 
I END OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

1-Hominids, 2-Time barrier, 3-Greed and libido,

4-Council of Nicaea, 5-Religion and conquest, 6-The rise of France,

7-Holy Roman Empire, 8-Maranos, 9-Huguenots,

10-East India Company, 11-Versailles, 12-Glorious Revolution,

13-Industrial Revolution.

II CREATION OF THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA

14-Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 15-David to Rotterdam,

16-Haym Salomon, 17-Letter from NYC, 18-International trade,

19-Wine and denim, 20-Union of 13 Colonies,

21-1st Continental Congress, 22-Recruiting Benjamin Franklin,

23-Working for independence, 24-Bank of North America,

25-Wilhemsbad, 26-Federalist Papers, 27-Manifest Destiny.

III THE TAKEOVER OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND

28-Real estate coup, 29-Terror and Barras, 30-Recruiting Bonaparte,

31-Battle of the Nile, 32-Quasi-War and Trafalgar,

33-Nathan in the City, 34-The 1812 tsunami, 35-Moscow Campaign,

36-The coup of Waterloo.

IV BULLDOZING THE ANCIEN REGIMES

38-Mass communication, 39-Wildcat banking,

40-Mexican-American War 1846, 41-Civil War,

42-Japan/China/India, 43-City of Lights, 44-Boer Wars,

45-The FED, 46-Conspiracy and control, 47-WWI & 1929 Crash,

48-WWII and Bretton Woods, 49-State of Israel,

50-Geopolitical sandwich, 51-The oil patch.

V ADAPTING TO DEMOCRACY

52-Empowerment, 53-The pill, 54-The badge of femininity,

55-The ANS, 56-Taming our ANS, 57-Sex and Christianity,

58-Emancipation of women, 59-The art of intimacy,

60-The ideal couple, 61-Facing society, 62-Making babies,

63-The budding libido, 64-The wall, 65-High school jungle,

66-Know your bully, 67-LGBTQ, 68-Gorgon Sisters, 69-Kintsugi.

I – END OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

Hominids

As we twitter with the whole world and fly to the far reaches of the globe on a whim, and as we enjoy clean water and unlimited electricity by flicking a button or turning a knob, we are empowered and feel invincible. Many of the values of those who not so long ago built their own homes, raised large families, grew their own food and made their own clothes, seem to be absent from our lives.

If we better understood the human ape and knew how the world of credit that empowered him was created, we would not only tend to reconnect with those values, but also realize how lucky we are to be living in the best of all possible worlds. More importantly, we would find serenity in that knowledge, and be more inclined to do things that fulfill us instead of those that eat away at our insides.

I mean to shed light on the evolution of humans and explain how the wonderful world of credit was created. The hope is that young people will read my findings and choose to live productive happy lives instead of overdosing on shit.

Around 65 million years ago, after the dinosaurs died off, we primates were the size of meerkats, and perhaps just as cute. In Africa, some 7 million years ago, the hominine-ape split occurred and we started using tools. At the beginning of the Quaternary, around 2.5 million years ago, the ice age we're presently in began, and as water levels dropped, we spread far and wide.

Glacials (maximum ice) and interglacials (minimum ice) occur in fairly regular cycles of around 20 thousand years. The timing is governed in large degree by predictable cyclic changes in Earth's orbit, which affect the amount of sunlight reaching different parts of Earth's surface. The three orbital variations are: changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun (eccentricity), shifts in the tilt of Earth's axis (obliquity), and the wobbling motion of Earth's axis (precession).

Our evolution was subjected to these glacial and interglacial swings that some refer to as the Sahara Pump. When the Sahara was dry, like it is today, we migrated either south to the Sahel region, north to the Atlas Mountains, or east to the Nile and African Rift valleys, and when it was wet, some of us migrated back. Around 3 million years ago, our cortex started to grow exponentially, and it seems to have occurred while we were in the African Rift Valley. In order to escape the big predators, we spent a lot of time in the water. In time, we shed our body hair, and because we had access to an overabundance of seafood, our brain size went from that of a chimpanzee to what it is today. We then developed language, created complex tools, controlled fire, built shelters, buried our dead, wore clothing, and built rafts to cross large bodies of water.

70 thousand years ago, the warming leg of the interglacial we're now in was interrupted by the Toba volcanic eruption that caused a one-thousand-year winter during which most of life on earth died out. In the following 30 thousand years, as the warming trend resumed, the hominids who had prospered in Asia slowly migrated westward to Europe. The Neanderthals, who had migrated to Europe prior to the Toba eruption had been severely affected by it and were not doing very well. Their population had dwindled down to a few breeding couples. As the hominids from Asia arrived in Europe, they mingled with the Neanderthals that were left standing, but the new arrivals prospered in a spectacular way while the Neanderthals were integrated as a breed. 10 thousand years ago, as the warming cycle that we're presently in gained full momentum, we started developing agriculture and leading sedentary lives.

Time Barrier

When scientists tell us that all life on Earth evolved from amino acids and the like, building blocks of life brewed in the primeval soup of life at the dawn of time, we sort of believe them, and when they tell us that Darwin's theory of evolution is irrefutable, we sort of believe them, but when they tell us we're apes, that's when we get our backs up. If we're intelligent, it's because God made us that way, and that's all there is to it.

Nonetheless, it gets harder and harder to refute the evidence that our ancestors had started prancing around on two feet as recently as 7 million years ago. As we became bipedal, and with the Sahara pump working away, we prospered in the African Rift Valleys where environmental conditions were ideal. We spent a lot of time in the water in order to protect ourselves from predators and lost most of our hair in the process. However, we found it impossible to compete with the big predators roaming the grasslands, and we certainly weren't able to get at the carcasses until the latter had finished with them. To be sure, we were at the bottom of the totem pole when it came to living off the grasslands. Nonetheless, in time, we got our courage up and invested the killing fields in order to glean a few morsels from the leftovers, and we obviously found nothing but bones. Understandably, we didn't know what to do with them, but since we were last on the scene and had all the time in the world to experiment, we eventually cracked one open. The precious bone marrow we found was avidly consumed, and when added to the rich and plentiful sea food already at our disposition in the shallow waters, we evolved in a spectacular way. By spending less time foraging for food, we had more time to 'think'.

Since our brain was rapidly increasing in size along with the rest of our body, there was outward pressure on the cranium, and, in time, our facial features slowly morphed into what they are today. As the neocortex grew exponentially and grafted itself upon our reptilian and limbic brains, it caused an explosion of cerebral activity, and we became the thinking, talking, problem-solving emotional beings we are today.

As of that moment, we traveled in an existential world different from the other primates. But the line that forever set us apart from our wild cousins was drawn in the sand when we grasped the notion of death. After witnessing the death of a loved one, not grasping why our parent or companion was no longer communicating with us, or why his or her body was decomposing, we were probably overcome with deep emotional distress. Our feelings and our need to understand surely made something snap in our brain. That was the day we broke the time barrier, the day we realized that we too would die.

Breaking the time barrier meant we were now intelligent. We could remember past experiences and project them into the future. As a simple ape frozen in the present, we had not known the anguish that the notion of death produces. Before, death had just been a momentary interruption in time, a sad happening devoid of meaning, and one that was not anticipated. But now, having broken the time barrier, not only did we know that we would die, but we also knew what could cause our death, and we were scared out of our wits. We saw dangers that threatened our life every which way we turned. We no longer trusted our instincts and our insecurity made us very aggressive. An everyday occurrence became a deadly threat, and fear overcame us. The forest became a scary place and darkness was unbearable. We could no longer stand the aquatic environment either, for we imagined the most terrible creatures lurking beneath the surface.

We managed to survive by taking refuge in caves and grabbing unto any outstanding individual who seemed to have answers. Through trial and error, we discovered how to make a fire and keep it going. Thereafter, we not only could warm ourselves, but we could keep the predators at bay. We learned to make weapons, and to hunt and live in groups, and our confidence grew. Nonetheless, it was hard to accept that we were animals, that we behaved like animals, and that our life would someday end.

Greed and Libido

When hominids became intelligent, their natural disposition towards envy, greed, and lust took on a new dimension. Natural selection being thrashed, the males started physically overpowering the females, for it didn't take them long to figure out that the most accessible and mind-boggling pleasures were those relating to fornication. Up till then, the right to pass on genes had been reserved to the alpha who had to constantly fight the other males for that privilege. However, the alpha never paid much attention to the female unless she was in heat at which time, he was made aware of her by the characteristic odor she exuded. This, however, was no longer the case, and it left the door wide open for the now intelligent lower order males.

In a blink of an eye, many lower order males became aspiring alphas, for they had the wherewithal to outwit the traditional alpha in their effort to get a female and experience the intense pleasures of copulation. Realizing that they didn't have to wait for the entrancing odors given off by the female in heat in order to satisfy their urge, hominids became very focused on 'diddling', and it caused a lot of violence and cruelty within the group. Males were ready to move heaven and earth in order to experience the wondrous sensations fornication procured them. They fought, cheated, lied, and were even disposed to maim and kill in order to satisfy the urges that the female triggered in them.

Unfortunately for the females, using his intelligence instead of his nose in order to find a partner meant the male was inclined to discriminate. Up till then, all the females had had the services of the best male available, the alpha, but now, the lower ranking males found ways to party as well, and that changed the order of things. Not only did the males start forcing themselves upon the females, but they became selective. They figured out that if they wanted to increase their chances at having many healthy offspring, it was not only better to seek out a young female with generous hips, but if a female had big breasts, a well-proportioned body, and harmonious facial features, she was more apt to be a good breeder, healthy, and resourceful.

In the millennia that followed, frantic sexual activity among lower-ranking partners made the breeding stock deteriorate, while the rate of sexually transmitted diseases increased, and fewer children survived. However, the law of natural selection did intervene one last time by transforming the oestrous cycle of females into a menstrual one in order to favor reproduction. Over the millennia that followed, females became reproductive all year round and were receptive to males on an ongoing basis. More pregnancies resulted. A uterus with thicker walls better protected the embryos, and more fetuses came to term. At the end of each menstrual cycle, the flow of blood freed the female genitals of harmful bodies, increased vaginal secretions made the vagina a hostile place for bacteria, and the rate of sexually transmitted diseases dropped. However, this hostility also applied to the spermatozoa, and since only the strongest of the latter made it to the ovum in order to fertilize it, it tended to enhance the quality of the genetic pool. And since the female received several males, paternity was confused, and males wanting to have a reproductive female with whom to have his own offspring dared not kill the babies of that nursing female, for he didn't know if they were his own. Thus, our species survived in spite of the fact that we became intelligent.

But there was another problem. Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry were now fornicating with every Sue, Jane, and Mary, the quality of the breeding stock dropped, and there were fewer Adonis and Venus lookalikes and more individuals with inadequacies and shortcomings. And since hominids were now intelligent, they weren't only conscious of where they stood on the social ladder, but they also knew if they'd been short-changed genetically. Feeling the need to compensate for their shortcomings, they took the easiest path. Lying, cheating, posturing, and bringing others down to their level as a way of making themselves feel adequate was the order of the day. They found it harder and harder to admit to being wrong or ignorant, and they were even prepared to commit cruel and dastardly deeds to prove they were as good as anybody else. Hominids became unnatural and fragile animals, and it engendered a lot of ugliness in them.

Though denaturalized, hominids were truly ingenious monkeys, and they knew that they couldn't afford to alienate the group members. They were dependent on the group, and they knew it was in their best interest to have the others think highly of them. They were torn between their uncontrollable urge to satisfy their desires and their need to be liked. Nonetheless, they were becoming hard to handle, and physical force alone could no longer keep them in line and maintain cohesion within the group. Many individuals were aware of the advantages that altruism and cooperation procured, but there were too many who didn't.

As it became obvious that hominids' disposition with regards to greed and lust was making cohesion within the group impossible, the elders had to find ways to make everyday life bearable. Through stories and myths, they promoted the notion of omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient beings who could inflict the worse punishments on those who didn't behave as expected. At night, hominids were constantly reminded of these threats as they sat around the communal fire listening to the tall tales. They saw the evil red eyes piercing through the thick surrounding blanket of darkness, and as they listened to the howls of monsters that prowled the night, they trembled. The precursor of the bad mean god who could condemn one to the consuming fires of hell for eternity was being created.

Council of Nicaea

Around 20 thousand years ago, hominids learned to grow things and became sedentary. 5 thousand years ago, writing started, and those who mastered the art were considered superior beings, and wanting to improve the human condition, they started putting religion to paper. Some 1700 years ago, as the Roman Empire was on the verge of collapsing, a few wise men decided to invent and create the most successful religion the world would ever see. The New Testament, the document that served as a basis for this religion, created a 'God made Man' figure that was based on the life of Apollonius of Tyana.

Apollonius was born around the start of the Common Era (CE) and lived to be around 100. Very early on in life he opted for continence and abstinence, as opposed to pleasure and gratification, for he was above all interested in achieving enlightenment and freeing his spirit. He followed the teachings of Pythagoras, great philosopher, mathematician, ascetic and vegetarian, born in 569 BCE. Later Apollonius travelled and studied far and wide, as far as India, in order to further his knowledge. He was an avowed philosopher, social leader, moral teacher, religious reformer and healer, and from one end of the Roman empire to the other, he was honored by all, by slave as well as emperor. Many referred to him as 'the master' or the 'savior', for he healed the body as well as the soul.

After travelling to India where he was greatly influenced by Krishna, he became a naturopathic healer. He healed by 'the laying of hands', and by the use of hydrotherapy. The idea of baptism likely originated from his way of cleaning the bodies of the poor wretches who came to consult him. He would rinse out their colon in order to rid them of worms, wash their whole bodies, insist on their getting a lot of clean air and sunlight, and above all, strongly urge them not to consume anything that Mother Earth did not directly produce. He was a strict vegetarian who did not drink wine and respected the life of animals as much as that of humans.

In India he was introduced to the doctrines of Krishna, and the doctrines of Pythagoras and Krishna became one in his mind. In Judea and Egypt, he preached to the Nazarenes and the Therapeuts, and converted many. The Nazarenes and Therapeuts were also known as Essenes, individuals who belonged to a Jewish sect that had split off from the main body of Judaism. The Nazarenes lived near the Dead Sea and are the presumed authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, while the Therapeuts lived near Alexandria where they were known as healers. Upon his return from India, Apollonius, already a famous teacher of morality, became known as a great healer, and he was the one responsible for spreading the Essene doctrine throughout the Roman Empire. Though not Jewish, he was considered an Essene, and converted many 'new' Jews to his way of thinking. The Essenes were soon seen as a threat to the foundering Roman religion.

In 325CE, faced with an Empire on life support, Emperor Constantine had an idea. Constantine had been made Augustus of the Western Roman Empire in 313 CE. A previous Emperor, Diocletian, had split the Empire into three parts in order to better rule, but it hadn't helped, for thereafter the Empire had been torn apart by civil war more than ever. Constantine had lost no time in defeating and killing Emperors Maxentius and Licinius, in order to become sole ruler. Wanting to establish peace within the Empire before leaving for Byzantium to the east, Constantine proceeded to replace an ineffective impersonal Roman religion with the very popular and widespread Essene religion based on the teachings of Apollonius. Instead of massacring the Essenes like Diocletian had done, he decided to use them. He would rule through a religious network instead of a military one. He would make the Essene religion the official state religion, and have bishops infiltrate the existing Roman Empire infrastructure. In 325 CE, he convened the Council of Nicaea.

Constantine may be revered as a saint by the Greek Christian Church, and somewhat so by the Latin Christian Church which doesn't quite know what to think of him, but regardless, he was a sanguinary. The Roman Church claims he was baptized on his deathbed, but that is questionable and irrelevant. Constantine was a brutal man who butchered his enemies and executed his own wife and son. It's clear that whatever this cruel man did was seeped in raw ambition.

As he convened the Council of Nicaea, Constantine must have insisted on having a few changes made to the about-to-be-created state religion. Apollonius, an Essene who had existed more than three hundred years before, was the acknowledged messiah, a holy man who had not only preached peace and goodwill among men, but also abstinence and respect for all living things. Understandably, a religion that condemned meat eating, wine drinking, lasciviousness and profit making, was out of the question. If it was to be declared the official state religion, it needed a few nips and tucks; it needed to be more in tune with Roman reality.

As it turned out, the revamped messiah not only drank wine and ate fish but was declared Son of God. The prelates kept inventing Christ by saying that he had been conceived by a virgin who had been visited by a holy spirit. All the scriptures that have come down to us were either created or adjusted at that time in order to give credence to the God-made-man concept. Contrary to Apollonius, the real messiah figure whose many writings were all destroyed, the alleged messiah accomplished a lot of miracles, miracles that were never corroborated by any historian. No matter, presenting the new Christ as the Son of God was something the superstitious hominids would readily believe. It wasn't much of a stretch for them to believe their Messiah was actually the Son of God who had been sent down on earth and made man in order to save them.

In pursuing their goal, the Church fathers were quite wise in keeping some existing myths. One such myth was a convoluted story where Adam and Eve, the first human couple, had been caught playing house in the Garden of Eden. The deed was so horrendous that God reacted violently and banned the couple and their descendants from the Garden of Eden for all time. Very odd behavior for a master creator who wanted to create a human race! Nonetheless, the Christian gurus' stroke of genius was to have everybody believe that God changed his mind and sent his son down on earth to die on the cross in order to redeem humans from their 'original sin', a curse that was sending hominids straight to hell. From then on, if one wanted God to accept him into the Garden of Eden after death, all he had to do was to have that dreadful first sin washed away from his soul through baptism and to live according to the teachings of the revamped Christ. This transformed the lowly hominids into godlike creatures, and more importantly, they now knew where they came from, why they were here, and where they were going after death. They were relieved from the 'original sin', 'existential sin', or 'sin of the flesh', depending on one's interpretation.

As for setting Christ's birthday, it was rather easy. Because he was now considered the giver of eternal life, it was quite logical to have his birth coincide with the greatest event in the sun's cycle. What happens on the 25th of December is a phenomenon that's unique and unchanging in the northern hemisphere; the sun stops dropping off the horizon and can be observed reversing itself. Since the increased amount of sunlight is tantamount to a promise of new life, many ancient gods are said to have been born on this day. And since the Romans were used to celebrating Sol Invictus, why not continue the tradition and celebrate Christ's birth instead?

Christ's birth year was another matter. The prelates wanted to make it coincide as much as possible with the birth of Apollonius in order to make the imposture credible. So, in 525 CE, a monk called Dionysius Exiguus introduced the Anno Domini calendar. Since the Easter calendar used during the Roman Era was a calendar referring to emperor years, Dionysius said it was intolerable to continually refer to Diocletian, the Emperor who had persecuted and massacred the Essenes, and he set about creating the Gregorian calendar. So, with imaginative arithmetic, he arrived at the conclusion that the Messiah was born in 753 of the Roman Era, and decided that January 1st of year 754 of the Roman Era would be known as January 1st of Year One of the Anno Domini Era (AD). It was much later, in 1582 CE that Pope Gregory, in spite of the dubious arithmetic used by Dionysius, made it official. Ever since, when dating historical events, the whole world uses BC or AD, acronyms that are tied to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a fabricated messiah. That's why some people today prefer to use the acronym CE (Common Era).

As for Christ's birth place, it was established when Emperor Constantine made a stop in Palestine with his mother Helena on his way to Byzantine. The idea was to eradicate Apollonius from history by breaking all possible ties between the new Christ, a Jew, and Apollonius, a Greek, while blurring the existence of Essenes and their ties to the new religion. Helena determined that Christ had been born in Bethlehem, a harmless out of the way place, and that's where she had a church built. In the meantime, Constantine had workers excavate the area where the demolished temple of Jupiter Capitolinus had been in Jerusalem. When the workers allegedly discovered the remains of the tomb that was reported to be that of Christ, Constantine had a new shrine built on the spot, and it still stands today as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The temple of Venus had also been demolished, thereby exposing the site where Christ was allegedly crucified. Emperor Constantine had arrived at this conclusion after ordering the Bishop of Jerusalem to make a search for the cross which produced a few pieces of wood found in a cistern. Constantine and his mother may have had the holy places built for their own reasons, but Jews and Muslims have never quite agreed with their findings.

The Council of Nicaea was indeed a momentous event in our history. Because the Christian Church was now the official Roman religion, it grew exponentially, and went about converting the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, and Vandals, the Arian 'barbarians', with the help of Clovis, the Frankish warlord. After being baptized in Reims in 496 CE, Clovis became the first of many absolute kings of divine right, and he went about doing his godly chores by changing the minds of those who believed Christ was a prophet and not the Son of God. In enforcing the Nicene Creed untold numbers of Essenes, or barbarians as the history books call them, were accordingly slaughtered.

Having gotten rid of all opposition, the growth of the new religion knew no bounds, and the church made good use of the Roman empire infrastructure, especially in the Latin half. Having a church and a holy man in every small town fostered a feeling of solidarity, and the poor hominids felt secure for the first time. To the east, in the Greek half, it was another matter. The Greek Church refused the authority of the Latin Pope and divided up in parts controlled by separate Patriarchs. And because it also had to face the pressures of the Muslim world, the Greek Church never attained the power and influence of the Latin Church.

The Christian Church very quickly became a considerable financial power. After Charlemagne was crowned Emperor by Pope Theo III in Reims, France, in 800 CE, tithing throughout Europe took on a new dimension. Because 10% of everybody's revenue represented mindboggling amounts, and because many Christians bequeathed their estates to the Church in order to ensure their passage to heaven after their demise, the Church owned as much as one third of all the wealth and property in Europe.

But, no matter how we view it, the tremendous success of the Christian Church was due primarily to human psychology. When humans broke the time barrier, they were not only traumatized by the awareness of their mortality, but they were also ashamed of their bestiality, especially as regards fornication. Judaism had long ago tried to alleviate their fear and their shame by imagining the story of Adam and Eve where both were banished from the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit, but the author hadn't followed up with a solution.

The genius of the fathers of the Roman religion was to tell the faithful that their messiah was the son of God who had been sent down on earth to free them from the sin committed by Adam and Eve and to show them the way to heaven. One needed only to be baptized and to follow the ten commandments. Their Christ had thus opened the door of heaven to all the poor wretches of the empire. Later, at the Council of Trent in 1545, when the Church Fathers made confession a sacrament, the success of Christianity was assured. The local priest was then perceived as being in direct contact with God, and being the representative of God on earth, he could heal the penitent's soul by forgiving his sins in his name. The beneficial psychological effect produced by the sacrament of confession cannot be overestimated.

In conclusion, though a creator of the world may exist, and that we'll never know, God did not create Man, but rather, Man created God in 325 CE. The religion derived from this invented god helped humanity get to where it is today. We should be thankful for that, but we must wean ourselves from Judaeo-Christian thought and know our true history if we want to experience a degree of happiness in this great wonderful living, breathing world that we find ourselves in.

Religion and conquest

When we became intelligent some 3 million years ago, we became aware of our mortality and bestiality and were devastated. In time, as animists, we invented and orally passed on myths of all kinds in order to address those two existential concerns.

When writing came along, formal religion started replacing animism. The pyramid texts were written around five thousand years ago, followed by Hindu Vedas scriptures one thousand years later and the Torah, another thousand year after that.

Hinduism, Buddhism, and the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are the religions that play the greatest role in our lives today, and although Islam, because of political unrest and conflicts over petroleum, is attracting most of the attention, Christianity remains the one that is most associated with the existing democracies.

The reason Christianity was so successful was because it was the first religion to address our fear regarding mortality and our shame regarding bestiality, albeit in very awkward ways. Jews and Muslims don't believe in original sin, a euphemism for sin of the flesh, the sin Eve committed. Jews say leading a good life and living according to the rules of Moses is the best we can do, whereas the Muslims say we are born pure, and all the faithful have to do is lead a good life according to the Koran and not let themselves be contaminated by society.

Christians, on the other hand, took a diametrically opposed view. In 325 CE, the creators of the New Testament came right out and said that the sin of the flesh—although they called it original sin not daring to mention fornication—was so awful that it did indeed send people to hell. But they gave the faithful a way out by inventing the myth that the son of god had come down on earth to take that sin upon himself, and thus save humanity. Not surprisingly, Apollonius cum Jesus cum Christ was celibate and his mother Mary was a virgin mother, for how could the son of god be the son of a sinner? Thereafter, to erase Eve's sin and avoid their descent into the cauldron of eternal fire, all the faithful had to do was get baptized and follow the 10 commandments. The Church Fathers may have dealt with Man's shame regarding bestiality in an enigmatic way, but it was ingenious in that, by doing so, they also dealt with the fear of mortality. The myth explains that humans are born in sin, that Christ came down on earth to save them, and if they get baptized and follow his teachings, they go to heaven when they die. No matter how ludicrous a myth is, if it is transmitted by official imposing dignitaries over a long enough period, it is believed to the point where nobody dares speak out against it. God was made flesh and he came down on earth to save humanity, period. How can anybody doubt that? A lot of His alleged contemporaries saw Him and touched Him, though no historian of His time mentions the man who performed all those mindboggling miracles. Regardless, who would dare say Jesus and his heavenly dad are simply figments of the collective imagination?

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all derived from the Old Testament. And if Christianity was so successful, why is it that the Arabs invented another religion in 610 CE instead of simply adhering to the existing Christian model, be it Roman or Byzantine? And why did Muslims make an end run around Rome by conquering north Africa and entering Europe through the Iberic peninsula? Perhaps the powerful merchants in the Arabian Peninsula saw an opportunity to unite the Arab people by conquest just like Rome had done with the Europeans in creating the Holy Roman Empire to the west and the Byzantine Empire to the east.

One thing is certain, the Muslims privileged the development of science, be it math, medicine, or architecture inherited from the Hellenistic world. Muslims had also learned the art of paper making, which made it possible to produce cheap and plentiful books. Arab doctors understood the need to quarantine sick patients in order to stop disease from spreading, and understood that a healthy diet helped patients to recover from illness. They invented the concept of zero, and Arabic numbers are used worldwide to this day. Muslims created the astrolabe, a type of computer that charted the movements of the planets, moon, sun, and stars, an instrument that helped sailors to stay on course when at sea. In a word, science was being disseminated in the Arab world while, in the Christian world, it was being stifled, the latter being founded on the rejection of the material world and the promotion of humility and poverty. Since the pursuit of knowledge and science is unstoppable among intelligent beings, this gave quite an advantage to the Muslims as they carried the torch of knowledge into Europe via Africa, effectively making an impressive end run around Rome.

At first, the founders of Islam were perhaps more interested in uniting the Arab world and conquering the Arabian Peninsula, but they were so successful that they expanded their ambitions to include the Byzantine Empire and Europe, and that's where Mohammed, born in 570 CE in Mecca, comes into the picture.

The founders of Islam decided to make Mohammed the ultimate prophet by doing the inverse of what the Christians had done. They couldn't very well have another Son of God come down on earth, so they decided to have Mohammed go to heaven and meet Allah, the unique God, in person.

Mohammed had been a caravan raider with all the violence that it entailed. In Medina, he had come to the attention of his future father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and was hired to run his operations. At age 50, in a single night, in 621, he rode his winged horse from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from there onwards to heaven to meet Allah. After meeting with Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, he was allowed to meet Allah with whom he negotiated the number of daily prayers the faithful would be required to make. He then rode back to Mecca via Jerusalem. When Mohammed related his adventure to the Meccans, they thought he was insane, and he decided to leave Mecca for Medina.

The conquests of the Arabian Peninsula began after Mohammed negotiated a peace between the Muhajirin, the immigrants from Mecca, and the Ansar, the people who had welcomed him to Medina. Thereafter, he assembled an army, conquered Mecca, and unified both after executing the whole population of male Jews who refused to accept Islam. From there, Islam went on to conquer most of the Byzantine Empire states along the north African coast before entering Europe, barely failing to conquer the whole of the Holy Roman Empire. The Muslim invasion was stopped in Granada in 1492.

However, both Islam and Christianity were religions with a serious Achilles heel. When Mohammed died, Islam split into two factions, those who wanted a caliphate system to keep running things, and those who wanted a blood descendance. The two factions, Sunnis and Shiites, became mortal enemies. As for Christianity, by being impermeable to science and profit-seeking, and by persecuting all those who were not Christian, it made two formidable enemies, the Huguenots, French entrepreneurs, and the Jews. These two foes, the Huguenots and the Jews, would join forces in 1600 in Amsterdam and bring down the political and financial power that was the Holy Roman Empire.

The rise of France

Shortly before the convening of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Emperor Constantine gave the Lateran Palace estate, the land where the Vatican stands today, to the bishop of Rome. For the western world, this was to be the center of world power, religious, political and financial, right up to the creation of the Bank of England in 1694.

Shortly after the Council of Nicaea, the Christian bishops started converting the Arian 'barbarians' who occupied most of the empire. The new Trinitarian religion that stated that the bishop of Rome was the representative of God on earth and that his authority had precedence over that of the 'barbarian' kings, was vigorously opposed by the latter. The Arian barbarians were followers of Apollonius, a holy man and prophet, and they found the concept of the Holy Trinity, where the son of God had come down on earth in person, totally absurd. They were more in tune with the doctrine that stated that Mother Earth was the ultimate source of power. They were prepared to accept the Roman administration, and even to live in harmony with the Roman civil servants, but they could not accept this new Trinitarian religion supported by Rome.

That is why the bishop of Rome and the emperor had to resort to force. When, in 486, at the age of twenty, a certain Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, won the battle of Soissons against Syagrius, the bishops realized that they had found their strong man. In order to convert Clovis to Christianity, they had arranged to have him meet Clotilde, a Christian Burgundian. He married her in 493, and once the kingdom of the Salian Franks was allied to the kingdom of the Burgundians and to that of Soissons, Clovis was able to go after the Alamans to the east and the Visigoths to the south.

During the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alamans in 496, the Frankish warriors, Salians and Ripuarians, were far outnumbered by their opponent. Clovis, seeing victory escape him, decided to invoke the God of his wife Clotilde, asking him to intervene. When the Alamans fled, their chief having been killed by a flying ax, the Franks claimed victory, and Clovis converted to Christianity.

On December 25, 498, Clovis was baptized and anointed king by Saint Rémi in Reims. From that moment onwards, the conquered Arians were not unhappy to have Christian Franks as masters, and Clovis adroitly exploited his status as the first king of divine right.

Later in 507, Clovis' campaign against the Visigoths took on the appearance of a crusade, and the decisive battle took place in the plain of Vouillé, near Poitiers, a battle from which Clovis emerged victorious. Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, perished in the fray, and Clovis not only seized a big slice of the Visigoth kingdom but also managed to get his hands on Alaric's treasure which was in Toulouse.

When Clovis died in 511, the vanquished Arians had by then accepted the Trinitarian religion, and the Frankish kingdom had become a Christian kingdom. France became the most important part of the Holy Roman Empire, for it was not only its geographical centerpiece but it played a major role politically and militarily.

Clovis' military successes against the Alamans and Visigoths, as well as those of his sons against the Burgundians, were such that Arianism disappeared almost completely from Europe, the only exception being the Lombards in Italy. After Charlemagne defeated the Lombards in 770, Arianism was totally eradicated from the empire. When Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks in 768, and especially when he was anointed Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in Rome, in 800, it meant the rule by kings of divine right was established with France leading the way. It remained so for the next thousand years.

Holy Roman Empire

From 481 to 751, the Merovingians converted the Arian populations to Christianity with great success, and since conversion implied conquest, France became the uncontested power within the Holy Roman Empire.

In 771, after the suspicious death of his brother Carloman I, Charlemagne ousted his two young nephews, legitimate heirs of their father, and took possession of the kingdom. The nephews took refuge in Italy among the Lombards with their mother. Charlemagne pursued them and captured them in Verona where they vanished without a trace, probably having been imprisoned in a convent.

After conquering the Lombards, Charlemagne spent several years subduing the Saxons to the north and conquering the Muslims to the south. Charlemagne became extremely powerful, and before France engulfed the Holy Roman Empire altogether, the Pope made his move. When the Pope offered to anoint him emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in Rome on December 25 of the year 800, Charlemagne feeling being emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was more prestigious than being king of France readily accepted, and without realizing it, restored the authority of Rome over France.

Europe being entirely converted, and the faithful being obliged to pay tithes, it resulted in considerable revenue for the Holy Roman Empire. In addition, many of the faithful were willing to pay to have their sins redeemed, and many others bequeathed their property to the Church in order to secure a place in heaven after death. The Holy Roman Empire thus became not only a gigantic financial power, but also a power that tolerated no competition.

In a position of strength, the Bishop of Rome undertook to convert the populations of England, Scotland and Ireland. He chose to send William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, across the Channel in order to make him King of England. But in so doing, the Pope made a major mistake, because when William the Conqueror was crowned King of England, he continued to be Duke of Normandy, and that didn't bode well for future relations between France and England. When, in 1152, William's great-grandson, Henri Plantagenet, married Aliénor of Aquitaine, ex-wife of Louis VII, king of France, the kingdom of France and that of England became seriously entangled. In fact, when the third son of Eleanor and Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, became King of England in 1189, he was Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Poitiers, Count of Maine and Earl of Anjou. Fortunately, during his reign, which only lasted from 1189 until his death in 1199, he spent barely a few months in England, and thus, there was no war between France and England during that period. The first war took place in 1202 when Philippe Auguste, king of France, seized the Duchy of Normandy which had been passed down to Jean sans Terre, Richard's youngest brother. The Hundred Years' War between French Kings of England and French Kings of France was to officially start in 1337. That's when Edward III, king of England, and direct descendant of the king of France on his mother's side, declared himself to be king of France. The battle for the crown of France remained a bloody family affair for over a century.

Nonetheless, when the Pope sent William the Conqueror to England in 1066, Rome's cruel ways didn't lessen in other parts of the empire, and the historical period that followed was extremely violent. In 1095, Pope Innocent III launched the first crusade in order to liberate the holy places of Jerusalem from the Muslims who forbade their access to Christians. In 1099 the Franks managed to seize the city of Jerusalem. After two hundred years of rule, the Frank kingdom known as the Kingdom of Jerusalem collapsed in 1291 following the defeat of the Franks in Saint-Jean-D'Acre.

In France, the crusade against the Albigensians began in 1209 with the Béziers sack where the whole population was massacred, and officially ended in 1321 when the last of the Good Men, Guillem Bélibaste, was burned at the stake. But in fact, the last group of Cathars, 510 strong, died in a cave in Lombrives in 1328 after the crusader, Simon de Montfort, walled the entrance to the cave and left them to die. For many centuries, countless infidels, whether Cathars, Muslims or Jews, were tortured, killed and sent to the stake by the Bishop of Rome's henchmen, and this heretic cleansing lasted long after the death of Joan of Arc in 1404. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII preached an inquisition against witchcraft, an attack directed against women where many were condemned to the stake. Later, this religious barbarism was even adopted by the Protestants, as exemplified by the Salem trials in America in 1692, where dozens of women were hanged for witchcraft.

With regards to the fratricidal wars between England and France, it all started when Edward I of England was crowned in 1272 following his return from the ninth crusade. Having legitimate rights over France because he held title to all the fiefs of western France, from Flanders to Aquitaine, he naturally declared himself King of France. And Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair, who reigned from 1285 to 1314, didn't help to pacify things. During his reign, he transferred the Holy See of Rome to Avignon, and because the kings of the Holy Roman Empire were not disposed to submit to the authority of a Pope who answered to the King of France, the transfer was short-lived. However, when he officially declared that Aquitaine belonged to France, that decision was to lead to a fratricidal war that would last more than one hundred years.

Philippe the Fair having died in 1314, in 1337, Edward III of England not only declared that Aquitaine belonged to him, but that he was the legitimate heir to the throne of France on his mother's side. His mother was Isabelle of France, daughter of Philip the Fair. Not surprisingly, the Plantagenets and the Valois clashed on the battlefield many times, until Louis XI, king of France, took definite possession of Aquitaine in 1453.

The atrocities committed against the "heretics" by the Bishop of Rome with the help of his absolute kings of divine right over so many centuries, were unspeakable. And they continued after the 100 Years War with Inquisitions against the Jews in the Iberic Peninsula. However, when the Church started to persecute the Protestants within France's borders, it signed its death warrant. The Protestants, also called Calvinists or Huguenots, were business entrepreneurs with great know-how, and they wanted to make up for lost time following 116 years of senseless war. But because the idea of profit making went against the Roman Church's doctrine, the Bishop of Rome decided to have his French kings apply well-tried persecution tactics against French entrepreneurs turned Calvinists.

The French Protestants would become the Church's mortal enemy, and would eventually join forces with the Jews in Amsterdam. The two persecuted groups would go on to create the East India Company in 1600, an institution that would eventually replace the Holy Roman Empire as a financial and political power. However, the Bishop of Rome had seen the growing threat of Jews and Huguenots, and that's why, in 1520, he anointed Charles-Quint Emperor of the Holy Germanic Empire. But Charles-Quint failed in his mission to counter French power, as well as in his attempt to put an end to the Protestant Reformation, and his reign was not only ineffective but a serious setback for the Holy Roman Empire.

Marranos

When the prelates decided to revamp the image of the revered messiah Apollonius by changing his name and turning him into the son of God, the founding fathers had a problem. The Apollonius lookalike had to be an Essene from Palestine, and that meant he had to be a Jew. How does one build a Roman religion based on the teachings of a Jew? Well, they did it by likening the money-lending Jews of the Temple of Jerusalem to Jews in general. By conjuring up a story where the invented messiah was violently opposed to the Jewish usurers, and where these same usurers were responsible for his horrible death on the cross, it would be one way to turn their Christ into a very acceptable Jew. Furthermore, the faithful would readily accept the idea that Apollonius, their long-departed Greek messiah, had, some 300 years prior, accomplished miracles and was indeed the Son of God as touted by the prelates of the Church of Rome. Whether the results were desired or not, Jews would henceforth bear the Christ-killer stigma. Thereafter, Christians, believing that Jews were responsible for the death of their Christ, wouldn't be unduly upset to see them tortured, burned at the stake, or despoiled and banned from their homes.

Geographically, France is the hub of Europe, and it naturally became the cornerstone of Christianity when the Church of Rome took over the administration of Gaul and the Western Roman Empire after Constantin's departure for Byzantium. Clovis, a Frank, was the Church's first anointed king of divine right, and during his reign, he did his best to persecute and convert the 'barbarians' who could be more rightly called Arians.

Once the converting tactics were well under way, the Church of Rome turned its attention to Jews. In 629 CE, the Pope directed King Dagobert to expulse the Jews from Christian Gaul. Later, in 996 CE, when King Robert the Pious came to power in France, he burned a great number of Jews at the stake. When in 1009 the Muslims allegedly burned the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Christians blamed the Jews, and consequently, many French Jews were again tortured and massacred. Later, in 1096, Jews started being systematically despoiled, and burned at the stake or expulsed from the realm. It was the start of the first crusade, and Philip 1st and his noblemen had taken advantage of the situation in order to replenish their coffers. By despoiling the Jews and expulsing them, they were killing two birds with one stone. Philip was not only doing his Christian duty but he had found a way to finance the crusade ordered by Pope Urban II. Over the next centuries, when King Philippe Augustus and others needed money, they would let the Jews back in for a fee, and the whole process would start over again. However, in 1394, Charles VI officially declared the definite expulsion of Jews from France, and as many as 100 000 French Jews made their way to Spain.

They chose Spain not only because it was close to France, but it was also because the Muslims were by then in full control of Spain and were more tolerant towards the Jews, albeit for financial reasons. However, when the Christians reconquered the Iberian Peninsula in 1478, the Pope ordered an Inquisition as soon as it became feasible. The Jews were again forced to convert to Christianity, and if they refused, they were burned at the stake. Understandably, many Sephardim chose to convert while continuing to practise their religion in secret, and they became known as Marranos. In 1492, they were expelled from Spain and many of them fled to Portugal and Morocco.

In 1536, there was another Inquisition directed at Jews in Portugal. Once more, facing torture and death, many Jews fled. This time, because a world-shattering event had just taken place in England, many of the great banking and shipbuilding Jewish families chose to go there. It had to do with Henry VIII who had reacted violently to the Pope's refusal to annul his marriage. The Pope, who was in the habit of arranging and annulling royal marriages for political and religious reasons, had refused to grant Henry VIII his divorce, and here's why. King Henry had married a Spaniard, Catherine of Aragon, and since the Church of Rome considered the Kingdom of Spain much more important than the Kingdom of England, it was therefore unwilling to displease the King of Spain. When the Pope refused to grant Henry VIII his request, the latter, determined to have a son that his present wife could not give him, declared himself head of the Church in England, separated from Rome, and divorced Catherine.

In the process, England was deprived of the financial services of Rome. At first, Henry sold off all the unprofitable Church property and even had his friends rummage through the unsold properties for possible treasures and valuable materials, but it was a futile move. Most of the revenue derived from these operations ended up in the hands of those doing the demolishing and the selling, and very little revenue reached the state coffers. Not surprisingly, many old aristocratic families are to this day indebted and loyal to the King of England because of Henry VIII's 'generosity'.

With no other option, Henry had decided to admit the Jews back into England. The Jews had been expelled from England since 1290, but these were special Jews. The Marranos or Conversos, as they were called, professed to be Christians when in fact they still practised their religion in secret. But Henry overlooked their deceitfulness, for he was in dire financial straits and needed their financial skills. In accepting the Jews for their banking skills and Huguenots for their great entrepreneurship, Henry was unknowingly sounding the death knoll of the Holy Roman Empire as a financial and political power. England remained Catholic, but the Jews and the French Protestants based in Amsterdam would eventually find a way to do in the papist kings and establish a constitutional monarchy once settled in the City in London.

Huguenots

The Christian Church was intolerant and sanguinary from the very beginning and it fostered much hate throughout the Holy Roman Empire. The absolute kings of divine right, anointed by the Pope, ruled over the different parts of the empire and not only persecuted the Jews, the 'Christ killers', but all those who refused to follow the Roman Church's liturgy as well. For instance, the Pope would suggest the need for a crusade, and the kings and nobles fearing excommunication would be quick to raise an army, France leading the way. The first crusade was against the Muslims in 1099. After slaughtering the Muslims in Jerusalem, the French conquered Palestine and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem which lasted until 1291. In 1209, Pope Innocent III asked the French king to carry out a crusade against his own people, the Cathars, and it lasted from 1209 to 1229. The Cathars were completely annihilated down to the last 'good man' who was executed in 1231, more than a million in all. All this because the peaceful Cathars refused to accept the Roman Church's liturgy.

The Church committed so many atrocities and was so inflexible that opposition to it could only grow. So, when Gutenberg's printing press came along in 1440, it slowly paved the way for the Protestant Reformation. At first, printing had a very limited impact, for it was used mainly by the Church to print the Bible and such. The Church controlled what was to be printed and the language used was Latin. Since few lay people could read and write, control was a no-brainer.

However, in Germany, in 1517, pamphlets targeting the abuses of the Pope and the Church started being printed by the leaders of the protestant movement to inflame popular opinion. Martin Luther was one of the earliest and most effective pamphleteers. The coarseness and violence of the pamphlets on both sides and the public disorder attributed to their distribution led to their prohibition. Many scholars, disgusted by the abuses and barbarism of the Church, rallied to Luther's side, and started reading the contents of the pamphlets to the masses. The Protestant Reformation was not about to go away.

By 1520, Luther's ideas had spread in France, and as early as 1521, at the initiative of the Sorbonne, the condemnations of the Protestant heretics began. Fines and prison sentences were imposed on lowly infidels, while heretical monks and priests were condemned to the stake.

Then came along Jean Calvin, a follower of Luther, who would do something Luther hadn't considered doing. Luther had mainly been a reformer trying to change the Church from within, but Calvin wanted much more, he wanted to lay down the rules for a new religion. He had great success among the French bourgeoisie, which comprised the greatest entrepreneurs of the day. Wanting to make up for lost time after the Hundred Years' War, these businessmen wanted the backwards and cruel Roman Church out of the way. They of course used pamphlets to make their views known, and after the 'Affaire des Placards' in 1534, King François I, having lost patience with them, had several of their leaders hanged or sent to the stake. Following these events, Jean Calvin left France and settled in Geneva. Other French Calvinists started emigrating to Hanau, Amsterdam and London.

While Latin continued to be the language of the Roman Church, French became that of the Calvinists in France and Switzerland. As of 1570, the printing houses in Geneva and Amsterdam became major centers for the dissemination of Calvinism, and consequently of French. The French nobility had massively adhered to Calvinism as early as 1555. The French papists, feeling threatened by the Calvinists, perpetrated the Wassy massacre in 1562, where several hundred innocent Huguenots, as Calvinists began to be called, were slaughtered like cattle. Then, in 1572, with printing becoming widespread in France, the Huguenots were on the verge of tipping French political power in their favor. That's when King Charles IX engineered the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On the night of August 24, 1572, more than 10,000 noble and notable Huguenots were killed, in Paris and in the provinces.

Because of the Placards Affair in 1534, the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, the siege of La Rochelle in 1627, and the dragonnades under Louis XIV in 1681, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots migrated to more clement lands, and it was the biggest brain drain in the history of any country. That's why, when Henry VIII was forced to open the door to those with financial and business skills in 1534, many Huguenots had ended up in England where French was still widely spoken among aristocrats.

In 1573, when William of Nassau-Orange converted to Calvinism, and later, in 1579, when the Treaty of Union was signed in Utrecht, making the Netherlands protestant and independent from Spain, Amsterdam became a Huguenot haven and many Calvinists were encouraged to join their brothers who were already established there. More importantly, when the Marranos started arriving after their expulsion from Portugal, they joined forces with the Huguenots in both London and Amsterdam, and their union changed the fate of mankind.

East India Company

In the Netherlands, William the Silent, also known as William of Nassau and Prince of Orange, was a robust champion of Protestantism who encouraged thousands of Jews, new Christians as he called them, and Huguenots, Christian Protestants from France, to migrate to Amsterdam. Thanks to this influx, Amsterdam became the trading capital of the world and the Dutch ruled the oceans for much of the 17th century.

Sephardim were money men while Huguenots were entrepreneurs, and together, they formed a formidable team. They first created the East India Company in 1600, in London. but in 1602 they decided to move their headquarters to Amsterdam. Even though Jews and Protestants had been free to enter England, a development that had started under Henry VIII, the people were still very much brainwashed by the old ideas of the Roman Church. So, because the Marranos weren't free to practise their religion, and because Protestants were still viewed as enemies, the company shareholders decided to set up their headquarters in Amsterdam instead.

Once established in Amsterdam, they got right down to business. In order to protect the North American fur trade, the company shareholders built a fort at the tip of Manhattan in 1609 which would become New Amsterdam in 1624, and later, New York. In 1652, they expanded and created a colony on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, in order to protect the spice trade with Asia. The Dutch East India Company ruled the waves, and its founders, Jews and Huguenots, became so rich and powerful, that they could start planning the demise of the Holy Roman Empire.

But they hadn't given up on re-establishing the company's headquarters in London, for England was across the channel from France and its economy had much more potential. However, before they could return, they would have to find a way to get rid of the papist kings and get a king that would accept parliamentary rule. As it so happened, there were strong anti-royalist feelings in the English parliament, and the word Catholic was starting to be used to distinguish the papist followers from the Anglicans. So, because Charles I, a Catholic, had just been crowned after marrying the Catholic Bourbon Princess Henrietta, it wouldn't be too difficult to finance an army that would answer to an anti-royalist parliament, defeat the catholic king, and force him to accept parliamentary rule. The country was ripe for civil war.

Oliver Cromwell came to the financiers' attention in 1642, when he joined the roundheads, the pro-parliamentarians. At the outset of what became known as the English civil war, he distinguished himself militarily and was subsequently promoted to commander of the New Model Army. Over the next few years, the royalist forces were defeated, and when Charles 1, the divine right king, was captured following a battle in Scotland in 1645, he was handed over to the English parliament which was under the protection of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. However, Charles refused to accept a constitutional monarchy and escaped. In 1647, he was recaptured, and in 1648, he was tried, convicted and executed. Cromwell then dominated the Rump Parliament created in 1649.

But Oliver Cromwell was a puritan fanatic who had been extremely aggressive towards Ireland and Scotland, both catholic strongholds. Not able or not wanting to work with the Irish and Scottish parliamentarians, he simply dissolved parliament. After assuming the title of Lord Protector of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, he turned the powerful English navy against the very financiers that had financed it, the shareholders of the Dutch East India Company. He wanted England to take charge of the Atlantic trade. Of course, that was not to be, and Cromwell was doomed.

When Cromwell died from natural causes in 1658, his inept son couldn't hold the Protectorate together, and the Convention Parliament was directed to recall the Catholic kings. During the Restoration period (1660-1688), two kings of divine right, the two sons of Charles I, James II and Charles II, ruled in turn and fought the Dutch East India Company for trade supremacy.

The Jews and Huguenots both in Amsterdam and in London had to find a way to put a stop to the fratricidal naval wars and especially to the rule of papist kings in England. An arranged marriage between William of the House of Orange and Mary of the House of Stuart would be a very good way to do just that. In the interim, the financiers turned their attention to France.

Versailles

France had so many indirect taxes, and they were so complex, that the king, who was forever broke, was quite happy to farm out the tax-collecting chores to accelerate cash flow. The Farmers General, as they were called, would buy a six-year lease for a price corresponding to the total amount of taxes they deemed they could collect in that period of time. Obviously, the estimates were always on the low side, but the king, forever short of money and anxious to get at these huge upfront sums of money, wasn't inclined to negotiate to any great extent. As one would expect, since the Farmers General kept all the taxes collected and acted in the name of the king, they used very aggressive tactics in dealing with the citizens.

The Farmers General became fabulously rich, pocketing as much as half of the total taxes paid out by the citizens. They would also routinely coerce and blackmail the producers in order to buy their goods at ridiculously low prices, and then they would sell the same goods to city merchants at the other end at exorbitant prices. They were the most hated men of the realm and much of the bitterness was directed at the king, for they acted in his name. When a finance minister was to be named, they directly influenced the king in his choice, thus getting the most accommodating candidate. When Nicolas Fouquet was named Superintendent of Finances, the East India Company shareholders were offered a great opportunity.

Louis XIV was a born megalomaniac, and in 1661, he was humiliated by Nicolas Fouquet who was suspected of having doubtful dealings with the Farmers General. Fouquet had invited the king to his magnificent château de Vaux-le-Vicomte that he had just built, and the king upon seeing the magnificence and the beauty of the domain, not only envied his achievement but wondered where all the money to build it had come from. Smelling a rat, he confiscated Fouquet's assets and threw him in prison.

The shareholders of the East India Company seized the opportunity and relieved the King's rancour by making all necessary credit available through third parties so that he could build the most sumptuous kingly residence in the world, the chateau de Versailles. Louis XIV proceeded to hire the great artisans that had created the château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, architect Louis Le Vau, painter Charles Le Brun, and garden designer André le Nôtre, and construction began.

By this time, the owners of the East India Company were the masters of international trade and commerce, and their navy ruled the oceans of the world. The shareholders of the East India Company were Jews and Huguenots, and although they were business men and bankers first and foremost, they harbored a festering hatred directed at the Holy Roman Empire, the politico-religious institution that had persecuted them for centuries. They were intent on bringing it down, and the obvious starting point was France, the cornerstone of that empire. In financing the construction of the chateau de Versailles, they were looking well ahead. They had found a way to divide in order to better conquer when the time came. By separating the seat of power from the people, Versailles was twenty kilometers from Paris, the king would become vulnerable. Eventually, Versailles would be perceived as a den of vipers living off the misery of the people, and the King would easily be brought down. The occult financing of the chateau de Versailles by the Amsterdam financiers was the seed that would develop into the French Revolution a hundred years later.

In 1789, bread continued to be the most important ingredient in a Frenchman's diet. It was central to people's lives, and though it was the corrupt Farmers General who controlled the supply of cereal and created famines, the bakers were the ones perceived as profiting from dearth and famine and making huge profits by selling this vital commodity at a high price. Bakers were often accused of hoarding stocks and were frequently assaulted. Being lynched became an occupational hazard for bakers. So, limiting the supply of cereal was a very easy way to create unrest in the major urban centers.

In 1789, there was such unrest in the realm when the tennis court oath under the leadership of Mirabeau in June, the taking of the Bastille under the sponsorship of Louis-Phillippe d'Orléans in July, and the March on Versailles under the guard of Lafayette in October, were carried out. These incidents were obviously organized by well-paid East India Company agents, and the March on Versailles is perhaps the one that best shows that. In October of that year, a very odd crowd of transvestites went to Versailles to fetch the royal family, "the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's apprentice" as their chant went. The untypically aggressive 'ladies' even entered the royal residence while Lafayette and his mounted guard made no attempt to stop them. How such an ungainly disguised group could go to Versailles, capture and bring back the royals to Paris with Lafayette's National Guard standing by is a mystery that the history books fail to examine.

The East India Company was established in 1600 and was made up of patient and determined men. It took control of international commerce as early as 1624 when it established a foothold on the shores of the Hudson River in America and especially when it took possession of Cape Town in 1652. The owners created democracy by financing an independent English parliament in 1689, and creating the Bank of England in 1694. Thereafter, being sure of having their loans repaid by the people's parliament, they financed unlimited research and development which became known as the Industrial Revolution.

Following a hundred years of mindboggling growth and wealth, they were ready to launch the French Revolution in 1789. In 1810, even though the Bank of England was taken over by the banking dynasty that had created the Bank of North America in 1781, the transition was harmonious, and investments in R&D continued to grow exponentially worldwide.

Glorious Revolution

The word revolution is a banker's term. It was used by the owners of the East India Company when they launched their first revolution, in England, in 1688. It was called the Glorious Revolution. A revolution is a well-planned, well-financed affair that succeeds and is permanent in nature. It is always part of a bigger plan for a better world. The Glorious, Industrial, American and French revolutions are all interrelated, and they collectively ushered in the great world of credit we live in today. A war, an uprising, a rebellion, a revolt, or a military coup can only be called a revolution if it succeeds and is permanent in nature, in other words, if it has the international financiers' approval.

When the owners of the East India Company decided to finance the construction of the chateau de Versailles, it was with the aim of destroying the Holy Roman Empire. Naturally, they had started with the most obvious target, France, the crown jewel of that empire. The construction of the chateau was the first step in a long series of events that would lead to the French Revolution. Construction of the chateau began in 1661, and by 1678, it looked like the chateau we know today. With the construction of Versailles completed, the owners of the East India Company turned their full attention to the upcoming Glorious Revolution. In 1688, that revolution would give England a constitutional monarchy, and the world a new form of government called democracy.

After his father's execution in 1649, Charles II of England had fled to the Netherlands where he lived in exile until he was invited back in 1660 after Cromwell's demise. He subsequently wore the English crown from 1660 until his death in 1685. As the shareholders of the East India Company had expected, much of England grumbled under his rule because he was for letting Catholics sit in parliament and because he had befriended King Louis XIV of France. The shareholders of the East India Company, who had a powerful base in Amsterdam, did their best to encourage the antipapist feelings in England, hoping to have Charles II deposed and replaced with a constitutional monarch. When, in 1672, king Charles asked Louis XIV to do him a favor and declare war on the Netherlands, it was time to act and figure out a plan.

Since Charles II had no legitimate heir, his younger brother, James II, a catholic, was next in line. They would wait for Charles' term to run out, while continuing to stoke anti-royalist feelings among English parliamentarians. Meanwhile, since James II had a daughter, Mary, who was being raised as an Anglican, it seemed like a good idea to arrange a marriage between her and William III of the Netherlands. As a Catholic, James II would be easy to overthrow when the time came, and the crown would be handed to Mary who was next in line.

In 1677, the marriage between Mary II of England and William III of Orange was celebrated in St. James Palace, and it wasn't a happy affair. At fifteen, an arranged marriage with a much older and repulsive William was not meant to make Mary happy, and she cried throughout the whole ceremony. She had a very unhappy life, especially while in the Netherlands, where she lived for the first eleven years of their marriage. William was a homosexual who spent most of his time leading a double life away from home, and Mary spent all that time in a castle on the outskirts of The Hague. She returned to England in 1688 after the "Immortal Seven" invited her and her husband to come to England and wear the crown. William landed in England with a small army, and he marched on London without hardly firing a shot. James II took off for France, and parliament subsequently declared the crown vacant. William and Mary were then both offered the crown after signing the Bill of Rights which precluded that they submit to parliament's authority and have no catholic descendants. That series of events led to what is known in the history books as the Glorious Revolution.

However, that was only half of what was to be democracy, England now needed a financial institution. And as it so happened, not about to throw in the towel, and wanting James II to reclaim the crown of England, the Pope gave the financiers the perfect opportunity to create the Bank of England. The French king's powerful navy gave the English navy a good drubbing as it went about invading England by way of Ireland. Naturally, the English parliament was asked by King William to build a strong navy in order to retaliate. But since no public funds were available, and since the credit of William III's government was non-existent, it was impossible for parliament to borrow the huge sums needed. The East India Company shareholders were waiting for just that moment. They readily offered to become private subscribers of the English debt providing they be incorporated into a company that would be known as the Bank of England. The bank was to be given exclusive lending rights to the government, and it was to be the only entity allowed to issue bank notes or coin money. Once the conditions were accepted, the necessary funds were raised in a matter of days, and the private financial institution known to this day as the Bank of England was created

For the first time in the history of mankind, the bankers were sure of being repaid in an orderly and just fashion. Parliament immediately got rid of the antiquated Farmers' General tax collection system inherited from France and proceeded to develop the country's infrastructure in order to be better able to collect taxes. The shareholders of the East India Company had wanted an autonomous parliament because they were banking on a human foible whereby the people's representatives, once their political campaigns, elections and salaries properly funded, would want to prove their worth and do things before taxes were collected. Since the Bank of England's shareholders, now established in the City and in control of the English monetary system, could accept or refuse to finance the parliamentarians' projects, they indirectly controlled all important developments in the country. That was democracy then, just as it today, and it's the owners of the East India Company who created the concept. Democracy can only work if the concerned country is indebted, and a democracy is always indebted.

If democracy has proven itself to be the best political system in the world, it's because people representation and monetary control are separate. The people's representatives manage things while the bankers decide what's to be managed by increasing or decreasing the flow of credit. If the one who prints the money is the same as the one who spends it, that is, if the parliamentarians do the printing and the spending, the system can only implode.

The Industrial Revolution

The Anglican religion, England's state religion, can hardly be called protestant like the Lutheran or Calvinist religions, it's a pseudo Catholic religion. When King Henry VIII personally replaced the Pope as head of the Church of England, he and the country remained very much Catholic. That church had been strongly influenced by the Puritans and the Lollards who had followed John Wycliffe's teachings and had wanted to change the liturgy, but it always remained true to its Roman Catholic roots. The strong anti-royalist or anti-papist feelings in England, in the 17th century, were a sign of the growing opposition to Church abuse, of course, but the Catholic Church's demise as a politico-financial power was mainly due to the work of the Jews and the Huguenots who had created the East India Company in Amsterdam, in 1602 and the Bank of England in 1694.

When Charles I was decapitated in 1649, it marked the beginning of the end for the Absolute Kings of Divine Right and the Ancien Regime of England. At that time, the East India Company effectively controlled the economy of the Netherlands and wanted to move its headquarters from Amsterdam to the City in London. However, because Cromwell had disappointed his sponsors by failing to establish a proper parliamentary system, they had had to postpone democracy for another 40 years until the circumstances were favorable. They patiently waited until the time was ripe for William and Mary to wear the crown.

In 1694, once established in the City at the helm of the Bank of England, investment in research and development (R&D) could start in earnest. Because they were sure to have their loans repaid in a timely and just fashion, they invested with abandon, and the period became known as the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to ready credit, the English economy became dynamic, and European know-how flowed into the country. The bankers then started financing infrastructure projects in order to facilitate tax collection, internal trade, commerce and exchange of ideas. However, developing road and canal transport didn't happen overnight, and the Industrial Revolution had to wait for the steam engine to really get started.

Denis Papin, a Huguenot from Hesse, had developed the cylinder and piston concept as early as 1695, but the use of steam was not fully exploited until James Watt invented the condenser in 1765. The Industrial Revolution coincided with the creation of the Bank of North America and Elie Whitney's mindboggling invention, the cotton gin with interchangeable parts, in 1781. The main industry of the times, cotton, experienced other great leaps forward with the invention of the flying shuttle in 1733, the spinning Jenny in 1764, and the spinning frame in 1769, but it was the use of steam power and the invention of the cotton gin that revolutionized the greatest industry of the times.

On the iron side of things, railroads started being built in early 19th century, but the rails were made with wrought iron and were not durable. Sir Henry Bessemer, another Huguenot, changed all that when he invented a steel making process in 1856. In his blast furnaces, air oxidized and raised the temperature of the molten pig iron, while a small quantity of molten pig iron containing manganese was added and converted the whole mass of molten iron into steel in just minutes, without the need for any additional fuel. That's when track started being laid non-stop across Europe and America. In 1876, limestone was added to draw phosphorous out of the steel, making it less brittle and turning it into the wondrous material that we know today.

Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1844, Elias Howe, the sewing machine, in 1846, Graham Bell, the telephone, in 1876, Thomas Edison, the light bulb in 1879, Galileo Ferraris & Nikola Tesla, the A/C motor in 1888, and Charles Steinmetz, the A/C transformer in 1893. When George Westinghouse bought Tesla's invention and started distributing A/C electrical current over long distances, the whole world lit up.

Though the Bank of England created in 1694 was the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, the industrial miracle didn't get started until steam power became a functional everyday reality. But it was also due to a major political development that occurred at that time. Because the Bank of England was made up of dozens of private bankers, it didn't speak with one voice, and though the bankers had become very powerful, they had also become very English, and very parochial. That's when the first genuine international banker seized an opportunity and created the Bank of North America in 1781. That great man would go on to take over the Bank of England with the help of his son in 1810, and give the world an international financial institution that spoke with one voice. Today, two hundred years after that takeover, we are the ones who enjoy the benefits of the great market economies made possible by that man and his dynasty.

II – CREATION OF THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA

Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the greatest man who ever lived, though almost completely unknown to most of us, was born in 1744 in the Frankfurt Jewish ghetto of Judengasse. In August, 1770, when he married, he was already wealthy enough to have the open street sewer replaced by state-of-the-art sewers running behind the rows of high narrow houses on either side of the street, making sure plenty of fresh water from the Main River flowed through them.

When he was eleven, his parents, who lived in Judengasse, had sent him off to a yeshiva near Nuremberg to study the Torah in the hope of his becoming a rabbi. Unfortunately, they died during a smallpox epidemic, and he was orphaned at twelve. That's when his future father-in-law, Wolf Salomon Schnapper, contacted Wolf Jacob Oppenheimer in Hanover and asked him if he would take in the young man as an apprentice in his bank.

At the Oppenheimer Bank, everybody thought very highly of him because he had developed, thanks to his father, a very quick mind when it came to handling money and buying and selling rare coins. Then, he got his first big break. Frederic II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, needed a favor. His court Jew was Jacob Oppenheimer, and he had sent for him because he was worried about his son William. Frederic had converted to Catholicism, and his Protestant wife had divorced him. When his father, the previous landgrave, died in 1760, he had sent Frederic to Kassel and given the principality of Hanau to his grandson William. William had been raised a Calvinist, and the thriving Calvinist community in Hanau wanted nothing to do with Frederic and Catholics.

The Calvinists, also called Huguenots, came from France. They were the great entrepreneurs of the day. The French kings, had always enforced the 'one God, one king, one nation' concept, and for centuries the Catholic Church had persecuted and massacred those who didn't agree. After repeated atrocities committed against them, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots migrated to more clement lands, places like the Netherlands, Hesse-Hanau, England, America and South Africa. Having endured unspeakable ills at the hands of the papist kings, Huguenots developed a deep hatred for Catholics, and by the same token, became more tolerant towards Jews.

Because of William's young age, Frederic's English ex-wife, Mary, was made regent. In wanting to protect William, in spite of his feelings for his ex-wife, Frederic decided to provide him with a financial advisor. He had hoped that Jacob Oppenheimer would personally take on the job. But because Hanau was five days by stagecoach from Hanover, Jacob told him it wasn't practical for him to do so and recommended Mayer instead.

Frederic knew that Mayer lived in Frankfurt which was near Hanau, for Mayer had met his son William when they were boys. When Frederic had been Prince of Hanau, Mayer had accompanied his father Moses on one of his trips to the principality. His father had rare coins to offer Frederic who happened to be an avid coin collector. Young William had been curious about Mayer's clothes and had wanted to have a yellow star like the one stitched to his coat. William never forgot the boy with the funny clothes.

But because Mayer was still only nineteen, Frederic wondered how much wisdom and experience that young man could have. After being assured by Jacob that the Oppenheimer Bank would stand behind him and advise him, Frederic agreed to meet with Mayer, and was satisfied with what he saw. Mayer then went to Hanau to meet with William and his mother who were quite pleased with him as well. So, Mayer started putting the principality's finances in order, and unavoidably, he met General von Estorff who had been sent by Frederic to take charge of the principality's troops. Hanau was a garrison city, but Mayer didn't yet know what that implied.

He was becoming a sort of a one-man branch of the Oppenheimer Bank, and things were going smoothly when he found out why Frederic had sent the general to Hanau. For years, Hesse-Kassel had been receiving huge annual retainer fees from England in order to keep an army of Hessian soldiers at the ready. Up until then, the soldiers had been mainly recruited in Kassel. However, in wanting to improve Prince William's finances, Frederic, who was now Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, figured that more soldiers could be recruited in Hanau. Huge sums of money representing that portion of retainer fees due Hanau were sent to William, and Mayer suddenly had the responsibility of managing millions of thalers. In spite of his inexperience, he had taken it in stride and had made sound investments. With the help of other court Jews living in the ghetto, he got the highest return on the investments, and he gave Prince William useful advice regarding expenditures. He was much appreciated and was even given the official title of court Jew which allowed him to get married.

Frederic was related to the English King who was thinking of using Hessian soldiers in America. In an armed conflict, the English Parliament could intervene more quickly without having to explain everything to taxpayers, thereby avoiding arousing passions. The English parliamentarians preferred sending German troops to fight English settlers, and by paying a retainer fee to Hesse-Kassel, they could have troops on the ground at a very short notice and at a much lesser cost.

Prince William used the huge retainer fees to improve the infrastructure of the Principality of Hanau. He always paid Mayer well, and the recruits received their pay whether in training or on active duty. When they were required to go and fight, they did so for a specified amount of time, and Mayer made sure their families were properly compensated.

William's father, Frederic, maintained around ten thousand troops in Kassel, and William, with the help of General von Estorff, maintained around two thousand in Hanau. The Oppenheimer Bank had always invested the retainer fees for Frederic, but in wanting to help his son, it was now Mayer who was investing the huge sums handed over to William in Hanau. Mayer made huge commissions, and after convincing the Prince that Hanau should have its own mint, it was set up in the Walloon House, also called the Goldsmiths' House, a building adjacent to the castle.

The silver bullion coming in from Kassel represented millions of thalers, and most of it had to be minted and invested by Mayer, and his personal fortune increased dramatically. Court Jews had always invested money for the princes, but also lent them money, and very often commissions weren't paid and loans not repaid. On a whim, the princes would even do away with the court Jew altogether. The horrible execution of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer just a few years back in Stuttgart was still fresh in everybody's mind. So, although Prince William was an honorable man, Mayer decided to be secretive and keep his personal business to himself, just in case. He was not at all interested in flaunting his talents or his wealth, he just wanted to be the best he could be at what he was doing. Nobody knew how much money he had, they just knew he wasn't poor. Humility was a better route in reaching one's goals anyway. As far as Mayer was concerned, the most important thing in the world was to have a family, and to live among a trusting caring people, for if one didn't have that, he had nothing.

But he had foresight, and since Frederic, William and Jacob had full confidence in him, he decided to make them a proposition. The German people weren't united, and there were hundreds of principalities who did as they pleased with currency, so Mayer decided to standardize the thaler in the State of Hesse. In other words, he wanted to mint a thaler that would be accepted throughout the state and beyond. Because Frederic and William, thanks to the English, had more silver bullion than any other German prince, and because Frankfurt, one of the most important German trading centers, was in Hesse, his initiative succeeded.

David to Rotterdam

Mayer lived near the waterfront and often walked down to the river's edge to listen to the hustle and bustle of ships being loaded and unloaded. This was a good place to think. Mayer was very interested in trade generally, and he was mesmerized by all the exotic merchandise coming from unheard-of parts of the world, but he saw it with the eyes of a banker, not those of a merchant.

The only bank in existence was the Bank of England, and it was a bank model Mayer wanted to duplicate. It was made up of a group of private bankers who had the exclusive right to lend money to the English Government. If the people's representatives wanted to launch a government project before taxes were collected, as was always the case, they went to the bankers for a loan. It was banker heaven, for not only were they sure of being repaid, but they could choose what loans were to be made. And by having the sole right to issue bank notes, they controlled the monetary system of England.

Mayer was already a banker of sorts for Prince William, and he took his commitment to the Principality of Hanau very seriously. However, it didn't stop him from planning to bankroll his own operations. His plan had to do with the Hessian troops being recruited for England. William was spending much too much money outfitting and arming those troops. Military supplies came mainly from France and England and were shipped through Bremerhaven up north. Because William didn't buy directly from the suppliers, and because the route was long and crossed many German states who collected tolls, everything cost much more than it should. If Mayer had someone in Rotterdam buy everything directly from the suppliers, and if he then transported everything in his own barges up the Rhine River, he would make a handsome profit while lowering his benefactor's costs. Even though this meant doing business, the risk was almost nonexistent, and it was a way of seriously increasing his capital.

For a hundred years now, since the Treaty of Westphalia, the Rhine River had been open to free trade. It was forbidden for local lords to collect tolls, and most of the castles along the Rhine River had been put out of commission prior to the treaty. Nonetheless, renegade lords still collected tolls, and that hampered inland commerce. But Mayer knew that if his barges flew the Hesse-Kassel colors, no one would dare stop them and make them pay, for everybody knew that the State of Hesse had a lot of troops at the ready.

Frankfurt was a port on the Main River, a river that flowed into the great Rhine River a few kilometers to the west. Mayer had talked with the shipbuilders in Hanau about getting large barges built, proposing a model like that once used by the Romans to bring in wheat from Gaul. It was a large barge about thirty-five meters long, six meters wide, with a draught of one meter, which could carry around twenty tons. It had a cabin in the back for cooking and sleeping, a square sail in the middle, and it was fitted for ten oarsmen. The local mariners all agreed such a barge could very well travel upstream on the Rhine. Upon leaving Rotterdam, it could run with the tide, and then the sail could be used to run with the prevailing west wind while the rowers pulled and steered as needed. Of course, sailing downstream from Frankfurt would be a lot easier.

Such a barge was affordable to build and a cost-effective way to transport goods, even with a ten-man crew. Mayer would start with one barge and have more built as needed. He would establish a counting house in Rotterdam where his broker would fill orders and have goods for the return trip waiting for the next barge. When the barge arrived, the goods coming from Frankfurt would be unloaded and stored in a warehouse, and the military supplies waiting in another warehouse would be loaded unto the barge headed for Frankfurt. All special orders for exotic products purchased from the East India Company would be unloaded in Frankfurt, Hanau or some port on the Rhine, while the military supplies would go to Hanau.

The Huguenots who had settled in the Hesse region more than a hundred years before were great entrepreneurs, and among other things, they set up foundries that produced high quality iron. They also made stylish furniture, glassware, tin ware, leather products, fine silks, and clocks. They even manufactured artillery pieces, called serpentines, known for their precision and durability. In Hanau, the Goldsmiths' House was actually an art center for the training of goldsmiths and silversmiths. Lithographers, engravers and artisans developed and used the latest techniques in the making of jewelry, in printing and in the minting of very attractive coins. Mayer knew that the manufactured products coming out of Hesse would be sure to sell easily in Rotterdam.

All goods at both ends would be bought at the lowest price and sold at the highest price, making sure that the highest price was the price that everybody was willing and ready to pay. The considerable profits thus realized would remain in the counting houses at either end, and would be used to buy ever more merchandise going in both directions. There would be a considerable buildup of specie at both ends, and since the two counting houses used the same bills of exchange, confidence in the bills grew. Since both counting houses would always adhere to a strict code of ethics imposed by Mayer, where the bills would be redeemed on demand at all times and unconditionally, they would gain the confidence of the local business community and become widely accepted. The increased credit would allow more businessmen to do more business, and profits would increase for everybody. Bills of exchange had a multiplier effect, and that was what banking was all about.

All he needed was to find a man who would want to go and settle in Rotterdam. As for the amount of money needed to build the barges and fill the initial orders at both ends, it was insignificant, considering his already considerable wealth. The first name that crossed his mind for the job in Rotterdam was that of young David Schiff. Since David and his wife Hannah lived upstairs in the same house, Mayer knew them well, and he had taken the young man under his wing. David would prove brilliant in the bills of exchange business.

Of late, David had been showing signs of unrest. He didn't like the idea of his family growing up in the Judengasse ghetto, and Mayer could understand why. David didn't come right out and say it, but Mayer knew. David had spoken of Rotterdam as being an attractive place to live, but what he didn't know was that it had many drawbacks for an Ashkenazi Jew. The Sephardi Jews, who ran the East India Company and ruled the oceans of the world, were wealthy Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. They were rich, proud and even arrogant. Those Jews didn't think very highly of Ashkenazim coming from Eastern Europe. However, if David accepted, Mayer would give him enough money to settle in properly, for projecting an image was very important. But there was another problem in that the Sephardim didn't worship the way Ashkenazim did, and David wouldn't be welcome in their synagogue. No matter, he would make David an offer while making it very clear what problems his family was going to face.

The ghetto was flourishing. The people were vibrant and united, and their faith made them strong. Judengasse had a fine stone synagogue, plenty of good clean water, good sewers, a fine hospital, its own kosher slaughterhouse, a yeshiva and a rabbi who was a prince of knowledge. Though the inhabitants were often harassed and humiliated when they left the ghetto and were not free to move about at night and on Sundays, in many ways, they were better off than the goys living outside the ghetto.

David agreed that the community was one big family, but he was overcome by feelings of hate and revenge when a goy treated his wife Hannah like a whore. One day he would retaliate, and his life and that of Hannah would be compromised. When Mayer offered to set him up in a fine counting house with all the money needed to hire a professional staff, purchase warehouse space, build a house for his family, and have all the necessary expense money to look like a successful businessman, he couldn't believe his good fortune.

David readily accepted the generous offer but wondered how he could ever repay Mayer. Mayer told him that he would be making his weight in thalers many times over, and that repayment shouldn't even be considered. He told David that though Ashkenazim in Rotterdam were poor and were assisted by the community, and that the Sephardim wouldn't be happy welcoming another Jewish 'rag dealer', 'another mouth to feed', things would be different for David. Mayer would introduce him to an Italian Jew named Moses Montefiore, a well-connected Sephardi who would help him get established.

Haym Salomon

America kept popping up in Mayer's mind because he saw the New World as a place offering a fantastic banking opportunity. Mayer knew the English were having trouble over there because he had learned through General von Estorff that they were seriously thinking about sending Hessian soldiers to the colonies. It seemed the colonials weren't happy because the mother country wasn't providing enough credit while gauging them with taxes. He just had to find a way to get firsthand information on what was really going on over there.

Mayer naturally thought of Haym Salomon who was presently working for him in Hanau. He invited him to Judengasse for a good schmaltzy dinner because he wanted to know what his wife Gutle thought of him before asking him to go to America. Haym was an extraordinary young man whom Mayer had befriended in Hanover. He was a Sephardi whose family had fled Portugal and settled in Poland. Haym had left what family he had in Poland, traveled through Europe, and had learned eight languages. While helping Mayer in Hanau, he had learned all there was to know about how to buy and sell bills of exchange and was getting ready to move on.

As they approached the north gate of Judengasse, they dismounted and left their horses at the blacksmith's barn where Mayer kept his mounts and carriage. The guard at the gate recognized Mayer readily and saluted the two men as they entered. When they entered the ghetto, Haym couldn't help but notice a crude drawing depicting Jews doing unnatural things to a sow, which included eating her excrement. Haym, a Sephardi, was taken aback, and he couldn't help thinking that Ashkenazim must be spineless to let goys treat them that way.

Mayer knew what he was thinking and told him there was no use spending energy fighting such vulgarities. Since the Frankfurt Council turned a blind eye on such abuses, and thereby encouraged the lowlifes that perpetrated hate crimes, wiping the wall clean would only make things worse. He continued by saying that the age of enlightenment would soon reach the Hesse region, and the walls would come down. Mayer preferred becoming rich and powerful, and taking down the walls stone by stone with his bare hands when the time came. One engaged in battle only when one was sure of victory.

As they went down Judengasse, Haym wondered how people could live in such crammed conditions, with so much noise, so little light, and so many strange odors, while Mayer saluted everybody, addressing most of them by name, inquiring about their families, and wishing them well.

They reached the tall narrow house where Mayer lived, and where his wife was waiting for them. They sat down for dinner, and Mayer started the conversation by asking Haym what he thought of America. Haym answered that there seemed to be a lot of fertile land to be had, that the winters were harsh, and that there was a well-established Sephardi community in New York City. He had also heard that it was a good place for an ambitious young man who wanted to get rich. Mayer replied that he was getting a good feeling for the colonies from the newspapers he read, but that he'd really like to have first-hand knowledge. Then he asked directly if Haym would be interested in going to America. Mayer was willing to pay his passage and set him up as a shipping broker in New York City. Haym would open a counting house that would work with the Rotterdam one run by David. The Sephardi community in New York would surely welcome him, and since Haym was a smart good-looking young man, he would have no problem finding a wife.

Mayer continued by saying Haym could count on his unqualified support, and that he would have all the money he needed. In the first instance, all he had to do was keep Mayer informed. If everything turned out to be like Mayer expected, Haym would then come back to Frankfurt to be debriefed, and they'd both decide what to do next. If Haym disliked New York City to the point of wanting to come back to Europe early, Mayer would not hold a grudge. All he asked was for Haym to give him fair warning if he so decided.

When Haym asked when Mayer expected him to leave, Mayer answered that winter crossings were very rough, and that it would be wise to leave as soon as possible. He hoped that Haym didn't suffer from seasickness, for a westward crossing could take more than three months.

Haym said he was more worried about New York's cold winter, and that all he hoped for was to find a rich widow who had a well-built boarding house with a fireplace in each room.

Letter from NYC '72

Dear Mayer,

I'm writing from New York City. If I didn't write sooner, it's because the sea voyage really weakened me, and because I wanted to have a better understanding of the city before putting pen to paper.

Let me start by saying that I arrived in Rotterdam as planned after an uneventful five-day coach ride. Since you had sent the five chests of pennies ahead with Thurn and Taxis, I didn't have anything to worry about, and it allowed me to better enjoy the company of the people I met in the relay inns. Upon reaching Rotterdam, I went directly to David and Hannah's place, and it was a moment of great conviviality. I'd missed them, they'd missed me, and I wanted to know everything about them, and they wanted to know everything about me. I can only say that I'm very impressed with what they've done. They have a beautiful home, the counting house is well-appointed, and they seem to have contacted everyone worth knowing with Montefiore's help, a truly great gentleman. There's no doubt in my mind that your decision to send David to Rotterdam was the right one, and I can only hope to do as well for you in New York

I left Rotterdam, and I crossed the channel to London where I waited for a ship that took on passengers for New York. I soon found what I was looking for, and I booked passage on a good-looking ship about to lift anchor. The ocean crossing took more than two months and was very unpleasant. The captain told us it was the worst weather he'd seen in years. I spent a lot of time turning green and wondering if life was worth living, and when it got too bad, I stayed in my hammock, and that, I'm sure, was what saved my life.

I did, however, have a few days of relief during which time I managed to get my hands on some moldy dry bread and barely drinkable water laced with rum, and having digested this doubtful ration, I was able to observe the world around me with some degree of lucidity. Most of the crew members were of the unrefined variety, but they were competent and helpful. There were several gentlemen who were going to the colonies to strike it rich, but my most interesting encounter was with a fellow named Ephraim Hart. He was especially interesting because he was returning to New York to resume his business activities, and he provided me with much information concerning the ins and outs of life in the colonies. When we arrived, I was in a pitiful state, and Ephraim was kind enough to introduce me to that fine landlady with the big house who has a fireplace in each bedroom, the same one I had fantasized about, remember? Well, it isn't quite so, but it is a fine house. And Gutle, you'll be happy to know she's Ashkenazi and feeds me schmaltzy food, American style, and my ribs are no longer showing.

It's been two weeks since I've arrived, and it's the first day I feel disposed to write. On the day of my arrival, I managed to get my personal affairs transported to the boarding house, and you'll be happy to know the five chests containing the thousand pounds of pennies are safe and sound. New York is a garrison town like Hanau, and there are hundreds of English soldiers and sailors roaming the wide avenues. Therefore, you need not worry about me or the money.

There are around fifteen thousand people living here. The city is located on the tip of an island that's hidden behind a much bigger one that protects it from the onslaught of the ocean. The military installations are on the southern tip of the island, and the port facilities are built along the Hudson River mainly on the west side and also the East River on the other side. One couldn't dream of a more accessible and well-protected deep-sea water port.

The city is traversed north and south by a main artery called Broadway that runs from the Battery, the British military fortifications at the southern tip, to a fresh water reservoir called Collect Pond, and is approximately one mile long in English units. The city covers an area approximately one mile by one half mile. There are three main streets, Broad, William and Queen, running in a north-south direction. All streets run north-south and east-west and are therefore perpendicular to each other. Most streets are pebbled and have paved walkways on either side, so one can easily access all parts of the city on foot or on horseback. Community life revolves around houses of worship, and there are many, including an imposing synagogue on Mill Street, not far from Broad Street.

On my first outing, I walked to Collect Pond and I was encouraged to follow Boston Road north because of the beautiful colors of autumn. There's a native tree called the maple that turns all colors this time of year, and it makes for a most spectacular sight. However, as I walked the streets, I couldn't help but notice that people leave much of their waste on the roadways. They even leave dead horses to rot, and although pigs and wild animals act as scavengers, they only clean up so much. There are pigs, cows and many other animals roaming about because as the city expanded northward from Wall Street, many people used their large plots of land to grow food and raise animals.

Another downside is that one can smell human waste just about everywhere one goes. It would seem that the more responsible home owners dig a hole in the back of their house and build what is called an outhouse, and when the hole is filled, they cover it with earth, dig another hole and move the outhouse accordingly. Others use a simple pail toilet and empty it in out of the way places when people aren't looking. There are many stories concerning chamber pots and how carelessly they're emptied. For instance, I'm told it's wise to hug the walls of buildings when walking in the city at night, for one never knows what can fall from the heavens.

Since there is so much waste being added to the soil, much of the water from the privately dug surface wells tastes bad and smells. A proud Philadelphian once wrote that here in New York 'people drink a proportion of their own evacuations, as well as that of their horses, cows, pigs, dogs, cats, and other putrid liquids so plentifully dispensed.' In all fairness, in comparing the two cities, that gentleman didn't take in consideration the fact that Philadelphia has two rivers bringing it plenty of fresh drinking water, giving it a decided advantage. As for waste disposal in Philadelphia, I'm told it's not much better than it is here. Its narrow unpaved streets crammed with poorly built houses are strewn with dejections, and the large deep wells dug in strategic parts of the city to accommodate waste produce a pervasive foul odor.

As a way of combating the scarcity of good drinking water, just about everybody, young and old, drinks beer. From the very first days of the colony, the Dutch drank beer and the English followed suite by bringing their brewers and beer making equipment with them. Everybody lives by an old European adage that says one doesn't get sick if one drinks ale. However, many of the more fortunate English families tend to drink tea and buy their water from water peddlers who go door-to-door with horse drawn wagons laden with huge wooden casks. Obviously, these solutions are out of reach for the working poor. When all is said and done, as a community, New York doesn't seem to consider having good drinking water to be a priority. When one compares the conditions here with the Judengasse ghetto and its superb sewers and abundant pristine drinking water, one can only wonder.

New York has a great middle class, composed chiefly of tradesmen and merchants. They are all housed in splendid residences, and most, including lawyers and doctors, have built their mansions on William, Broad and Queen Streets. On the other hand, the humbler folk who work for these prosperous citizens are parked along the East River in an area called the flats. It consists of an agglomeration of shacks and lean-tos built on either side of a street appropriately called Water Street, and even though they can throw their waste directly into the East River, these poor people don't have access to clean drinking water and don't always have the pennies needed to buy beer. Their lot isn't at all enviable.
The mansions and office buildings are built of stone or brick, and the Governor's House, Trinity Church, St. Paul's Church, Columbia College and the hospital are all within one block of Broadway. There's a lot of wealth generated here irrespective of the sanitary conditions that I've described, and, not surprisingly, the population is said to double every ten years or so. For the time being, my boarding house located on Broad Street just south of Wall Street will serve me well, for I have access to all manner of businesses in the financial and port districts. It'll be very easy to rent or buy office space, and you'll be glad to know, that everything costs a fraction of what it does in Frankfurt. For instance, you can build a large two-story stone building on Broad Street for slightly more than five hundred pounds. According to Ephraim, you could have a five-hundred-ton capacity ocean-going vessel, all rigged and made of oak that can withstand thirty years of rot, built right here in New York for about the same price. This got me thinking as a banker, and I'm sure you'll be interested in the suggestions I make further on in this letter.

First, let me tell you more about Philadelphia. It's bigger than New York and it lies far up the Delaware River. A religious group from England called Quakers, a people known for their peaceful ways and tolerance, settled there. Since they were not tolerated in England, they're not as loyal to the English crown as their counterparts in New York, and this could be worth remembering as the political storm builds over what is considered unfair taxation by the Mother Country. A large population of Swedes and many Germans from Frankfurt have settled there as well. However, because the tolerant Quakers are intolerant when it comes to language and want everybody to learn English, the three groups tend to stand apart.

The Delaware River being a more modest river than the Hudson, and Philadelphia being far upstream, the English have naturally built the bulk of their military facilities in New York City where they have ocean access to the whole coast. Another noteworthy fact is that Philadelphia though a long distance from New York City by sea is quite close by land. After crossing the Hudson River from New York City by ferry, it's a mere two-day stagecoach ride to Philadelphia, and the service has been in operation for years. This situation is unique in the colonies, for all the other capitals remain quite isolated from each other.

Both the Delaware and Hudson River basins are very fertile and have been developed along the same pattern. Following the early Dutch East India Company guidelines, both valleys developed using the patroon system. The idea probably came from the Huguenot refugees who first settled in Rotterdam and later in New Rotterdam. In wanting to encourage settlements, the Dutch granted patroonships that spanned 16 miles in length on one side of the river, or 8 miles if spanning both sides. Later the plot sizes were cut in half in order to accommodate more Dutch Americans in good standing. The title of patroon derived from the word patron and meaning boss in French, grants powers and privileges just like they do to our princes in Europe. The patroon creates civil and criminal courts, appoints local officials, and holds land in perpetuity. In return, he is commissioned by the Governor to establish a settlement of at least fifty families within four years. As tenants working for the patroon, the settlers don't pay public taxes for the first ten years, but they do compensate the patroon in money, goods, or services as agreed to by all parties. The patroon lives in a luxurious, well-built house of brick or stone, has a retinue of servants, large barns, orchards and gardens, and broad pasture lands. A patroonship has its own village infrastructure that includes a church which records births, baptisms, and marriages. On the one hand, the English encourage this system because the large tracts of land are very productive. On the other hand, they forbid the patroons from manufacturing goods for resale. As can be expected, the patroons disregard the interdiction, and continue to operate their foundries and other small industries that produce iron goods, furniture, and cloth. They then float all their excess production, along with all the furs they can get from the natives, downriver to New York where they sell the lot to the citizens and merchants totally disregarding the English interdictions.

The patroons and the merchants have developed a bartering system. They exchange local goods for manufactured goods coming from England, and keep track of how much one owes the other. No matter, there's a real money problem here, and it lies in the fact there isn't much silver specie to buy and sell the little things that ordinary people need in everyday life. When Ephraim told me that the Bank of England completely ignored the needs of colonials by refusing to inject silver specie in the colonies, I didn't quite believe him, but it's even worse than that. Not only do colonials have little sterling, but the English refuse to accept the plentiful Spanish dollars at par with the Pound, in spite of the fact they both contain the same amount of silver. By establishing an exchange rate of 4 to 1 in favor of the Pound, they are strangling the local economy. That combined with the fact that they ban the importation of non-English goods and force the locals to sell their production of goods to English merchants foments ill feelings towards the Mother Country. This doesn't make for a healthy political situation, and there's even a growing dissident movement called Sons of Liberty that's present throughout the colonies, especially in Boston where the English have massacred a number of their sympathizers last year. The Boston Massacre, as it's decried on the street, has even enflamed the very loyalist Southern Colonies.

I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about these tensions at a future date, but for now, here are some of my views regarding facilitating trade with Europe. I've talked to Ephraim about this, and he thinks that our services are highly needed here in the colonies because although trade is increasing at a rapid rate, credit is hard to get. Like I said earlier, there's very little specie and England is maintaining very unjust exchange rates in favor of the pound. But if we were disposed to finance a shipment of tobacco to Rotterdam, here's how it could be done. I would ask a fellow I met, Robert Morris, or someone of his stature, to buy and deliver a load of tobacco consisting of a thousand hogsheads to Rotterdam. A hogshead contains a thousand pounds of tobacco worth a penny per pound and costs around £4. Morris would receive a bill of exchange reflecting a guaranteed price of, let's say, five pennies per pound payable to him when David took possession of the tobacco in Rotterdam. Morris would then issue his own bill of exchange to the producer in Williamsburg payable when the tobacco is delivered in Rotterdam, and he would also give him written proof that taxes are paid and that the cargo is fully insured. In this scenario the seller in Williamsburg is guaranteed a full penny per pound for his tobacco payable in six months' time with interest as required, and the merchant, Robert Morris, is guaranteed five pennies per pound when the shipment arrives in Rotterdam. David in Rotterdam will have by then sold the tobacco well below its market price if need be, let's say, ten pennies per pound. In a worst-case scenario, the producer gets £4000, the shipper makes £16000 (£20000 less £4000), minus expenses, and our counting house makes £20000 (£40000 less £20000), minus expenses. All parties make a handsome profit, and since we have such a huge profit margin to play with, since tobacco is in such high demand, and since it would be sold ahead of time, it could be said there's no risk at all.

If you wanted to finance shipments of goods going from Rotterdam to New York or London, I have two suggestions, and they have to do with two French products. As you know, before I met you, I had been travelling in France, and that's when I became aware of them. I'm talking about two products the English in England, and especially in the colonies, aren't familiar with. It has to do with a cloth from Nimes in the south, and an extraordinary wine from the Burgundy area further north.

If Burgundy wines became known, the demand for them would explode, I'm sure. The English are already very fond of Bordeaux clarets, and once they taste these delightful wines from Bourgogne, they'll surely be overwhelmed. I personally tasted them and know how good they are. But here's why I think they're worth investigating further. I've heard that wines can now be shipped in bottles instead of casks, an innovation that not only guarantees the original quality of the wines but allows them to age to their sublime potential before they reach the palates of connoisseurs. In a word, if we found a way to have Burgundy wine bottled, corked and packaged before sending a shipment of it to Rotterdam, London and New York, it would surely become an overnight sensation, and its price would increase exponentially.

As for the cloth, it's an ingeniously woven cotton fabric manufactured in Genoa, Italy. The cloth got its French name when a Huguenot silk manufacturer from Nîmes bought the Genoa business during the religious persecutions. The cloth had been used for making sails, but in wanting to expand the business, the Frenchman thought of marketing the fabric for the making of work clothes. There was much talk about this white-blue 'de Nîmes' cloth when I was in Lyon. In spite of cotton being outlawed by the King, people kept asking for it, claiming it could outlast Indian cotton ten to one. Judging from that experience, I can say with assurance that if you financed a shipment of that fabric to America you would make a mindboggling profit. The cost of working clothes is so high and disproportionate to income in the Colonies that the demand for a cheap, attractive and tough cloth would surely be overwhelming.

Unfortunately, I have no way of looking into those products at this end. It would be necessary for someone to go to France and see about their availability. As far as I know, there are three key cities involved: Nîmes for the cloth and information regarding the bottle corks, Lyon for the bottles, and Beaune for the wine. The three cities are in a north-south axis along the Rhone-Saone River corridor. The corks, the bottles and the wine would come together in Beaune, and from there, the 'de Nîmes' cloth and the now-bottled wine would be transported over an excellent old Roman road that goes from Beaune to Basel on the Rhine, and from there the merchandise could be shipped down the Rhine River to Rotterdam or anywhere in between.

I hope you don't think I'm being bold in making these suggestions. I'm just trying to give you useful information. There are many other possibilities, and I'm sure you'll advise me. But I'm convinced that indigo, rum and tobacco from the Americas, Burgundy wine and 'de Nîmes' cloth from France, and colorful cotton fabrics from England are the sort of exotic merchandises that would generate extremely high profits.

There's something else I have to tell you, and it has to do with a discovery that I'll refer to as the Atlantic 'stream'. Don't fret if you've never heard of it, hardly anyone has. It's an ocean phenomenon that's been confirmed by a very ingenious fellow called Benjamin Franklin, a Philadelphian who has become the Colonies' emissary to England. For some time now, merchants have been wondering why it takes longer to sail to New York than it does to the southern colonies even though they're much farther, and this fellow Benjamin figured it out by listening to the New England whalers. The whalers kept saying that in order to catch more whales they followed what seemed to be a big river of warm water that flowed right through the Atlantic Ocean. This river was full of plankton, whale food for the uninitiated, and it flowed in an easterly direction. If they followed this river, they were sure to bring back all the whale oil their ships could hold.

Benjamin was paying attention, and on one of his trips to Europe, he got the captain to agree to zigzag his way across the ocean, thus going in and out of the supposed river of warm water. As he did so, he recorded water temperatures and latitudes, and the result was very convincing. He was able to chart this 'stream' of warm water and show that it flowed at a speed of around four knots. He published his findings in England, but since mighty English captains have nothing to learn from lowly colonial whalers, this discovery is still not being exploited by the English. But the fact remains, if one were to sail north or south of it on the westward leg, one could shorten the journey by as much as two weeks, and if one were to sail in it on the eastward leg, there would be much time gained as well. I thought you might find this information useful because I remember you telling me in your tongue-in-cheek way that having a good communications network and knowing things ahead of everybody else can be very profitable.

In closing, let me say that I intend to proceed with the rental of office space on Broad Street. I also took the liberty of having a small quantity of bills of exchange printed. I'm enclosing a sample for your perusal.

As I await your answer which will probably arrive in four or five months from now, I'll get acquainted with merchants and find out what merchandises are the most profitable to finance. I'll also make a point of going to Philadelphia and meet with a fellow called Bernard Kratz who's trying hard to have a synagogue built over there. I'm sure I'll find out everything there is to know about Philadelphia through him. As I await your reply, regardless of the financial activity I pursue, it won't involve big sums. When I get your letter, if you've decided to go with tobacco, I'll be ready. Needless to say, a four or five-month correspondence delay doesn't simplify matters, but once I know exactly how you want to proceed, things will get sorted out. Rest assured that I don't see any major impediments at this end, at this time.

Regards,

Haym

International Trade

Mayer sat down and wrote Haym that he was to go ahead with the tobacco shipment. He told him he would confirm it with David who would then get the necessary warehouses built in Rotterdam. Haym was to get the best tobacco available, for high quality products attracted higher prices and could be sold more easily.

As for the wine and denim, he told Haym he was acquainted with two Frenchmen in Frankfurt who were in a position to help. Jean-Baptiste Willermoz had a silk factory in Lyon, France, but spent a lot of time in Frankfurt where another Frenchman, François Johannot, operated a silk factory as well. The high-end silk business wasn't doing so well and they would certainly welcome a chance to get involved in a more lucrative business. Mayer was certain that Jean-Baptiste, François and their wives would welcome a chance to have a first class, fully paid voyage to the south of France while inquiring about the availability of bottled wine and denim cloth. The offer to leave winter behind them, visit family and friends in Lyon, and bask in the Mediterranean sun would be a powerful enticement.

With the help of Jean-Baptiste and François he was certain he would soon be financing wine and denim shipments to Rotterdam, London and NYC. This would work out extremely well, for wine and denim shipments would go down the Rhine by barge to Rotterdam, and the same barges would come back up the Rhine with arms and military supplies for Prince William along with pre-ordered manufactured goods to cities along the way. In anticipation, he was arranging to have more of the Roman-type barges constructed in Hanau. So far, his barges on the Rhine were proving to be quite a success, and because they all flew the Prince's colours, they hadn't been harassed by the bandit lords and forced to pay tolls. He intended to continue the same modus operandi with the wine and denim shipments.

He finished his letter to Haym, and took it to the Thurn and Taxis office for delivery to America. He came back in time to have supper with Gutle and his precious little Yochana. He told Gutle he was planning to go to Rotterdam to acquaint David with the latest developments, and that he would be gone at most three weeks. When prompted by Gutle, he proceeded to tell her what was on his mind.

He had already told her how the Sephardi Jews had joined up with the Huguenots and created the Bank of England in 1694. He explained that he saw an opportunity to do the same in America. The Americans needed credit, and since the Bank of England bankers weren't providing it, he would. Everybody trusted his bills of exchange, and they were already widely accepted on both sides of the Atlantic. If he helped the Americans win their independence from England, his bank would then be automatically recognized as the official bank of America when the time came.

For now, he was planning to finance shipments of high-quality products in both directions across the Atlantic. When merchants became convinced that his bills could be redeemed for specie and on demand on both sides of the Atlantic, and that his exchange rates for Thalers, the Spanish pound and the sterling pound were fixed and fair, he was sure that instead of going through the trouble and cost of redeeming them they would just sign them over to third, fourth, and fifth parties. On the other hand, David and Haym would be instructed to only accept specie regarding all sales. As more of his bills circulated, more species would accumulate and both counting houses could then issue more bills of exchange. As he waited for the sale of the first shipment of tobacco in Rotterdam, he was already making plans to send Jean-Baptiste and François to France to look into the wine and denim possibilities.

As Gutle grasped the huge sums of money that were involved, she worried about her family and told him this wasn't what she had expected when she married him. Mayer reassured her. He had no intention of showing his wealth and letting everybody know how rich he was. He told her that his name would never be officially connected to anything he did because he didn't want to stir up feelings of envy and hatred. He told her he was not interested in flaunting his wealth. The only things that mattered were his family and his extended family, and what he wanted above all else was for her to be proud of him.

He explained how he planned to finance the Americans in their fight for independence, and once achieved, how he would create a bank for them without their ever knowing who he was. His financial operations would be international in nature, and that would ensure his success and his anonymity. His counting houses on both sides of the Atlantic would be run by people who didn't officially answer to him, like Haym and David. Because each counting house had to interact with the others, they would be independent and yet firmly part of a whole. Notwithstanding the fact he trusted his agents with his life, the counting houses would be accountable to each other and to Mayer without his ever having to be present.

Mayer intended to surround himself with Ashkenazim who would become an extended family network, and he would use goys only when he had to. Though Haym was a Sephardi, Mayer thought of him as a brother. He respected and trusted both David and Haym, and by giving them everything they could possibly want, he was sure of their respect and loyalty, and this allowed Mayer to work in anonymity. Maintaining anonymity, making astounding amounts of money and being magnanimous and honest in all transactions, at all times, was the key for lasting success.

Gutle loved this man, and as he picked up Yochana and started singing from the Torah, she was the happiest woman in the world. She didn't want to lose that. But she also knew that if Mayer didn't follow his dream, he would cease to be the man he was, and she could not bear that.

The next morning, before leaving to meet with Jean-Baptiste and François, Mayer told her how important that meeting was. French wine was the best in the world, and there was talk that the Burgundy wine could be bottled in uniform-sized bottles. The other product had to do with cloth. The Huguenots, in wanting to have a country of their own, had emigrated to the Prince-Bishopric of Basel where they were weaving cotton cloth which was in great demand, but which was forbidden in France proper. They grew cotton in the Caribbean islands and were shipping it up the Rhone-Saone-Doubs river system to Montbéliard and then by land to Mulhouse, the industrial center near Basel.

Mayer wanted Jean-Baptiste and François to look into those two products. If it turned out as he expected, he would consult with Haym, authorize the shipments, and then help the Americans gain their independence. He would start by financing a meeting of the thirteen colonies with the aim of creating some kind of government. He would find and finance leaders who were opposed to English rule, and since Virginia was the most sophisticated colony politically, that's where he planned to concentrate his efforts.

Wine and denim

By the end of June, 1773, David in Rotterdam had received and sold several shipments of tobacco and realized a bigger return than anticipated, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz and François Johannot and their wives had come back from the south of France with interesting information along with several bottles of Burgundy wine and several meters of 'de Nîmes' cloth.

After debriefing Jean and François in his Farhgasse office, Mayer decided to give Gutle, his one and only confident, a full account of their trip. They sat down at the kitchen table, and Mayer started relating the great news Jean-Baptiste Willermoz and François Johannot were bringing back from France.

He first showed her a sample of the cloth. It had one weave of blue thread crossed with a weave of white thread, and the double-weave not only made for an interesting design, but gave it extra durability. Gutle thought the indigo colored cloth was beyond belief and wondered if poor people could afford it.

Mayer answered that it would sell for the same price as Indian or English cotton, and before Gutle had a chance to make a comment, Mayer reached for a bottle of burgundy wine, one of the many samples brought back by François. He picked up a funny curly piece of metal, drove it into the cork with a screwing motion and pulled the cork out of the bottle neck. He took two glasses, half-filled them, and they drank to their growing family.

Gutle thought the wine was too good to be true, but her mouth dropped upon learning how much money the wine and cloth was going to bring in. Mayer had started by explaining that Bouchard in Beaune was to receive a letter of exchange in the amount of £2500, or 1 shilling per bottle of wine once delivered in Rotterdam where David would presell it for 1/6 per bottle. David would give the new willing owners a letter of exchange guaranteeing them 3 shillings per bottle if delivered in New York where Haym would presell it for 4 shillings per bottle. 250000 bottles, or half a shipload, would thus generate a profit of £6000 in Rotterdam and another £12500 in New York City.

With regards to cloth, Dollfus in Basel was to receive a letter of exchange in the amount of £12000, or £10 per bolt of denim once delivered in Rotterdam where David would presell it for £12 per bolt. David would then give the new willing owners a letter of exchange guaranteeing them £15 per bolt if delivered in America where Haym would presell it for £17 per bolt. 6000 bolts of cotton, or half a shipload, would generate a profit of £12000 in Rotterdam and another £12000 in New York.

To make these figures more palatable to Gutle, he repeats that since a work outfit made with denim cloth in America will cost less than one made with English or Indian cotton and last ten times longer, everybody will be fighting to buy it and be very happy to have the opportunity to do so. Likewise, since the best wine in the world will only keep getting better in a bottle, all the bourgeois in America and England will want to fill their cellars with it. He then adds that though the profits appear to be huge, the price for these superb new products is well below what people will be willing to pay.

To further help Gutle get over her choc, he starts relating the adventures of François' trip to France. His party had started off by taking a river coach to Mainz. After spending a delightful night in a well-appointed inn, they had set off the next day for Basel. River coaches were much more comfortable and a faster means of transportation, but only when going downriver, upriver, it was best to travel by stage coach. It took them five days by stage coach to reach Basel where friends were waiting for them.

After a day's rest, they travelled by stage coach to Montbeliard , and from there they continued on by river coach to Chalon-sur-Saone, a town south of Beaune. Having made prior arrangements, a local winemaker whom they hadn't seen in years welcomed them in his beautiful country estate. The next day, their host introduced Jean-Baptiste and François to Joseph Bouchard, a wine merchant from Beaune. They were told the Givors factory on the outskirts of Lyon was making glass using ovens fired by ground coal. And because glass made with coal instead of charcoal as a fuel was much stronger, and because the glassblowers had started using handheld molds, they now made less fragile and more uniformly shaped bottles more quickly. Because the bottle necks were thickened and had a standard diameter, it was now possible to use a one-size-fits-all cork stopper. Bouchard told them there was plenty of wine available, but getting fifty thousand glass bottles at a time might be a problem. He told them it was best to check with Michel Robichon who was the glassmaker in Givors. As for the corks, the cork slabs could be bought in quantity in Arles, transported to Beaune where they could be suitably shaped. All in all, he thought it was quite a feasible operation, and it would be no problem to fill the bottles with the best wine of the region and cork the bottles in a matter of days. Bouchard was already experimenting with the bottles, and he promised to give them wine samples on their return trip home. If Givors supplied bottles in sufficient quantity and at the expected price, he stated he could get the wine to Rotterdam via Basel for around nine pennies a bottle.

Jean-Baptiste and François were quite anxious to go to Givors to visit the glass factory and interview Michel Robichon, the owner. They left their wives with family in Lyon and continued on to Givors the following day when they reached the glass factory, they acquainted Robichon with Mayer's idea of financing regular shipments of bottled wine using the services of Joseph Bouchard in Beaune. They told Michel they had talked to Joseph, and that his only concern was having enough bottles. Naturally, they wanted to see if his factory could supply lots of fifty thousand bottles on an ongoing basis.

Jean-Baptiste and François were happy to hear Michel say that he had just put in a second oven and that a third was on the way. Since one oven supplied enough glass to accommodate four glass masters, and since each master could turn out five hundred bottles a day, it meant that the production would soon be six thousand bottles a day, thirty-six thousand a week or some two million a year.

Michel added one cautionary note. The factory was presently getting its high-quality ground coal from Rive-de-Gier, a mine situated fifteen kilometers from Givors. The canal that was meant to transport the coal by barge was not yet completed, and the mine owners had to use mules to bring the coal to Givors. They had some twelve hundred mules in all, with two trains of four hundred mules making a daily turnaround while the remainder rested. With each mule carrying eighty kilograms of coal, it averaged out to a daily supply of around sixty tons. But since most of the coal was destined for the south of France, if he was to add extra ovens, he might not be able to get enough coal. However, he would put a little pressure on the coal mine owners by reminding them that his factory was operating under the Royal Seal, and was to be supplied in priority. But that was down the road. For now, there was more than enough coal to fire up the second oven, and it would take less than two weeks to produce the fifty thousand bottles. He could have molds made with logo indentations in order to identify the wine, and before shipping the bottles to Joseph Bouchard in Chalon-sur-Saone, he would package them in fifty bottle capacity wicker baskets.

Jean-Baptiste and François were happy and wasted no time getting back to Lyon where their wives were waiting. They spent a few days visiting family and friends, but they couldn't wait to carry on downriver to Arles by water coach. It took them only three days to reach Arles under very comfortable conditions, and from there, it was a short trip by land coach to Nîmes where they had written ahead to Jean André, the owner of the cloth factory in Genoa, Italy.

When they finally met with Jean, Jean-Baptiste and François were pleasantly surprised to hear that he had every intention of going ahead with the production of the double-weave indigo cloth. They couldn't believe it when Jean added that he was planning to move the production of this very promising cloth from Genoa to Mulhouse which was not far from Basel on the Rhine. It was a Huguenot city-state bordering France and the thousands of jobs being created were needed to fuel the growing economy. It didn't cost much more to bring the raw cotton and indigo from the Americas up the Rhone instead of to Genoa, and because one of the two rivers that ran through Mulhouse had soft water and was perfect for dyeing cloth, the savings would more than offset the added transportation cost.

There were already fifteen cotton factories and more than two thousand cotton workers in Mulhouse. With the advent of the flying shuttle and the spinning carding frame powered by a water wheel, two recent inventions developed in England, the cost of producing cotton cloth had dropped, while the quality and production had increased dramatically. With the added planned production, Mulhouse would become the biggest cotton manufacturing center in continental Europe, and because the city was independent of France, they weren't affected by the embargo imposed by France on the production of cotton fabrics. Understandably, since the demand for cotton cloth was exploding, the fabric would no doubt attract high prices for years to come.

Jean told them that his cotton mills would be operational within a few months. He had already bought an existing factory on the Mulhouse riverfront, and the equipment being fabricated by local artisans was likely finished by now. Jean told them his director in Mulhouse would soon be able to deliver twelve hundred bolts of the finished indigo double-weave product to Basel on a regular basis for around £10 per bolt. They confirmed that with Jean-Henri Dollfus, the man running the Mulhouse factory, on their way back to Frankfurt. Dollfus had already received several barges of raw cotton from the French West Indies along with indigo.

Before Gutle had a chance to give vent to her unbelief, Mayer sat down at his desk to write to Joseph Bouchard in Beaune and Jean André in Nîmes telling them he was willing to buy as much product as possible at the agreed price. There was no time to lose for the letters had to be translated by François before being sent on. He was telling Joseph Bouchard to deliver all the grand cru Burgundy wine he could bottle. Mayer would give him a letter of exchange redeemable upon delivery in Rotterdam and would willingly give him a down payment if he so wished. He then addressed a letter to Jean André asking him if he would agree to the same financial conditions. Just like with the wine, Mayer would buy all the cloth that could be delivered to David in Rotterdam where the letter of exchange would be redeemed.

Soon, it would be possible to redeem Mayer's bills of exchange, and even use them as currency, in Frankfurt, Rotterdam and the 13 Colonies, not including the counting houses that would soon open in London and Basel. He had contacted Moses Haim Montefiore in Rotterdam, the friend who had helped David Schiff get settled, asking him if he was interested in running a counting house in London. Moses had replied by return mail that he had been thinking of settling permanently in London, and running a counting house for Mayer in that city was more than he could have hoped for.

By the end of 1773, David was receiving tobacco on a regular basis and he had dispatched the first shipments of Burgundy wine and denim cloth. In both Rotterdam and New York, everything always presold at a price better than anticipated, and Mayer's counting houses were becoming financial institutions of note. He was now ready for his next venture.

He wrote to Haym asking him to come to Frankfurt as soon as possible. Haym was to first go to Williamsburg in Virginia and introduce himself to as many members of the House of Burgesses as possible in order to see what the political climate was in that very important southern colony. Virginia's leaders had always been stalwart supporters of the Crown. However, some die-hard loyalists had started being upset with the English Parliament just like in the colonies up north, and Mayer wanted to confirm that. Haym was to identify any leader who stood out in his opposition to the Crown, preferably someone who was imposing, ambitious and vain.

The very powerful Bank of England, by way of the English Parliament, was treating the 13 Colonies as a parent would a child. Although the pound was the official currency, the Bank of England supplied very little sterling in order to facilitate trade. The colonials were reduced to using tobacco, wampum and the like when they couldn't get their hands on Spanish dollars. The lack of credit, the unjust rate of exchange between the Spanish dollar and the Pound, the lack of representation in decision making, and the unjust taxes forced upon the colonials by the Mother Country was making for an explosive situation.

Mayer was honest and had enough specie to redeem all the paper he was issuing, and because his counting houses on both sides of the Atlantic used the same conversion rates, his paper was in high demand. In all his counting houses one pound had the same value as the Spanish dollar, and 1oz of gold was worth 15 oz. of silver. And since the British insisted on a colonial conversion rate of 4 Spanish dollars to the Pound, it gave Mayer's American counting houses a serious edge over the English. Necessarily, all bills originating from the colonies were expressed in Spanish Dollars, whereas all merchandise coming from Rotterdam was valued in Pounds, as this greatly advantaged the American colonials. Since Mayer's counting houses only accepted gold and silver as payment, and since Haym was instructed to never exchange Spanish dollars for Pounds, the great disparity in the English exchange rate didn't affect his counting house while profiting the local merchants.

Mayer's counting houses were gaining in international status, and he had more than he needed to finance a meeting of the 13 Colonies. The colonies' representatives would not question the help of Haym Salomon, for it was only natural for a rich friend who profited so much from colonial trade to want to help out. Once the Americans gained their independence, they would look upon Mayer's counting house as an honest, dependable source of credit, and Mayer would take control of the 13 Colonies' monetary system just like the Bank of England bankers had done with that of England a century before, but he would do it anonymously.

Union of 13 Colonies

Upon receiving Mayer's letter, Haym left Ephraim Hart, his business associate and friend, in charge of the counting house in New York and went to Williamsburg by way of Philadelphia. He planned to sail out of Williamsburg aboard a Robert Morris ship transporting tobacco intended for David in Rotterdam. Because going from New York City to Williamsburg by land would take about the same time as going by sea, he decided to go to Philadelphia by land and visit with Robert Morris and Bernard Gratz. And since Philadelphia was a mere two-day road trip to the mouth of the Elk River on the Chesapeake, he didn't have to rush. He could still have a long visit with Michael Gratz in Williamsburg before sailing to Europe.

In Philadelphia, Bernard and Robert told him what he already knew regarding the political climate in Pennsylvania, and he was happy to hear there was ever more grumbling in Virginia. This showed the Sons of Liberty in Boston weren't alone in wanting the British Government out of their lives. Haym had found that even though they were poorly financed and had few weapons, the Sons of Liberty were a determined lot and a thorn in the New York Governor's backside. He was convinced they were a viable group, one determined enough to fight the English in a systematic way, if given the chance. The anti-English feelings were definitely spreading throughout the colonies, and Mayer would be happy to hear that.

When he reached Williamsburg, Michael Gratz was waiting for him. Haym had written ahead asking him if he knew members of the House of Burgesses that would be of interest to Mayer. Michael couldn't wait to tell him that the political climate in Virginia was deteriorating at a rapid rate, and that two men stood out in their opposition to the Mother Country. When, in 1770, the British shot into a mob of colonials, in what became known as the Boston Massacre, the southerners began to oppose the ongoing 'intolerable acts' of the English Parliament just like the people in the colonies up north did. Here in Virginia, Patrick Henry and George Washington were trying to make a name for themselves by pushing to have a resolution drawn up condemning England's treatment of the colonials and demanding parliamentary representation.

Patrick Henry was a lawyer, a great orator and a member of the Burgesses, and he was down on his luck. His small plantation was no longer producing, and his wife was very ill. Because he was a frustrated man, a little too hot under the collar, Michael suggested George Washington might be a better man for what Haym and his sponsor had in mind. Haym answered he didn't know precisely what Mayer in Frankfurt wanted, but agreed it was a good idea to at least meet this fellow.

Washington was a tall imposing dour figure who worked very hard at giving the impression of being a strong silent type, and the fact he was an important landowner gave credence to the image he tried to project. After her husband's death in 1752 followed by that of their only son in 1754, Anne Fairfax, his brother's widow, had remarried, and George Washington had become custodian of Mt. Vernon. When George married Martha Custis in 1758, he received a dowry of 6000 acres of prime land that happened to be adjacent to Mt. Vernon. In 1761, when Anne Fairfax died George inherited Mt. Vernon. Although the buildings on the estate were in a rather poor state of repair and the farm revenue modest, the man did his best to lead the life of an English country squire.

There was a lot of talk about this gentleman, and it wasn't all flattering. He had married rather late in life, had no children, and people wondered about his motives for marrying and his exaggerated military career claims during the French Indian War. As Commander of the Virginia Militia, he had participated in two of what could be called skirmishes during that war. In the one, he was said to have killed a French officer in cold blood, and in the other, his militia unit had been captured, and he had been taken prisoner. His inexperience and impetuosity were blamed for those lackluster military achievements when later, having tried to get a commission in the British Army, he was turned down. No doubt feeling slighted, he got married to a rich widow, settled down at Mt. Vernon, and went into politics.

When Haym and Michael arrived at Mt. Vernon, Haym took one look at the imposing figure welcoming them, and he just knew Mayer would be interested in this man. Once done with the usual formalities and seated in the living room, Washington, in wanting to impress this very rich merchant from New York, was quick to tell Haym he had personally seen to the decoration and the furnishings of the mansion, and Mary, his wife, agreed. She was a charming no-nonsense kind of lady, and Haym knew that the shades of pink used on the walls, the rococo draperies, the overflowing array of glitzy furniture and the paintings representing biblical scenes of nude men wasn't her doing.

They talked about the House of Burgesses and the state of affairs in Virginia, and before leaving, Haym told Washington that his sponsor in Germany wanted to help the colonials gain their independence. He asked Washington if he would be interested in meeting with him in order to discuss the matter. Washington, sensing a great opportunity, agreed while making sure not to show too much eagerness.

Michael and Haym took their leave, and as their carriage headed back to Williamsburg, Michael couldn't wait to tell Haym about the rumors that were circulating in town. Apparently, Mary and her husband slept in separate bedrooms on different floors while George and the estate's handsome overseer who lived with them had adjoining bedrooms. They both agreed he was probably leading a secret life that could very well explain his choice of colors and furnishings, and they both roared with laughter.

Haym duly left for Rotterdam, and since Morris ships now made a point of taking advantage of the Gulf Stream, he arrived in under two months. He spent two days with David and his wife, and thoroughly enjoyed their warm hospitality. After promising to stop by on his way back to America, he took a stage coach to Frankfurt, and five days later, he was at Mayer's house in the Judengasse ghetto.

Both Gutle and Mayer had sworn on their wedding day they would never leave Judengasse. They were a happy couple, madly in love, and they both knew what was important in life. It was hard for Haym to determine whether this tall gentle man was happy because he was the richest man in the world or because he lived in the ghetto with his wife Gutle who was about to give him a second child. Regardless, the house was in a festive mood, and exquisite Burgundy wine was flowing.

They spent the next few days exchanging information, and when the subject of Washington came up, they had a good laugh. However, it was a serious matter, and they both agreed that since Washington had the aura of a leader and military experience of sorts, and since he was apparently a gentle megalomaniac living a secret life, he would be perfect for the job. Given the right financial incentives, he would do whatever was asked of him. It was one thing to give a man power, but it was best to keep a Damocles' sword dangling over his head.

After hearing what Haym had to say about the Sons of Liberty, Mayer knew he had the leader and the movement, and above all, he knew it wouldn't cost very much to get them operational. The first thing he would do is make sure his New York counting house had all the necessary specie. With a fortune that he no longer could count multiplying at a rapid rate, Mayer could easily get the colonials talking with one voice by having Haym finance a meeting of the 13 Colonies. Haym was to pay for all travelling expenses incurred by the chosen representatives and compensate them handsomely for their time. He was to finance their political undertakings and provide a meeting hall and adequate housing for them while in Philadelphia. From what Mayer knew, Philadelphia was the perfect city for the meeting, and Haym agreed. If the meeting went as expected, the delegates would probably want to recruit a military leader from the south, and Washington's candidacy would be encouraged. He estimated a man like Washington would cost around £2000 the first year and £1000 thereafter, and the politicians around £300 each per year, an amount equivalent to six times the salary of a skilled tradesman. £100,000 would be more than enough to pay for the politicians' salaries and expenses, and to house them. Getting Washington looking like a genuine military leader and supplying his army as well as the local militias would not be a big financial drain either.

Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies and stood midway between New England and the South. Since the idea was to bring the southern gentry and the northern merchants together, it was ideal middle ground. The fact that Philadelphia wasn't easily accessible by sea, especially for the big English naval vessels, and had an important non-English and non-royalist population was also a consideration. And because Philadelphia was close to New York City, it would make it easier for Haym to control things.

Eager to supply more arms and powder to the American militias, Mayer told Haym he had looked for a way to circumvent the English authorities. David in Rotterdam had suggested that the best way to do that was through the Dutch duty-free port of St. Eustatius in the Caribbean. The Commander of the island, Abraham Heyliger, happened to be an avowed American patriot sympathizer. After confirming that information with Isaac Moses in NYC, a merchant familiar with the Caribbean, Mayer had given David the go-ahead to buy arms.

Talleyrand, the diplomat turned arms merchant working for David, agreed that sending French muskets and powder to America via St. Eustatius was a good idea and he promised that he could supply all the weapons needed. St. Eustatius was nothing more than a big rock in the Caribbean on which were built hundreds of warehouses full of American, West Indian and European goods. Each year, thousands of captains stopped at this duty-free Caribbean port in order to exchange merchandise.

That Caribbean free port was extremely successful because merchants from Europe and the New World could buy and sell goods at established and just exchange rates. The Bank of England's exchange rate between the Spanish dollar and the Pound was unwarranted and to be avoided at all cost. Based on their silver content, the two currencies should have been at par, and that's what Mayer's counting houses offered. Necessarily, merchants who already did everything in their power to circumvent Britain as a trading partner and buy manufactured goods from other European countries out of St. Eustatius would be quite motivated to use Mayer's bills of exchange.

For Isaac Hayes and Robert Morris who already shipped rum, tobacco and indigo and manufactured goods presold by David in Rotterdam and Haym in NYC, shipping arms through St. Eustatius would be a welcome proposition. As for Mayer the clandestine shipments of arms and military supplies delivered to the various colonial militias on credit would become part of the nation's debt after the war and would be used in order to create a national bank.

The American captains were experts at delivering goods undetected by the British authorities because they knew the coast so well. The rugged coast had many inlets, and it was impossible for the British to stop contraband and arms shipments. Ships from St. Eustatius dropping off cargo in some cove in Chesapeake Bay, up the Delaware, in Long Island Sound, or some small bay along the New England shoreline were almost never intercepted.

Before Haym left for America, Mayer asked him to go by way of St. Eustatius and make arrangements with Heyliger. From there he was to stop in all the major American ports in order to recruit goy political leaders who would in turn select representatives to represent the individual colonies at a meeting in Philadelphia planned for September. He was to explain that he was very interested in their march to independence and financing a meeting in Philadelphia was the least a rich merchant like himself could do. He was to be overly generous in all his endeavors. The specie in Haym's vault in NYC was more than adequate to finance a meeting in Philadelphia and anything else that needed doing.

Although Haym was sad to leave Gutle and Mayer, he was anxious to return to America and get the meeting organized. It was time for new experiences and adventures. He welcomed the idea of travelling to Rotterdam aboard a barge transporting wine, and then sailing on to the Caribbean.

1st Continental Congress

When he arrived in St. Eustatius, Haym introduced himself to Heyliger with a letter of introduction from Mayer. Heyliger said he was most happy to do more to help the American cause. In order to devote all his time to his new occupation and avoid any conflicts of interest, Abraham suggested it would be best if he handed over the post of Commander to his son-in-law at the first opportunity. Haym left a considerable amount of silver specie with him to make absolutely sure any bills of exchange that came his way in St. Eustatius would be honored. It would be more than enough because Mayer's bills were so widely accepted that merchants simply signed them over to second and third parties who eventually redeemed them in the 13 Colonies or in Europe.

When he arrived in Boston harbor, Haym sent a runner to the home of Moses Hayes, a prominent member of the Sephardi community who ran Mayer's local counting house. Moses had presold most of the cargo and the balance of wine and denim was promised to waiting buyers in New York and Philadelphia.

Haym acquainted Hayes with his plan to help the patriots achieve independence and asked him for the name of a goy politician won over to the cause, preferably one who was very ambitious. Once he was told what kind of man Mayer was looking for, Hayes mentioned one John Adams, a very motivated lawyer who was willing to espouse any cause for a price. Since he and Adams were practically neighbors, Hayes added he could arrange a meeting at Haym's convenience.

The next day, Haym was sitting in front of John Adams telling him of his plans to finance a meeting of the patriots in Philadelphia in September. He asked him if he would be interested in attending, and if he would be willing to recruit five members from each of the New England colonies which included Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Haym told him the 13 Colonies were making him very rich, and the least he could do was finance a meeting to help the colonials gain their independence. When Adams realized how much money was involved, and seeing what was in it for him, he offered to leave everything he was doing and give the matter his full attention, saying the welfare of the colonies was what mattered most. Haym added that Hayes was to take care of expenses and compensate the men chosen by Adams, and to show how serious he was, he handed Adams £300 in silver, a small fortune in badly needed specie. Adams was thrilled to be chosen, and the two men shook hands.

Haym sailed on to New York City with the remaining merchandise and the many chests of pennies to be stored in his vault. Once the presold merchandise was unloaded and the specie deposited in a safe place, the empty ship sailed back to Boston to pick up a rum shipment for David in Rotterdam. Haym then went to meet with John Jay who was flattered to be chosen to recruit the New York delegates. Haym told him he would get all the required funding and gave him an advance of £300 in silver, just like he had done with John Adams.

The next morning, Haym crossed the Hudson River and took a stage coach to Philadelphia. Mayer's counting house run by Bernard Gratz was doing almost as well as the one in NYC. Before leaving for Williamsburg, Robert Morris assured Haym that he would be very happy to recruit the representatives for the Mid-Atlantic colonies. It was his way of saying that he was grateful for everything that Mayer was doing for him and the Colonies. Haym then asked Bernard to build or buy the best meeting hall possible along with all the necessary housing for the representatives of the 13 Colonies, estimated to be around sixty members in all, and again Morris volunteered to help. Bernard's superb mansion could accommodate many delegates, but since he was a Jew, it was best to have Morris, a goy, organize the housing arrangements.

He spent the night in Wilmington, and the next day he arrived early at the mouth of Elk River from where he sailed to Williamsburg on the other side of Chesapeake Bay. The winds were favorable and he reached Williamsburg by nightfall. He had written ahead to Michael Gratz who was waiting for him. Michael showed Haym to his room where he freshened up before sitting down to a very welcome meal.

Haym made plans to meet with Patrick Henry and George Washington separately. Michael told him he had met Patrick Henry on several occasions and had had a good rapport with him. He didn't think Henry would mind coming to his home, the home of a Jew. Since they would need someone like Henry to recruit delegates in the southern colonies, he thought it best to first invite him and see if he was truly won over to the cause. The next step would be to meet with George Washington. If all went well, he could then have a meeting that would include Haym, Michael, Patrick and George. A meal washed down with fine Burgundy wine brought along for the occasion, and the promise of unlimited funding, would certainly be helpful in forging a solid bond.

Patrick accepted Haym's invitation and arrived at Michael's mansion the following evening. It was quite obvious this sharp-witted individual was distraught with the way the English Parliament was behaving. As a matter of fact, since the Boston Massacre, all he could think about was finding a way to have the colonies meet and devise a plan to achieve independence. It was precisely what Haym wanted to hear, agreeing with Patrick that it was the best thing for trade, and necessarily, for the people. Haym was quick to add he was a rich merchant profiting from trade with the colonies and it was to his great advantage to have representatives from the colonies meet and form some kind of government. What the English Parliament allowed or didn't allow to go in or out of the colonies and the abusive exchange rate regarding the Spanish Dollar that they imposed upon the merchants was insane. Free and just trade had to be the colonies' main goal, and credit had to flow if America was to thrive.

Haym continued by saying he was willing to finance such a meeting and that he had already recruited John Adams in Boston, John Jay in New York, and that Robert Morris had volunteered to do the same out of Philadelphia. If Patrick agreed to recruit representatives from Georgia, South and North Carolina and Virginia for a September meeting in Philadelphia, Haym was willing to give him unlimited funding through Michael Gratz. He told him Michael ran his counting house in Williamsburg and was authorized to finance the meeting. He went on to say, if Patrick accepted, he would get all the necessary funding to give him the necessary status and power in order to get the job done. If Patrick needed to expand his mansion in order to accommodate the American leaders when he met with them, Haym was more than willing to finance such an undertaking. Giving the impression of authority and power was important. Haym added he was quite impressed with Patrick's initiative to have George Mason draft a complaint intended for the English Government, and that it would be a great idea to present such a document in Philadelphia when the representatives met. Patrick answered he also had a young prodigy working for him by the name of Thomas Jefferson, and together, George and Thomas were bound to come up with an impressive document. Patrick shook Haym's hand and promised to get the job done. Since Haym was fulfilling his every wish, and since there were no conditions attached, Patrick was indeed motivated.

When George Washington came to meet Haym in Williamsburg a few days later, Haym acquainted him with the offer he had already made Patrick Henry, but added he had something else in mind for him. Saying he was quite impressed with George's natural leadership qualities, he added he was not only willing to finance his military career as head of the revolutionary army if it came down to that, but also his political career which, if all went well, would likely include his election as head of the new government. In anticipation of the meeting, and in order to make sure he was chosen as Commander-in-Chief, he was to offer to personally finance the confederate army and forego his own salary. He would submit his expense account to Congress after the war was won. Haym would give him unlimited funding and make sure George received everything he needed.

Since many prestigious residences would be needed to house out-of-state leaders and hold meetings, Haym was allowing as much credit as needed to have them built. If George wanted to expand and renovate his mansion, all he had to do was ask Michael. As a matter of fact, George could immediately hire an architect, and if he wanted, he could even start ordering materials from England through Michael. With the help of his people in Rotterdam and London, building materials and furnishings could easily be ordered and shipped to him in Virginia within a few months.

This offer was beyond George's wildest dreams, but keeping his excitement in check, he simply told Haym he accepted his offer, promising if he ever became leader of the new government, everybody would know where the funding came from. He couldn't help asking, however, if Haym had a strategy regarding what had to be done next. Haym simply repeated he wanted the Philadelphia meeting to be a success, and was depending on him, Patrick Henry, and Robert Morris to make it happen. Michael and his brother Bernard would supply all the credit needed. Haym would study the maps of the colonies along with English troop and ship movement, and after consulting with General Von Estorff in Germany, he would make the general's views known to George. Lastly, as the men shook hands, Haym told George that the most important thing he could do for now was make sure the wording of the resolves presently being drafted by George Mason and Thomas Jefferson reflected the mood of the representatives when they met in Philadelphia.

Post-scriptum

Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia was finished on time and the 1st Continental Congress met there from Sept. 5, 1774 to Oct. 26 1774. There were 56 delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies, Georgia being the sole exception. John Jay, John and Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, George Washington were some of the more prominent participants. The Fairfax Resolves whose content is summarized below were used as a template during the meeting.

Synopsis of Fairfax Resolves

1. Resolved that our ancestors, when they left their native land and settled in America, brought with them the form of government of the country they came from and were entitled to all its privileges, immunities and advantages which ought to be as fully enjoyed as if we had still continued within the Realm of England.

2. Resolved that the most important and valuable part of the British Constitution, upon which its very existence depends, is the fundamental right of the people not to be governed by laws to which they have not given their consent.

3. Resolved that the inhabitants of the American Colonies are not represented in the British Parliament, and that the legislative power can only be exercised by its own Provincial Assemblies or Parliaments, and that the Colonies should be allowed to trade with countries other than England

4. Resolved that it is the duty of the Colonies to proportionally contribute to the defense of the British Empire as long as they are treated on an equal footing

5. Resolved that to extort money from the Colonies without the consent of the people is not only diametrically contrary to the first principles of the Constitution, but is totally incompatible with the privileges of a free people.

6. Resolved that Taxation and Representation are in their nature inseparable.

7. Resolved that the powers over the people of America now claimed by the British House of Commons are contrary to the interests of the colonies and are most grievous and intolerable forms of tyranny and oppression.

Recruiting Benjamin Franklin

After reading Haym's letter, telling him that the meeting had gone well, that the Fairfax Resolves had been accepted by all the Colonies except Georgia, that war was inevitable and that Boston was ready to explode, Mayer left for America by way of St.Eustatius in early 1776 aboard a Robert Morris ship carrying arms and powder. He was quite impressed with all the commercial activity such a small island generated, but he was especially pleased to meet Heyliger. Since all merchandise was moving so well, thanks in part to Heyliger's efficient running of Mayer's counting house, there wasn't much to talk about. After the necessary formalities and the well-deserved congratulations, the two men enjoyed a great seafood dinner, and the next morning, Mayer was off to Boston.

When Morris' ship arrived at the drop-off site in a cove south of Boston in late March, Mayer, learning that the English had evacuated Boston earlier in the month, asked the captain to carry on directly to Boston harbor. The whole cargo was unloaded while Mayer went to meet with Moses Hayes. He learned that George Washington had marched his army to Cambridge after the Battle of Bunker Hill, and had sent young Henry Knox to fetch the canons captured by Benedict Arnold at Fort Ticonderoga. The young librarian had accomplished a miracle by transporting the canons overland by oxen to Boston in the dead of winter without losing a single one. Washington had then positioned them on Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston harbor. Moses went on to say that, thanks to the arms and powder shipments received from St. Eustatius, not only had the canons been readied for action, but that thousands of New England militiamen had been recruited.

With the heavy canons bearing down on his fleet, General Howe had thought it best to evacuate Boston and take the loyalists with him. When Moses added that the merchants, the patriots and the politicians were more determined than ever to gain their economic freedom from England, Mayer was pleased that so much had been accomplished with so little blood being spilled.

When the British left Boston, Washington thought the British had gone to NYC, and that's where he headed with his newly recruited army. This meant Mayer would not meet with Washington in Boston, and that suited him just fine, for he would have a chance to speak with Haym before talking to the General at his NYC headquarters.

Mayer told Moses that the British had sent some twenty thousand Hessians to fight in America and that the first contingent would be arriving soon. Mayer had learned that the Hanau contingent was to be dropped off in Quebec City which meant the British were planning to send troops down the Richelieu River in order to take control of the Lake Champlain-Hudson River waterway in the spring. There was no longer any doubt the British were planning to split the Colonies in two just like General von Estorff had predicted.

The next day he went to see John Adams, and although the man wasn't a die-hard patriot, he congratulated him on the successful siege of Boston. But what Mayer really wanted was to acquaint Adams with the fact the Hessians were coming and to ask him to send couriers to spread the news to the other Colonies. If independence was to be achieved, the wavering loyalists and the moderate patriots had to know that the Mother Country was sending mercenaries to fight them, news that would surely influence them and consolidate the patriot movement. Adams agreed and couriers were dispatched on the hour.

When Mayer got to NYC, he immediately went to see Haym. The first thing Haym told him was that the 2nd Continental Congress had voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence. Copies had been sent to the different Colonies and Congress was expecting them to ratify the document. According to Haym, because everybody now knew the German mercenaries were coming, the more moderate members of the New York Provincial Congress, and even some of the die-hard loyalists, were likely to come on board.

NYC had always been a loyalist stronghold, but with recent developments in Boston the less moderate elements of the population were being swayed. After the Boston evacuation, the British had, the month before, sent a warship in NYC harbor in order to protect the loyalists, and that encouraged the rebels to foment fear, and that led to the more moderate Provincial Assembly being replaced by the Provincial Congress. A Committee of Safety whose main task was to raise and equip troops for the defense of NYC and spy on the loyalists suspected of assisting the British was created. The situation had reached a point of no return.

Mayer lost no time in arranging a meeting with Washington who had set up his headquarters in upper Manhattan. Upon reaching Washington's headquarters Mayer and Haym were not surprised to see that he had requisitioned an elaborate mansion for his staff. The luxurious surroundings and his many young aides-de-camp prancing around in sharp uniforms contrasted sharply with the rag tag troops encamped in helter-skelter fashion in the fields adjacent to the command post. However, what mattered was having a Commander-in-Chief who held the Continental Army together and showed the colors as much as possible. How he conducted his private life, or how good a military commander he was, was of no concern to Mayer. All that was expected of him was to harass the enemy with his company of Virginia riflemen and whatever canons he had, and retreat inland as the British retaliated.

With Haym as translator, Mayer greeted the General and made a point of congratulating him on the successful siege of Boston. He then asked him how Mrs. Washington was and if the renovation and expansion of Mount Vernon was completed to his satisfaction. Washington answered that Martha was very well, and that thanks to Mayer and his collaborators, nodding in Haym's direction, Mount Vernon was finished and was indeed a sight to behold. Mayer said that he was delighted for him and added that if he needed anything, all he had to do was ask Haym.

Washington then told Mayer he was planning to have the Declaration of Independence document read to the troops assembled on the common the next day, and that it would be an honor to have him attend. If the Provincial Congress signed the document as expected, George would then give young Alexander Hamilton, a very promising King's College student who had formed a group of patriots called Hearts of Oak, the go-ahead to raid the battery in Manhattan. Then, he would point the seized canons in the direction of the English fleet and wait for the English to land their troops. Once that happened, George would put up a barrage of canon fire and get the Virginia rifle company to hold them off as long as possible. When the inevitable came, the Continental Army would simply retreat towards the interior, leaving Manhattan to the English. He was sure Cornwallis, not wanting to put too much distance between his army and the English fleet in NYC, wouldn't pursue them too far inland.

Knowing the Hanau Hessians had been dropped off in Quebec, the General was convinced the English would be sending an army to Ft. Ticonderoga from Quebec by way of Lake Champlain and another up the Hudson to meet up with it. The two armies would no doubt get moving in early spring, and it was imperative that he send whatever militias he could muster to cut them off. As for the Continental Army, he needed more French muskets, more Pennsylvania rifles, more powder, more boots and clothing, more horses and saddlery, in short, more of everything.

Mayer answered that muskets, powder and boots were being sent in ever greater number. European military uniforms were also being sent to Pennsylvania along with hundreds of bolts of fine woolen red and blue cloth. An army of seamstresses would tailor the uniforms to the General's liking. Furthermore, the Pennsylvania gunsmiths were being financially encouraged to produce as many rifles as possible and as quickly as possible. The General would soon be able to form more rifle companies. Mayer told the General all he had to do was ask Haym if he needed anything. For now, the important thing was to prevent the two British armies from joining up at Fort Ticonderoga.

Moreover, since over the winter months there wouldn't be much action, Mayer told George that he had asked Haym to work on getting the Hessians to defect when they landed in New York. Mayer thought that if they were promised parcels of land and money in order to settle down in Pennsylvania where there already was a big population of Germans, the Hessians would readily accept the offer. If Haym succeeded in getting some Hessians to defect, Mayer wondered if the General wouldn't mind picking them up and conveying them to Pennsylvania.

The general, happy to be getting his horses and saddlery, the promised Burgundy wine along with his guns and powder, said he would be more than willing to assist Haym in the defection of the Hessians. When Haym was ready, all he had to do was tell the General when and where to pick them up. Haym could also count on the General for transporting his family and capital to Pennsylvania if and when it became necessary.

The next day, Mayer witnessed a very moving ceremony on the common as the Declaration of Independence was solemnly read to the troops. A group of citizens listening on the fringes were so moved that they proceeded to tear down the newly-erected statue of the King. When it was confirmed that the Provincial Congress had signed the Declaration of Independence document earlier that day, Mayer left for Philadelphia in a good frame of mind. With New York in the American camp, the British didn't have much of a chance.

Mayer was a judicious man who never let himself be unduly impressed by people upon meeting them, he preferred to treat everyone politely and with respect, and not prejudge them. He knew what pushed people to do the things they did and was never disappointed one way or the other. Culturally, he was an Ashkenazi, a member of a Jewish population that had survived thanks to the solidarity of the group, a group of people he could trust with his life. He trusted Sephardim like Haym, and a few goys like Prince William in Hanau and Robert Morris in Philadelphia, but it was a case by case affair.

When Mayer met Bernard Gratz and Robert Morris in the Philadelphia counting house, they exchanged heartfelt greetings, and Mayer asked if Benjamin Franklin had been invited. He had, and when Franklin arrived, Morris explained who Mayer was, and Franklin bluntly told him he was most anxious to meet the mystery man who had made the meeting of the 1st Continental Congress possible. When Mayer met Americans, he had to use an interpreter, but this time, he was quite relieved to learn that Franklin spoke some German.

Mayer knew of Franklin's reputation, and as they made eye contact for the first time, he was convinced that it wasn't overstated. This man exuded humility, strength of character, and sharpness of mind, a combination of qualities that he had not seen in any of the other goy leaders. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, John Jay, and other American leaders he had met, were all talented men in their own right, but they were politically motivated. They were indispensable in the nation building process, but they weren't men of vision. In order to achieve a monetary union and a united America, he needed an American counterpart who shared his dream, a man who wanted to establish a monetary system and who wasn't primarily motivated by self-interest. He needed a man like Franklin.

Mayer and Franklin engaged in small talk which had to do with ocean travel and Europe. Mayer being of the strong silent type variety, Franklin was the one who kept the exchange going by asking Mayer why he had come to America. Mayer had anticipated this moment and told him he had come to meet with the directors of his counting houses, but also to find a way to help the patriot cause. He didn't tell Franklin outright that he was the one who had financed the 1st Continental Congress and supplied arms and ammunition to the militias in the 13 Colonies, but Franklin had already put two and two together.

When Mayer asked him if they could meet privately, saying that it was a matter of great importance for America, Franklin accepted and suggested they meet the following day in his modest manor. And since he had just hired a great cook, he insisted that they have lunch. Mayer accepted on the condition he supply the wine.

The house was quite spacious and very comfortable, but Benjamin's wife having died the year before in 1774 while he was in England, the drawing and engraving paraphernalia he was using to produce the Continental Dollar plates was slowly invading the whole house. Since his return, he had produced four fractional dollar bills for Congress and he was working on several others. Congress had reconvened in May following the Battle of Bunker Hill and had declared war on England. The dollar bills were to be used to pay for the war. Franklin wanted the bills to convey strong messages, for he hoped that the Continental currency would help unify the 13 Colonies. He wanted plants and animals instead of people on the face of the bills, and he had made hundreds of sketches and drawings that were strewn about. They kept company to the many books from which he got his ideas for symbols and sayings that he intended to translate into Latin. As each bill was printed bearing a message of resilience, strength, frugality, industry and such, he would publish an article in the Philadelphia Gazette in order to explain the meanings of the symbols, the emblems and the Latin. Mayer thought the man was brilliant but had doubts about the long-term success of his bills.

No matter, Mayer couldn't help but scrutinize Benjamin's work and marvel at his great talent and energy. Mayer knew a lot about printing bills thanks to all the knowledge he had gained from the printers at the goldsmith house in Hanau, and he knew that the man before him was indeed a genius.

Likewise, Benjamin was quite impressed by Mayer. It was obvious that Mayer wasn't a rich pompous merchant, but rather a quiet powerful man who wanted to make the world a better place. When Benjamin told him that he was aware of what he had done for the patriot cause, Mayer added that it was only natural for a man such as himself, a man who was making a fortune financing trade between the Colonies and Europe, to want to help. As a matter of fact, he added, that's what he wanted to talk to Benjamin about.

It was obvious that Benjamin knew a lot about money, for he had published a lot of treatises concerning paper currency, and over the years he had done a superb job printing bills for the Colonies and now for Congress. Mayer and Franklin both wanted the Colonies to gain their economic independence and become united, and they both knew that a common strong currency was the way to do it, and that was the topic of discussion.

Mayer proceeded to say that the only lasting monetary system that the world had ever seen was the one England had, and that was the system he wanted to duplicate. The Bank of England was made up of a group of private bankers who were the sole lenders to Parliament, and after almost a century, that arrangement was still working superbly. Above all, the Bank of England had succeeded because it was a private bank. A monetary system based on a government printing bills and minting coins for its own use, though quite morally appealing, was doomed to failure. Politicians weren't equipped to run a monetary system, for they would always tend to print too much and for the wrong reasons. The Chinese and many others had tried to print paper money in the past, but no currency except the Pound had ever passed the test of time. A strong central government and a strong private central bank were what was needed if America was to become the great nation that it was meant to be.

Benjamin had spent enough time in England to know that Mayer was right, but he had no idea how it could be done. How does one create a central bank like the one in England out of nothing?

Mayer went on to explain how he had established his bills of exchange on both sides of the Atlantic, how he had accumulated considerable wealth, and how he had been able to organize the 1st Continental Congress and supply the various Colonies with arms and powder. He was continuing to supply war materials on credit, for he was sure the Colonies would want to pay him back after they won their independence. The debt incurred would serve as collateral for Mayer's bank down the road. However, uniting the 13 Colonies was another matter. A strong federal power had to be created, and a strong private central bank was needed to accomplish that. Mayer had enough gold and silver to redeem all the bills he issued on demand, but he explained that more gold bullion would be needed in order to create a central bank like the one in England.

Benjamin trusted that Mayer would know what to do if he had more bullion, and so he asked him outright how it could be done. To Benjamin's astonishment, Mayer answered it all depended on the diplomat before him. Benjamin had invented a lot of things, and he was curious about everything, but he wasn't a magician, and he told Mayer so. However, he was relieved when he heard what Mayer had to say on the subject. Mayer reminded him he was the most influential diplomat America had, and that his many years of representing the 13 Colonies in London were invaluable. Since Benjamin spoke French, Mayer told him if he were to go to France and seek France's help, given his personality, experience and fame as an inventor, he would have a great chance of succeeding. Success would mean getting aid from France and, more importantly, getting French gold. The French King would certainly welcome the opportunity to give England a bloody nose by chasing it out of America.

After a short pause, Benjamin said he had some contacts in France, but that he wouldn't know where to start. Mayer replied that Congress would be only too happy to send him over as an official ambassador, especially if Robert Morris was to arrange to pay all his personal expenses and make sure he had all the credit needed to accomplish his mission with no questions asked. France was the country where the citizenry had the most gold bullion, and if it was to put an aid package together, it would necessarily involve gold. He and Mayer would then make sure Haym Salomon became France's treasurer in America. Mayer had never defaulted on an exchange bill, and his bills were as good as gold. So, Haym would simply continue doing what he was already doing, and make sure that his bills backed by the French gold would be spread around generously to the politicians, the various militias, Washington's Army, and needless to say, France's armed forces. The continental dollar was bound to depreciate, but his bills of exchange backed by French gold would more than make up for that loss.

By the time they had put the guinea hens down their gullet and washed them down with the excellent Burgundy wine that Mayer had brought along, both men were in total agreement. They both knew they formed a great team, two men of vision who were in the process of designing the framework of a great nation. Franklin would go to France, and they would succeed.

Benjamin left for France on Oct. 26, 1776. A month earlier, the British had accused Haym of aiding the Sons of Liberty and had arrested him. Having foreseen this development, Haym had asked Washington to convoy his family and treasury to Philadelphia for safekeeping, which he did as he and his army retreated to Pennsylvania. Haym was sentenced to house arrest after agreeing to interpret for the Hessians. That was precisely what he had hoped for. The great defection of Hessians that was about to take place at Trenton would be a simple matter of getting to the right Hessian officer, and Haym had befriended several.

Working for Independence

Franklin left for France, accompanied by his illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, and his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, son of Sarah. Sarah was the daughter he had with Deborah Read, his common-law wife.

They sailed on board the Continental sloop-of-war Reprisal which carried sixteen guns. He had to be protected, for if Franklin had been captured by the English on the high seas he would have been hanged for treason. The 70-year-old American, widely referred to by the English as 'chief of the rebels' or as 'General Franklin', was deemed dangerous. The British Ambassador to France expressed his regrets that some English frigate had not met and dispensed with him on the high seas. However, he landed at Auray on the Loire River and made his way to Nantes with great difficulty. From there, the 250-mile trip into Paris was like a triumphal procession. He was wined and dined along the way by scientific and literary notables, and his entry into Paris caused a sensation.

Franklin's fame was due not only to his scientific reputation, but also to the French rage for what philosopher Rousseau called 'the natural man'. There was a vogue for things American in France at this time. Many French intellectuals looked to America as a new world, a fresh world, a world where human nature was closer to its natural origins. And Franklin, of course, was more than pleased to cater to French expectations. When he arrived in Paris, he was wearing a little fur cap to keep his bald head warm. To the French, the hat was the embodiment of the rugged American frontiersman and proof that Franklin was a true 'natural man'. Even though no one knew what exactly he was doing in France, the French welcomed him with open arms, and he became a pop culture icon. Images of Franklin, wearing a fur cap instead of a wig, were depicted in paintings, engravings, medallions, rings, and snuffboxes.

After the Battle of Saratoga and the humiliating defeat of the British army commanded by General Burgoyne, Franklin, in spite of his struggling with the French language, used his charm, wit, and knowledge, to parlay this English defeat at the hands of American militias into a gigantic diplomatic victory. The French foreign minister, Count of Vergennes, wasted no time in officially acknowledging that the United States was an independent country. A formal treaty with France followed in 1778.

When he first arrived in Paris, Benjamin settled in Passy, a very affluent part of the city. It was necessary to seek out the French elite in order to achieve his goal. He had no direct access to the King, but he could influence those around him in order to get financial and military aid for America. He sought out the most select salon he could find, and since he was a freemason, he frequented a local lodge, where the great men of the day, the enlightened ones, were members.

Early on, he was introduced to the salon of Mme Helvetius in Auteuil. At the relatively late age of 29, Mme Helvetius had married the French philosopher and poet, Claude Adrien Helvétius, who had amassed a fortune as a Farmers General tax collector. The couple settled in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, and Minette, as she was called, opened a salon where she entertained some of the greatest figures of the Age of Enlightenment. Among them were Suzanne Necker, Diderot, Duclos, André Chénier, Condorcet, l'Abbé Sieyès, Buffon, Condillac, d'Alembert, Lavoisier, and such politicians as Malesherbes, Talleyrand, Madame Roland, Mirabeau, and it included of course, Voltaire.

Twenty years into her marriage, her husband died, and in 1776, she and Jérôme de Lalande opened the 'Loge des Neuf Sœurs', a masonic lodge that was affiliated to the Grand Orient of France. Freemasonry was incontestably one of the great changes that was taking place in the west. It was where new ideas were expressed, and where men influenced the course of events. Of course, Benjamin frequented that French lodge assiduously from the very beginning. Two years later, in 1778, he was initiated as a member, and, in 1779, he was made Worshipful Master. A few weeks before his death, Voltaire was initiated as a member, and when Benjamin was introduced to him, he was greatly impressed with the man. They became good friends, and when asked by Benjamin, Voltaire gave his grandson his benediction. Needless to say, the lodge was an excellent way for Benjamin to meet great men who had influence in the highest levels of society.

But Benjamin was also a ladies' man. His wife had died in 1774, and in spite of his age, while in France, he was treated like a rock star, and he couldn't help being a flirt. One lady whom he considered his equal was Mme Helvetius, and he may have even proposed to her. One thing for sure, he wanted to share her bed. He called her Notre Dame, and in one of his notes to her, he writes: 'if Notre Dame is pleased to spend her days with Franklin, he would be just as pleased to spend his nights with her; and since he has already given her so many of his days, although he has so few left to give, she seems ungrateful in never giving him one of her nights'.

Franklin frequented the upper classes and the aristocrats, for they were the ones he had to convince in order for them to convince the king to help America. The salon of Mme Helvetius and the Lodge of the Nine Sisters served his purpose well, but that was not his only activity. He was in constant communication with Robert Morris in Philadelphia, because, as arranged by Mayer, he depended on his financial help. There was a four-way communication between Mayer, David Schiff, Robert Morris and Benjamin because arms, clothing and war material shipments to America had to be organized as well. Because Benjamin had so many important contacts in Paris, and because he was such a hit with the French, he had been able to convince Minister Vergennes to replace the outdated arms in France's numerous arsenals and send them to America. The arms then found their way to Rotterdam from where David shipped them to America through St. Eustatius. So, from 1776 to 1778 ever more arms and powder made their way to America.

Back in NYC, in 1776, after being arrested by the English for helping the Sons of Freedom, Haym had started interpreting for the Hessians. That's when he befriended Colonel Johann Rall, a Hessian, and by pulling all the right strings, he was put in command of the Hessian troops sent to hold the Trenton position on the other side of the Delaware facing Philadelphia. Haym had explained to Rall that Philadelphia was a community made up of Germans who had come from the Frankfurt region just like them, and if they were to defect, not only would they feel at home but they would be given large parcels of land and enough money to start a new life. The Trenton Hessian soldier pickup was a total success, more than 900 Hessians crossed the Delaware with Washington's help. More importantly, it was construed as a major American victory over the English, and it gave quite a boost to American morale.

Later, on July 12th, 1778, when the French Ambassador sailed up the Delaware, Mayer had been forewarned and had sent word to Haym who was in NYC. Haym escaped without too much difficulty, and though the English sentenced him to death in absentia, he arrived safely in Philadelphia ahead of the French Ambassador.

After settling in the counting house run by Bernard Gratz, Washington backed Haym's candidacy as broker of the French aid package. But the French Ambassador was already looking for Haym, thanks to the recommendations of Benjamin in Paris. That's how, with Benjamin's help and the support of influential members of the Continental Congress, Haym was chosen by the anti-Semite French to be their American treasurer. Haym was not only named broker to the French Consul, but also Treasurer of the French Army, and Fiscal Agent of the French Minister to the United States. Most important of all, some 500 tons of gold, equivalent to some 60,000,000 dollars, were added to the bullion already in his Philadelphia vault.

However, working within Congress was another matter. Both Haym and Robert worked for Mayer, but Robert Morris was the one chosen to become a member of Congress because he was a goy. Not only that, but he was, as far as the colonials were concerned, a rich merchant who had supplied them arms and ammunitions since 1774. David had sent on the arm shipments to America as directed by Mayer, but it was Morris' arms importing company that had fronted the operations. Congress and the militias had gotten arms and powder, and they had been too grateful to ask questions. Mayer had total confidence in Robert Morris, and since Americans, like Europeans, were not yet ready to accept Jews in the inner sanctum of political leadership, Robert worked inside Congress, and Haym outside. Mayer couldn't have been more satisfied with this state of affairs.

Bank of North America

American Independence and the French aid package to America was what was foremost on Mayer's mind, for that was the way he would become sole banker for the American Congress, just like the shareholders of the East India Company had become sole creditors for the English Parliament in 1694. After the Trenton defection of nearly 900 Hessians in 1776, and especially after the capture of Burgoyne's army in Saratoga, in 1777, Louis XVI, impressed with Benjamin Franklin as a man and in awe of the American victories, had signed the Treaty of Alliance with the 13 Colonies, thus declaring war on England in the process. Thanks to Benjamin Franklin's diplomatic skills, France had come to America's aid.

The English High Command retaliated by attacking the French fleet which was in the Caribbean. Clinton, the new commander of the British forces, then sent Cornwallis to re-establish control over the southern colonies. Cornwallis' army won major victories in Charlestown and Camden, but the English Navy had a bad time of it in the Caribbean. To make matters worse for the English, the American general, Nathaniel Greene, started hit and run tactics against Cornwallis, forcing the latter to chase him throughout the Carolinas. Eventually, Clinton had Cornwallis rest his demoralized army in the ice-free port of Yorktown in Chesapeake Bay. Clinton intended to resupply him as needed, and Cornwallis was to go back on the offensive after a much-needed rest. But they hadn't taken into account General Rochambeau, Commander-in-Chief of the French forces, and a great military strategist.

Rochambeau was a professional soldier trained in the art of warfare, and he singlehandedly coordinated the military operations that would lead to the Yorktown victory. He marched his very well rested and disciplined army out of Newport towards New York City, and as planned, he met up with Washington's army at Wethersfield, Connecticut, in late May. When Rochambeau saw Washington's army in tatters, he also realized there was mutiny in the air. The troops had had it with Washington's leadership and his 'military family', a group of young aides-de-camp who rode well-bred horses with fine saddlery and spent a lot of time feasting with the General. So, Rochambeau proceeded to pay the American troops what was owed them, to feed them, and to give them proper uniforms and much needed military supplies. The allies then got ready to attack New York City. But when Rochambeau got word that Admiral de Grasse had defeated the English in the Caribbean, he had a change of plan.

He knew Cornwallis' army was recovering in Yorktown and realized how vulnerable it was. It was obvious that defeating Cornwallis' army would be easier and have a greater impact than facing Clinton's well-entrenched and well-supplied army in New York City. After convincing Washington, he sent word to Admiral de Grasse in the Caribbean and Admiral de Barras in Newport informing them of his change of plans. Luckily for everybody, the two admirals agreed to go along with Rochambeau, and both headed for Chesapeake Bay. Admiral de Grasse got there first and easily defeated the English fleet off the Virginia coast, while Admiral de Barras arrived from Newport and blockaded Cornwallis' army by positioning his fleet at the mouth of the York River. Having joined forces, the two French fleets easily outnumbered anything the British were able to muster. When Rochambeau and Washington arrived at Yorktown, they had the troops dig a siege line behind Cornwallis' position, thus entrapping his army. The allies then tightened their stranglehold, digging a second siege line closer to Cornwallis' army. As the naval and land artillery kept pounding away from front and rear, Cornwallis realized he didn't have a chance. The English redoubts were taken one by one, forcing Cornwallis to surrender. When the English Parliamentarians learned they had lost another army, they decided to put an end to the war, but it wasn't to be made official for another two years.

Meanwhile, in Frankfurt, Mayer was telling Gutle how Haym had convinced a lot of Hessians to defect while he was under house arrest, and how Haym had escaped and been named broker to the French Consul, and Treasurer of the French Army upon arriving in Philadelphia. Haym had then made sure the French army, as well as Washington's army, the 13 militias, and the politicians had everything they needed. But now that the politicians were about to take over, Mayer hated to tell Gutle that he had chosen Robert Morris instead of Haym as the one to deal with Congress. Because America was no more ready than Europe to accept Jews in a leadership role, it was Robert Morris, a goy, who would look after Mayer's finances in 1781. The continental currency that Congress had issued at the start of the war and that had somewhat helped to finance the war had by now completely depreciated. Fortunately for Congress and for Mayer, the 'Morris Notes' backed by the French gold had by now replaced the worthless currency.

When Gutle asked if Mayer has stolen the French gold, Mayer gives her a long homily on the magic of gold. He starts by telling her that it was officially all spent but that it remained stockpiled in his vaults. He continues by saying there are two ways of looking at gold bullion. The first is where the owner uses it to further his personal ambition in order to gain influence, and the second is where it is used to establish a credit system and to build a monetary system like Mayer was doing. The gold provided by France was doing what it was supposed to do. It was helping America win the war like Louis XVI had wanted, but it would do much more than that, it would help create a government, a country and an economy. When gold bullion is used to make more credit available, it becomes the cornerstone of the economic structure, whereas it accomplishes nothing if used as currency. Gold bullion is meant to be gathered in a pile, as huge as possible, and the pile is meant to remain inviolate and observable. The notes and the bills backed by the gold are issued and spent, but the gold stays in a neat pile. The banker who possesses the gold can issue bills of exchange in which everybody has the highest confidence, and as the pile of gold grows, it acts as a starter or mother for more notes and more bills. Confidence in the bills issued is what makes it all possible. Of course, the process of creating credit makes the gold holder richer, but beyond a certain point, getting rich is no longer the goal, amassing more bullion and shoring up the monetary system is.

Creating credit is akin to controlling the monetary system, and controlling the monetary system isn't about increasing the wealth of one individual. In Mayer's case that was already a given. It's more about pointing the economy or the country in the desired direction and creating more credit and more wealth, and buying more gold. Elected individuals can't possibly control a monetary system, for they are too subjective and think too short-term, and the monetary system is sure to founder under the weight of their greed, corruption and short-sightedness. Only objective private interests totally intent on building thriving market economies can succeed. However, because the privately-owned Bank of England was myopic and parochial in nature, contrary to Mayer's bank that was international in nature, his bank would one day take over the prestigious Bank of England.

He continued by giving a brief account of what had been accomplished so far. The Bank of North America had been created on May 26, 1781 by the Confederation Congress, at which time, Alexander Hamilton had recommended Morris for the position of Superintendent of Finance. The constitution for the Bank of North America had been drafted by Alexander and was modeled after the Bank of England. Morris had then submitted his legislative proposal based on that draft, and that's how Mayer's bank became the private commercial bank of the United States of America.

When Robert Morris became superintendent of finance the continental currency had ceased to be issued. On April 30, 1781, Alexander Hamilton advised Morris to issue 1,000 shares of Bank of North America priced at $400 each. When Mayer offered Benjamin Franklin, who was still in France, a symbolic share in order to show the great American's faith in the Federalists and his confidence in the new bank, he gratefully accepted. Thomas Willing, the original President of the bank of Philadelphia, and William Bingham, were both given shares as well. But Robert Morris was the one chosen to front Mayer's bank, and he held more than 90% of the shares, thanks to the French gold in his possession.

Wilhemsbad

Mayer didn't want to scare his wife Gutle by telling her about the huge tract of land he had recently bought on the outskirts of Frankfurt. It was a parcel of around two hundred acres of forest and marshland to the north of the city, well beyond the city walls. Now that Haym was more or less confirming what he already knew regarding America, it was obvious he would need more office space. As soon as the landscaping allowed it, he would go ahead with the building of a grandiose manor that would serve as his headquarters. The marshland would be transformed into a vast botanical garden, and he already had a name for the palatial structure to be built at the north end facing south. It would be called Green Castle. Officially, it would be Peter Heinrich von Bethmann's residence, but unofficially, it's where Bethmann would run Mayer's banking operations. Mayer would keep the top floor of one wing for his personal use. The manor would be a perfect place to initiate his children to the world of finance and to the world of the goys. From the terrace of Green Castle there would be a panoramic view of huge stretches of lawn, trees, ponds and many exotic plants and animals, things that were completely foreign to the Judengasse ghetto. It would be a peaceful place where Gutle could go and enjoy the fresh air and the luscious green beauty with the children. He knew Gutle would find this private green paradise hard to resist once she was introduced to it. Above all, this property was subject to the authority of Prince Wilhelm, not that of the Frankfurt Council.

As expected, on a glorious spring day in 1782, Gutle had gone to enjoy a picnic with her family on the grounds facing the newly-built Green Castle. A gentle brook was trickling down into a pond where the swans were slaloming around water lilies. Mayer was sitting by her side, her boisterous children were running around chasing the strange creatures that populated the marvelous gardens, and she was happy. However, even though Mayer owned the property, it was part of the goy world, a world that threatened her family.

Mayer was forever trying to reassure his worried wife. He would tell her that though their children would know a different kind of world, the family's roots were so deep, its values so time-honoured and its commitment to honesty so true, that the children would never forget their upbringing. The boys would become powerful men and live with goys, but they would always remember who they were and where they came from.

Gutle knew Mayer was right. Judengasse may have been a narrow sunless street, but it was the artery that had brought life, love, and joy of living to them all. Nobody who lived there could ever forget the bonds that held the community together. But now that Mayer's bank, the Bank of North America, had been accepted as the official bank of the United States of America, Gutle had even more reason to worry.

Mayer was more concerned with what was about to take place in Hanau. Prince William was hosting a meeting in Wilhelmsbad, and the participants were coming from all over Europe. The Illuminati, or Enlightened Ones as they liked to call themselves, were preparing to free Europe from the yoke of the Holy Roman Empire. The Huguenots and the Sephardim in the City were apparently planning the destruction of the Ancien Regime of France, the cornerstone of that Empire.

After the Huguenots and Sephardim created the East India Company in 1600, they had immediately started undermining their enemy's stronghold. In early 17th century, they decided to isolate the French King from Paris, the center of French political power, by financing the construction of the Chateau de Versailles. Now, a century later, they were getting ready to topple Louis XVI, and they needed a communications network on French soil. Since 1773, Masonic Lodges had multiplied throughout France, and the City bankers had even recruited the king's cousin, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France. At the Congress of Wilhelmsbad, the Illuminati's intention was to have the French lodges break away from the Scottish rite in order to make them available to all faiths. Members had always been required to swear on the Roman Catholic bible in order to become a freemason, and they wanted to do away with that requirement. Prince William, a Calvinist, had embraced the idea, and had allowed them to hold a meeting in Wilhelmsbad, near Hanau.

It was men like Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, a very prominent and well-respected French Freemason, who organized the meeting, but violent men like Adam Weishaupt also participated. Weishaupt was heard to say that his only hope was to one day see the last priest strangled with the guts of the last king left standing. This did not augur well for France who was the main target.

With the Scottish rite gone, the Illuminati would then infiltrate the lodges and start undermining the French political structures while forcing the absentee King in Versailles to agree to a Constitutional Monarchy like the one created in England a hundred years earlier. In order to separate Church and State, they would confiscate all Church property and sell it at auction instead of giving it to the aristocrats like Henry VIII had done in England. They had already recruited a very powerful individual by the name of Mirabeau, who just happened to be a physiocrat. Mirabeau believed like many French economists of the times that the wealth of nations was derived from the value of land. Benjamin Franklin had held similar ideas when Mayer had first met him, but his thinking had changed.

Notes backed by Church property would be a huge success at the outset, but the bankers in the City as well as Mayer in Frankfurt knew that human nature being what it is, the people's representatives would be inclined to print ever more notes based on that success. The Bank of England would then surely take advantage of the situation by dumping a gigantic number of counterfeit notes into the French economy in order to have the currency depreciate and bring down the regime. The bankers would then facilitate the creation of a Constitutional Monarchy with Louis Philippe d'Orléans as king, and Mirabeau as Prime Minister.

Mayer had good reason to believe what he was hearing, and he came up with a plan of his own. He would ask François, the silk manufacturer, who had been a very successful printer in Lyon before coming to Frankfurt, to meet with him. A few years back, his silk mill had not been doing all that well in Frankfurt, and Mayer had asked him to run the goldsmith house in Hanau. He had since taught gold engraving while working on stereotype printing in his spare time. Printing was his first love, and since he missed France, Mayer would offer him the opportunity to return to Lyon by giving him the necessary financing to start his own printing house.

If the Bank of England could print counterfeit French notes, so could Mayer. If François returned to France and started his printing business in the immediate future, he would be ready to print the counterfeit notes in tandem with the new government when created. Having perfected a wet mat method for creating matrixes for stereotype printing and having access to the same paper as the one that would be used by the new government, that is to the same supplier, Julien Ouvrard, he would be able to produce quality notes many times faster at a fraction of the cost.

Gutle was shocked to hear she was about to become a counterfeiter's wife, and Mayer was quick to explain that his action wouldn't hurt anybody. He wouldn't be taking property from anyone, for the properties would already be confiscated. All Mayer would be doing is buying the confiscated properties at auction with counterfeit notes and selling them back to anxiously waiting Frenchmen for gold. The English bankers' main objective was to destroy France in order to destroy the Holy Roman Empire. Mayer wanted to have enough gold to take control of the Bank of England in order to create more democracies and have America, France, England and the rest of Europe trade fairly and freely with each other. Mayer's action would not hurt France, on the contrary, he would turn France into a democracy and he would do it in total anonymity.

Mayer added that he was an Ashkenazi first and a banker second, and though he was very rich, he hadn't changed as a person. He was still Mayer, the happiest man alive, and it was not due to his business activities, but rather to his family. He admitted his ego did influence his business persona, for it was only natural to be proud. After all, he had devised a way to take over the Bank of England.

French-speaking agents, Huguenots all, recruited in England, the Netherlands and Germany would use the new Masonic Lodges in the various French communities as their base in order to communicate with Julien Ouvrard and François Johannot using the dependable and safe Thurn and Taxis mail service. Speaking French and having an unlimited supply of notes, the agents would easily outbid everybody as the properties came up on the auction block. The properties would be immediately flipped to waiting buyers for gold, and the law firm of Jean-Jacques Cambacérès would do the necessary title transfers. Ouvrard, a young financial wizard working in tandem with Cambacérès, would have the Thurn and Taxis immediately transport the gold bullion down the Seine to a waiting ship in Le Havre headed for London. With the properties being the choicest in the world and the French currency depreciating at a rapid rate, wealthy Frenchmen would want to invest in real estate directly and thus bypass the worthless yet very expensive government Assignats. Mayer expected to have accumulated several thousand tons of gold by the time it was all over. The agents, Cambacérès and Ouvrard would all be compensated beyond their wildest dreams, and the gold bullion transported by Thurn and Taxis would be sure to reach the vaults of the Goldsmid Bros. in the City, in London.

Mayer would not be involved directly, and the French authorities wouldn't know which way to turn, especially with the English bankers flooding the market with their own counterfeit notes. Mayer expected to have stockpiled most of the gold bullion circulating in Europe within two or three years, and then he would send his son Nathan to England to have him create his own bank in the City and replace the Goldsmid Brothers.

Gutle wondered what the City was, and Mayer was more than willing to explain. He told her that, in 1694, the Jewish and Huguenot bankers, in wanting to be completely independent of the English Government, had taken over the City. The City was a financial district on the banks of the Thames and had the status of a territory. It had its own administration and was off limits to English authority. It was unassailable financial ground from which Nathan would soon launch international banking.

Federalist Papers

In 1785, Benjamin returned home to Philadelphia after a very successful nine years spent in France. Mayer decided it was an opportune time to go to America. He would spend some time with Haym Salomon, Robert Morris, Ephraim Hart and the Gratz Bros, and have the added pleasure of meeting with Benjamin. He had arranged to be in America around August, but upon hearing of Haym's passing, he had left immediately and had arrived in New York in late June. Haym and Ephraim had recently gotten the Bank of New York, a branch of the Bank of North America, up and running, and it was proving to be a huge success. Robert Morris who had just resigned as Superintendent of Finance was by Ephraim's side, and that had been very reassuring for the business community of New York.

Hart was at dockside to welcome him when he arrived, and the first thing Mayer wanted to see was the building that housed the Bank of New York. The Bank of Philadelphia on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia had become the Bank of North America in 1782, but the Bank of New York built by Haym on St. George Street in NY was the new seat of power. When Mayer saw the building, he was very proud indeed, but his thoughts quickly turned to Haym. He was very grateful for all the work he had done, and he asked to be driven to Haym's residence in order to pay his respects to his wife. He would visit the bank later.

Haym was thought to be a very wealthy man, for he and Morris had officially organized and financed the meeting of the politicians in Philadelphia in 1774 and had supplied military equipment to all the militias from the very beginning. Nobody knew Haym had been working for Mayer, and being so busy with what he was doing, Haym had put very little money aside for himself and his family. So, Mayer wanted to tell his wife that she didn't have to worry about the welfare of her family, and that Ephraim Hart would make sure that the family's future was secure.

After spending the night at Ephraim's mansion, the two men met with Robert Morris the next morning in the executive offices of the bank. The mood was one of friendship and celebration. These men, not excluding Haym of course, had accomplished a great deal in a very short time, and Mayer was justly proud of their achievements. With the Bank of New York as the new seat of power, with branches already built in Philadelphia and Boston and others being built in the other capitals of the 13 Colonies, Mayer's federal bank was here to stay. The merchants and the politicians had no choice but to acknowledge that this financial institution was formidable, and no one was inclined to regret the Continental Dollar. Unofficially, there was only one currency in the 13 Colonies, the US dollar, and it was the currency that would continue to be used in the existing branches of the Bank of North America. It would become the official currency of the nation when the Constitution was ratified.

Many in Congress reviled the unknown bankers that were supposedly getting fabulously rich running the Bank of North America, and Morris, who had been the Superintendent of Finance as well as the bank's main shareholder in lieu of Mayer, had quietly resigned. Although the central bank was stable, inspired confidence, and was helping the economies of the 13 Colonies grow at breakneck speed, and although it was becoming, like the Bank of England, an indispensable financial institution, it was best not to foment envy. So, Mayer, in wanting to keep feelings under control in Congress, and wanting to maintain a low financial profile, had asked Morris to resign from the post of Superintendent of Finance. When George Washington became President, and that was sure to be, Morris would encourage him to nominate Alexander Hamilton to the new post of Secretary of the Treasury. In the interim, three nondescript commissioners would fill in as managers of the country's finances.

When George Washington became President in 1789, as planned, he appointed young Alexander Hamilton who was more than qualified for the job of Secretary of the Treasury. The young prodigy from New York, who had recommended Robert Morris for the post of Superintendent of Finance in the first place, had been a protégé of George Washington during the revolutionary war and had drawn up the constitution of the Bank of America in 1781 as well as that of the Bank of New York in 1784. His nomination to the post of Secretary of the Treasury was accepted without opposition.

Alexander Hamilton, a man of questionable lineage had come to New York by way of the Caribbean islands. Thanks to a clergyman who recognized his talent, he went to New York and studied at King's College. He was a brilliant student and a courageous one. In August 1775 he formed a militia called the Hearts of Oak which later participated in a successful raid against the British. He had seized the cannons stored in the Battery at the tip of Manhattan in spite of being under fire from HMS Asia. Alexander was naturally made Captain in the Continental Army. He was rapidly promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel in George Washington's 'family' of aide-de-camps. He became disgruntled when he lost his most favored position to the young Marquis de Lafayette when the latter arrived from France in 1777, and he resigned his commission. Morris had then taken him under his wing and had sent him back to King's College to study law. In 1779, he introduced him to Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of a very wealthy merchant, and he married her in 1780. In 1781, he fought at Yorktown, and then rejoined his wife in Albany where he got special permission to pass the bar exam before the required time of internship. He was elected to Congress and was appointed receiver of taxes for NY in 1782. In 1783, he practised law in NYC where he defended the rights of returning loyalists. Morris liked his opinions concerning central banking and central government and had hired his law firm to draft the incorporation documents for the Bank of New York. Hamilton had used the Bank of England as a working model, like he had for the Bank of America in 1781 as per Mayer's instructions, and he had done a superb job in both cases.

Mayer, Robert and Ephraim adjourned for lunch with the intention of inviting Alexander Hamilton to the afternoon session. After lunch, when Mayer was introduced to Hamilton, he congratulated him on his drafting of the bank's constitution. Mayer didn't think it was necessary to say more for now, though he was definitely impressed by the young man. Mayer turned the discussion to another matter that was on all their minds, the Constitution of the United States of America. They all knew they had to act fast, especially when the two biggest Colonies, Virginia and New York, were both reticent to the idea of a strong central government.

An initial constitution in its most simplistic form had to be drafted as soon as possible, one that could easily be signed by all. Since the agricultural states in the south disagreed with many of the ideas held by the merchants in the north, and since many in both camps were anti-federalists, it was imperative to have the document written by a southerner who believed in a strong central government in collaboration with someone from the north who had the same convictions. Thomas Jefferson from Virginia had been the obvious choice, but he was presently in France, so James Madison, his closest associate, who had drafted Virginia's Constitution, was the next best choice. When Mayer asked if anyone knew of someone from NY who would be prepared to work with Madison and had the necessary skills to sell the newly drafted constitution to the New York Congress, all eyes turned to young Alexander.

Hamilton felt he had to say something and simply said he would be honored to help out in whatever way he could. He had met James Madison and he thought highly of him. He, like the others, knew that if New York and Virginia, both anti-federalist states, were made to take the lead and sign the Constitution, then it would be easy to get the other Colonies to come on board. All agreed that Hamilton was the right man for the job, but since he was from NY, they further agreed that it would be better if it was written by Madison who was from the south. Hamilton simply added that he would be willing to cooperate wholeheartedly with Madison who was perfectly qualified to draft the official document, and that he would welcome Madison's input in helping him promote it via the local newspapers. He was convinced they would work well together, for they both believed in a strong federal state.

Mayer was quite happy with that answer and told him so, but not being inclined to squander praise, he immediately brought up the other pressing matter, that of the assumption of war debts. Mayer told them he was going to Philadelphia to meet with Benjamin Franklin who had arrived from France. Benjamin was getting on in years and was thinking of retiring, and Mayer would try to convince the 'Father of Independence' to accept a seat in the Senate and use his influence while working with Morris. The two men would spread the word that war debts incurred by the individual Colonies would be forgiven if they surrendered to Congress their rights regarding the lands east of the Mississippi, the lands that had been ceded by England in the recently signed Paris Peace Treaty. All the federalists were bound to welcome such an initiative, and by going along with it, the 13 States would be officially recognizing the authority of Congress and the existence of the Bank of North America. The desired political union would be achieved, and the bank would become entrenched as the official financial institution. Best of all, the compromise would in no way affect the bottom line of the Bank of North America. The war debt incurred by the Colonies would simply be transferred and become a federal debt. The amount owed Mayer, now the Bank of North America, would remain unchanged.

When Mayer asked Morris, what progress was being made, he answered using colourful language. The whole universe tended to take the path of least resistance, like water flowing downhill, and people were part of that universe. By facilitating the solution of a problem with a financial enticement, all the states were bound to welcome the initiative, it was just a matter of time. They were all amused by his rhetoric, for they all knew he was right

Mayer told him not to take anything for granted and to keep pushing as hard as he could. He was to spread the pork freely, and to wine and dine everyone who needed to be swayed. Results were all that mattered. Then he turned to Hart and asked him how the Bank of New York was doing. Ephraim answered that confidence in the bank was growing on a daily basis, and that the specie accumulating in the bank's vaults was having a snowball effect as expected.

Mayer had already inspected the bank's vault, so the news didn't take him by surprise. He then turned his attention to another pressing political matter. They all knew that George Washington would be acclaimed President when the Constitution was signed, but the two major obstacles, that of getting the Constitution drafted and signed, and finding a place to house the President and Congress were pressing matters. He wanted to know what the politicians were saying and turned to Morris once again. Morris said that as far as the Constitution was concerned, there was no consensus, but agreed that it was indeed a good idea to have James Madison and his staff in Virginia draft the Constitution in consultation with Alexander Hamilton and his staff in New York. As for a President, there seemed to be no real opposition to the candidacy of George Washington. The residence of the President and the Government, however, was another matter. Morris went on to say that the only way to satisfy the two big States, Virginia and New York, was to locate the houses of government in a neutral central place like at the head of the Potomac River.

Mayer then turned to Hamilton to ask him if he had further suggestions with regards to the drafting of the Constitution. Alexander reiterated that he was more than willing to work with Madison, for he was the most qualified, having already drafted the Constitution of Virginia. As far as he was concerned, the only thing that was absolutely imperative was to have a tripartite system, one where the three branches of power, the legislative, the executive and the judiciary were separate. He and his staff could start promoting the ideas of federalism by publishing weekly instalments in all the local papers, something that could be called the Federalist Papers. He was ready to start as soon as Mayer gave his OK, and he added one more thing. If the Constitution was to be kept simple in order for everyone to sign it at the earliest possible time, as suggested by Mayer, it was imperative to keep the Bill of Rights out of it. They would have to make that very clear and promise the politicians that as many amendments as necessary could be added after the signing. That would keep the debate wide open while making it possible for everyone to sign.

Mayer agreed, of course. For now, selling the idea of forgiving the war debts of the major colonies, and offering generous compensations to those with little war debt in exchange for giving up their land claims, was urgent. Morris and Hart would continue coordinating the bank's activities, those of Philadelphia, Boston and New York as well as the others being created. Madison and Hamilton were to have all the financing needed to have the constitution drafted in the shortest delays. The last item that Mayer wanted to bring up was the trade issue with Britain.

According to Ephraim, there was a great cry to re-open trade with England. The merchants had always traded with England, and although the States had signed an Alliance Treaty with France in 1778, trading with that country was proving to be very unsatisfactory. Something had to be done to stimulate transatlantic trade. Mayer said he would decide what to do after meeting with Franklin.

Manifest destiny

Mayer went to meet with Benjamin who had just arrived in Philadelphia. Though Mayer was much younger, they had become the best of friends, and they greeted each other enthusiastically. They had enjoyed the time spent together before Benjamin left for France, and again when they had met in Paris. They couldn't wait to have a tête-à-tête which they arranged to have the day after the official welcoming ceremonies that were planned for Benjamin.

Benjamin's German hadn't improved much, but Mayer had since picked up an English word here and there, and they managed to communicate quite well. Mayer congratulated Benjamin on his masterful use of Morris Notes sent to him in Paris in order to pay for the French arms supplied by Vergennes and sent to Schiff in Rotterdam. Thanks to him, David had channelled vast quantities of surplus French arms to the Colonies. In other words, Mayer wanted to let Franklin know that without him, the victory at Yorktown, the founding of the Bank of North America and the about-to-be-signed Constitution would have been impossible.

Benjamin thanked him for his kind words, but he was more interested in knowing how Robert Morris had used the French gold to capitalize the Bank of North America. So, Mayer started by saying that the French gold was intact and had been used to back up the Morris notes. Morris had become the Bank of North America's main shareholder, and the bank was on the verge of obtaining a 20-year charter from Congress. Mayer admitted that he now controlled America's monetary system. However, the only thing that mattered was accumulating more gold bullion in order to create more credit and strengthen the burgeoning economy. The two main concerns was getting more gold out of the ground, for it was limited by current technology, and maintaining anonymity while controlling the monetary system. When Benjamin learned that Mayer had financed the creation of the recently-opened École des Mines in Paris with gold extraction in mind, he was in full of admiration of the man.

The subject then turned to France. Benjamin had much to say, and Mayer was all ears. Benjamin felt that France was a kettle ready to boil over. Masonic Lodges were mushrooming throughout France since the Congress of Wilhelmsbad, for members no longer had to swear on the Catholic bible in order to become freemasons. The change had opened the door to the Huguenots who were infiltrating France from England, Holland and Germany. Somebody was pushing for change in France, and that initiative seemed to be originating in the City, in London. Benjamin was quite sure the English bankers were out to destroy the Ancien Regime of France. People like Mirabeau and many others were already talking about France having a Constitutional Monarchy like that of England.

It seemed that Versailles was creating a problem. The King was completely isolated and surrounded by his aristocratic cronies in a lush setting while a starving Paris grumbled. Benjamin had personally felt this unrest in Paris in spite of the fact that Versailles was now occupied by Louis XVI and his young wife, a rather congenial couple.

The news was no surprise to Mayer. It was now his turn to give Benjamin some bad news concerning the Treaty of Alliance of 1778 that had unofficially made France America's major trading partner. Since then, America's economy had grown by leaps and bounds and now needed a stronger trading partner. Because of turmoil in France, Mayer thought that a formal trade agreement with England had to supersede the treaty that Benjamin had ratified in Paris in 1778. He knew that the French and the American citizenry would be very upset with what they would deem treachery, which, in fact, it was. Nonetheless, Mayer wondered if Benjamin could accept to work with him if such a trade agreement were signed. Mayer saw it as an urgent matter as well as a logical thing to do. America was mainly English-speaking and Protestant just like England, and the merchants in both countries were familiar with each other's ways, for they had been trading with each other for a long time.

Benjamin was truly taken aback by this suggestion and remained quiet for the longest time. His natural inclination was to mistrust any man who dealt in betrayal. But because he knew Mayer was right in that they had no control over what was happening in France, and because he truly admired this man, he dismissed his gut reaction. He knew that Mayer felt the same way he did about France, and that he felt very bad about not honoring the Treaty of Alliance, even though it hadn't been an official trade agreement. Reluctantly, he agreed with Mayer. Mayer added that he would make it up to France by always giving it top consideration in all future economic and cultural matters and would do everything in his power to give France a Constitutional Monarchy like that of England.

In the meantime, if Congress was to be receptive to the idea, Mayer told Benjamin his help was sorely needed. Although he was thinking of retirement, he urged him to accept the seat he was being offered in the Senate. With him sitting in the Senate, and Alexander Hamilton controlling finances under Morris' leadership, they could easily steer the ship of state. It was the only way to successfully address the pressing matters facing the 13 Colonies. Getting the constitution signed, a President elected, permanent residences built for both the President and Congress, and a trade agreement signed with England would require all their attention.

So far, Hamilton had written newspaper articles that had led to the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by New York, and he was now in the process of drafting the constitution with Madison. With regards to the ceded lands by England, since the individual Colonies had claims on them, Mayer had asked Robert Morris to forgive their war debts on condition that they sign over their rights to Congress, and it seemed to be working. There wasn't much doubt that all would accept, and in so doing, they would be accepting the authority of Congress. That in turn would open the door to their accepting a residence for both the President and Congress up the Potomac River, and thus, a federal state.

Because Mayer thought things were going well and in the right direction, he added that it was probably now time to start thinking about the territorial boundaries of this great nation in the making. After the signing of the Paris Treaty in 1763, the French had repatriated their administration and military leaving America to the English, and after the signing of the Paris Treaty of 1783, the English had left the 13 Colonies to the Americans, it was now time to start thinking of expansion westward.

Mayer was thinking of a way to repay France for coming to America's aid in 1778. America would buy its vast land possessions that stretched from New Orleans to Hudson Bay and to the west right up to and including the great prairies for a substantial amount of money. His bank would advance the money, and the loan would be added to the federal debt. For France, the windfall would be a compensation for aiding America in 1768, as well as for its loss regarding the upcoming trade agreement with England. Mayer would find a way to arrange a mindboggling deal that both France and Congress would be only too happy to agree to. Then, a huge buffer zone north of the 49th parallel could be created, and the USA would be free to expand westward in an orderly fashion along that parallel. Once the West was opened, the Spanish-Mexican problem to the south would be addressed. Congress would first help Mexico gain its independence from Spain, and down the road, offer to purchase the Mexican lands north of the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande would then become the southern boundary line. The American states west of the Mississippi would be incorporated as warranted by population growth, and the USA would become a coast-to-coast nation, with Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. Unlike Europe, the USA would be a coast-to-coast homogeneous country, with a mainly white, English-speaking, Protestant population. It was the 'manifest destiny' of the USA to become the greatest country the world had ever seen.

The Jew and the goy looked at each other in total agreement and embraced. In that instant, they took full measure of the situation, and the long silence that followed, steeped in humility and mutual respect, spoke volumes about what they had and would accomplish.

III –THE TAKEOVER OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND

Real estate coup

In 1789, upon hearing that Benjamin was feeling poorly, Mayer decided to go to America with his three teenage sons, Amschel, Salomon and Nathan. The last time he had travelled to the new world was in 1785, following Haym's death. On this trip, he wanted the boys to get a feeling for this wondrous new country, but above all, he wanted the boys to meet Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, Benjamin being old and in poor health, they arrived too late.

But business went on. Mayer met with Moses Hayes in Boston, Ephraim Hart in New York and the Gratz Brothers in Philadelphia. Robert Morris who had done such a superb job as head of the Bank of North America and Superintendent of Finance had passed on the torch to his young protégé, Alexander Hamilton, who was now Secretary of the Treasury. Alexander was a true prodigy and was handling the young nation's finances brilliantly. When Mayer met with Robert Morris, he told him he was henceforth free to use his own good judgment in the running of the country's finance. Of course, Robert was expected to consult with Alexander, Moses, Ephraim and the Gratz Brothers, and directly with Mayer in Frankfurt if urgent matters came up.

He then met with Washington in his magnificent renovated Mount Vernon estate and congratulated him on his election victory. He assured him that since trade and commerce was developing at breakneck speed, he and his political supporters would continue receiving unlimited funding in order to carry out their mandates as they saw fit.

Next, he met with Alexander Hamilton and congratulated him on getting George Washington elected. He also told him how impressed he was with the work he and Robert Morris were doing. He then brought up the subject of the Bank of North America charter that was expiring in 1791. Hamilton was way ahead of him on that one, for a first draft of the 1st Bank of the United States of America charter that was to run for another twenty years was already being circulated and was meeting with very little opposition. Mayer was indeed impressed by this young man.

The states were developing at breakneck speed, Mayer's people were rich and getting richer, and his bank's charter was about to be renewed for another twenty years. There was absolutely nothing for Mayer to worry about. He always treated his collaborators as equals, and they were always made to feel free to satisfy any whim without having to ask Mayer. People don't necessarily like being on a string, but severing a link to such bounty is unthinkable, especially when it's so easy to forget the string exists. One thing was certain, America and his bank could look forward to twenty years of peace and prosperity.

The only matter that needed immediate attention was getting permanent residences for the President and Congress. Mayer agreed that having the federal capital at the head of the Potomac River was the best choice since the area was more or less in the south, and strategically well-protected. Having an executive building for the President and his staff separate from that of the people's representatives was deemed important as well. However, although the constitution, drafted by Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson who had just come back from Paris, had been submitted the year before, some states were still holding back. Regardless, Alexander was certain the US Constitution and the Compromise of 1790 would be accepted and would lead the way in the creation of a strong federal state.

Before setting sail for the trip home, Mayer and his boys decided it would be a good idea to go by way of Paris, in order to see what was happening in France. Mayer wanted to see first hand how his real estate operations were going. When they arrived in Amsterdam, they took a Thurn and Taxis mail coach in order to avoid problems with the French authorities. Mayer had written ahead to David Schiff, Moses Montefiore, Gabriel Julien Ouvrard, and the Goldsmid Bros. convening them to a meeting in Paris.

The meeting took place in Gabriel's mansion in Paris, and since it wasn't a good idea to display wealth at that time, they kept the meeting low key which suited everybody. Mayer and the boys listened with the greatest attention as they were briefed on the state of the real estate sales and on the latest developments of the ongoing revolution.

The counterfeit assignats printed by Johannot were being circulated undetected, and Ouvrard's agents, Huguenots working out of the lodges of the Grand Orient of France, were having no trouble buying the prodigious properties as they were put up on the auction block. Ouvrard and his agents flipped the properties to anxiously waiting French buyers with the help of Cambacérès' law firm that was paid to do the necessary paper work. The word had gotten around that gold could be used to buy the properties at a reduced price, and the wealthy buyers were queuing up. For instance, if a buyer personally purchased confiscated Church property at auction, he had to use badly depreciated assignats which he had to buy at face value from the government. For example, by purchasing a property worth 100 million pounds at auction, he needed to buy 100 million pounds' worth of assignats at face value, whereas if he bought the same property from Ouvrard using gold, he could get it for 50 million pounds.

As the sales were completed, Ouvrard sent the gold to Paris by Thurn and Taxis. The gold was then shipped down the Seine to Le Havre where a waiting Baring ship from the East India Company took it to London where it was deposited in the Goldsmid Bros. vaults in the City. Montefiore in London made sure everything went smoothly at that end. So far, there had been no hitches and the elite group assembled in Paris didn't foresee any. Mayer's boys were in admiration of their father who had set up such a marvelous scam where no one was harmed that hadn't been already.

Mayer and the three boys left Paris in good spirits, except for Nathan who was complaining about not being allowed to go and witness the demolition of the Bastille prison. In order to humor Nathan, Mayer talked about plans for the family as it pertained to London. Soon, he would need to have one of his sons take charge of family affairs in the City. It was a foregone conclusion that Amschel, the eldest son, would be the future head of the family and remain in charge in Frankfurt, and that Salomon was to go to Vienna to supervise the massive banking operations in the loosely united German states. As for London, since Nathan spoke English best, he would be sent to the City when he reached 21. That definitely took Nathan's mind off the Bastille.

When Mayer got back to Frankfurt, the first thing he did was sit down with his wife Gutle and acquaint her with the latest American and French developments. All was going as planned in America, and there wasn't much to add to what she already knew. Though Benjamin's passing had been deeply felt by Mayer, business carried on as usual. The 1st Bank of the USA was about to receive a 20-year charter, and the buildings housing the President and Congress were to be built at the head of the Potomac River. With Morris and Hamilton at the helm, things were going fabulously well.

In France, however, it was another matter. The year before, in 1789, the Illuminati had financed a meeting of provincial representatives who had been either named or elected in order to draw up lists of grievances in view of bringing them to the King's attention. When they congregated in Versailles, the clergy and nobility refused to sit in the same room with them. Mirabeau, a great orator, then convinced the people's representatives to hold a meeting of their own. Naturally, when they declared their body to be the official government of France, the King sent in the National Guard to disband them. Mirabeau then seized the moment, stood up to the sergeants, and the assembly refused to disperse.

Planned famines continued to undermine major French cities, and the Illuminati were using the Palais Royal, the Paris residence of the King's cousin, the Grand Master of the Orient of France, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, as their center of operations. The courtyard was a meeting place for all the hotheads, lowlifes and unsavory characters attracted by the firebrand speeches. In July of that year, a throng assembled in the courtyard, fired up by the speeches, went and stormed the Bastille, the much-hated royal prison. The prison governor was decapitated and his head was paraded through the streets of Paris.

A few weeks later a procession of very odd masculine ladies accompanied by Lafayette's National Guard went to fetch the royal family in Versailles. Oddly, the royals were brought back to Paris without any intervention on the part of Lafayette and his guard. The royals were put under house arrest, and the newly formed National Constituent Assembly had followed them to Les Tuileries in order to be at the center of power. Because the National Assembly had no source of revenue, its members immediately voted to confiscate and sell church property as planned. They voted to have assignats printed and sold for hard currency, and only those with assignats were to be allowed to buy the confiscated Church property put up at auction throughout France, just like Mayer had foreseen.

When the auctions got going, Ouvrard's agents were already in place and Johannot's high quality counterfeit bills were being circulated. A number of prestigious properties had already been bought by Mayer's people. Ouvrard's agents having unlimited amounts of assignats had no problem outbidding the French who were quite willing to wait and buy the properties for gold at a discounted price. Ouvrard was directed to ship the gold bullion to the Goldsmid Bros. in the City, in London. Francis Baring, the Chairman of the East India Company in Amsterdam, was charged with conveying the bullion to the Goldsmids, and always had a ship at the ready in Le Havre. Mayer agents, the Goldsmids, were on the verge of becoming the most powerful bankers in England.

Gutle was greatly troubled by the counterfeiting operations, but she was happy to hear that the operation of stockpiling gold bullion in the City, as planned by Mayer, was going smoothly. She was especially relieved knowing that nobody would ever know what Mayer had done, and that most people would continue ignoring his existence. Some knew he was rich, but since he lived in a ghetto, they didn't know what to make of it. It would have been a far reach for anybody to even think that Mayer controlled the monetary system of the United States of America. In time, the American politicians would question the bank's origins and wonder who the owners were, but Mayer would maintain total anonymity. People couldn't possibly grasp that what was best for the bankers was also what was best for the people, and they tended to envy and even revile bankers. However, since there was not much they could do if they didn't know where to point the finger, that's the way it would continue to be. As long as everybody was kept guessing concerning the working of the monetary system, and as long as Mayer did what was best for the country, the people would eventually and grudgingly accept the fact that it was the only way democracy could work without ever really understanding what democracy was.

Terror & Barras

In the latter part of 1792, the Illuminati set up a shadow government, the Paris Commune, in Paris City Hall. Sitting as Montagnards in the Legislative Assembly, their representatives voted to abolish the Assembly, and replaced it with the Convention. The September Massacres followed. For a whole week, teams of workers went about butchering a lot of innocent people. They would leave Paris City Hall in the morning wearing leather aprons and carrying axes and hatchets and go and butcher inmates and patients in prisons and hospitals. They would return at night with bloodied axes and sullied aprons to collect their day's pay. It transfixed the French population and all of Europe with fear. And even worse, as the September Massacres were being carried out, the guillotine started beheading people by the thousands. The Illuminati were not only bringing down the political structures of the Ancien Regime, they were also venting their deep festering hatred for their perennial enemy.

Though the Holy Roman Empire was rather helpless during this cataclysm, when the royal family was guillotined, it put all its might behind the Federalists in order to protect the catholic populations that were resisting in the Vendean region to the west and in major French cities. In retaliation, the revolutionary government gave orders to apply scorched earth tactics to the Vendean region, and a genocide of great magnitude was carried out. And it wasn't much better in France's major cities.

In order to save Toulon, the Federalists had taken it with the help of the French navy whose Royalist commanders espoused their cause. However, once in command of the port, faced with a superior advancing Convention army who had just defeated their counterparts in Nimes, Avignon and Marseille to the west, the Federalists decided to surrender their city to the English whose navy had been blockading the port. It was a good tactic, for with thousands of English soldiers occupying the port, the Convention forces were kept at bay.

Mayer was appalled by the Vendean genocide where thousands of Catholic men, women and children were being exterminated, but it was only when he got word of what was happening in Toulon did he become fully aware of the magnitude of the Terror and decide to put a stop to it. Maybe someone like Barras could be useful.

The year before, Paul Barras, an aristocrat, had been elected to the Convention Assembly as a Montagnard representing the Var region. He was an unscrupulous, penniless and debauched individual from a well-to-do and respected family. He was initiated as a Freemason and joined the Jacobin Club like all Illuminati recruits of note. Since he represented the Var and had a military background, he was sent as emissary to the Italian Army Command which had been sent to liberate Toulon. When he got there, the Convention troops were in disarray, and nothing was being done. That's when a young artillery lieutenant called Bonaparte suggested to the generals that it would be best to shell the port before any attempt to launch a frontal attack. The generals paid no attention to him, but Barras did. Since Barras had the authority, he told the generals to give the young man permission to get his canons. In quick order, Bonaparte proceeded to gather all the artillery he could from Marseille and other surrounding cities as well as the Italian Army Command to which he belonged. From the heights of Toulon, Bonaparte had a great advantage over the English forces, and after relentless shelling, the English were forced to flee taking some Federalists with them. But when told what happened to the Federalists who were left behind, Mayer was aghast. Barras and Freron ordered their troops to take the city and butcher the Federalists at will just like they had done in Marseille. Notably, a wounded Bonaparte had not participated in the massacre and was made general. He owed it all to Barras.

In the meantime, Ouvrard had reported to Mayer that he had started selling off the unwanted secondary assets of the great confiscated estates he had purchased. The sale of the detached lands and buildings, as well as the furnishings and livestock, had pacified the local notables and farmers who hadn't been able to bid at the auctions and had felt cheated by the revolution. By encouraging them to pool what metal money they had, Ouvrard had made it possible for them to buy a lot of good property and chattels at an affordable price. Ouvrard told Mayer that he sometimes hesitated selling off the chattels because he didn't know what prices to set. So far, he was using the original Convention evaluations set in pounds, but he wanted Mayer to confirm what exchange rates to use. Although there was hardly any metal money in circulation, fortunes in silver and gold were tucked away under mattresses.

Mayer had obviously thought it all out. The French livre would remain fixed to the English pound. 4 livres worth 1 oz of gold or 16 ozs of silver. With regards to the property values, the Convention evaluations would do just fine. Mayer told Ouvrard the only thing that mattered was receiving gold as payment because of the sixteen to one weight advantage. He didn't tell him the real reason.

The Huguenot agents were extremely motivated, for they were becoming rich beyond their wildest dreams, commissions on billions of pounds being paid out in silver were mindboggling. But now Mayer wanted to thank them in a special way. He told Ouvrard that when the remaining Émigré real estate was bought up, he and the agents would be free to use their commissions to bid on any property still available. And when the auctions stopped, he was to tell François to stop printing assignats. Mayer would acquaint François with his decision at his end.

With thousands of tons of gold accumulating in the Goldsmid vaults, Mayer would soon need to have one of his sons take charge of family affairs in the City. Nathan, the pugnacious one, would be sent to the City in London when he reached 21, in five years' time.

Recruiting Bonaparte

1n late 1793, when Gutle heard of the Vendean genocide, she took it very hard, for she hadn't yet gotten over Marie-Antoinette's execution on Oct. 14th of that same year. If her man was the most powerful banker in the world, and he was, he just had to do something about stopping the atrocities.

Mayer agreed. The time had come to put an end to the Terror. When Barras returned from Toulon, he was widely acclaimed as a hero by members of the Convention, and Mayer seized the moment. He wrote to Ouvrard telling him to finance Barras and give him all the means necessary to put an end to the Paris Commune working out of Paris City Hall. Not only was Robespierre running the guillotine at full speed, but he had set up procedures for mass trials where 50 to 60 victims were executed at a time.

Barras became very affluent in a very short period of time and took charge of the Convention. When he sensed that the moderates were ready to get rid of the mad dogs (les sans-culottes) in the Assembly, he moved to have Robespierre and his lieutenants arrested on July 27th, 1794. However, Robespierre was brought to Paris City Hall that was run by his cronies, the sans-culottes. So, fearing retaliation and an attempt on his own life, Barras quickly had himself named commander of the Paris military forces and immediately went to City Hall to fetch Robespierre. Robespierre was wounded in the process, and on July 28th, 1794, he was guillotined. The following day, 80 'sans-culottes' were also guillotined and the Reign of Terror ended just as suddenly as it had begun on September 2nd, 1792.

A year later, when the Royalists threatened to take control of the Convention, Barras knew how he would stop them. He employed the brilliant and idle Bonaparte by reinstating him as brigadier general. On October 5, 1795, Barras ordered the latter to stop the Royalists who were marching on the Convention. Using artillery, Bonaparte massacred 300 Royalists on the steps of St. Roch Church. The young man received all the honors of victory, and Barras praised him highly in the presence of the assembly. His appointment to the rank of general of division was voted by acclamation while his protector, Barras, settled in the Luxembourg Palace.

Barras was a completely debauched individual, and he welcomed bribes from military suppliers and big business in order to pay for his mistresses, and his aristocratic lifestyle. Ouvrard personally gave him a contract to supply the Navy. Barras was quite generous with his friends and he entertained many at the Castle of Grosbois which served both as his summer headquarters and his hunting lodge. Suppliers, solicitors, horses, and adventurers of all kinds, accompanied Barras wherever he went. Barras was the most popular of the five directors and his court presented a singular mixture of the biggest names of old aristocratic France and 'nouveaux riches'. Being assured financial backing by Mayer through Ouvrard and having the full support of Bonaparte, to whom he had given his mistress, Joséphine Beauharnais, Barras had nothing to worry about.

Ruling from his headquarters at Luxemburg Palace, Barras was called 'le roi pourri' (rotten king) by his fellow citizens. Of course, his dictatorship didn't please the Royalists either, but there wasn't much they could do about it. They were almost totally excluded from power, and they didn't dare take to the streets, especially since Bonaparte was in charge of the Paris garrison. After the Toulon massacre, when Barras had asked Bonaparte to take charge of the Paris Garrison and protect the Convention, he had warned Barras, "Once my sword is drawn, it will not be sheathed until order is restored".

On March 9, 1796, Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais. Two days after his marriage, Barras sent him off to take charge of the Army of Italy. It seemed like quite a promotion, but it was in fact a way to keep him out of the way. Not surprisingly, what Bonaparte found was an army that was weak, hungry, tired, and running out of supplies. Nonetheless, in less than one year, he had recruited one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, five hundred and forty cannons, not to mention horses, uniforms and weapons for all.

When he went to Italy, he was quite aware that his future rested on the shoulders of his 'grognards'(grumblers), and he set about turning them into soldiers. In no time, he had them eating out of his hand, and if they called him 'petit caporal', it was not because of his rank or his size, it was an affectionate term they used in addressing a great general who spoke their language. He made them feel he was one of them by showing great familiarity without ever jeopardizing his commander status. He was a man of stature who treated them with respect.

Bonaparte authorized his soldiers to take what they needed in an orderly way, and because northern Italy was such a rich region, the conquering army soon started looking like one. As Bonaparte's fame and fortune grew, so did his soldiers' self-esteem, for they were the recipients of many promotions and decorations and they basked in glory. In no time at all, the grumblers were draped in well-fitting uniforms, had shining weaponry, and the officers were riding spirited horses. The medals that were handed out in profusion made the spectacular uniforms even more striking. It was only natural for Bonaparte to feel at home in Italy, for he had Italian blood and spoke Italian. He accumulated victory upon victory, worked on his propaganda machine, and enjoyed much success generally.

While in Italy, Bonaparte never stopped chasing the Austrians. Throughout the autumn of 1796, he whittled away at the Austrian army with victories at Castiglione, Bassano and Arcole. In March 1797, just two months after routing the enemy at Rivoli and driving them from northern Italy, he crossed the Alps into Austria itself, and by April 7, 1797, he was within seventy-five miles of Vienna. Stunned by the rapid advance of the French army, the Austrian emperor surrendered and ratified the Treaty of Campo Formio.

Bonaparte had found new ways to do battle. For instance, since armies needed first and foremost bread and fodder to survive, he first worked on that aspect. If bread and fodder could not be requisitioned in the occupied countries, the armies had no choice but to live off their own stores, which considerably limited troop movement. So, in order to live entirely off the land and move his army quickly, Bonaparte chose the right growing season to engage in battle, moved quickly through the most fertile areas, and sent his storekeepers ahead to negotiate and buy the necessary supplies from farmers and artisans.

Militarily, he used a much greater number of troops than was the norm, which he equipped with long-range muskets. He also used long-range cannons, that were lightweight, had greater accuracy and that he could move around with lighting speed. More importantly, he invented the division system where the artillery, the cavalry and the infantry became separate units. Finally, by attacking the enemy from the rear and the flank, it meant he could herd the enemy into the area where he wanted the battle to take place which in the process had the effect of breaking down enemy morale. He, on the other hand, had troops with good morale because his soldiers were fighting for the ideas of the Revolution and were very motivated. Though the techniques of rapid movement, of attacking from unusual directions and of pursuing the retreating army used by Bonaparte were deplored by the commanders of the old school who had never seen such barbaric behavior, it didn't alter Bonaparte's modus operandi.

Each victory was not only related in detail, often in advance, but embellished as well. In every French village, it was a common occurrence to hear the church bells heralding a news bulletin describing the great exploits of Bonaparte, the crier never failing to stress the General's great courage and prowess. The fact that these bulletins were more often than not written by the great man himself didn't seem to bother anybody. The French were a battered people and they couldn't get enough of these great military feats involving brave Frenchmen. Bonaparte was building a solid reputation that no one in metropolitan France would dare attack, not even the newly-entrenched landed gentry. Understandably, when he returned to France in 1797, he was acclaimed as a hero.

The Battle of the Nile

In 1798, Nathan Rothschild moved to England to take over from the Goldsmid Brothers in the City. His first mission abroad was to strengthen the chain of command put in place by his father in France. Ouvrard, already Barras' financier, would ask the latter to have Talleyrand come back from exile in order to have him watch over Bonaparte. Nathan wanted to destroy an annoying and useless royalist French navy, which was sinking American merchant shipping in the Atlantic. Following the signing of Jay's Treaty with England in 1793, a treaty that had de facto canceled the Treaty of Alliance of 1778 between the US and France, many Americans and French saw this as an act of betrayal on the part of Congress, and the French Directoire insisted that America return the 500 tons of gold that Louis XVI had sent to America in 1778.

Nathan's plan was relatively simple. Since his return from the Italian campaign, Bonaparte had become too popular and a nuisance for Barras, so Nathan would kill two birds with one stone. Barras would get Talleyrand to return from his voluntary exile and act as an intermediary between Barras and Bonaparte, in order to convince the latter to go to Egypt. Now that the Terror was over, Talleyrand, seeing only advantages, accepted to return to France, and once at Bonaparte's side, encouraged him to go to Egypt. When the time was right, Nathan would make sure the Admiralty of the English Navy was aware of these developments. No doubt, the latter would be only too happy to go and sink the French fleet.

As expected, Bonaparte, seeing this mission as the one that would bring him fame and fortune, took off for Egypt. After having disembarked Bonaparte's troops along the Egyptian coast, the French fleet dropped anchor while awaiting their return. When Nathan learned that Bonaparte had landed, he informed the Admiralty in London, and the British navy rushed to Egypt to sink the French navy which had humiliated them at Yorktown in 1781. A new war tactic was being born, that of financing both sides of a conflict in order to get the desired results.

When Bonaparte went off to Egypt in early 1798, the Directorate had chosen Admiral de Brueys to command the fleet. Bonaparte had no choice but to accept this incompetent, boot-licking coward, but he wasn't overly concerned, for all he wanted was to get as many men as he could to the other side of the Mediterranean. Bonaparte even sacrificed space and sailors aboard the ships in order to transport more soldiers. Bonaparte was quite eager to go to the Middle East. He must have dreamt of riches and glory in wanting to reclaim Palestine, and to dominate trade with India by constructing the Suez Canal. Pillaging Egypt was no doubt in the back of his mind as well.

Admiral Horatio Nelson was the one chosen by the English Admiralty to command the English Fleet. Nelson was taking the looming battle very personally and very seriously. Like most of his countrymen, he wanted to settle the score for what had happened at Yorktown. The English Naval defeat in 1781 had not gone down well, and Nelson had taken off with fourteen ships filled with hooligans hell-bent on killing frogs.

Meanwhile, after unloading Bonaparte's army, de Brueys anchored down in the Bay of Aboukir. Although his naval force was inferior to that of Admiral de Brueys, Nelson was itching for a fight. When the English fleet was spotted in early afternoon on August 1st, 1798, by the artillery unit deployed on the heights dominating the entrance to the Bay of Aboukir, the Commandant of the French unit duly gave the alert, but there was no reaction on the part of Admiral de Brueys. His ships were at anchor, chained together from bow to stern, thus forming an impenetrable line of defense... or so he thought. Many of his more intrepid officers, Vice-Admiral Cheyla and others insisted he recall the sailors who were on shore and immediately take the offensive, for the favorable winds would have given them a decisive advantage. But he chose to do nothing as fourteen ships filled with vengeful, bloodthirsty Englishmen came bearing down on him.

Admiral de Brueys reasoned that it was 5:00 pm and too late in the day for the English to attack. He didn't even see the need to position frigates at the head of his anchored fleet to stop Nelson from sailing behind his position. It was as though he had decided to self-destruct. The great admiral kept repeating that Nelson would not attack on that day. So, the canons were not in position, and the decks were cluttered with everything except cannon balls, powder, and artificers.

Upon seeing the French fleet in such a vulnerable position, Nelson kept on going and attacked the ships on both port and starboard sides simultaneously. The French fleet was blown out of the water, while Nelson's ships remained unscathed. Admiral Villeneuve, who commanded the flotilla at the head of the line and who could have used the favorable winds to counterattack, decided to escape, thus saving two ships of the line and two frigates.

The Egyptian campaign thus began in defeat. The only good thing that came out of the whole campaign was due to the great number of scientists Bonaparte had brought along with him. They, at least, were responsible for some major scientific discoveries. Politically, Bonaparte left behind an efficient Egyptian governing body. However, with regards to the survey of the proposed Suez Canal, the plan to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea was stopped dead in its tracks. Because it was wrongly concluded that the waterway would require locks to operate and would be very expensive and take a long time to construct, it was abandoned. The survey report made clear that the Red Sea was 33ft higher than the Mediterranean, an error of monumental proportion.

Bonaparte had several costly victories in Palestine, but they all went for naught. He had accumulated tons of artifacts in Egypt, but since he had no ships to bring them back to France, it turned out that it was the English Navy that eventually transported them to London. As for Bonaparte, he left his army behind in Egypt and took off for Paris. When he arrived, his propaganda machine had worked wonders, and he was again acclaimed as a hero. Thereafter, Barras quietly retired, and Bonaparte casually assumed power by declaring himself 1st Consul with Talleyrand by his side. It was now time to destroy the Holy Roman Empire east of the Rhine.

Quasi-War & Trafalgar

The Quasi-War was a result of the signing of Jay's Treaty in 1793, a trade agreement that Mayer and Benjamin had deemed indispensable to the growth of the American economy. America and France had signed the Treaty of Alliance in 1778, and Jay's Treaty was putting an end to that agreement. The French and many Americans were incensed, for it was seen as a treacherous act by both the US Congress and the Directorate in France. Naturally, the French revolutionaries retaliated by insisting on the return of the 500 tons of gold given to America in 1778.

Since Congress was in no position to do that, the French revolutionary government's navy started sinking American merchant ships. If Mayer was to defuse the situation before it got out of hand, he needed to have a strong presence in the City, and in 1798, he sent his 21-year-old son Nathan to England. Mayer then asked Robert Morris to get the American Congress to send diplomats to France and offer to compensate France by having the USA buy the French territory west of the Mississippi. Mayer's bank would do the financing and pay handsomely. As for Nathan, once the Louisiana was completed, he was to devise a way to get rid of the very royalist and redundant French Navy.

When Robert Morris suggested that Congress send an American delegation to Paris and offer to buy New Orleans for 15 million dollars, he was sure it would be accepted. Bonaparte couldn't possibly refuse, for it would give him the wherewithal to crown himself emperor. But before the sale could be completed and the Quasi-War stopped, France had to reclaim the port of New Orleans that they had ceded to the Spanish when they left America after the Treaty of Paris, in 1763. Talleyrand was to get the Spanish to sign a treaty which stipulated the return of half of San Domingo, that was presently occupied by France, in exchange for New Orleans.

However, this ambitious project was to be delayed. When the American delegation, consisting of three diplomats, arrived in Paris, they were treated very poorly by the Marquis of Talleyrand who had the gall to request personal compensation in order to intervene on their behalf. The American diplomats were so shocked by this behavior that they returned immediately to America to report to Congress. Both parties in Congress spoke with one voice in condemning the French response to their genuine peace overture. So, the Quasi-War continued, and the French Navy continued seizing and sinking American merchant ships in the Caribbean.

Mayer couldn't allow the Quasi-War to continue. He controlled the American monetary system, that of England, and indirectly that of France, and he didn't want the three countries who were now under his financial control to be fighting each other. France, America and England were meant to become trading partners, and one navy was all that was needed, the English Navy. Therefore, it was urgent to finalize the Louisiana Purchase in order to compensate France.

After the signing of the Treaty of Mortefontaine with the USA and the Treaty of San Ildefonso with Spain in 1800, the Quasi-War came to an end. The promised Louisiana Purchase that had been the bait was completed in 1803, thanks to Mayer's bank, the 1st Bank of the USA. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the thirteen Colonies had around seven million dollars in revenues, a 3.2-million-dollar deficit, and didn't yet collect taxes. Naturally, it was Mayer's bank that provided the funds according to Mayer's wishes. The deal not only confirmed the status of the First Bank of the United States, but the Louisiana Purchase allowed Congress to open up the west.

To everyone's surprise, when Congress offered to pay fifteen million dollars for the port of New Orleans, Napoleon sweetened the deal by throwing in at no extra charge all of the French possessions, including Rupert's Land, a territory that in large part is Canada today. That was, indeed, a mind-boggling offer, and though Congress couldn't believe its luck, it didn't bother to question this 'divine' intervention. Then a straight line representing the 49th parallel was drawn across the continent by the same 'divine' power that had devised the Manifest Destiny concept. When Rupert's Land north of the 49th parallel was joined to Lower Canada, the territory became in fact what is today Canada. America was on its way to becoming a coast to coast nation with Canada to the north, and Mexico to the south in spite of the fact there was still a strong Mexican presence north of the Rio Grande.

In 1803, Nathan let Bonaparte have the proceeds of the Louisiana Purchase as planned, and the latter lost no time in crowning himself Emperor Napoleon at Notre-Dame Cathedral, in Paris, on December 2, 1804. The megalomaniac then gladly did what was expected of him, because in restructuring France politically he was ensuring his renown. He divided the country into departments and rammed through the Civil Code on March 21, 1805. It marked the beginning of the end for the Catholic Royalists who opposed it violently because it meant they no longer had legal recourse with regards to their confiscated property. Unperturbed, backed by Fouché's dreaded state police, the Prefects ruled in the departments, and the mayors answered directly to them. France had become the centralist state that it is today.

The Louisiana Purchase was concluded in 1803, and Bonaparte having crowned himself Emperor Napoleon in 1804, Mayer advised Nathan, who was in charge of the dynasty's affairs in the City, that it was a good time to get rid of what was left of the French Navy. Nathan then asked Ouvrard to do what was necessary to get Talleyrand to encourage Napoleon to put his plan to invade England into action which Napoleon proceeded to do. But Nathan in the City had another plan. Like in the Battle of Aboukir in 1799, Nathan would keep abreast of Napoleon's naval deployments, and when the French fleet would be at its most vulnerable, Nathan would leak the information to the English Admiralty who would be only too pleased to have Admiral Nelson finish the job started at Aboukir.

Since Aboukir, the French Navy had been rehabilitated by Latouche-Tréville, but surprisingly, it was Admiral Villeneuve, the same one who had fled at Aboukir, who was given command of the fleet. Napoleon's plan was to send Villeneuve to the Caribbean, while making the English Admiralty think it was Latouche-Tréville who was headed for Egypt. Thanks to favorable winds, Napoleon's deception worked. Villeneuve went to the Caribbean, and Nelson went to Egypt. By the time Nelson realized his mistake, Villeneuve had had time to rendezvous with other French units in the Caribbean thirty-two days ahead of Nelson's arrival. Villeneuve's Navy was shipshape, superior in fire power, and could have easily defeated Nelson, but instead of engaging the English fleet, Villeneuve took off for Boulogne-Sur-Mer where Napoleon and his Imperial Army were waiting. All the French ships from the now liberated French ports were to rendezvous at that port. Everything was going marvellously well for Napoleon when, for some unknown reason, Villeneuve was intercepted by some mysterious naval unit at sea. The French admiral then made the worst decision possible, one that was as catastrophic as the one taken by de Brueys at Aboukir. Instead of continuing on to Boulogne, he turned back and headed south for the Spanish port of Cadiz. Understandably, Napoleon was furious at Villeneuve and immediately sent orders to have him removed from command. However, before receiving those orders, Villeneuve joined up with the Spanish fleet and went to attack Nelson's fleet that had been spotted approaching from the west. Why on October 21, 1805, off Trafalgar, Villeneuve decided to attack Nelson in the worst possible weather conditions remains a mystery.

At the head of a disorganized Franco-Spanish fleet, practically in a dead calm, Villeneuve headed north to engage Nelson. When Nelson saw that Villeneuve's ships were scattered six miles wide, he seized the opportunity and, contrary to tradition, he divided his fleet into two columns, one of which cut the Franco-Spanish fleet in two. That column went in at right angles, firing broadsides to port and starboard while remaining totally immune to enemy fire. The other column went northward and sank any enemy ship that decided to turn about and come to the rescue of the sister ships being attacked. The whole Franco-Spanish fleet was either sunk or captured. The score at Aboukir had been 13 to 0 in favor of Nelson, and now at Trafalgar it was 33 to 0 in his favor, notwithstanding the fact that he died after being shot by a French sailor from one of the damaged ships.

Nathan had to be very happy with the results, for that meant the Atlantic was now under the control of only one navy, the English Navy. The Atlantic community could now flourish. Napoleon abandoned his plan to invade England and was encouraged instead to go seek fame and fortune by attacking the Holy Roman Empire to the east. He was to personally keep all the spoils of victory, so, he was doubly motivated to go on the warpath. He defeated the Austrians in Italy and continued right into Austria where he defeated both Tsar Alexander I and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II at Austerlitz in 1805. It marked the beginning of the end for all the Ancien Regime countries in Europe. A year later, the Holy Roman Empire east of the Rhine was abolished and replaced by the Confederation of the Rhine, with Napoleon as 'protector'. Nonetheless, the Holy Roman Empire wasn't done in, and it would take two world wars to accomplish that.

Nathan in the City

When he arrived in England in 1798, other than wanting to do a good job and making his father proud, Nathan had a pressing personal matter. In 1795, on his way to America with his father and brothers, they had stopped over in London, and he had been introduced to two families. Though Moses Elias Montefiore's family was the one meant to welcome him when he moved to England, Nathan developed closer ties to the Levy-Barent Cohen family, for ever since 1795 when Nathan met Hannah Cohen, who was 12 at the time, that adorable little girl had been constantly on his mind.

Nathan started off by going undercover to Manchester. He had left the Judengasse ghetto as a penniless young man in 1798, and in the space of 8 years, he supposedly became the wealthiest man in the world. After achieving this feat dealing in the cloth business, he went to London. Other than wanting to see Hannah Cohen in London, being the man that he was, he must have been also champing at the bit to take over from the Goldsmids in the City. In 1806, he married Hannah Cohen, in 1808 Lionel was born, and in 1809 he moved to St. Swithin's Lane in New Court. In 1810, after replacing the Goldsmid Brothers, he proceeded to create a bank in his own name, N M Rothschild & Sons, and overnight, he was recognized as the most powerful banker in the City, and hence, the world.

However, in taking over from the Goldsmid Bros., he had been helped by destiny. Benjamin Goldsmid committed suicide in 1808 just prior to Nathan's moving to Swithin's Lane. It was said that Benjamin had been depressed for some time. When his 19-year old son converted to Anglicanism, it had shaken him up, and when his wife and daughters followed suite, it appeared to do him in. At that time, he had expressed the thought that he was saddened by the idea of being the last Jew of his lineage, and no doubt, that had led him to be further depressed, enough to take his life. One morning, he was found in his bedroom dangling at the end of his bathrobe chord.

Abraham was troubled by his brother's suicide, and doubly so because he was now alone in facing his firm's business obligations. The brothers had bought £14,000,000 of Government Consoles, and in order to do so they had contracted a sizeable loan with the East India Company in Amsterdam. In 1810, for reasons unknown, the East India Company called in Abraham's loan. That of course forced him to sell the Consoles at below market, thus making him suffer a huge loss that resulted in the insolvency of the firm. Abraham, a respected and honorable business man, used the whole of his personal assets to pay back what he owed, and that left him penniless. He committed suicide in 1810. A handgun was found near his body lying in a wooded area not far from his home.

In that same year, at age 33, Nathan opened his bank in the City. Miraculously, he was instantly recognized as the most powerful banker in the City. In effect, he had taken over the Bank of England. He had done so by taking possession of his father's gold held by the Goldsmids, almost half the gold ever produced in the world at that time, some 5 thousand tons. Consequently, his bank immediately started fixing the daily price of gold for the whole world, and continues to do so to this day. If Nathan opened the bank in his own name it was because Mayer wanted to make sure Nathan's bank didn't have any official ties with himself. In doing so, all possible ties to a father who lived in a ghetto, to his bank, the First Bank of the United States, and to the gold accumulated during the French real estate scam, vanished. Nobody would ever know where all that power and gold enjoyed by Nathan came from. Anonymity was the key to success.

1810 was also a time to decide Napoleon's fate. That year, Napoleon was tidying up his personal life. He had wanted a male heir, and since Josephine couldn't give him one, he divorced her very solemnly and publicly. He married Marie-Louise of Austria later that year, and his son, the King of Rome, was born in 1811. That's when Nathan decided that Napoleon had served his time. After shoring up Barras who put an end to the Terror, after serving as a catalyst for the demise of the French Navy, after politically transforming France into the centralist state that it is to this day, and after dismantling the Holy Roman Empire on both sides of the Rhine, Emperor Napoleon and his Imperial Army were no longer needed. However, there was one more thing Napoleon could do before he was given the coup de grace, he could go to Russia and force the Tsar to let private companies mine for gold in the Urals.

The 1812 Tsunami

In 1811, the charter for the First Bank of the United States ended. President James Madison and ex-President Thomas Jefferson, by now convinced that the American monetary system was in private hands, let it be known that they were going to do everything they could to put a stop to the operations of these greedy private bankers. However, Nathan operating out of the City was omnipotent, which meant he had a lot more gold than all the shareholders of the Bank of England combined. At that time, he had more than half the gold ever produced in the world, an estimated 5000 tons.

On March 4th of that same year, Nathan declared unilaterally that either the application for renewal of the charter of the Second Bank of the USA would be granted, or the United States would find itself involved in a most disastrous war. Quite unexpectedly, on June 18th, 1812, it was President Madison who declared war on England, not the other way around. It begs the question, how did Nathan get Madison to declare a futile, senseless war?

Early on, Nathan realized that there was strong opposition to the renewal of the charter of the First Bank of the United States. Since the USA refused to annul their 1768 trade agreement with France, and since money talks, Nathan had the English parliament strong-arm the Americans into trading with England instead of France, as per Jay's Treaty signed in 1793. Not surprisingly, the British Admiralty was only too happy to start impressment tactics by seizing American ships trading with France and even went so far as to force American sailors to integrate the English Navy. This was an intolerable situation, and just as Nathan expected, Congress declared war against England.

Congress was forced to borrow from the First Bank of the United States, Mayer's bank, which was still operational, while the English Parliament was forced to borrow from the Bank of England, which had been unofficially taken over by the N M Rothschild & Sons bank founded in 1810. Ever since the Battle of the Nile in 1799, Mayer's dynasty has financed all opponents in major armed conflicts, it being the surest way to get the desired outcome.

The War of 1812, started in August of that year, ended unofficially when the White House, residence of President Madison, was burned down by the English troops in August, 1814. Congress, financially ruined by the war, was forced to sign the charter for the Second Bank of the United States into law on December 15th, 1815, thus giving the bank another twenty-year lease that was to last until 1836. As of that moment, Mayer's dynasty officially controlled the monetary systems of England and America, and unofficially those of Russia, France, Holland and Germany.

In short, the year 1812 was a pivotal year for the Rothschild dynasty. First, the War of 1812 forced the US Congress to accept a monetary system based on the dollar and controlled by Nathan in the City, the same currency that had been established in 1781 by his father. Also, in 1812, the Russian campaign by Napoleon set up the modus operandi with regards to the exploitation of gold for centuries to come. Thereon in, by encouraging the production of gold and buying all the gold produced either in Russia, South Africa, North America, Australia or elsewhere, Nathan and his dynasty would be able to create more democracies and control their monetary systems. Unfortunately, 1812 was also the year when the patriarch of the dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, died in the Judengasse ghetto in Frankfort.

As for the Holy Roman Empire, it was still not completely defeated by the financial powers in the City, and it kept doing everything it could to stop Mayer's dynasty from destroying what remained of the Ancien Regimes of Europe, mostly east of the Rhine, and from taking control of their monetary systems. Major wars would be needed in order to completely uproot the Ancien Regimes, and they would all be won in the name of democracy, that is, by the dynasty of bankers established in the City. On her deathbed, Nathan's mother was heard to say, 'if my sons didn't want war, there would be none', and she was right.

Moscow campaign

After launching the War of 1812, confident that the American politicians would renew his bank's charter, Nathan turned his attention to Europe. He was anxious to send Napoleon to Russia. Like his father, he believed that more gold bullion was needed if the number of central banks, and hence the number of democracies, was to grow. It was crucial to accumulate as much gold as possible while waiting for the USA to become a coast-to-coast country and for the US dollar to become as good as gold. The problem in 1812 was that gold mining was still in its infancy, and that exploiting alluvial gold deposits was still very much a problem. However, it just so happened that the most advanced mining engineering school in the world was in Paris. L'École des Mines de Paris founded in 1783 and financed by his father had developed the latest techniques for extracting alluvial gold, and this gave Nathan the wherewithal to carry out his plan.

In 1803, alluvial gold had been discovered on the western slope of the Urals in Russia, and it was well known that the Tsar wanted to keep it a secret, for he didn't want the serf population to start a gold rush. In 1810, Nathan who was already setting the world price for gold bullion out of the City in London, was well aware of that situation. Therefore, he would get Ouvrard to contact Talleyrand who in turn would encourage Napoleon to go and force Tsar Alexander to open the country to private gold mining. Napoleon would take a corps of engineers with him, and once Alexander was forced into accepting, that elite corps would be dispatched to the Urals in order to launch and supervise mining operations. Of course, as an incentive, Napoleon was to keep all the proceeds from the sale of the mined gold. Nathan would open a Russian bank and buy all the gold as it was being produced. Nathan would give the Tsar his royalties on the one hand, and buy the gold by sending letters of exchange in pounds to Napoleon in Paris. The gold would then find its way to Nathan's vaults in the City. Napoleon and the Tsar would get the paper, and Nathan would get the gold.

Napoleon started the Russian campaign in June, 1812, and he was heading into a Russian winter which made no sense. A lot of people wonder to this day why he went. After major losses, he entered Moscow, but the retreating Russian Army had burned and stripped the city of supplies. It was a deadly place to be for a starving army. He could easily have gone on to Saint Petersburg to defeat Tsar Alexander and winter his troops in that city, but he chose to stay in Moscow for a whole five weeks instead. Napoleon was obviously waiting for an answer from the Tsar, to whom he had issued an ultimatum regarding opening the country to gold mining. After likely receiving assurances from Tsar Alexander that it would be done, Napoleon decided to spare Saint Petersburg, and took off as fast as he could for France, but not before dispatching to the Urals a contingent of 22 000 men headed by engineers from l'Ecole des Mines de Paris. If Napoleon then took the same direct way back to France, knowing full well the countryside was totally devastated by the passing of his army on the way to Moscow, and that winter was around the corner, it was because he was in a hurry to reap the benefits of the campaign and was willing to gamble. Napoleon made it OK, but his army wasn't so lucky. Winter set in early, and his army was almost completely annihilated.

Later that same year, the Russian senate issued an act authorizing subjects and private companies to mine for gold and silver ores providing they pay royalties to the Severnaya Kazna National State Bank. As expected, numerous private mining companies with Russian names started mining operations, and the country's gold output was as much as 2 tons during the first year of activity. Financing research and development in gold mining technology and buying the gold produced at the price set by Nathan in the City would become the modus operandi for all time.

Meanwhile, in Judengasse, Mayer's health was failing. Upon receiving the bad news, Nathan duly rushed to Frankfurt, and was at his father's bedside when he died on September 19, 1812. One can only wonder if the War in America declared on June 18, 1812, happening at the same time Napoleon was starting his Russian Campaign, didn't adversely affect Mayer's health. Did he think Nathan was in too much of a hurry? Did he think too many people were being killed needlessly in the name of gold? Or was 68 considered a ripe old age for the times? No matter, the greatest man who ever lived passed away in almost total anonymity in the ghetto where he was born.

One thing is certain, Gutle must have reminded Nathan of the absolute necessity for discretion and anonymity so dear to his father. In London, Nathan had been doing exactly the opposite of what Mayer had always done. By not keeping a low profile while running the greatest financial dynasty of all time, Nathan was running counter to the founder's wishes.

However, Nathan's 4-year-old son Lionel also attended his grandfather's funeral. Fortunately, Gutle bonded instantly with her grandson, and when he took over the reins of power after his father's death in 1836, Gutle was still living in Judengasse. She died much later, in 1849, and Lionel visited the old woman he loved as often as he could. Gutle must of had a great influence on him, for under his direction, the dynasty built by Mayer slowly went back to keeping a low profile, to the point where most people today wonder if it ever really existed. Nonetheless, Nathan's bank in the City still fixes the daily price of gold for the whole world and does so in US dollars.

The coup of Waterloo

When Napoleon returned from Russia, Nathan decided it was time to get rid of him. Nathan financed the armies of Austria, Prussia, Russia and England on the one hand and Napoleon's Imperial Army on the other. Napoleon suffered defeat upon defeat, and after his encounters with Wellington in Spain, he was forced out of the Iberian Peninsula. Defeated, he signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau on April 11, 1814, abdicating in the process, and was exiled to the Island of Elba.

However, something very odd happened on February 26, 1815. In wanting to completely uproot Napoleon's personal empire and destroy what was left of the Imperial Army in order to create, or at least try to create, a French constitutional monarchy, Nathan probably arranged to have him escape from Elba. As the British guard ships looked the other way, Napoleon slipped away from Portoferraio on board French warships with some 1,000 men and landed between Cannes and Antibes on March 1. He knew that Royalist Provence would not be very friendly to him, and so, he took another route through the Alps to get to Paris.

Surprisingly, without firing a single shot, he marched unimpeded in a country in which he was reviled, and his troop numbers swelled until they became an army. On March 5, the Royalist 5th Infantry Regiment at Grenoble crossed over to Napoleon en masse. The next day they were joined by the 7th Infantry Regiment under its colonel, Charles de la Bédoyère, who would later be executed for treason by the Bourbons. An odd anecdote illustrates Napoleon's charisma. When Royalist troops were dispatched to stop Napoleon at Grenoble, Napoleon stepped out in front of them, ripped open his coat and said "if any of you wishes to shoot his Emperor, here I am." Instead of doing their duty, the men acclaimed him as his 'grognards' had when he had first gone to Italy.

Marshal Ney, a military commander under Louis XVIII, was heard to say that Napoleon should be brought to Paris in an iron cage, but on March 14, that same Ney rejoined his old comrade in arms with 6,000 men. Five days later, after making his way northward, promising constitutional reform and an elected assembly, Napoleon entered the capital to the acclaim of the crowds.

In the meantime, Nathan arranged to have the Coalition countries, Austria, Prussia, Russia and England, to meet in Vienna where they proceeded to declare Napoleon an outlaw and each pledged 150 000 men to defeat him. Unruffled, Napoleon decided to take the offensive by going after the weakest army, that of Wellington, which had marched into Belgium. Because there were still many English troops in Canada as a result of the War of 1812, Wellington didn't have what could be called an elite army.

The Duke of Wellington with 110,000 men, and Prussia's Field Marshal Blucher with 120,000 men were the only two armies close enough to threaten France, and so Napoleon decided to strike before the Russians and the Austrians arrived. Moving with stunning speed, he invaded Belgium with 125,000 men in a bid to split Wellington and Blucher's armies and defeat each separately.

Marshal Grouchy went to meet Wellington's army while Napoleon defeated the Prussians. Then, with the Prussians on the run, Napoleon decided to personally go after Wellington to the north. Marshal Grouchy was to make sure the defeated Prussians to the east would not come back and join up with Wellington. However, it took more time than expected for Napoleon to drive through Wellington's defenses, and mysteriously, Marshal Grouchy failed to hold back the routed Prussians. According to legend, at noon, on the 18th of June, Grouchy was having lunch with a local notable and was more interested in finishing his meal and having his strawberry desert than in heeding his officer's insistent and repeated warnings that the Prussians were returning. When Blucher's forces joined up with those of Wellington, Napoleon didn't have a chance. It marked the end of the Battle of Waterloo.

Meanwhile, Nathan had put a formidable communications network in place, and on the day of the battle, he was in London waiting for the official results. Even though Nathan was financing all the armies and probably had arranged to have Marshal Grouchy betray Napoleon, he wanted to be absolutely sure before putting his devilish stock exchange plan in motion. Nathan already held a goodly amount of the 300 million pounds' worth of Consols, the debt that England had consolidated in funded government securities that were traded on the London Stock Exchange, but he wanted to own it all.

As soon as the battle outcome was confirmed by his personal couriers who had waited for the carrier pigeons to arrive, and who had then rushed to the London Stock Exchange to inform the great man, Nathan started dumping all the Consols that he owned, making sure all the traders saw what he was doing. In no time at all, convinced that Nathan knew something they didn't, the traders started dumping their Consols until the price of Consols dropped to ten percent of their value. When Nathan gave the signal, his aides bought back all the Consols as fast as they could. When the outcome of the battle was made public a short time later, and when everybody realized it had been Wellington, and not Napoleon, who had won, the price of Consols skyrocketed past their original high, and in a single day, Nathan had taken charge of the entire English debt and thus was in total control of the Bank of England and the monetary system of Britain.

Napoleon was exiled to St. Helens, and Louis XVIII was encouraged to establish a French constitutional monarchy. But the Holy Roman empire power machine was still too powerful, and the attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy backfired when the royalists perpetrated the White Terror. Louis XVIII was then removed from power with the help of Adolphe Thiers, and Nathan made another attempt at establishing a constitutional monarchy with Charles X, but it was no better. So, again with Thiers' help, Charles X was removed. Nathan tried again to establish an English style monarchy in 1830 with Louis-Philippe, the citizen king, but again it was unsuccessful. When Lionel, Nathan's son, became head of the dynasty in 1836, he decided that enough was enough. Paris, the center of power, would be cleaned up and transformed into the City of Lights, and France would return to being a republic as established under Napoleon. In order to do that, he would once more use the very versatile politician, Adolphe Thiers.

Under Lionel's direction, the first thing Thiers was asked to do was build huge military fortifications completely surrounding Paris starting in 1841. Then, in 1848, Lionel got Thiers to have the bumbling idiot, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, elected President. In 1852, as planned, with Adolphe Thiers by his side, President Napoleon III unilaterally declared himself emperor. Thiers' wall was finished in 1844, and the construction of the City of Lights began in 1848 with the help of Baron Hausmann. In 1870, the Commune of Paris was completely destroyed after a week-long bloodbath. The federalists still standing were exiled to New Caledonia, the massive fortifications surrounding Paris came down, and in 1875, the royalists threw in the towel by agreeing to the Constitutional Laws. France was now officially a republic and was to be governed by an elected president with a 7-year mandate. The French nightmare was over, thanks to Lionel who must have been devastated by the massacre perpetrated by Adolphe Thiers.

IV – BULLDOZING THE ANCIEN REGIMES

Mass Communication

Our world, the western world, started when the Jews and Huguenots, the enemies of the Holy Roman Empire, created democracy in England in 1689. After getting a foothold in Amsterdam in 1602, they were extremely successful running the East India Company and eventually set up their headquarters in the City, in London, in 1688. In 1689, the bankers financed the election of the people's representatives in wanting to create a proper parliament. Democracy as it became known, was a win-win situation for all. Parliamentarians forever asked the bankers to finance their projects, and in wanting to safeguard this great source of credit, the politicians made sure they collected taxes in order to pay back the loans, or at least the interest. The bankers were thus sure of having their loans repaid for the first time in their history, and they invested in research and development at a frenzied pace. The period of R&D that was to follow would be known as the Industrial Revolution.

At first, there was no infrastructure, and communication was limited to the printed page. The printing press had been invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, but the rotary press did not see the day until 1846. The Industrial Revolution was slow in getting going, but it got in gear when, in 1765, James Watt invented a converter for the world's first steam cylinder and piston engine that had been invented by Denis Papin, a Huguenot from Hesse, in 1690. As of 1765, the Industrial Revolution had a full head of steam so to speak. Manufacturing goods, weaving cotton, mining with steam power and transporting those merchandises along roads and canals became commonplace. Other major inventions like Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1793, Elias Howe's sewing machine with interchangeable parts in 1846, and Henry Bessemer's steelmaking process in 1857 contributed to the production of goods, but the concept of globalization envisaged by Nathan in the City in 1810, and by his father before him, depended entirely on the development of communications.

Nicephore Niepce invented photography in 1820, Samuel Morse the telegraph in 1844, Charles Havas, Paul Reuter and Bernhard Wolf founded the news agencies in 1845. After the creation of Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, the three news agencies that I call the Gorgon Sisters, communications increased exponentially. When Bessemer invented the steelmaking process in 1857, railroad tracks were finally cast in a durable material and the construction of railroads mushroomed. Then came Graham Bell with the telephone in 1876, Thomas Edison with the light bulb in 1879, and Nikola Tesla with the a/c induction motor in 1887. However, when George Westinghouse triumphed over Edison with his a/c current distribution system in 1891, that changed the industrial world as well as people's lives. The global village was born.

As research and development continued to receive astounding amounts of credit, images and voices started travelling through the air over long distances. Reginald Aubrey Fessenden transmitted the human voice without wires in 1900, and Hollywood started producing films that seduced the whole world as early as 1910. After Henry Ford got the combustion engine rolling with his Model-T, and the Wright Bros. got it flying in 1903, films made in America, the dream nation, were seen around the world. Although images started travelling through the air with TV in 1926, it was the talking colour film introduced in 1930 that entrenched the 'image is the message' concept of Marshall McLuhan. When the first computer and its mouse arrived in 1976, and especially when Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web came along in 1990, we became information addicts. But it was the smartphone in 1993 that captivated our total attention and hardwired us to the news agencies, transforming us into smombies (smartphone zombies) in the process. It took 3 million years to get to steam energy, but it took a mere 225 years more to get the whole world lit up and connected.

Hollywood was a good example of how research and development money gets things done. In the early 1900s, filmmakers, almost exclusively Jewish, began moving to California. The idea was to create the film industry in an unreachable place where they would be free to use with impunity the usurped patents owned by Thomas Edison and Eastman Kodak of New Jersey. If an agent from New Jersey came out west to sue them, all the filmmakers had to do was make a quick escape to Mexico. There was really not much Thomas Edison or George Eastman could do in order to protect their patents.

The first film, 'In old California', was produced in 1910. From there, the Laemmle's, the Zukor's, the Frohman's, the Lasky's, the Goldfish's, the Abrams', the Warner's, the DeMille's, the Cohn's, the Selznick's, the Sarnoff's, the Zanuck's, the Loew's and the Mayer's, Jews for the most part, made the industry prosper with lightning speed. The radio and film industries launched the 20th century into the realm of globalization, and in the blink of an eye, television, computers, mobile phones and airplanes turned us into world citizens.

Wildcat Banking

Mayer created the Bank of North America in 1781, and after sending his son, Nathan to take over the Bank of England in 1798. By 1810, the two banks were operating under one roof. The City would henceforth be the board room of world finance headed by Nathan's bank in the City, while the Secretary of the Treasury in the District of Colombia would unofficially be its chief executive. This is confirmed by the fact that, in 1810, Nathan's bank in the City was already fixing the daily price of gold for the whole world, which it continues to do to this day.

Things were going smoothly when suddenly the US President threatened to get rid of private banking. When the 20-year charter for the 1st Bank of the United States was about to run out in 1811, hostility to private banking in the US was at a peak, and the hot-head, Andrew Jackson, convinced James Madison, the President, not to renew the bank's charter. A year before, in 1810, Nathan had seen the problem developing and had issued an ultimatum: "either the application for the renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war." Madison and Jackson couldn't believe that one man could have that kind of clout, and they didn't alter course. After declaring that he would teach the impudent Americans a lesson and bring them back to colonial status if they didn't renew the bank charter, he proceeded to do just that.

When the English burned down the White House on August 24, 1814, it brought an end to the war. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814, and the US Senate ratified it on February 16, 1815. All territory went back to its original owners, and nothing changed. The real results were unofficial and never linked with that treaty. The 20-year charter for the 2nd Bank of the United States was signed on April 10, 1816. There was a welcome result in that anglophone Upper Canada and francophone Lower Canada had found a degree of identity in adversity, an element that would lead to the creation of the great country that we know as Canada today.

When the second charter for the 2nd Bank of the United States came up for renewal in 1836, President Andrew Jackson didn't hesitate to veto it. If, contrary to 1812, Mayer's dynasty in the City didn't insist on getting the charter renewed at this time, it was because of the possibility of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. After completing the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the West had naturally opened up. Now, in 1836, thirty years later, the City bankers decided it was time to let America expand at breakneck speed, a period that would become known as the Wildcat Banking Years.

The modus operandi was simple. During the period of 1836 to 1863, they would let ambitious men open banks, claim land, prospect for gold, drill for oil, and do all the dirty work so to speak. The frenetic development that ensued was like a gigantic rodeo where no-nonsense men rode bulls and wild broncos. It was definitely wild, but it was OK because the rodeo was taking place in a secure corral. In other words, the dollar used by the defunct but still operating 2nd Bank of the United States and its affiliates on the east coast was tied to the English pound which was tied to gold, and all the funny money being printed in the emerging American States had to be more or less pegged to the dollar. The shinplasters, as the state currencies were called, were meant to fail just like the Continental currency had during the War of Independence. When the time came and everybody cried for more financial stability, the dollar would again be officially re-instated throughout the country.

In 1863, Congress passed the Banking Laws Act, and the dollar became the official currency in all the States. Key industries working in the US dollar financial zone had prospered, and their tentacles reached across the entire nation. The oil industry, the railroads, the steel industry and industrial America generally, were run by men like Westinghouse, Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller, while the Lehmans, the Kuhns, the Loebs, etc. continued running the branches of the defunct 2nd Bank of the United States. The creation of the Federal Reserve Board would have to wait until 1913.

During the Wildcat banking years, from 1836 onwards, Lionel, Nathan's son, who had become head of the family dynasty in the City, was satisfied to let the American West open up in a free-wheeling manner, for he had three other worldly matters that required his attention. The most pressing one was getting the Spanish-Mexicans to move South of the Rio Grande in order to establish a permanent Southern US border. The French administration along with its military had left America in 1763, that of England in 1783, and now it was the Spaniards' turn. Once that was accomplished, the Manifest Destiny concept could then be realized, for Lionel would populate California with Americans, and he already had an idea on how to do it.

The two other matters had to do with China and France. On the one hand, it was imperative to get Japan to invade China and get rid of the Chinese warlords. On the other, France had to be stabilized politically. The federalists who controlled Paris and other major cities would be deported to New Caledonia, then, Paris, the center of power, would be bulldozed and transformed into the City of Lights. That done, France would adhere to the central state concept laid down by Napoleon. Transforming Paris into the great city that it is today helped in making the population swallow the pill of central government. Moreover, since the building of democracies in the ancien regime countries of Europe with their different languages, traditions and cultures would not happen overnight, and it was best to get started as soon as possible. The Chinese and Indian democracies would be easy enough to establish, but Europe would take a very long time. Although globalization was very much on Nathan's mind when he created his bank in the City, in 1810, it was Lionel, his son, who would kickstart it.

Mexican-American War, 1846

Establishing the US-Mexican border was accomplished in two stages. The first stage was helping the Mexicans achieve their independence from Spain in 1821 by having American and English troops give them a helping hand, and that had turned out marvellously well. The Mexican-American War of 1846 was the second stage. That's when Lionel, head of the banking dynasty in the City, decided to promote the idea among members of the US Congress that it was advantageous for America to have a permanent southern border. Lionel had devised a very simple plan. Congress would send US troops to occupy Mexico City in order to force Mexico to relinquish its claims with regards to Texas and other parts of the American south. Congress would get the funds to offer generous compensation to the Mexican Government, and if need be, the American troops would remain in Mexico City until the Mexicans threw in the towel.

When General Winfield Scott entered Mexico and won the Battle of Mexico City, it marked the unofficial end of the Mexican-American War of 1846. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and it stipulated that Mexico recognized the U.S. annexation of Texas. Mexico was also agreeing to the sale of California, as well as all of its territory north of the Rio Grande. The U.S. was to pay $15 million for the territory to be annexed, and $3.25 million to settle claims of American citizens against Mexico. It gave the United States the Rio Grande as a southern boundary along with the ownership of California and a large area comprising roughly half of New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. Mexicans in those annexed areas were expatriated to Mexico unless they declared loyalty to the US government. Over 90% chose to pledge loyalty in exchange for not losing their homes.

The northern border keeping the French Catholics, the English Loyalists, and the many disgruntled natives north of the 49th parallel, was defined by the Oregon Treaty in that same year. Having drawn a straight line along the 49th parallel, and another along the Rio Grande extending to the Pacific Ocean, the Manifest Destiny concept had become a reality. America was now a predominantly white, English-speaking and Protestant country from coast to coast, with Canada to the north and Mexico to the South. The Spanish-speaking population remaining in the US would be overwhelmed, and the recalcitrant natives would continue to be forcefully relocated on Indian reserves.

In America, the first locomotive had been manufactured as early as 1830, but transportation remained limited to steam boats navigating canals and the Mississippi River and to short rail systems east of the Mississippi. The Oregon Trail was a primitive way to go west to the Pacific coast, but that didn't include California. So, now that the Spanish-Mexicans were no longer a threat, the dynasty of bankers in the City launched Lionel's plan to populate California with 'white Americans'. Lionel had been waiting for this moment to start a gold rush. He knew there was gold in California, of course, and since the telegraph had been clicking away throughout America and Europe since 1844, it was just a matter of letting everybody know there was a lot of gold waiting to be picked up off the ground. Some 300 000 individuals moved in, easily displacing, when not massacring, the native populations, and dominating the Spanish speaking population. California went straight into statehood. As a bonus, close to 4000 tons of gold was produced and bought up, making both the City bankers and the miners very happy.

Civil War

Once the borders of America became permanent, there was still a lot of work to do. The Southern agricultural economy was out of sync with the rest of the country. The bankers in the City wanted the southern states to become a vibrant market economy like the one in the northern states, but the South was talking secession. Geopolitically, there was no question of letting it secede, not to mention the fact that it had huge oil reserves. Industry needed oil and the banking dynasty in the City wasn't about to let a few country gentlemen destroy its American masterpiece. The South's old structures had to be destroyed, but the problem was how to start the civil war. The South was not about to attack the north, for it didn't have the means and didn't have to. All it had to do was stay put and secede. So, if something was to be done, it was up to the North. As it so happened, slavery was a hot issue in the north, and the City backed the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln, a staunch advocate for National Union and racial equality. It was rather easy to get the northerners worked up over the issue of slavery, and they declared war the minute the South seceded from the Union. Slavery was the pretext, not the real issue, and that's why when Abraham Lincoln declared war on the South in 1861, he clearly stated that it was to preserve the Union. That was the truth, and it was precisely what the City bankers wanted.

At first, it seemed that Abraham Lincoln was doing the City's bidding, and, presuming he was assassinated for political reasons, we could ask ourselves why the City bankers wanted to get rid of him, if such was the case. Some say it was because, in 1862, in wanting to pay for the war, Lincoln had Congress pass the Legal Tender Act, thus giving Congress the right to print interest-free money. However, because the greenback had so little success, it was likely not the real reason. We don't know whether the City bankers printed counterfeit greenbacks in order to flood the market, or whether they directed its 'defunct' 2nd Bank of the United States not to accept them, but the end result was that the greenback was not well accepted and quickly depreciated. In 1863, Lincoln had had no choice but to reverse his position and sign the National Bank Act. Even though the greenbacks remained legal tender, the law re-established the status of the dollar, thus voiding the Legal Tender Act. So why, if such was the case, have Lincoln assassinated when the interest-free money problem no longer existed?

A plausible explanation for his assassination would be to say that Lincoln was just too nice a guy. We can be sure that the City had wanted to replace the archaic social structures of the Old South after the war, for that had been the whole purpose of the war. But because Lincoln wanted to let the Southerners rebuild their lives as they saw fit, and since his only requirement was to have the Southerners swear allegiance to the Union, he had to be stopped. The domino theory, where the establishment players do what they're paid to do, played out. So, those who wanted to do what was best for America, proceeded to do just that. After winning the 1864 election by a landslide, Lincoln was assassinated on April 14th, 1865. The carpetbaggers, most of them lawyers and businessmen loaded with cash, were immediately unleashed, taking the South by storm. They purchased the abandoned lands, opened businesses and banks, constructed railroads, and last but not least, started running the local governments. America was now officially the United States of America.

Japan/China/India

The East India Company established company rule in India in 1757, and it lasted till 1858. In 1857, after a major rebellion in which over 100 000 Indians were killed, Lionel, Mayer's grandson, decided to dissolve the East India Company and put an end to the Maharajahs' power by establishing the British Raj or Crown rule which lasted till 1947.

In 1930, Mohandas Ghandi led a revolt that galvanized the country, but it was short-lived. Nevertheless, after many subsequent years of haggling in the halls of power, both in India and London, it was agreed, in 1947, that two republics should be created, that of Pakistan (mainly Muslim) and that of India (mainly Hindu). That agreement later caused more religious tensions and more bloodshed, but nonetheless, there was an Indian general election in 1951. The Indian National Congress won a landslide victory, at which time Jawaharlal Nehru became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the country. Religious tension remained high, but politically, India and Pakistan were working democracies and would never look back.

China, on the other hand, was a much more complicated matter. It was the biggest, most populated country in the world, had no permanent borders, no army, no national identity, no national pride, no economy to speak of, and was ruled by warlords. So, in 1947, with India on the verge of becoming a democracy and Europe on the verge of signing the Treaty of Rome, it was time to transform China into what was to become the world's second largest market economy.

It was Lionel who had started the process way back in 1853 when he decided to use Japan, a country that was totally isolated from the west, to do his bidding. That year, American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo (Tokyo) Bay with four battleships, two of which were powered by steam. The Japanese marveled at this awesome technology that was totally unknown to them. However, their admiration would have been tempered if they had known that this impromptu visit was meant to usher in the end of an era, the Tokugawa shogunate.

In 1854, the Convention of Kanagawa was signed forcing the Japanese to open their ports and trade with the U.S. In 1868, the City financed the Meiji restoration, a political movement that gave Japan a constitutional monarchy, which meant that the City now controlled its monetary system and could allow credit to flow in. The Meiji restoration ushered in modernization and westernization, and as expected, the Japanese played the game of fukoku kyokei, a game that turned their country into a rich and aggressive military power. Japan's power grew, and the proud Samurais, not satisfied with their colonial status, developed a warring culture that would spread beyond its borders.

However, Japan had no raw materials to speak of and was dependent on the US for oil, rubber, and iron. In other words, because it was vulnerable, it could easily be controlled. Japan was encouraged to expand and become the most important military and economic power in Asia. It grabbed Manchuria, Taiwan, and parts of Northern China in 1894, defeated Russia in 1904, and took possession of Korea in 1910. By 1929, it was an empire, and its expansionism knew no bounds. When Emperor Hirohito defied America by refusing to retreat from China, the US turned a blind eye and didn't retaliate. Instead, the US slowed down the flow of raw materials for the world to see, but not enough to stop Showa expansionism. Japan had a job to do, and that was to clean up the warlords in China.

WWII was the time chosen to destroy the Japanese empire that had by then finished its work in China. The City then proceeded to the next step, which was securing China's borders. China had Russia and Mongolia to the north, the Himalayas to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east, but the South China Sea border had a few leaks. After the war, England returned to Hong Kong, Chiang Kai-shek took charge of Taiwan in 1949, and in 1950, after a longer than expected war, North Korea became a needed buffer zone between China and Japan. After the Indochina war that led to the creation of a nationalist Vietnamese government in 1975, the Southern Chinese border was sealed. However, for good measure, in the 1970's, the City allowed both Pakistan and India to develop the nuclear bomb. China was now effectively contained, and the process of unification could continue.

As early as 1934, the City had found the man who would help get the job done. Mao Tse-tung had caught the City's attention when he was elected Chairman of the Soviet Republic of China, which, at the time, consisted only of a small communist controlled mountainous area in Jangxi province. The City started financing Mao after his famous Long March in 1935 when he evaded the Nationalist troops at the head of some eight thousand men, becoming a Chinese hero in the process. With the City's help, Mao Tse-tung went on to fight Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, and in 1949, the Nationalists were forced to retreat to Taiwan, and Mao became President of the People's Republic of China. From 1949 to 1958, Mao organized the peasants into collectives. He followed that up with his disastrous Great Leap Forward in 1958, when at least twenty million Chinese peasants starved to death. It was only after the purges of the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards went through China with a fine-tooth comb waving the Little Red Book and forcing everybody to follow the party line that the country started responding to one authority, Mao's Communist Party. It was time to turn it into a market economy.

The City was so confident that China would turn out the way it did, that immediately after WWII, in 1945, it gave China a permanent seat in the UN Security Council along with France, Russia, U.S.A., and the UK. In 1964, it allowed it to join the nuclear club, and in 1980 it opened the first of several Special Economic Zones in Shanghai.

City of Lights

In France, in 1804, after the Civil Code was rammed through, non-elected prefects answered directly to the central authority in Paris and ran their departments with the help of the dreaded Fouché police. After Napoleon was sent to St. Helens, Nathan, who was head of his dynasty in the City, had taken a wait and see attitude in order to determine whether or not a constitutional monarchy was possible for France. He let Louis XVIII have a go at it, followed by Charles X and Louis-Philippe d'Orléans. Those three monarchs were more interested in doing the Holy Roman Empire's bidding by perpetrating the White Terror and taking their revenge on the Bonapartists and old revolutionaries in general than in founding a constitutional monarchy. When Nathan died in 1836, France was still being plagued by political unrest, and his son Lionel decided to put the French constitutional monarchy matter to rest. Putting a stop to anarchy in a country to which the world and Mayer's family was so beholding, was the only decent thing to do. Lionel decided to turn Paris into the City of Lights and give France stability by enshrining the centralist state put in place by Napoleon.

The 500 tons of gold sent as an aid package to America in 1768 had been used by Mayer to open the Bank of North America, and the roughly 5000 tons of French gold generated by the real estate scam in 1789 and stored in the Goldsmid Bros. vaults in the City, had been used by Nathan to take over the Bank of England. Lionel, as head of the family dynasty, now controlled the monetary systems of America, England, France and most of Europe, and he personally wanted to do something special for France. This country had given a lot to his family and the world, and yet had been subjected to untold miseries just because it happened to be the cornerstone of the Holy Roman Empire. Things had to be put right.

Adolphe Thiers was an active French political figure from 1825 to 1875, and no doubt did the City's bidding during that time. In 1830, after helping to bring down Charles X, who had replaced Louis XVIII, he supported the Orléanist Louis-Philippe and had him elected with Lafayette's help. When this third attempt at Constitutional Monarchy failed, political unrest continued, and Lionel decided that enough was enough. In 1841, mindboggling amounts of credit were made available to Thiers in order for him to build a wall around Paris.

When the wall was completed in 1844, it was time to get rid of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, the last king that was to be. In 1848, Lionel had Thiers support Louis-Napoleon, a Bonapartist, who was easily elected President with the help of intellectuals such as Victor Hugo. Thiers then encouraged Louis-Napoléon to declare himself Emperor Napoleon III, which he did in 1852, before starting to demolish much of Paris, for this would not be a very popular move. In 1853, Adolphe Thiers and Baron Haussmann, the Paris prefect, started levelling whole sections of the city to make wide avenues that would, as far as the federalists were concerned, facilitate the movement of troops within the city. Nonetheless, the demolition of crowded and unhealthy medieval neighborhoods, the building of wide avenues, parks and squares, the annexation of the suburbs surrounding Paris, the construction of new sewers, fountains and aqueducts, and row upon row of the most beautifully designed residential buildings in the world, continued. Since gas used for lighting was now accessible throughout the city, Paris became known as the City of Lights. One could ask, however, why they had surrounded Paris with an impregnable thirty-three-kilometer wall bordered by an elevated 250-meter strip of land defended by sixteen fort cities that were part of that wall?

It obviously meant there was a Machiavellian plan in place. In fact, as beautiful as Paris had become, the fortifications had turned Paris into a fishbowl that was meant to contain the Federalists. When the time came, they were to be rounded up with their families and sent into exile to New Caledonia, thus removing a major political obstructionist force. Although the Federalists were true democrats, like none before or since, and as appealing as pure democracy is in theory, it is not feasible. Human nature simply won't allow it. The only type of democracy possible is one where the monetary system is run by private interests. The one who prints the money cannot be the one spending it, and that's what the Federalists were in effect trying to do. The very unique and democratically minded Federalists had to go.

Moreover, if France was to be stabilized, the Royalists had to be given a death blow as well. The period from 1789 to 1840 had proven that the two groups could never achieve constitutional government on their own. The only solution was to enforce the centralist state concept that Napoleon had put in place in 1804, and have the population elect a president every seven year. This would empower the people at the expense of the Federalists and the Royalists who would never recover.

So, when the City of Lights was more or less completed in 1870, it was time to get rid of the Federalists. Louis-Napoleon, listening no doubt to a divine voice coming from the City, made the most absurd decision by declaring war on Prussia over an insignificant diplomatic incident. Even more bizarre, he wasn't the one who attacked Bismarck, it was Bismarck who attacked Paris. After the preordained siege of Paris, Louis-Napoleon fled to England, and Thiers, now the self-proclaimed head of government, transferred his whole administration to Versailles. Surprisingly, he came up with the colossal sum of money needed to buy back the 100,000 French prisoners from Bismarck. Inexplicably, it was Thiers, not Bismarck, who marched into Paris with the recently purchased French prisoners. His orders were undoubtedly to surround and capture the members of the Commune, Federalists all, before exiling them to New Caledonia, but things didn't work out as planned. The Federalists put up too strong a resistance, and a panicking Thiers committed the worst atrocities imaginable. Tens of thousands of Federalists, including women and children, were executed, while perhaps twice as many were imprisoned under atrocious conditions and died in the process. Thiers did succeed in exiling thousands of Federalists to New Caledonia, and it did mark the end of that political force, but the Paris Commune remains one of the worst blood baths in history, much to Lionel's chagrin, to be sure.

On January 3rd, 1875, Henri Wallon tabled an amendment proposing that the President of the Republic be elected by an absolute majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives for a renewable seven-year period. It became known as the Constitutional Laws of 1875 which officially established France as a centralist state. Thiers, who had been chosen as the 1st President, conveniently resigned, and Patrice MacMahon, a catholic aristocrat who was neither monarchist nor republican, was elected to succeed him. The wall that had cost countless billions to build was torn down, and the Stockholm syndrome kicked in. The French have since put their trust in one man, their President. They elect their President, a "father knows best" figure, who somehow becomes l'État, and they trust l'État more than they do their fellow citizens. The people's Assembly is composed in great part by duly elected mayors, and since mayors answer directly to prefects nominated by the President, it means that France is a centralist state, or a democratic dictatorship.

Boer Wars

The story of the City in London is all about gold. Mayer was the founder of international banking because he was the first banker to use gold as it was meant to be used. According to him, gold was not meant to be spent, it was meant to be mined, purchased, and then stockpiled in a secure location for all time. The one who had the gold necessarily controlled the monetary systems. Mayer created the Bank of North America in 1781, thanks to the 500 metric tons of French gold made possible thanks to Benjamin Franklin's intervention. After Mayer's real estate coup in France in 1789, he managed to funnel another 5000 tons of French gold to the City. In 1810, his son Nathan had the wherewithal to fix the daily price of gold worldwide from his offices in the City. Nathan had perhaps as much as 7000 metric tons of gold in his possession, close to half the gold ever produced at that time. He held most of England's debt, and was in charge of the English, French and American monetary systems.

In 1812, Nathan sent Napoleon to Russia in order to force the Tsar to let private interests mine for gold in the Urals, which was a determining moment in our history. Thanks to the French engineers from l'École des Mines de Paris, placer deposit gold mining techniques had been refined and newly mined gold made its way to the City.

Mayer built his dynasty on gold and trust, and his dynasty wasn't about to change course. When hard rock mining was made possible in the 1880's, gold production skyrocketed. Paper money went to the miner, and gold went to the City. As gold was stockpiled in the City, the paper it backed, whether in America or England, became as good as gold. There have never been losers, for the miners get paid the world price set in the City, and Mayer's dynasty stockpiles the gold and creates more credit.

The total production of gold to date is estimated at around 250000 metric tons. The gold used in jewellery, industry, and dentistry, combined with the token amounts of gold on display in the various Central Banks of Germany, Italy, France, USA, China, Russia etc., probably accounts for around 75000 metric tons. Most gold is held in a virtual form as Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF's), and though it is impossible to be accurate, there's around 150000 metric tons of real gold bullion unaccounted for and stockpiled in the City and its financial satellites.

The Boer Wars are forgotten wars, but if one analyzes and correlates the dates and circumstances surrounding the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa and the wars that were fought in that country, it becomes clear that they were all about controlling the production of those two precious commodities. In 1879, the British had managed to put an end to the Zulu military might, and in 1880, had declared the South African Republic to be an English possession. But in 1881, the Boers, independent white Dutch settlers, badly defeated the British troops, and sent them home. In 1899, this time, with the help of several Commonwealth countries, Britain came back to fight the Boers, and after heavy casualties on all sides, British, Commonwealth, African and Boer, England finally prevailed in 1902. The British unilaterally changed the name of South African Republic to Union of South Africa in 1909, while declaring it to be a dominion of the British Empire. Since then, South Africa produces a disproportionate amount of the world's gold and diamond production, and both commodities are neatly stockpiled in places like the Wharf in the City in London.

The FED

In 1768, Haym Salomon, Mayer's right-hand man in America, with the help of another great collaborator, Robert Morris, took charge of the French gold given as an aid package to America and used it to create the Bank of North America in 1781. That sealed the destiny of America, and what a great one it turned out to be.

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton drafted a constitution for the 1st Bank of the United States, and all of Mayer's people agreed on the rules and regulations that were to govern it. During the time the bank was headquartered in Philadelphia, eight branches were created, one in each of Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, and New York in 1792, and four more in each of Norfolk in 1800, of Washington in 1802, of Savannah in 1802 and of New Orleans in 1805.

Its largest customer was the government, and one of the highlights of that relationship was the bank's efficient managing of the government's fiscal affairs with respect to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The bank's notes circulated countrywide and infused a safe medium of paper money into the economy for business transactions. Although the relationship between Mayer's bank and the government wouldn't always be a smooth one, due to those who didn't want a strong Federal Government and who thought bankers were crooks, it would remain steadfast, today's Federal Reserve Bank being the ultimate proof.

Nonetheless, in 1811, American politicians who opposed Mayer's bank refused to renew the charter of the 1st Bank of the United States. As we have seen, in retaliation, Nathan, who had by then taken control of the Bank of England in the City, proceeded to 'teach the impudent Americans a lesson' by forcing them, in 1812, to wage a costly war. Shortly after the British troops burned down the President's Residence in 1815, Congress signed a 20-year charter for the 2nd Bank of the United States in 1816, and 26 more branches were opened almost immediately across the country.

Augusta, Georgia (1817, closed 1817) - Baltimore, Maryland (1817)

Boston, Massachusetts (1817) - Charleston, South Carolina (1817)

Chillicothe, Ohio (1817) - Cincinnati, Ohio (1817)

Fayetteville, North Carolina (1817) - Lexington, Kentucky (1817)

Louisville, Kentucky (1817) - Middletown, Connecticut (1817)

New Orleans, Louisiana (1817) - New York City (1817)

Norfolk, Virginia (1817) - Portsmouth, New Hampshire (1817)

Providence, Rhode Island (1817) - Richmond, Virginia (1817)

Savannah, Georgia (1817) - Washington, D.C. (1817)

Mobile, Alabama (1826) \- Nashville, Tennessee (1827)

Portland, Maine (1828) \- Buffalo, New York (1829)

St. Louis, Missouri (1829) - Burlington, Vermont (1830)

Utica, New York (1830) \- Natchez, Mississippi (1830)

When members of Congress again refused to renew the bank's charter in 1836, it no longer mattered, for it was the perfect excuse to open the West at breakneck speed. The 2nd Bank of the United States with all its branches remained the unofficial national bank, while many ruthless individuals sought wealth and power by creating banks in the new states being created. All the shinplaster money issued by the state banks didn't in the least affect the banks that constituted the backbone of American finance, the unofficial 2nd Bank branches. These banks continued to work as a unit using the dollar that continued to be fixed to the price of gold in the City. It was a standard that the country could depend on, and all the funny money printing state banks had no choice but to stay within range of that standard. So, industrial America developed by leaps and bounds in spite of, or perhaps more accurately, because of the Wildcat Banking years.

In the 1860's, the South was out of economic sync with the rest of the country, and that had to be put right if the Manifest Destiny dream was to become a reality. Before the Civil War, huge amounts of credit from the City and its affiliates in Holland and Germany started flowing into the country in order to give the North and the South the means to wage war. The cotton economy was on the wane, and the political and financial pressures on the South were great. Pushed to the wall, the South's only option was to secede, which it proceeded to do. War ensued as planned, and the South was completely destroyed. Thereafter, the carpetbaggers loaded with cash invaded the South, while railroads were being built in a frenzy from coast to coast. Soon, Congress, tired of financial bedlam, signed the National Bank Act in 1863. Congress had had no choice but to seek loans from the well-established unofficial 2nd Bank network whose currency was the US dollar which was tied to the gold in the City. In the process, the dollar was re-instated as the national currency. Although businessmen and politicians continued to ignore the reality of international financial control by the City, and to distrust bankers, they just knew it was the most reliable and sound financial arrangement possible.

In 1913, the Federal Reserve Bank was created by Congress. Its shareholders were the Rothschild Bank of London, the Rothschild Bank of Berlin, the Warburg Bank of Hamburg, the Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, the Lazard Brothers of Paris, the Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy, the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, the Goldman Sachs Group of New York, the Lehman Brothers of New York, and the Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York.

All these banks were privately owned and backed by the City bankers who held huge quantities of gold bullion. Although the FED became the executive arm of world financial power, that power remained in the hands of those who had all the gold, the City bankers. Since 1810, the daily price of gold has been fixed by the Rothschild Bank in the City, in London. In 1913, when the gold price started being fixed in US currency, the dollar became as good as gold.

Democracy is a system that encourages elected representatives of the people to borrow from the private central bank of their country in order to get things done before taxes are collected. Democracy is based on this human foible, for if a country is not indebted, control is lost, and democracy can't exist. The system has worked flawlessly since 1694, giving mankind order and prosperity in the process. However, we should be especially grateful to Mayer who created the Bank of North America in 1781, and his son Nathan who overpowered the Bank of England in the City in 1810 and laid the groundwork for universal credit as we know it today. Since then, the modus operandi is to buy all the gold bullion being mined around the world in complete anonymity, and then putting it to good use by just letting it sit in a nice neat pile in a secret place.

Conspiracy & Control

When we became intelligent some three million years ago, we became aware of our mortality and were consequently scared out of our wits. This led to unrest and confusion within our specie for the longest time. Fortunately, in 325 of the Common Era (CE), a group of good men decided to create a very effective religion, one meant to control man's behavior by instilling the fear of God in him. That religion, Christianity, invaded the infrastructure of the Roman Empire like a hermit crab. Once established with its network of kings, it forced all the citizens of the empire to adopt the Nicene Creed. It ruled by diplomacy and fear of God, and when that didn't work, it used threats of excommunication, wars, crusades, and inquisitions to set things right. The official religion was not only intolerant and exclusive but was opposed to the spread of knowledge as well. It was created on the premise that poverty was godly, and that science was the work of the devil. Its finances were based on tithing and deeding by those who wanted to buy their way into heaven ahead of time. It was a haphazard but boundless source of revenue, and corruption set in. The Vatican ruled very inefficiently. Not surprisingly, along the way, it created two deadly enemies, the Jews and Huguenots (French Protestants). Those two enemies joined forces in London in 1600, but finding more tolerant political conditions in Amsterdam, they established their headquarters there in 1602. Under the guise of the East India Company, they ruled the oceans of the world for nearly a century. As soon as it became feasible, in 1688, they returned to London and established their head office in the City. The next step was the creation of a political system called democracy.

In 1694, the East India Company created the Bank of England, a financial oligarchy that now ruled the oceans out of the City in London instead of Amsterdam. The bankers were determined to turn the world into one great market economy, an English one, of course. That short-sightedness was what allowed Mayer Amschel Rothschild to create the Bank of North America in 1781 and his son, Nathan, to take over the Bank of England in 1810. Mayer's far-sightedness gave us international finance, a system where market economies, or democracies, freely trade with each other. Mayer's dynasty had the added advantage of not only speaking with one voice, but in making credit accessible to governments as well as merchants and ordinary citizens, it could only know lasting success. Today, we are all living witnesses to that fact.

Credit is the most sophisticated and cleanest method of control, and more importantly, it's always in great demand. The credit machine could be compared to a water pumping system where the big water reservoir is the more than hundred and fifty thousand tons of gold stockpiled in the City and its Central Banks. From that reservoir, the gold is magically transformed into paper dollars before being sent on their way. The added magic in this operation is that no matter how many dollars are printed, the stockpile of gold never decreases, quite the opposite, it is meant to increase in size as more gold is mined and bought up. Today, the good as gold dollars and all the currencies tied to it, paper or electronic, soon to be replaced by virtual bitcoins, flow to the central bank of each country as well as the multiple world organizations such as the United Nations, Unesco, World Bank etc. These are connected to smaller pipelines going down to industries and individuals in the form of loans, and to the man in the street in the form of a salary. On each pipeline there is a tap that controls the output, the tap being the interest rate. If the City wants a country or a multinational to shape up, it gets Standard and Poor's or some other mysterious entity to let the Gorgon Sisters, Reuters, AP and AFP, tell the world that their credit is no good. Then the NYSE, the first domino in a long chain of dominoes, falls in the desired direction, thus starting a chain reaction. The dominoes are manipulated by the 'suits', politicians, traders, professors and journalists, who are never told what to do or say, but know exactly what the one who pays their salary wants, and act accordingly. No matter how many dominoes there are in a given sequence, they all fall in the direction in which the original domino fell, and if one domino fails to fall, it is simply replaced or bypassed, and the chain restarted. All people who receive a salary do what is expected of them, and that includes everybody, the President on down, but no one is made to think he's a pawn, for democracy is all about instilling the feeling of empowerment.

Credit control works extremely well, but when drastic action like war is needed, the people must be made to believe that it's necessary and to not question it. Credit control depends on democracy, and democracy depends on the empowerment of the people. People have to be made to believe they are the ones deciding or democracy can't work. In the good old Holy Roman Empire days, the clergy used very crude ways to impose its will, as mentioned earlier, but Mayer's dynasty in the City has always used more sophisticated controls such as free speech, job creation, and media feed in order to sway public opinion. But in dire cases, it gets America, the City's executive arm, to arrange for a Pearl Harbor, an Oklahoma City, a World Trade Center, or a 9/11 in order to get things done.

First, the people must be empowered, and that comes about largely with the creation of jobs. When war is being planned, huge sums of credit are injected to fuel the arms industry, creating a lot of employment and making a lot of people rich in the process. But swaying public opinion is trickier. The process begins with the Gorgon Sisters feeding the various media with the necessary information or misinformation, and encouraging 'free' speech. Those who speak for the war are good patriots and good leaders while those who oppose the war and question the facts leading up to it are quickly branded conspirators, or even traitors. The Gorgon sisters freely let conspiracy theories flow into the media because they can easily counter them by having a number of respected 'suits' defend the City's point of view that has become theirs. People eventually become blasé to conspiracy, to the point where every time they hear the word, they switch off. Honest citizens don't listen to those nuts, and when it comes to the crunch, they trust their elected leaders and their media, regardless.

In 1913, after the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law, Hollywood started sending pictures depicting the greatness of democracy around the world. The dollar was becoming as good as gold, and the image was becoming the message. On the one hand, Mayer's dynasty controlled the dollar and the many currencies tied to it, and therefore unofficially ruled the financial world, and on the other, the 'land of the free', or the 'land of opportunity', became everyone's ideal on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. Every able-bodied person wanted to come to America or be like Americans. It opened wide the door to globalization.

Today, Marshall McLuhan's maxims, 'the image is the message', and 'the global village' have become more meaningful than ever. Hollywood followed by TV, the internet, and the smartphone gave us an image-oriented society and virtually empowered us. But as incomes grew, people had more leisure time on their hands, and that meant the Gorgon Sisters had to play an ever-greater role in filling the airwaves. Politics, religion, sports, entertainment along with local news had to keep everybody focused. Today, people march to the magic baton of the Gorgon Sisters as they orchestrate the medias.

We have come to that because the citizen needed ever more direction, and the old control, the one based on the fear of God and the threat of damnation no longer sufficing, a new concept had to be introduced. Since humans are genetically conditioned to live with fear, it is very easy to condition them to forever expect dread, as long as they are convinced that their leaders will save them if and when disaster strikes. In fact, it is a simple control, very much like a riding crop used to make horses do what they are meant to do. A horse would not be worth his salt if it didn't do what its owner wanted it to do, so, once broken in, the crop is used to remind it of a looming threat. A good owner never hits the horse with the crop, but simply makes sure the horse is aware of it. In a democracy, people may have the illusion of being free and empowered, but they react to credit and media just like the horse to the crop. Instilling fear into a population must go hand in hand with the assurance that it is protected. People may complain, and that is useful in keeping their minds busy, but they must above all trust the one who brandishes the crop, or it doesn't work.

Fear comes with names like Hitler, Khomeini and Bin Laden, and words like anarchists, Marxists, communists, fascists, terrorists, ISIS, Al Qaeda and Dahesh, Stalin and Putin, names and words that were and are repeated in the media thousands of times each day throughout the world. From atop his elevator shoes, the leader of North Korea threatens to blow up the whole world, and we tremble. And though the five permanent Security Council members, America, Russia, England, France and China are under one roof and have never fired a shot at each other, we continue fearing Russia and China to this day. The banking dynasty in the City created the Permanent Security Council and controls all the central banks of the world, yet we still fear being annihilated by an atomic bomb coming from Russia, and even North Korea, as ludicrous as that is. The Gorgon Sisters know how and when to brandish the crop, and by sending images of terrorist attacks, along with ridiculous military parades and the lighting of wet firecrackers out of North Korea, they make us tremble, just like they did with Russia not so long ago. As more and more people become smombies, that is, those glued to their smartphones, we could say that they are hardwired to the Gorgon Sisters who constantly spew out marching jingles.

Two great examples of the way the crop is used have to do with airport security checks and the climate change debate. Anybody who has a million dollars can hijack or blow up a plane anytime, anywhere in the world, and any professional killer can use a plastic card in his wallet, or the plastic food utensils on board, to kill or threaten to kill anybody at will. As for security checks per se, if people are asked to remove their belts and shoes, it is simply a symbolic way to instil fear in the middle class men of the world, the main flying population, by symbolically having them drop their pants and walk bare-footed, for it serves absolutely no other purpose. The only valid control at the airport is the metal detector that's meant to stop the ordinary crazies who may be tempted to carry a knife or a gun on board. As for climate change, it is a reality, but not for the reasons the Gorgon Sisters give. The reality is that we're on the warming leg of a glacial cycle, and that the production of CO2 is irrelevant. But, like with the horse who trusts the crop holder, we trust the one who spews out the fabricated hype about CO2. The more the crop is brandished, the more we walk the line.

WWI and 1929 Crash

In 1913, with the U.S. Federal Reserve fiat dollar in the bag, the City decided to create more democracies by getting rid of what was left of the Ancien Regime countries around the world. After the Glorious Revolution in England, in 1688, seeing that France, its perennial base was under threat, the Holy Roman Empire's headquarters was moved east of the Rhine to Vienna. In 1805, Napoleon had defeated the Emperor of Austria, but in 1913, the time had come to give the Holy Roman Empire the coup de grace. The idea was to create a grandiose European market economy, just like that of the U.S.A. It had been relatively easy in the case of the USA, for it was built on virgin land where a few gentle animists roamed, but in the case of Europe, a built-up hodgepodge of countries with unique cultures, old money, and long-standing traditions, it was indeed a different kettle of fish. But if globalization was to be, the first step was to transform the autocracies run by tsars, kaisers, kings, warlords, and sultans into democracies. Faced with the complex situation in Europe, the City bankers had no choice but to bulldoze the whole lot and start from scratch.

The three Gorgon sisters, the Reuters, AP and AFP news agencies, used the most basic kind of propaganda to work the nations of the world into a frenzied, anti-German mood. We don't know when the phrase 'the war to end all wars' hit the wires, and we don't know who was first to utter it, but we do know it was repeated time and time again until it became a war cry around the world. Any good propagandist will agree that once such a phrase is rooted in the popular psyche, very few citizens will dare speak out against it, for war and patriotism are concepts that work well together. Later, when it came time for the USA to go to war, President Wilson even created the Committee on Public Information (CPI), an official propaganda and censorship agency.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28, 1914, and without the least indication that Serbia was responsible for the assassination, Emperor Franz Joseph declared war on Serbia on July 28th. On August 4th, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany and by August 12th all the major powers were at war and the first major engagement of WWI, which took the lives of 27,000 French troops, occurred on August 14th, 1914. That means that in less than eight weeks after the assassination, all countries had declared war on each other and blood had started flowing. Normally, diplomats talk, gesture, threaten, and make attempts at compromise, especially when dealing with such a banal, international incident. So, if events unfolded so quickly at a time when communications were in their infancy, it can only mean that the City had, in anticipation of the moment, let huge amounts of credit flow to the arms industries of the concerned European countries. War is definitely City business, and it always gets the desired results by financing warring parties on both sides. All it has to do is increase or decrease the amount of credit given to one side or the other to get the desired results.

Though a lot of sane people violently opposed the war, the wires kept spewing out the "war to end all wars" propaganda to the point where it became unsafe to challenge it. So, the war was played out, and almost twenty million people were killed because an unknown duke was assassinated by an unknown anarchist, the international scare word in vogue at the time. It seems that if all the great statesmen of the world (the suits) went berserk and made the worst kinds of decisions with lightning speed and on cue, it was because WWI was indeed wanted and well-planned.

In 1914, Germany, not known to be a great, seafaring nation, became the new mistress of the seas overnight. It produced submarines like bratwurst and controlled the North Atlantic shipping lanes by sinking everything in sight. Germany somehow overpowered both the English and American navies, the two greatest navies of the times. But when Germany sank the Lusitania in 1915, the American cry for retaliation grew louder. That's when President Wilson created his propaganda machine, the CPI. The City was ready to have America join the fray.

WWI was played out like a chess game in which the City moved the pieces on both sides of the board like it had with Wellington and Napoleon, and with the North and South during the American Civil War. However, in this case, something went terribly wrong and WWI had to be stopped. It came to an abrupt end in the same manner it had started on July 14th, 1914. When, in October 1918, the Americans and their allies breached the Siegfried Line, which is in France, not in Germany, the Germans stopped fighting. The Central Powers just rolled over and immediately signed the Armistice on November 11th, 1918. The Allies didn't even push the invaders back into Germany. The victorious Allies just seemed to say, "okay, guys, it's over, you can go home now."

However, if we look at it more closely, it was a very different story. By the time the Armistice was signed, the Tsar had been executed and the Bolsheviks had taken over, and that meant that the Russian Empire no longer existed. It also meant the City had full control over the Urals gold and the Baku oil. As for the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, they had been on life support before the war and after being battered about by the Italians, Russians, and British, they just broke into pieces. Moreover, since the British had established a strong military presence in Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Cairo, the whole Middle East oil patch was under lock and key. Nonetheless, the main goal had not been achieved, for the Holy Roman Empire east of the Rhine, Germany, was still standing. WWI was not a success story, far from it, and here's why the City bankers had to take another kick at the can in 1939.

At the beginning of the war, the dynasty of bankers in the City had planned for the Americans to join the Western Front and for Russia to create an Eastern Front, the intention being to crush what was left of the Holy Roman Empire by surrounding the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in a pincer movement. But this did not happen because the bankers did not foresee a fatal decision on the part of the Tsar, and because the Bolshevik Revolution financed by the bankers didn't go quite as planned.

The debacle began when, on August 21, 1915, Tsar Nicholas II left for the front in order to take command of the Russian armies that weren't doing very well. The bankers did not see this coming, for the Tsar knew little about commanding and organising large military forces, and more importantly, they had not taken into consideration the reign of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, the Tsar's German wife, that was to follow. The Tsarina was advised by Rasputin who was against the war, as were the Bolsheviks in the Duma. The Eastern Front was dead in its tracks.

The Duma was prorogued indefinitely, the name of St. Petersburg changed to that of Petrograd, and the Bolsheviks who had sat in the Duma were now more dynamic than ever. Russian troops were in dire straits and suffered considerable defeats and human loss in spite of the massive amounts of arms supplied by the Americans and shipped from the Pacific coast via the Trans-Siberian railway, whose construction the City had financed at the beginning of the century. Nicholas II abdicated, a provisional government was formed, Lenin returned from exile and signed a separate peace with Germany. The October Revolution and the execution of the imperial family would soon follow.

At the end of 1918, without hope of creating an Eastern Front, and after years of apocalyptic trench warfare in France, the City decided to end WWI and come back another day. Lenin died in 1924 from gunshot wounds sustained in a 1918 assassination attempt and was replaced by a more sanguinary Stalin. With Stalin in place and the effects of the Treaty of Versailles, a most unrealistic treaty, being hard felt in Germany, the groundwork was set for WWII.

In the meantime, the City didn't bother taking a breather. It took advantage of the twenty-year pause between the two World Wars to advance its agenda and perpetrate the 1929 market crash. Like in all market manipulations, the City bankers made all the wrong decisions in order to create a major market bubble, and when they felt the time was right, they burst it and pretended to fix things by again making all the wrong decisions. The 1929 financial tsunami was really about destroying the pound as a world reserve currency and crowning the dollar. As of 1913, the City had two major world currencies on hand, and one had to go. It is of no surprise then if the dollar was chosen as the world fiat reserve currency in Bretton Woods in 1944.

After WWI, America was the greatest market economy in the world and most of Europe, especially Britain, overtly started buying into the American dream. As UK gold purportedly flowed into the US, the market bubble grew, and when the world was told that the English gold reserves were depleted, it burst. In reality, since the City controlled both countries' monetary systems, physical gold didn't have to be moved, it only had to appear to do so. Everyone could see that England was investing heavily in America, and after the crash, the three Gorgon Sisters simply told the world that the pound was no longer adequately backed by gold, and confidence in the hallowed currency eroded. It was a rather easy tour de main, for the City and the FED have never been audited by an independent accounting firm.

At the end of the day, the Market Crash of 1929 had been a Machiavellian way of establishing international dollar supremacy by making it appear to be the result of legitimate business transactions in a free-market economy. The City depends on the democratic process for its very survival and it must nurture the illusion of empowerment among the people. Smoke and mirror tactics are therefore used. The only question we mere mortals need ask is whether the number of casualties and the pain suffered by so many during the French Revolution, the American Civil War, WWI, the Great Crash, and WWII, are a just price for the benefits we receive from the credit economy we live in today.

WWII and Bretton Woods

After the armistice was signed in 1918, the City banking dynasty immediately sat down at the drawing board and prepared for WWII. The Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 was the worst possible peace treaty imaginable, and we can be sure that peace was not on the peacemakers' mind. All the statesmen had to be from la-la land in order to give their approval to such impossible terms. The thirty-three billion dollars of war reparations the allies imposed on Germany couldn't possibly be repaid and everybody knew it. Furthermore, when it was decided to split Germany in two by creating the Polish Corridor, the whole German population was profoundly humiliated. Such decisions were more than enough to set the wheels in motion for WWII, notwithstanding the fact that Stalin was waiting in the wings.

The Treaty of Versailles definitely indicated the direction in which the City was heading, and very soon the bankers found their mouthpiece, the man who would rally the German crowds. Adolf Hitler was noticed very early on in 1919. In spite of his poor physical condition, he had joined the army in 1914 at age twenty-five. Until then, he had been a poor, lost soul and the war had given him a purpose in life. Private Hitler volunteered his services as a dispatch runner, a very dangerous assignment, and was eventually promoted to the rank of corporal. His comrades thought he was rather weird, for he forever volunteered for the most dangerous missions, facing death repeatedly while remaining unruffled by it all. In 1916, he was wounded in the leg and went on R&R to Berlin where he became thoroughly disgusted with the apathy among German civilians with regards to the war. Upon returning to the front in the last days of the war, he was blinded by chlorine gas and returned to a starving, weary Germany to convalesce. Upon hearing that Germany had been defeated, he became totally despondent, and when he eventually snapped out of it, he was filled with deep hatred vaguely directed at groups within Germany.

In 1919, still in the army, this overly patriotic twit went so far as to inform on his fellow soldiers, and this led to the arrest and even the execution of many. The General Staff, embittered by Germany's defeat and the unjust terms of the armistice, rewarded Hitler by promoting him to undercover agent and sending him on an indoctrination course at the University of Munich. He returned as an "education' officer and started speaking out with great vehemence against the Communists. The mysterious Thule Society had taken Hitler under its wing and his fate was sealed.

Hitler swore vengeance on those who had put an end to the war, the only worthwhile experience he had ever known. Inexplicably, his ire was directed mostly at the perceived enemies from within Germany, the Communists and the Jewish Marxists. Moreover, Hitler had to have had serious psychological problems in order to advance the idea of a superior race made up of blond, blue-eyed Aryans. This was not a healthy idea to begin with, but it was especially so because Hitler happened to have a swarthy complexion and brown eyes that had most likely been genetically transmitted by a Jewish parent. It's obvious that someone was manipulating this air brain.

In 1919, Hitler, the intelligence officer, dressed as a civilian in order to spy on a meeting of the German Workers' Party in Munich. When one of the members suggested that Bavaria separate from Germany and join Austria, it touched a raw nerve in the extremely patriotic Hitler. He couldn't resist lashing out at the whole gathering in spite of the fact that he was Austrian by birth. Nonetheless, he definitely had the gift of the gab and everybody was impressed. Understandably, the members of the Thule Society were quick to have him join the German Workers' Party. He may have been uneducated with deep psychological problems, but now, this empty-headed megalomaniac guided by hate and vengeance was in politics.

Hitler was a great talker, but all the ideas he kept expounding over the years were those of the Thule Society. This fraternity consisted of a small group of influential Germans who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race. They were deeply nationalistic and racist and from the very beginning, they had the swastika in their coat of arms. It was Dietrich Eckart, a leading member of that society that helped Hitler hone his public speaking skills. As early as 1919, Hitler had definitely been taken in by the Thule Society, the group that gave birth to the Nazi Party.

At first, the violent methods used to promote Hitler and the German Workers' Party didn't have the desired results. They only succeeded in getting the whole country to view Hitler as a silly little man, a sort of bad-tempered clown. Nonetheless, by 1923, Germany was reeling under the effects of inflation, and Hitler's backers thought the time had come to make their mark by overthrowing the Bavarian Government. However, the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, as it became known, failed and Hitler was arrested. That's when Hitler's supporters decided that force alone was not going to work and that it was best to use more politically-correct methods.

Hitler's public trial lasted several weeks and, for some unknown reason, the authorities let this ridiculous little man flaunt his oratory skills throughout. He apparently seduced many of the judges, for instead of getting life he got five years and was eligible for parole within six months. He served nine months in luxurious quarters and even had a private secretary, Rudolph Hess, who was a member of the Thule Society. That's when Hitler produced Mein Kampf, a book that could never have been written without the help of Hess, a man who had studied politics at the University of Munich. The writing of Mein Kampf was, without a doubt, a way to spread Thule Society propaganda.

Guided by the members of the Thule Society, and assisted by misfits like Joseph Goebbels, a communications and propaganda genius, Heinrich Himler, a cruel, cold-blooded psychopath, and Adolf Eichmann, a logistics genius, Hitler became Fuhrer in 1934. It's obvious that the Nazi Party was a very costly machine to operate, and only the City, through the Bundesbank and the German arms industry, could have financed such a sophisticated political machine, for Germany was a devastated country. And as the arms industry revved up its production, the economy picked up, and Hitler, now seen as some kind of savior, easily convinced the German people that war was inevitable and that he was the one who could lead them to victory.

After WWII was declared, the German army went around the totally useless French Maginot Line with lightning speed and had the allies surrounded at Dunkirk in a matter of days. One can only wonder why, in an age of air and tank warfare, a great nation such as France spent mindboggling sums of money in order to build an archaic structure, if not to allow Hitler to reach the Atlantic in record time. With the allied armies unable to retreat further, Hitler let the troops sail to England, no doubt hoping for a non-aggression pact in compensation for his good deed. However, England was apparently not willing to cooperate. Hitler then figured he might get the English to change their minds if he shook them up a bit. Eventually, the English must have given Hitler some assurances, for the London Blitz ended on May 10th 1941. Convinced that the western front was now secure, Hitler immediately turned his attention to the eastern front, and invaded Russia on June 22nd, 1941. Just like Napoleon in 1812, who had gone after the gold in the Urals, Hitler wanted to get his hands on something he really needed, the oil in the Caucasus. In both cases, the megalomaniacs' armies were destroyed, and in both instances, their empires came to an abrupt end. The City tends to repeat what works well.

On December 7th, 1941, shortly after Hitler took off for Russia, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It seems the City was thinking of China and wanted to destroy the Nippon Empire by using the might of America. In July of that year, Congress imposed an oil embargo on Japan, and the ensuing kamikaze approach to the war adopted by Japan proved the City right. Japan had tried to negotiate with the U.S., but everything possible had been done by the Americans to have the negotiations fail. The very proud Samurais were thus forced into a suicidal war, hanging on to the hope that an alliance with an apparently victorious Germany would improve their prospects.

If there's any doubt that America was conned into going to war, a few facts should help dissipate it. Although the US and UK navies controlled the Pacific, and although there was a SCR-270 radar station with a 150-mile range installed in Honolulu, the Japanese were able to have a huge fleet of warships, including aircraft carriers, sail across the Pacific to Hawaii, and then launch squadrons of aircraft without anyone noticing. Furthermore, all the U.S. aircraft carriers had been sent out on sea exercises and only the very outdated WWI battleships and destroyers remained in port. The play became obvious when President Roosevelt, under the guise of protecting the U.S. air force, personally ordered all the military aircraft based at the Honolulu airbase to be positioned in such a configuration as to make them less vulnerable on the ground, but which had, in fact, the effect of preventing them from scrambling effectively. It seems that the City dynasty had simply let Roosevelt know it was time for war.

The City bankers succeeded in getting the U.S. to join the war at a cost of only 2,390 lives, the number of casualties at Pearl Harbor, a low human toll when considering the mindboggling number of casualties in WWI and WWII. The war in the Pacific got underway as planned, and the U.S. declared war on Germany without actually engaging Hitler for another three years. When the American troops did get into the thick of things on D-day, in 1944, Stalin's troops came in from the east, and the Holy Germanic Empire was totally destroyed. As of that moment, all the Ancien Regimes of Europe, including Russia and the Ottoman Empire, could be considered demolished, and the Vatican tiger was at last toothless and declawed.

To have some idea which countries the City targeted in WWII, we need only look at the casualty numbers. Russia lost twenty-two million soldiers and civilians, while Germany and China suffered losses of eight million and twenty million, respectively. As for the UK, the U.S., and France, they lost around half a million each. We know that the City had wanted to destroy Germany, but why so many Russian casualties? And what was going on in China? For one, Russia had to be seriously weakened if it was to be trusted to play the scarecrow role it was on the verge of being assigned, and that will be explained later. In China's case, the City obviously had let the Japanese mangle the Chinese warlords at will, for during the war it supplied China with just enough war materials for it not to capitulate. The City had fully intended to destroy Japan once the Chinese warlords were done in, and the time had come. China was ready to be transformed into the great market economy that it is today.

In 1944, in Bretton Woods, with the world having gone through the grinder, the City convened all the nations of the world and had no difficulty in creating the first official world currency of reference, the U.S. dollar. All the countries agreed to peg their currency to the dollar and use the dollar as a world reserve currency. The City had achieved the ultimate in financial wizardry, the paper dollar was now as good as gold worldwide.

The State of Israel

There's quite a dilemma here! Either the Rothschilds control world finance or they don't. If they control international finance since 1810, why didn't they put a stop to the Nazi Party's rise and the arms buildup prior to WW11, and the horrendous persecution of the Jews during the war? The answer is that they were the ones who financed all three operations. Let's not forget that the Rothschilds control the three Gorgon sisters that can launch propaganda campaigns at will. Why should we be surprised if, in matters surrounding WWII, the media didn't tell it like it was? The following is a synopsis of the Jewish question and why the City allowed so many atrocities to be committed against the Jews.

First, the three Gorgon sisters exaggerated the numbers when they said that six million Jews were exterminated during WWII while spreading horrendous pictures to support their claim. One of the reasons they did was because the Rothschilds wanted to create the State of Israel, and to do so, they had to shock the conscience of the Christian world that is anti-Semite. So, at the end of the war, not only did they exploit the pictures that were taken of 42,000 Bergen-Belsen camp prisoners who had died of typhus and had been bulldozed into mass graves, and those of the many thousands of emaciated prisoners dying of starvation in the many liberated camps after the war, but they distorted the truth by alleging they were all Jews. What is not made clear is that Roms, homosexuals, misfits, intellectuals, politicians and prisoners of war made up a large portion of the camp populations. The Rothschilds wanted to transfix the whole human race with deeply-felt horror using appalling pictures in order to lay the groundwork for the creation of the State of Israel while guaranteeing that their name would never be associated with WWII, for how could anybody in his right mind think the Rothschilds had anything to do with WWII, a war that was meant to exterminate Jews?

However, what happened to the Jews in Europe during WWII had to be okayed by the Rothschilds, for it was the culmination of a very complex Jewish problem that had been created by the Rothschilds themselves. As early as 1892, the Russian Jews, who had been forever persecuted, were used as pawns when the Rothschilds decided to encourage them to go to Palestine with the intention of creating a homeland for all the Jews of the world, a state that would play the role of a much needed policeman in the oil-rich Middle East. They started financing Jewish immigration to what was to become Israel, in 1892. Up until 1939, there were five waves of immigration, population movements better known as Aliyahs. The last Aliyah occurred just before WWII when approximately 250,000 Jews left Germany and Central and Eastern Europe for Palestine. The Aliyahs were partially successful, and Tel-Aviv, founded in 1909, attests to that. However, Palestine was a very arid place and as disillusioned Jews wandered back into Europe, they spread the word that Palestine was not a very inviting land. It's also a known fact that most of the Jews wanted to reach the West. They all wanted to go to America in spite of the fact that the U.S. had, by now, removed the welcome mat. One thing was certain, Palestine was not a place where the East European Jews wanted to go and they would have to be forced into going if the Jewish homeland was to become a reality.

Since early Russian persecutions against Jews, many of the latter had ended up in Poland, a land of tolerant Catholics who had welcomed the poor lost souls. But prior to WWI, many Jews bent on going west to America, headed westward and landed in Germany where they were exploited and, in many cases, used as slave labor in the German factories that were gearing up for the war. After losing the war, an impoverished Germany wanted to rid itself of the same poor uneducated Polish Jews, for they were no longer needed and were an impediment to the economy. Unfortunately, by this time, not only did America and Germany not want them, but Poland, now run by fascist Catholics, was also refusing to take them back and had even started persecuting those that were in Poland. So, at the end of the day, millions of Jews who had been encouraged to go to Palestine by the Rothschilds were now stagnating in the worst of conditions in Central Europe.

Necessarily, the Jewish problem was front-and-center during the planning of WWII and it is no accident that the City chose to finance the Thule Society, a group of Nazis who believed in a superior Aryan race and who blamed the Jews for Germany's woes. If the City wanted to force the Jews eastward, spirit them northward and later, out of Europe, it was better to finance those who would do a convincing job and who would never be associated with the Rothschild name. In a critical situation, it is better to deal with the devil you know than the one you don't.

The Rothschilds had obviously accepted the fact that during the upcoming WWII, no matter what they did, Jews would greatly suffer along with Germans, Russians, and Poles, and they likely decided to make the best out of this calamitous enterprise by managing it as best they could. If, after the war, many of the Nazi "war criminals" were allowed to live in peace in such places as Brazil, Argentina, and Canada, it can only mean they had rendered great services to the City bankers during the war and were now being protected by their very powerful guardian angel.

All the alleged extermination camps were built in Eastern Europe, mainly in Poland. The City had started building this extravagant network of camps and railways before the fall of Warsaw in 1939. Was the fact that they were all built behind what was to become the Iron Curtain and would be inaccessible to Western scrutiny for the next forty years due to fate, or was it planned? Collective memory is very short and with the Russian scarecrow already in the works, the City no doubt knew that if its "final solution" propaganda was not physically challenged during the Cold War, it would remain unassailable for eternity. No matter, there doesn't seem to be much doubt that the plan was to have the German "war criminals" round up as many Jews as possible and send them eastward to the Polish camps before sending them northward to the labor camps in German occupied territories. After a sure-to-be-horrendous treatment, the poor wretches who survived would welcome the opportunity to go to Palestine and, with a world trembling with revulsion, Israel would become a reality.

The number of Polish Jews who were or were not killed in the conditions we were told is today a much-contested matter. There are two groups with opposing views: the revisionists and the proponents. The history of WWII tells us that six million Jews were exterminated by the Germans in what is called the Holocaust. That seems to be what the Rothschilds have always wanted the world to believe and the three Gorgon Sisters were very successful in doing just that. However, the forensic evidence emanating from revisionists and published since the end of the war, indicates that there was no systematic extermination of the Jews, and certainly nothing close to the six million that were officially declared massacred.

The proponents, on the other hand, contend there were mass graves in extermination camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz, graves that allegedly contained the ashes of millions of cremated bodies. If so, such numbers would have produced hundreds of tons of ashes, along with bone and tooth debris, and the lot would be extremely easy to detect. Ground penetrating radars can easily show where mass graves are dug, even seventy years after the fact. Proving their existence would be a simple matter of going to the alleged areas, grabbing a shovel, taking a few samples, and analyzing their contents in the presence of an impartial team of observers. The matter could thus be laid to rest in the matter of hours and yet the proponents have never agreed to do this.

The revisionists, on the other hand, did conduct clandestine experiments where the alleged mass graves allegedly were and found nothing to support the proponents' thesis. Furthermore, a respected scientist, Germar Rudolph, experimented with the alleged gas chambers in Poland and concluded that no such mass extermination methods were used. Fred Leuchter, an engineer who was in the business of building gas execution chambers in the U.S., clearly demonstrated that Zyclon-B gas, an insecticide that was allegedly used in the alleged extermination camps, had been tested in the U.S. as a possible lethal gas for executions as early as 1929, and that, based on his experience and that of his predecessors, it could have been used to disinfect clothing, but not to kill large numbers of people when used in conditions such as existed in the alleged WWII gas chambers.

It seems the number of Jewish victims was greatly exaggerated, that there were no mass exterminations, and that the strip-gas-incinerate horror stories were more of the strip-shower-delouse variety. To be sure, there were many executions and mobile gassing units were used, but nothing that would account for the death of millions. Before WWII, there were three million Jews in Poland. We know that thirty-five thousand died in the Warsaw Ghetto and that some three hundred thousand were sent on to Treblinka, but the proponents say that the whole three million were exterminated. It's much more likely that most of the three million Polish Jews were forced northward and used in labor camps for the German arms industry. If the proponents keep proposing this preposterous figure as a starting number, they, of course, soon arrive at the six million number put forward by the three Gorgon sisters. However, based on good common sense, the total number of Jews who were murdered or gassed, and who died of starvation and disease, had to be much less. The proponents, in justifying the six million figures, likely ignore the fact that there were only 8 million Jews in the whole world at the time and that four point four million Jews left Europe between 1931 and 1945.

To be sure, the numbers used by the three Gorgon sisters after the war were very misleading. For instance, of the seventy thousand Jews deported from France during the war, only around seven thousand were full-fledged registered French citizens and of those, three thousand returned after the war. In Germany, it was even more blurred, for there was a large population of poor Polish Jews that were unregistered. Of the 140 thousand Jews deported to Poland, we can't know how many were German citizens, but we do know that after the war, some fifteen thousand German Jews along with some 200 thousand East European Jews came back to settle in Allied-occupied Germany. In France, as in Germany, non-nationals were never part of the census and a lot of Jews had been running for their lives. It should be noted, as well, that a lot of those who were exterminated were the very rich. The local French or German nomenklatura no doubt knew a good thing when they saw one, and it is no accident if much of the wealth stolen from the rich French and German Jews ended up in Swiss banks while their owners were exterminated. It may all be a muddle, but could it be there were a lot more survivors than believed and that the horrific Jew round-up throughout Europe was a "resettlement solution" to the very complex problem created by the Rothschilds, who had failed in their attempt to send East European Jews to Palestine years before?

There is no proof that millions were exterminated and buried at Treblinka, Auschwitz, or other such sites during the war. This does not take away from the fact that German psychopaths caused the death of many Jews and the suffering of millions more. It just means that many of the victimized Jews were saved because they were transited through such camps as Treblinka and Auschwitz on their way to the labor camps in the Baltic States and Sweden, and after the war, were shipped to Palestine. Schindler's List is much, much longer than we think.

We mustn't forget that, during WWII, the Eastern front was a deadly place to be, for it claimed twenty million Russians and eight million Germans. During that period, Germans imprisoned and executed Roms, homosexuals, misfits and reactionaries, and prisoners of all kinds, not just Jews. A great number of Jews died in unspeakable ways, but could the word extermination used to describe their fate be a bit too strong? Could the expression "final solution" have been misused in that it was intended to mean that the State of Israel would finally be created and that no Jew would ever again be persecuted?

Some may wonder why scientists who question the existence of mass graves or the use of gas chambers for mass extermination during WWII are accused of inciting hatred toward Jews. Why are people who want to know the truth convicted and even imprisoned? That is very odd behavior indeed on the part of democratic states. Could this be more proof that democracies around the world are totally controlled by the City? If the Jewish bankers find it necessary to prevent forensic research into these matters by jailing scientists, is it because their backs are against the wall? The City is made up of hard-nosed pragmatists and, when doing business, they don't make mistakes like leaving physical evidence lying about or not leaving any when they say they did. Could it be that this time, in their efforts to create the State of Israel, they were a bit careless because they were being ruled by their emotions like the Church prelates of old? Could it be they depended too much on permanent collective amnesia?

No matter, when the State of Israel was created, the Rothschilds had reached one of their main objectives and it is almost certain that an anti-Semite world would not have been as easily won over if the pictures taken at the end of the war hadn't been used so effectively, and if the six million figure hadn't been etched in people's brains. Repeating the word "genocide" and broadcasting that six million Jews had been exterminated, while showing emaciated bodies being bulldozed into huge trenches, definitely had more impact than simply acknowledging the horrific death of a great number of Jews. Why else are the six million figures so sacred? Surely, the appalling death of so many and the horrendous treatment endured by millions more is bad enough.

Geopolitical sandwich

WWII had been needed because, during WWI, Tsar Nicholas made a catastrophic decision by deciding to take command of the armies. Because the Bolsheviks in the Duma and the tsarina with her spiritual adviser Rasputin all opposed the war on the one hand, and because he was not a military field commander on the other, the eastern front was doomed. The bankers in the City had not expected such a development, and since an eastern front hadn't materialized, they had had no choice but to terminate a war that had become a senseless war of attrition. The City bankers decided that if Russia was to be counted on to create an eastern front in the upcoming WWII, and eventually play a scarecrow role in what was to be the mighty USSR after the war, they needed a new strongman at the helm. By 1928 Stalin had replaced Lenin and introduced his five-year plan.

In 1929, Stalin ordered the liquidation of the Kulaks as a social class, and the Red Purges lasted until 1938. In 1922, Lenin had introduced an economic plan that allowed some farmers to sell their crops, and once in power, Stalin completely did away with all that, and millions of Kulaks with their families starved or were slaughtered. According to this egomaniac, for the USSR to catch up with the world, everybody had to work for the state, no questions asked. Naturally, the USSR was transformed into the formidable police state that many of us later came to know, but at the exorbitant cost of 20 million Russian civilians and soldiers killed.

Nonetheless, by 1945, all the old regimes of Europe had been dismantled and the Holy Roman Empire east of the Rhine no longer existed. The pound sterling had been replaced by the dollar as the international reserve currency, Germany and Japan were completely devastated, and China was unified. Moreover, Israel, which was destined to become the gendarme of the Middle East, was on the verge of becoming a state. The hordes of Jews from Eastern Europe hell-bent on reaching America before the war had been pushed back under atrocious conditions and forced to work for the German war machine before being transported from the Baltic states to Palestine at the end of the war.

Prior to WWII, Russia had been merely a shell of a nation. But thanks to the American lend-lease program, the City bankers had armed the nation and Russia had 'won' the war. After the war, the lend-lease program continued and Russia was transformed into a virtual superpower, the USSR, a country that would be perceived as a worthy U.S. foe. The world would henceforth have two major league teams: the U.S. would be team 'A', and the USSR, team 'B'. They were to threaten each other in order to create international tension, but they were never meant to shoot at each other, and never did. Both teams did the bidding of the bankers in the City, and if there's any doubt, all we have to do is look at the role the USSR played in Afghanistan, Egypt, Algeria, Cuba, and other parts of the world before it collapsed like a house of cards. However, the main purpose for having these two teams after the war was to create a monster geopolitical sandwich, a sandwich with Europe in the middle of two bigger-than-life military powers, the U.S. and the USSR. Having lost its will to fight after two world wars, and being constantly threatened with nuclear annihilation, Europe would naturally be eager to unite and protect itself against those two big bullies. As planned, the cold war did not see a single shot fired between the two "superpowers," and the Treaty of Maastricht was signed at about the same time the Berlin wall was torn down in 1989.

Russia was a huge, bankrupt country that had always known a feudal serf system. It had been a nation with no market economy, no infrastructure, and its citizens didn't even have indoor plumbing, yet lo and behold, underdeveloped Russia miraculously became a superpower overnight, and took off for the stars. In no time at all, it had rockets and Sputniks, nuclear bombs and missiles, and it was threatening to blow up the whole world. Intercontinental bombers and nuclear submarines were being built in record number and in record time, or so the Gorgon Sisters told us. The City was obviously building the most impressive scarecrow it could dream up as fast as it could. Russia's MIGS were even equipped with Rolls-Royce engines from England. Russia had a lot of missiles, but we'll never know how many of them were equipped with nuclear warheads. The City was erecting an imaginary apocalyptic structure that would be so threatening and so ever-present in people's minds, especially now that there was a television set in everybody's living room, that it would sow terror in the heart of the citizens of the world. Russia became a phenomenal scarecrow that was used in a masterful propaganda campaign that lasted forty-odd years.

The City had set up the Russian scarecrow for everyone to see. It financed the Sputnik project in 1957 and stuffed the ensuing images in all the television sets in America and the world, thereby turning the USSR into a bigger-than-life foe. When the Berlin wall was built in 1961, and especially when Nikita Khrushchev allegedly gave atomic bomb carrying missiles to Cuba in 1962, the USSR was perceived as the baddest superpower the world could imagine.

As expected, with the U.S. on one side and the USSR on the other, the Europeans were quick to start talking union. As early as 1950, Germany and France decided to unite their steel and coal industries, and in 1957, the same year Sputnik was launched, the Treaty of Rome was signed and the European Economic Union, the EEC, was born. The Berlin wall fell in 1989 and the Treaty of Maastricht was signed in 1992. Now that the European Union had reached the point of no return, the wall was no longer needed. It was demolished while Russia went back to being the feudal serf regime that it had always been. At the time, many wondered about the USSR being little more than smoke and mirrors, but the Gorgon Sisters kept the image alive as best they could. The propaganda techniques used in the case of the USSR scarecrow were so efficient and cost-effective that the City is today successfully using the same technique in North Korea, albeit for other reasons.

If the geopolitical U.S.A.-Europe-USSR sandwich theory seems far-fetched, circumstantial evidence can be had from Louis T. McFadden's infamous report to Congress in November 1934. McFadden was a respected Congressman who had started as a humble bank clerk and had become President of the Pennsylvania Bankers' Association before being elected as a Republican Representative to the sixty-fourth Congress in 1914. Congressman Louis T. McFadden was Chairman of the very prestigious House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920 to 1931. Nonetheless, this extraordinary citizen was accused of being an anti-Semite because he fought the FED.

When he accused the FED of having caused the Great Depression, and also of having funded the Bolshevik Revolution, it was taken very seriously in the City. It got worse when, in 1932, he moved to impeach President Hoover while bringing conspiracy charges against the FED, and when again in 1933, he moved to impeach the Secretary of the Treasury, two assistant Secretaries of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, as well as the officers and directors of the FED's twelve regional banks. His attempts failed, but there were subsequently three attempts on his life. The third one was successful when he died of poisoning on a visit to New York City, in 1936. No order is ever given for drastic action of this kind, but there is always an appropriately placed 'suit' to do what 'needs' to be done.

The City cannot exist without democracy, and democracy cannot exist without the empowerment of the people, therefore, the City bankers are sometimes forced to play with life and death like a heart surgeon. Taking a healthy heart from a dead person, and a sick one from a live person, and switching them, is not something too many people can do. And while the results are not always those hoped for, who can say with any degree of certainty if it's not warranted? The only things that matter in drastic world undertakings such as war is for its motive to be dispassionate and for the goal to be for the good of all, at least in the long term. After two world wars, there was Bretton Woods, and since then, the world is officially under one financial roof. If we believe that, as we should, we also believe that the City bankers can't possibly want to destroy the superb structure that took them 400 years to build. We can be absolutely sure there will never be another major war, that is, unless it's launched from outer space.

The oil patch

Our consumer world is built in large part on oil. The sweetest and cheapest oil comes from the Middle East. Today, the unrest we see in the world and call terrorism stems in large part from its exploitation, and it constitutes a major obstacle standing in the way of the development of the global village. But although the oil sheiks have accumulated mountains of petrodollars, they have no real power, so it won't take as long for Islam to throw in the towel as it did for the Holy Roman Empire.

Because the oil sheiks are bitter relative to the apparent injustices done them by the City bankers, and because they don't want to be overwhelmed by western ways, they manipulate Islam in order to reclaim some power over their destinies. Religion is once more being used as a tool. However, because the City has all the gold and controls all the central banks of the world since the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, it is omnipotent, and it will not let the oil sheiks stop the march of globalization.

The Middle East problem started after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, when a Briton, Mark Sykes, and a Frenchman, Francois Picot, were directed to draw the new borders of the Middle East sheikdoms. In wanting to better organize the exploitation of oil by the USA, France and Britain, the City bankers directed them to draw the map of this very volatile region of the world and divide it into states that cut through ethnic and religious communities. In doing so, they created a geopolitical problem of great proportion. A century on, many Arabs continue to blame the subsequent violence in the Middle East, from the occupation of Palestine to the rise of the Islamic State, on the Sykes-Picot treaty.

The excellent cheap easily extracted oil started being shipped around the world just as the US Dollar was becoming the dominant currency in the world following the creation of the Federal Reserve Board in 1913. At that time, oil was selling for less than five dollars a barrel, and Europe and America couldn't get enough of it.

For 100 years now, the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, have been selling mindboggling amounts of oil to the developed countries. To this day, the Emirates hold more dollars than anybody else in the world, and therein lies the problem. They can build ski slopes in the desert, but they are not allowed to build aircraft carriers and atomic bombs. The only way the oil sheiks can make the petrodollars work is by depositing them in the Central Banks of the World which are directly tied to the City. If they wanted to withdraw their dollars in order to make the Central Banks collapse, their dollars would no longer be worth anything. It is the best catch22 ever devised. The sheiks are very rich, have little power, and are very frustrated.

Terrorism is the result of this frustration. The Emirates are doing everything they can to reclaim their autonomy and free themselves from the City. Though this is an absolute impossibility given that the City owns and runs the financial world, it does not stop them from trying. The sheiks have not only chosen to manipulate Islam in order to achieve their goals, but the problem is further complicated in that Islam is split into Sunnis and Shiites, two factions that behave like deadly enemies.

Following the Sykes-Picot treaty in 1916, the City not only financed the development of the oil industry, but they paid for the oil extracted. The problem, however, was that the sheiks didn't have any say in the matter, and once empowered by the fantastic windfall that ensued, they wanted to redress the situation. The City bankers had foreseen this, and in wanting to police the area, had created the Empire of Iran in 1941 and the State of Israel in 1948. However, they made a big mistake in not paying attention to the fact that Islam was divided into two deadly enemy factions.

Since close to 90% of the 1, 5 billion Muslims in the world are Sunnis and the rest Shiites, Saudi Arabia and Egypt being the two main countries in the Sunni world, we could wonder why the City bankers opted for a Shiite Iran. In 1941, when the City decided to enthrone the Shah of Iran and give him state of the art armament, it seems the City was swayed by the fact that ex-Persia represented one of the greatest cultures that the world had ever seen, and that the sheiks of the peninsula were perceived as mere tribal chiefs.

Since 1694, the City bankers have made three major mistakes. The first was when the original Bank of England bankers forced English trade down everybody's throats which ended up costing them America and the financial control of the world. The second was when the banking dynasty that replaced it put too much trust in Tsar Nicholas II which led to WWII, and the third was when that same dynasty failed to pay attention to the Shiite-Sunni split which ended up costing them the Six-Day War, the Iran-Iraq War and the two Gulf Wars, not to mention all the ongoing terrorist acts that have to be countered on a daily basis.

The City bankers did, however, change their minds after Israel defeated Sunni Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967, when it became obvious that the Shah of Iran was not able to hold his end of the bargain and assert his authority in the Middle East. In 1979, the bankers decided to back the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) instead of the Shiites (Iran). They had the Ayatollah Khomeini depose the Shah of Iran on the one hand and encouraged Saudi Arabia to back Saddam Hussein and make him the strong man in Iraq on the other.

The Iraq-Iran War followed in 1980, and it turned out to be a long war of attrition that ended in a stalemate. Not only was Saddam Hussein an incapable leader unable to defeat the Shiites of Iran, but he was becoming an unmanageable despot. He therefore had to go, and it took two Gulf Wars to get rid of him, one in 1990 and another in 2003. A media campaign was sufficient to get America to launch the 1st Iraq War codenamed Desert Storm in 1990, but the negative results of that war that had followed the apocalyptic Vietnam War made Americans wary. It took the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing of 1995, and 9/11 in 2001 to get America to launch the 2nd Iraq War in 2003.

Today, Saddam is gone, the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia) are slowly reasserting their authority in the region, while the City is encouraging a Muslim diaspora in order to have Islam integrate the global village. By having millions of Muslims immigrate to Europe that badly needs manpower, the terrorist elements of Islam will gradually be diluted into the mainstream world population. The sheiks will have less influence, and Islam will become an acceptable religion just like in the case of Christianity after the Holy Roman Empire's demise.

For now, the recalcitrant Sunnis and Shiites are spreading terror in order to have their way, and there is a lot of collateral damage whereby innocent people suffer. But the good news is that the Sunni and Shiite leaders will be forced to throw in the towel in the not too distant future because the global village concept is irreversible. Some Emirates have already started adopting western ways, and it's only a matter of time before their leaders become 'suits'.

V – ADAPTING TO DEMOCRACY

Self-empowerment vs mass-empowerment

By now, some of us may be convinced that we live in the best of all possible worlds, that there will never be another world war, and that the final obstacle to globalization, the oil patch unrest, will soon become a figment of our collective memory. If so, we have Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the greatest man who ever lived to thank for that. Yes, we are in safe hands and free to enjoy a great quality of life like at no other time in human history. This is true in spite of the fact that the Gorgon Sisters brandish the crop more than ever, in wanting to make us believe just the opposite in order to keep us in line. They have no choice, for during the time the dynasty of bankers in the City has had full control of world finance, that is from 1944 to today, it was so successful that world population went from 2 to almost 8 billion. And because the world of credit spawned a world of leisure, the Gorgon Sisters are solicited more than ever. It's more proof that our world is financially controlled by Mayer's dynasty. If we are persuaded that it's indeed the case, we have to also believe that the City is prepared to defend its great creation with tooth and nail. I personally want everybody to believe that they do and what is best for the dynasty of bankers in the City is what is best for us all. If we agree, we will all lead less stressful lives.

We are unfortunately overwhelmed by mass-empowerment, an illusion of power that evolved as jobs were created in early 20th century. That's when we started putting money in our pockets and had access to credit for the very first time. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a great family man who was born in 1744 in a ghetto in Frankfurt where he lived all his life in complete anonymity, most certainly didn't foresee this outcome. His main concern was most assuredly to empower individuals by giving them access to credit and a decent life, not to turn them into victims of empowerment. If we believed that his dynasty still stands on that position, we would be more inclined to adopt the values that make us happy, what makes all living beings happy, that is creating an enduring family group and living according to our natural talents. It has been said that if one does what he loves doing for a living, he will never work a day in his life. When, not so long ago, we foraged for food and water around the clock, we had no time to think and things were simpler. However, in a world where food and water, not to mention credit, are available in abundance, we have no choice but to find what we love to do if we want to be happy. We must therefore stop thinking short term like we are genetically programmed to do.

Regardless, whether we believe in the existence of Mayer's dynasty or not, we can't deny that in the last 100 years, humans have been seriously empowered as a specie. Democracy, or the world of credit as I call it, is the greatest gift mankind ever received. This ultimate political system made credit available to the lowest rungs of society. Mayer and his banking dynasty gave mankind the means to know freedom, security, prosperity and leisure beyond belief. Unfortunately, we have stopped being self-empowered in the process, the root cause being that we live in a world of leisure for which we are not genetically programmed, a world that tears us away from family, fauna and flora.

Democracy, or access to credit, has turned out to be a double-edged sword. In the last hundred years, the fantastic mass-empowerment that it provided mankind has almost completely supplanted self-empowerment. As we moved from the country to the city, we started disconnecting from the natural world and became intoxicated with empowerment to the point where we ignore our true nature. We want a bigger salary, a bigger house, bigger car, and more of everything instead of wanting what makes us happy. Our libido drives us and we are totally preoccupied by wanting others to see us as sexy, smart, important, young, rich, and beautiful beings, all the while harboring a poor self-image.

The world of credit as we know it today was created in 1810, but as far as we mere mortals are concerned, it only got going in early 20th century when electricity and the FED came along. When television followed, series like 'Little house on the prairie' portrayed what self-empowerment was all about. Bringing in a crop, raising healthy farm animals, feeding the family, and building a homestead for sheltering a family and welcoming friends and neighbours were fulfilling activities. Our ancestors worried at times, but it never constituted stress, that is, the permanent nebulous state of anxiety many of us experience today.

Mass-empowerment actually started in 325 CE when the newly entrenched and official Roman state religion, the Christian religion, gained political control of the Western Roman Empire and invaded it like a hermit crab. Gradually, the Church's anointed absolute kings of divine right ruled over Europe, forcing the Nicene Creed down everybody's throat and committing mindboggling atrocities in the process. In spite of all that, common man was valorized for the first time. Christians were told they were created in the image of God and went to heaven if they obeyed the 10 Commandments. If they didn't, they ended up in burning hell for eternity, it was up to them. Unfortunately, or more exactly, fortunately, because the Holy See and its Kings of Divine Right were so intolerant and nearsighted, they made two deadly enemies, the Jews and the Huguenots.

These two persecuted groups managed to join forces in Amsterdam in 1602 before moving to the City, in London, in 1688, where they established the world's first democracy. However, it was a limited democracy in that only English merchants and privileged citizens voted and had access to credit. It was only when Nathan Mayer Rothschild took over the Bank of England in 1810 that ordinary citizens started having access to credit. In early 20th century, with electrical power reaching cities and towns, and Mayer's dynasty having created the FED, the consumer world went into high gear. Since then, world population went from 1 to almost 8 billion. Today, just about everybody earns a salary, or, in other words, has access to credit. Paradoxically, the more people have the wherewithal to do what makes them happy, the less they take that path and the more stressed they become.

Like Christianity, Democracy has always been romanticized, and most of us don't know how they were created in 325 CE and 1689 CE respectively, and that's part of our problem. If we accept the fact that intelligence is a consequence of our breaking the time barrier, and that the more we are able to connect with the past in order to learn from it and make for a better future the more intelligent we are, we must conclude that we are going backwards. Most of us live in the present and let our minds drift into historical amnesia, we are ever more empowered by easy access to credit, and fed ever more information pigswill by the Gorgon Sisters via our smartphones. Instead of trying to understand how Christianity and Democracy were created and what our real values are, we whirl around brightly lit smartphones just like moths around light bulbs, forever risking getting our wings singed.

Self-empowerment has to do with doing what fulfills, whereas mass-empowerment has to do with doing what shows. While basic human values are those of all living things and are fulfilling, societal values are moral in nature and are simply meant to make the group function. The secret would be to learn to live with the smartphone while identifying and giving top priority to our basic human values. We're not genetically programmed for a world of comfort and leisure, and since we still march to the beat of 'survival of the fittest', we always want more, bigger, better and so on, and neglect the essentials of a happy life. Families are more associated with fission than fusion, we know fauna and flora from what's in our plate, and we fail to make a point of finding and giving priority to our natural talents.

When we were little burrowing animals, around 65 million years ago, we were constantly wary of the dangers in and around our burrow and in the sky above. We grabbed any food at hand and reproduced using the wham-bam thank you ma'am method. We were constantly on the alert and permanently stressed. Today, we feel threatened by the real or perceived threats of the whole world via our smartphone, we grab junk food on the go, and we use the wham-bam thank you ma'am approach to sex more than ever.

All living beings on earth are beautiful and fulfilled when they are pursuing nurturing or creative activities, so that's what we should strive for if we want to free ourselves from stress. Creating a solid and lasting family group and using our true talents in order to earn a living, should definitely be our main aspirations. In the last 100 years, the City bankers have created an environment that allows us to easily do just that, yet our primal instincts make us do the exact opposite, the too many divorces that produce hordes of emotionally crippled children and the ongoing battle for higher paying jobs being sufficient proof.

The 20th century has afforded us great freedoms and comforts, but that's turned out not to be such a good thing because it's not in sync with our genetic makeup. In the last centuries, we may have learned to eat and drink properly and dispose of our body waste, but we haven't learned to reproduce properly because it's deemed to be a lowly animal thing that we, as intelligent beings, find quite vulgar and demeaning when not sexually aroused. We can't escape the fact that we are 100% animal and that we must answer to our ANS, and it's to our advantage to accept those facts, for only then will we start dealing properly with our libido. Because we now live in a world of leisure, our libido drives us more than ever, yet instead of teaching our kids how their libido will soon force them to make babies and preparing them to face up to their responsibilities when they become teens, we, as well as society at large, pussyfoot around the subject. If the teen is aware that his libido is a 'natural selection' tool meant to force him to make babies and if he is aware what that involves from A to Z, he'll be more apt to behave responsibly, and who knows, maybe choose self-empowerment as exemplified by a Charles Ingalls over mass-empowerment typified by a Donald Trump.

There is a trick on how to wean ourselves from mass-empowerment. First, we must accept that R&D (research and development) started being financed in a systematic way when the Huguenots and the Sephardim created the Bank of England in 1694 and that the financing of R&D became international when Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his son Nathan took over the Bank of England in 1810. Since then, every major project in the world must be financed, thus okayed, by that dynasty in order to be realized. That dynasty gave birth to democracy as we know it today, and if we believe that, we are half-way there. The hard part for us is to believe that we are the beneficiaries not the initiators of that wondrous credit system. Every time we take a shower, turn on the lights or use our GPS and smartphone we should feel grateful to that dynasty. The bankers in the City are the ones who decide to finance a Hubble or a Panama Canal, all we do is pay to use it. We of course pay taxes and user fees when using the Channel Tunnel, the Internet or our smartphone, but we should be very happy to do so. The secret to becoming serene and enjoying this great world of credit is to believe what has just been said. If we can muster enough humility to do so, we can reclaim our self-empowerment status. 'Think positive' should be replaced by 'think talent', no matter how modest our talents are.

The pill

The more we develop skills that self-empower us, the less stressed we are and the better we feel. As a child, when I saw my uncle admiring his field of golden wheat swaying in the sun before bringing in the crop, I saw a fulfilled man. In winter, when, in the presence of his loved ones, he sat around the dinner table where the products of his farm were being served, he was a happy man. But those feelings have nothing to do with mass-empowerment. Mass-empowerment has turned out to be very detrimental to human development in that it supplanted self-empowerment. The conundrum is that while mass-empowerment should enhance self-empowerment, it does just the opposite. We find ourselves in the best of all possible worlds, a world of leisure, just to discover that we are not genetically suited for such a life.

When the world of credit got rolling in the latter part of the 20th century, women were the first real victims of mass-empowerment. Because they had always been subjected to male domination, they were understandably overwhelmed by the fact they could earn money and have some degree of independence. Nonetheless, not knowing what to do, they decided to get emancipated through their man. In order to get social status, it was deemed preferable to seduce a pseudo alpha male rather than look for a genuine life partner with whom to build and share a family life. Frustration set in, and they adopted the badge of femininity, a symbol that heralded a sexual revolution that is ongoing. However, the sexual revolution we're in is turning out to be a real mess because it doesn't favor parity of the sexes, quite the contrary, and doesn't address the key issue of how to deal with our libido.

In early 20th century, mass-empowerment developed in tandem with the advent of electricity, tap water, toilets and jobs. In 1913, the bankers in the City created the US Federal Reserve Board, which made the dollar an international currency, and America, the biggest economy on earth. With this great market economy firmly in hand, the City could now proceed with its globalization agenda. It was time to bulldoze the Ancien Regime countries of the world, in what was left of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe, as well as Tsarist Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Japan and China. Although the two World Wars that followed created havoc in the existing market economies, the result was positive for women in that they finally got good paying jobs. Furthermore, after WWII, because America was now considered the Eldorado of the world, everybody wanted to go there in order to create wealth, and a lot was created in a very short period of time.

People experienced greater comforts, and long-term prospects looked good. However, as mass-empowerment took root, it was the males who got the diplomas, the managerial responsibilities, and the investing and inventing opportunities. Males were cast in the 'father knows best' role, and that didn't augur well for the females. Although some women got good paying jobs, most were of the office secretarial staff and factory production line variety. The parents wanted their sons to have a good education, get a good job, make good money, and marry a good woman, while for the daughters, it sufficed to get a good man, a 'somebody'. The world continued to be very macho because women geared their ambitions to that of their men.

However, in 1920, after the passing of the 19th amendment, women got the right to vote, own property, and manage their bank account without their husband's permission. After WWII, there was a move to the suburbs and the good life, and that's when the real trouble started. It was the beginning of a world of comfort, leisure and plenty, a world for which our specie is absolutely not genetically programmed. The desperate housewife was being born.

However, women had to wait for the 1960's and the advent of the pill in order to be emancipated, at least sexually. That's when they were freed to some extent from male sexual domination and abuse. For the first time in 3 million years they could claim that they were in charge of their own body, and free to decide whether to have children or not. But though the females did gain some sexual freedom, social parity remained very much out of reach.

Genetically, women are programmed to get the best male with the best genes, as dictated by natural selection. But when we became intelligent and left the world of natural selection some three million years ago, though our genetic make-up remained unchanged, the relationship between males and females took an abrupt turn for the worse. Women lost their privileged status in that they stopped getting the services of the best genitor available, the alpha male. Not only did more lower ranking males get at the females, but they became selective as well. When the pill came along, women unwittingly attempted to go back to the good old natural selection days where they were the ones who more or less chose and got the best genitor. But unfortunately, in trying to reclaim their social role of old, they decided to do so through seduction. They didn't know at the time that fighting for emancipation by attracting pseudo alpha males with their badge of femininity would not only be a missed opportunity, but a disastrous social experiment. They didn't know that the altruistic alpha male of pre-sapiens times no longer existed.

The male entrepreneurs were quick to exploit that sexual aberration by taking charge of the fashion world. The badge of femininity, as a symbol of independence and success, was adopted with a vengeance when technicolor first hit the big screen in 1936 and especially the small screen in 1966. In the process, women naturally morphed into Barbies, and it made many heterosexual and homosexual males of the fashion and cosmetic world very rich. By wearing her mask, the female couldn't hope to find a partner who was her equal and a job worthy of her potential, and she was an easy prey for any pseudo alpha male who came along. Establishing a meaningful equal relationship became almost an impossibility. The female certainly wasn't aware that wearing the badge in order to get a man was not only ugly and vulgar, but counterproductive as well. To be fair, the pill had hit the market like a tsunami, and overwhelmed, women had responded instinctively by looking for an alpha male like they had always had in the world of natural selection millions of years before. Unfortunately, they weren't aware that the alpha male of old had volatized along with the world of natural selection and had been replaced by self-interested and self-centered imitations.

It now seems obvious that if women are to achieve social equality and parity, they must discard the badge of femininity as an absolute prerequisite. They not only have to fight tooth and nail for equal education and equal jobs for equal pay, but they have to focus on getting free universal child care, parental leave, and having access to pro-choice clinics. Women would be well advised to stop making their quest for alpha males a top priority, for altruistic alpha males are long gone. The alpha male of old was concerned with the welfare of the group, but that altruistic male is no more. The female should look for an ordinary loving man like her in order to share the joys of family life on an equal footing instead of looking for a pseudo-alpha dominating male, be he an Adonis.

To be sure, in our world of leisure, it's hard to find a partner with whom we can establish a lifelong relationship based on trust, honesty, and respect, but if equality and parity are to be achieved, women have to stop using sexuality as a tool and throw their badge of femininity in the trash can. If one feels the need to show or prove that he or she is a man or a woman, something has to be terribly flawed in that person. Marlboro Man, the macho man par excellence, was dethroned years back, surely Barbie, the bimbo, can be as well.

Badge of femininity

Before breaking the time-barrier and becoming intelligent, that is, in the pre-sapiens era, all women got the services of a genuine alpha male who fought for that right. Sexually, the females were all fulfilled while most of the males were frustrated. But after we left the world of natural selection, women experienced a total reversal of fortune. That's when the lower order males found ways of outwitting the alpha male and started forcing themselves on the physically weaker females. To make matters worse, males not only associated sex with pleasure, but they also wanted as many healthy male offspring as possible in order to help them hunt and fight off their rivals. Moreover, as natural selection waned, the genetic pool deteriorated, and males became more selective, preferring females endowed with good childbearing attributes, that is, young with big bosom and generous hips. When all is said and done, the day we broke the time barrier some three million years ago, it was not a good day for the females.

Women never had a chance to fight back until the great wonderful world of credit got rolling in the early part of the 20th century. That's when they started moving to the cities and working in factories and offices. They earned pitiful wages, often pinched by their fathers, but they still managed to put the odd nickel aside in order to buy silk stockings or a coveted tube of lipstick. They felt that if they painted up to look young and beautiful like the kept women depicted in paintings hanging on museum walls, or the public sexy women in Hollywood films, they would have a better chance of getting an alpha male like they were genetically programmed to have. In spite of the fact they were using a vulgar, unnatural and hopeless approach, there was hardly a female who didn't adopt the badge of femininity.

The badge of femininity consists of wearing lipstick and mascara, showing cleavage and enhancing the buttocks with the help of high heels. It is perceived as a badge of independence and freedom, and because humans are apes, younger females can't wait to do like their seniors and be 'liberated'. Today, if a woman walks into her workplace without her badge, she will be challenged by the other females and accused of being slovenly. It's a form of competition. If the women with less sex appeal force the pretty foxy ones to paint up like they themselves do, the physical differences between them will be less noticeable. But it gets worse. Males also get involved in this competition because they too are apes. Men despise makeup for the most part, but if females make a point of wearing the badge of femininity, they want the one who has the most attractive one. Her badge becomes his badge. Makeup is ludicrous to the point where women don't want to be seen not wearing any by their mates when they go to bed at night, and make sure they have it on before their mates see them in the morning. The bottom line is, who, at the personal level, be they husbands or children, can feel fuzzy-wuzzy towards a woman wearing a mask, and in the workplace, take a made-up clown or a bimbo seriously. Women must reclaim their natural look, walk with their head held high, and find a real mate who loves them for who and what they are. That will not happen if they make a point of wearing the badge 24/7.

Women want parity, and it's totally warranted, but how can it be achieved? Let's say an employer wants to hire an accountant. The first candidate is a female wearing the badge of femininity, the second is a male wearing tight pants and displaying a hairy chest, and the third one is a nondescript male wearing a suit. Assuming they are all equally qualified, the first one will be hired if the employer wants to decorate the office, the second will be hired if he happens to like pretty boys, but the third will be hired strictly because he's an accountant. To be sure, there are situations where men and women are not meant to compete, but in our world of robotics and AI, women definitely can compete in most areas without having to look like clowns or playing the role of bimbos. It is insane to want to show that one is a woman with all the necessary attributes of reproduction, because a real man knows a real woman when he sees one, and it doesn't matter whether she's wearing firefighting gear or not.

Many would dearly like to help women achieve parity and have them take their rightful place, for it would make for a better world. Needless to say, if we lived in a matriarchate like elephants do, or returned to the world of our wild cousins, the problem wouldn't exist. But that's not the case, and the problem at hand is to find a way to reverse the perceived need to wear the badge of femininity. Maybe doing things like legislating against beauty contests for little girls would be a start. Who remembers JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old pageant winner, who was found strangled in the basement of her house? What about the 'glitz pageants' where prepubescent bodies wear hair extensions, heavy makeup, press-on nails, and high heeled shoes. The enhancements are not only encouraged, they are necessary to win. Judges will even deduct points for contestants who don't wear teeth covers that hide their jack-o-lantern smiles. Many good Christian women don't see anything wrong turning their 6-year-old daughter into a sex object. If the ordinary mother remains undecided, she should ask herself why she doesn't allow her 10-year-old daughter to wear make-up. If she is intellectually honest, she will soon realize why, and it may help her discard her own badge.

Nonetheless, there is hope in that a growing number of women, who have reached their rightful place in the scientific, academic and medical fields, refuse to wear the badge of femininity. It seems that education is the key to the true emancipation of women. We can never go back to the world of natural selection where genuine alphas do what's best for the group, so, women have to learn to find a mate on the basis of honesty, trust and compatibility, and they can't do that unless they discard their badge of femininity and show their true self.

Since women are the main victims of the ongoing twisted sexual revolution, they are more apt to want to initiate change, and if change is to occur, educating young girls is the best way to get started. If girls are made fully aware that we are no longer part of the world of natural selection, if they understand how they are driven by their ANS (autonomous nervous system), and if they know how this great wonderful world of credit was created, they'll naturally want to take advantage of it by establishing lasting relationships based on basic human values, and the boys will have no choice but to follow.

P.S.

Women wear the badge because they don't like their self image, and the badge makes them feel pretty and feminine. Since they aspire to be like everyone else, and since wearing the badge is an accepted world-wide calamity, they just wear it without thinking how vulgar and unnatural it is. As we go forward in this consumer world, the more phoney or virtual we become. The women don't even know that they wear the badge in order to get a pseudo male alpha just like the public and kept women of the world that she sees on museum walls and the big screen seem to get. Since all perceived successful seductresses wear the badge, why not her?

On the other hand, males don't mind looking at racoon-eyed ladies with fellatio-inviting lips who let their boobs hang out while jacking up their butts with high heels, and they'll diddle them every chance they get. They are not too fond of all that messy stuff they wear, but since most girls wear make-up, they just try to get the most striking one, mostly to impress their buddies. If a girl wears the badge, they know she's sexually alert and won't undermine their male ego. But if they see one without the badge, they just know she's a ball-breaker and steer clear. Males will take the path of least resistance every chance they get, being quite content just to have sex. So why do women keep wanting to be ugly bimbos and keep insisting on playing on this uneven playing field, when being natural offers such great advantages. Bimboism and parity are definitely incompatible.

ANS

If we study group behavior among our chimpanzee cousins, and if we accept the fact that we were exactly like them prior to our breaking the time barrier, we can learn a lot about ourselves. In the wild, alpha males dominate physically in an altruistic way. They play an important role in the survival of the specie by spreading the best available genes while protecting the females and their offspring. But it's the wily alpha females who most often lead the group to food sources and water holes and teach the extended family members the necessary survival skills.

Since becoming intelligent some three million years ago, the female's role has changed, but genetically, she hasn't. She is as invaluable as she ever was to the specie, but it seems that the opinion she has of herself has seriously deteriorated, and we should want to remedy that. To my way of thinking, when explaining the injustices done to the female, the three main ones have to do with our breaking the time barrier, with her reproduction lifespan, and the Christian Church's perennial attitude towards her gender.

We have already seen how unkind nature was to women, how after breaking the time barrier and leaving the world of natural selection, the males dominated them. But before I attempt to show how her reproduction cycle and the Church Fathers played a role in dampening her aspirations for freedom and equality, I think it would be helpful to better understand our ANS.

All vertebrates have a reptilian brain sitting atop the spinal cord consisting mainly of the hypothalamus which links the endocrine and nervous systems. It's the control center where the autonomous nervous system (ANS) that regulates without our conscious intervention bodily functions, such as heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, defecation, and sexual arousal, is located. If we want to focus on our human values and eventually establish parity between the sexes, we have to become more familiar with that primitive brain that can only be synced up with our human brain if we intervene consciously.

When the dinosaurs disappeared some 65 million years ago, we were small burrowing mammals and we lived by our fight-or-flight and feed-or-breed instincts. Danger was everywhere, in our burrows and in the sky above, and the constant stress we experienced was such that we didn't live much longer than rodents do today. However, as our brain developed, we learned to sort things out, and as our daily survival stress was reduced, we grew and lived longer. We acquired a limbic brain, then a cortex and neocortex grafted themselves onto the limbic brain, and as little as 3 million years ago, standing on our own two feet, we had the wherewithal to break the time barrier as explained earlier. And though we were no longer subjected to the forces of 'natural selection' and 'survival of the fittest', we continued to be driven by them.

Though we learned to live in sync with some aspects of our ANS, we never learned to deal efficiently with our sex drive. Having become aware of the exquisite and gratuitous pleasure that an orgasm procures, and with ever more time on our hands, when we became aroused sexually, we just didn't try very hard to put on the brakes. Nonetheless, right up to the 20th century, we depended on the family for survival, and because we didn't want to be shunned by it, we felt obliged to use some degree of self-discipline in controlling our sexual urges. But when mass-empowerment took hold in the 20th century, fashion ads, social media, celebrity lifestyles and Hollywood films seriously encouraged us to adopt lascivious and superficial behaviors. We still follow the group, but the group has become virtual and individuals relate to each other through their libido, and often, virtually.

We can't escape the fact that sex is forced upon us by our ANS and that it procures us intense pleasure, and if it didn't, we wouldn't make babies and we'd die out as a specie. It is all the more reason to be aware of this archaic breed-or-feed instinct that's taking over our lives, and to establish educational programs to help us channel it. Sex is a lot of fun and indispensable, but we have to put it in its proper place by using the intelligence we acquired as humans. Why do teachers, mothers and fathers have so much trouble explaining sex to children?

Ask any 10-year-old child what he or she thinks about dad sticking his penis into mom in order to make a baby, and he will quickly respond by saying that it's gross. Perhaps that may be the reason untold generations have refused to talk openly about sex with children, but perhaps it's simply because adults unwittingly want to cover up the fact that they think the act of penetrating another's body is vulgar and demeaning. Sticking a penis or a tongue in the vagina, the anus or the mouth of another isn't esthetic. Hollywood, the media, and even the Christian Church make it sound attractive or at least acceptable for their own purposes, and because we're intelligent apes and don't want to be labeled prudish, we adopt and even defend those view points. The end result is that though the ugliness of the act makes us uncomfortable, we act as though it's cool. However, the only time we are totally in tune with our sex drive is when we're sexually aroused, a time when we are forced to blindly answer nature's call.

For the most part, horniness is brought on independently of our will, and when men are in that state, they may even go so far as to kill someone who stands in the way of their penetrating the targeted body and injecting their semen. To be sure, women also display despicable behaviors when in estrus and determined to get a man. So, how can we explain such behavior except to say that it's our ANS that's forcing us to reproduce. If we sometimes go completely out of control and adopt horrid behaviors in order to comply with that imposition, who's to blame? Traditionally, the Cristian Church tried to control sexual behavior by insisting on no sex before marriage, pretending sex is love, dressing it up socially, and using the condemning-confessing-repenting-forgiving solution, but those are all band-aid approaches. We would be much better off if we faced the problem head on in a scientific and objective manner through education. That way, we could deal with sex like we deal with food. A shared meal prepared with patience and with tasty natural ingredients is more rewarding than stuffing one's face with a bag of chips on the run.

In spite of the sexual act being ugly, we have to admit that some courtship displays preceding it are breathtakingly beautiful. When we write love poems, slow dance, walk hand in hand, whisper sweet nothings to each other, hug and look at each other languorously, what could be more beautiful? And later, is it necessary to mention the boundless joy felt when a newborn comes into the world? But the middle game where one's body penetrates or is penetrated by another is ugly, no matter what the fashion magazines or Hollywood tell us, show us, or imply regarding the matter. Observing someone penetrate the mouth, the anus or the vagina of another with his body parts is no prettier than observing the ejection of urine, excrement or vomit through these same orifices.

Nonetheless, excluding our sex drive, we did learn over time to deal with some of the ANS impositions that affect our daily lives. The use of knives and forks is today common, and we no longer act like pigs when we eat. And what about toilets and bathrooms that made urination and defecation banal a mere century ago? Nonetheless, we definitely haven't learned to deal with fornication where a partner is indispensable. We willingly give in to it if we're horny, drunk or drugged, that is, when we don't have to think about it, but because we still refuse to face the issue in a rational manner, we continue to make a mess of it. Thanks in part to the sacrament of matrimony instituted by the Christian Church, we even use the words sex and love interchangeably in order to deal with the grossness of the sexual act being forced upon us. And if we're not sure of how we feel about the sexual act, all we have to do is picture the next-door neighbor copulating with his wife, and that should give us the answer.

Taming our ANS

When Christianity was created in 325CE on the premise that we were godlike creatures, not animals, it did everything it could to make us ignore our ANS. Our Judeo-Christian world was built in a scientific vacuum, and if science plays such a large part in our world today, it's thanks to the Huguenots and Sephardim who created the Bank of England in 1694, and Mayer Amschel Rothschild, an Ashkenazi, who created the Bank of North America in 1781. Those bankers, sure of being repaid for the first in the history of man, then invested in R&D at will, a period that became known as the Industrial Revolution. Today, the world of plenty being the result of those investments, most of us are mesmerized by the artificial good life that is being flaunted all around us, and ignore that we are mere mortals that must answer to our ANS on a daily basis like all animals on earth. It is almost impossible to put ourselves in the situation of the Andes Crash Disaster where normal well-educated people were forced to resort to cannibalism in order to survive.

We are genetically programmed to go to extremes to survive, and we will eat our fellow man, drink our urine, and have sex in most violent ways in order to do so. In order to survive, we have a few minutes to get air, a few days to get water, and a month or so to get food. But because the 20th century has given us a world of plenty, and since we now have easy access to water and food and have plenty of outlets for urination and defecation, we take those bodily functions for granted.

Of the five bodily functions that demand our constant attention, hunger, thirst, defecation, urination and sexual drive, our libido creates the most havoc in our lives because it is the only one that we haven't learned to deal with it. As recently as two hundred years ago, we spent most of our time looking for food, water and shelter, and we thought of sex in a timely fashion. Today, it's a complete reversal, we have a lot of time on our hands and we spend an inordinately amount of that time dealing with everything relating to our sex drive and wondering how attractive others think we are. Needless to say, it creates quite an imbalance in our lives, and it's causing us a lot of grief.

We started using tools around 3 million years ago, and by the time we mastered the art of fire making, around 1mya, we were still hunters and gatherers. The ability to make tools and fire was a considerable advance in our evolution, but it was only when we decided to settle down, some 20 thousand years ago, that we started being the humans we are today. That's when we unwittingly started to respond to our ANS in an organized way. We began planting and growing food in order to store it and avoid famine down the road. We built shelters close to a good water supply, on land where things grew, and realizing that there was strength in numbers, we started associating with other groups.

As hamlets grew, humans soon realized that they had to do something about their body waste. Stench and pestilence had to be dealt with if they planned on living together. As nomads, it was something they had never thought about. But now, they had to think not only about growing food and having a steady supply of clean water, but also of getting rid of human waste that fouled their living space. However, it was only until very recently, at the very end of the 19th century, that thirst, hunger, urination and defecation, our main ANS imperatives, started being dealt with in a systematic way. That was when electricity made tap water and water treatment plants common place and when grocery stores abounded.

Providing easy access to electricity, clean water, toilets, wages and grocery stores, cities attracted poor people who had previously scratched a meager existence on small plots of land out in the country. People fled the countryside for the city because they were blinded by the promise of an easy life. What they did not know was that they were about to exchange their core values relating to self-empowerment for superficial values relating to mass-empowerment. Genetically programmed to live in a world of survival, they were choosing to live in a world of leisure, a world in which they were not meant to be.

Every living creature wants clean water, clean air, good food, a family, as well as a shelter to protect that family, because these are its essential values. When we, as intelligent beings, obtain this by the sweat of our brow and by our determination and our creativity, we have the feeling of being fulfilled. However, to get there, we have to feed our domestic animals, produce our own food, make our own clothes, build our own homes, in short, lead a hard life 24/7. It is therefore not surprising that we left the countryside for the city where we could enjoy an easier life. But in doing so, we were trading our essential values for superficial ones, we were leaving the world of producers for that of consumers. The effort required to feed ourselves by tilling the soil was now replaced by the effort to earn money, and the fear of seeing a crop destroyed by bad weather was replaced by that of the uncertainty of not being able to balance the family budget at the end of the month.

Therefore, money became the focal point of our existence. And as we have seen, democracy is based on credit. Parliamentarians, big corporations, and the working poor all want to start projects or buy material things with money they haven't yet earned. Everyone wants credit, and credit originates in the City. From there, a huge virtual or electronic pipeline lets the credit flow to the different countries, then the different companies to finally reach the working people who receive a salary. Since credit or salaries instill a feeling of empowerment in people, from the CEO on down to the humble worker, everybody always want more credit or a higher salary in order to do or buy more things. Therefore, credit or salaries encourage instant gratification and undermine our core values.

To make matters worse, once established in an urban environment, we were ever more stressed by the uncertainty of promotions, by the threat of layoffs and firings, and by the monotony of repetitive work. We no longer had the satisfaction of growing our own food, raising our own animals, making our own clothes with all the effort that these activities involve. We no longer felt empowered by our efforts, we simply had the satisfaction of earning more so that we could spend more. Our core values were definitely on the wane.

Today, with lots of free time, and living in a connected world, we fall back on our libido in order to fill the void and combat the frustration caused by the world of credit. We spend an inordinate amount of time on social medias talking about ourselves and our sexuality. Everything revolves around the poor image we have of ourselves or the image we would like others to see, and it has become catastrophic. We absolutely must tame our ANS, or at least learn to manage our libido, the function which is responsible for our malaise. To do so, it would be a good idea to accept the fact that our libido takes on too much importance in our idle lives, and try to understand why. Then, establishing a life partnership with a loving person with whom we are intimate, discovering our talents by all possible means and earning a living using those talents, living in harmony with the flora and fauna, learning to eat and drink wholesome ingredients while refusing to consume any addictive substance, and finally, being regularly physically active, would be good ways to reconnect to our essential values.

Sex & Christianity

As social groups developed thousands of years ago, the wilier males as well as the pseudo-alphas who were by now more of the bully persuasion, exploited the weaker members of the group, which included men, women and children. Some became warlords, and had their serfs form warring parties in order to grab land, women and anything else of value for the lord's good pleasure. The men fought and hunted for the master while the women and children were used as field hands. The women were treated as chattel. As long as the prettier ones gave him sexual pleasure, for the lord had the right to deflower whom he pleased, and as long as they were healthy and strong enough to work his fields and make healthy babies, they were kept and fed.

Thankfully, as the lords increased in power and number, some of their male offspring had more idle time, more time to think. This led to the development of reading and writing, which became a source of perceived mystic power. Forever wanting greater power by having a greater number of subjects, the pseudo alphas decided to organize their serfs in a more efficient and orderly fashion. This led to the creation of religions, for those who possessed the written word were thought to be in contact with a higher being. Instilling fear in humans by saying that a god or gods would judge them after death and send the docile ones to heaven and the unruly ones to hell, was such a successful tactic that it is still in use today. First came Judaism 4kya, followed by Hinduism 3kya, Christianity in 325CE, and Islam in 610CE.

With regards to the Christian Church, the Founding Fathers decided that their religion, the Roman state religion, would apply to all. So, they proceeded to force everyone in the Western Roman Empire to accept the Nicene Creed. They decreed that the new Apollonius, the one they now called Christ, was the Son of God and not a prophet like the Essenes had always believed. In the process, the Christian Church perpetrated one of the worst blood baths in history as millions of ex-Essenes, referred to as barbarians in our history books, not being inclined to accept this new doctrine, were forced to do just that. However, as the Christian Church built infrastructure throughout the Roman Empire, which included monasteries, convents and churches, the poor felt protected and connected for the first time in their history and were quite willing to believe the new breed of preachers. After all, the new Christ was only an improved version of Apollonius, the one they had always revered.

The next step was to anoint Absolute Kings of Divine Right in order to have them rule over the different parts of what is today Europe, starting with Clovis in 481CE. Then the Church Fathers, in their effort to create a peaceful and orderly society, promoted monogamy as a reproductive solution. Although it was a needed development, and improved the female condition, it was also limiting, in that married women now had to officially submit to their husband in every way.

Much later, when the Christian Church became the unofficial Church in the Americas, and later still, when the USA developed into a world power in the 20th century, Christian doctrine spread far and wide. The archaic Christian views, both Catholic and Protestant, regarding matrimony and reproduction, were so successful that they are still used as a template. The Church Fathers meant well when they made monogamy and matrimony the social standards, but unfortunately, in the process, it institutionalized male domination over the female.

The Church had a hard time dealing with sexuality, and the Adam and Eve story shows it was very macho from the very beginning. As the story goes, Eve was borne from Adam's rib, and it was Eve who made Adam fall from grace. In the Garden of Eden, God had forbidden the couple from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But it was Eve who was taunted by a serpent to take a bite of the fruit, and after doing so, gave a bite to Adam. Another way of interpreting this myth is to say that, as first man and woman, they were meant to procreate, but when they started doing just that, they were banned from paradise. Not very shrewd on the part of a master creator! However, the trick was then to have everybody believe that God changed his mind and sent his son down on earth to die on the cross in order to redeem humans from their 'original sin', or the 'reproduction curse' that was sending hominids straight to hell. Thereafter, if one wanted to go to Eden after death, all he had to do was get baptised in order to be relieved from the 'original sin', 'existential sin', or 'sin of the flesh', depending on one's interpretation, and obey the 10 commandments.

Because the Church Fathers were very uncomfortable dealing with sex, they devised new myths. For instance, the mother of the Son of God would now be a virgin, for such a mother could not be a lowly animal that fornicated. Since that was a very difficult thing to swallow, it took centuries, right up to 1854, to have the dogma of the Immaculate Conception accepted. The Church fathers, in wanting to manage fornication, had always tried to have the faithful believe they were created in the image of God, and therefore, did not have sex like animals, but made love. Very early on, fornication became synonymous with love, if you had a monogamous relationship in matrimony that is. But sex is not love, and today that erroneous inherited notion is causing us a lot of angst.

From the beginning of Christianity, women have been unwittingly cast in the role of Eve. They are the morally questionable ones who lead men astray. But luckily for mankind, the Son of God, a man, came to save humanity from the mess caused by Eve. Very macho indeed! That line of thinking is propagated to this day. Let's take the AIDS epidemic where the media seem to imply that it's the females who communicate AIDS to the males. Science tells us that the AIDS virus is transmitted by blood contact, and that it was men who were first contaminated when they allegedly practised bestiality on wild primates. Having sex with our wild cousins can't happen in the best of conditions to say the least, and when it occurred, it caused lesions to the human penis and anus, and hence the perfect conditions for transmission. Once infected, human males transmitted it to their partners, male or female, by practising sodomy. The anus not being designed to be penetrated by a penis, lesions in that area necessarily resulted, followed by infection. As for the women who became infected mothers, they transmitted it to their children through the umbilical cord. The fact that it's the men who are the root cause of this disease is never made clear in the media or in our schools. Why do women continue to bear the brunt of such ignorance, and worse, let themselves be sodomized and infected?

Regardless, as the Church went forward with its 'reproduction' agenda, it continued preaching the 10 Commandments and especially the one that says 'you shall not covet your neighbor's wife'. Monogamy was definitely on their mind, but it wasn't until the 16th century that the Church made matrimony a sacrament and institutionalized male domination. The bride was told that she had to 'submit herself unto her own husband as unto the Lord, for as Christ is Head of His Church, so is the husband head of his family.' In Pre-Cana, she was even told that she couldn't deny sex to her husband, use any form of contraception, nor derive pleasure from the sexual act.

It is reasonable to conclude that although the Christian Church gave us social order by keeping the threat of damnation ever present in our minds, it did little to emancipate women. And although monogamy may be desirable for both men and women, it isn't possible to live by such a high standard unless the couple is convinced that sex is not synonymous with love, that sex has to do with pleasure, reproduction and domination whereas love has to do with sharing common life goals. Nonetheless, the two can co-exist if the partners create a loving partnership based on mutual respect before starting to make babies.

Emancipation of women

Three million years ago, when hominids became intelligent, it meant they had the ability to use past experiences to improve their future. From that point on, they were no longer subjected to the laws of natural selection. This also meant that, after many millennia of sexual frustration, the lower order males were now able to devise ways to outsmart the alpha male in order to access the females and fornicate. Realizing that they could experience sexual pleasure without waiting for the females to be in estrus, the males started forcing themselves on the physically weaker gender at will. In time, the genetic pool deteriorated, and it proved to be a double catastrophe for the females, for the males now started to be selective as well.

The males, however, shouldn't be blamed for this turn of events. Intelligence allowed them to follow the path of least resistance in order to give free expression to their sexual drive, and they simply took it. Like water and electricity, and other forces in the universe, humans are wired to take the path of least resistance. But in order for intelligent individuals to live in a group, there has to be rules and controls. In the natural selection environment of old, the male alpha used muscle in order to establish order, spread the best genes and ensure the survival of the group, but when hominids left that world, those controls disappeared, and humans had to devise new ones. Around 5kya, they did just that by creating writing, reading, and religion.

Nonetheless, women kept being treated like inferior beings. They were used as field hands and baby machines, and they were sold and bought in sophisticated ways by means of a dowry or a bride price. If the fathers wanted to get rid of extra daughters, they paid a dowry, if a family wanted to achieve a higher social rank by associating with a higher-ranking family through marriage, it paid a bride price. Women had no say, they could be marketed at any age, and all that mattered was that they not lose their virginity. Of course, making sure the young girls remained virgins meant they were even more mistreated by their fathers and their brothers. Furthermore, if women learned to read and write, they were perceived as a threat to males, and the macho society would accuse them of witchcraft, burn them at the stake, or send them to rot in convents or some such place.

It was only in 1600CE, when the world of credit took root in Amsterdam, that women began entertaining the possibility of emancipation. When the Sephardim and the Huguenots created the East India Company in Amsterdam, in 1602, they ruled the oceans of the world and slowly wrenched world financial power away from the Holy Roman Empire, the Christian Church, in the process. In 1688, they moved their headquarters to the City in London and created the first real parliament, thus laying the groundwork for modern democracy. Women did not yet vote and weren't allowed to own property, but they started earning money in their homes. When Mayer created his bank, the Bank of North America in 1781, it was another major step forward for women. But the real change occurred when Mayer's son, Nathan, took control of the Bank of England in 1810. It marked the beginning of international banking, and as more credit was made available to the masses, women started working for wages, and were thus gradually emancipated in a real sense. Nonetheless, women had to wait until 1920 in order to get the right to vote, but when they did, it was a point of no return. Once the macho world was undermined, it was only a question of time before women could claim social equality. And when the pill was marketed in the 60's, it put them on the road to full emancipation.

But the post-war years, as far as female emancipation is concerned, was also a time when the proverbial dung hit the fan, for that's when women opted to wear the badge of femininity instead of insisting on parity. They chose the worst option possible by concentrating their efforts on getting themselves an alpha male by means of seduction in order to advance their social position. But who can blame them for using that approach? After going through 3my of mistreatment, and especially 2ky of macho Christian doctrine, they were totally brainwashed into thinking they were inferior to men. So, they figured if they seduced and snagged a so-called alpha male like they were genetically programmed to have, they could achieve emancipation through him. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that the alpha male of the natural selection era no longer existed. They didn't know that the men prancing around looking like male alphas were mainly interested in advancing their own agenda. And the fact that Hollywood was endorsing sexual relationships with virtual alphas as the ultimate form of social success, and the fact that sex was on everybody's mind, was not meant to help. Understandably, it was only natural for the pseudo alpha males to have sex as often as they could with the want-to-be bimbos by telling them how beautiful and needed they were, and the females believed them.

Though it was natural for the women to adopt the badge of femininity in wanting to look like the Hollywood stars and get themselves an alpha, they soon realized they weren't getting the desired results and wondered why. That's when they discovered that aging was an even bigger problem. They deduced that males stopped wanting to have sex with them when they reached menopause. But why didn't men like mature partners like women did? They simply didn't know that males are genetically polygamous and programmed to reproduce well past middle age, and that if the female is no longer able to reproduce, the male's ANS no longer incites him to have sex with her. After suffering mistreatment at the hands of males and being subjected to Christian macho doctrine for 2ky, now that she was emancipated, she was being hit with a third bolt of lightning, the genetic quirks of the male's ANS.

How are women expected to deal with this genetic injustice? That is the question. If women completely discarded the badge of femininity, men and women, the women leading the way, would be more inclined to have genuine relationships based on trust, honesty and respect, instead of sex. But because we left the world of natural selection, because we live in a world of plenty, because we give free rein to our sex drive instead of curbing it, because we measure our self worth against our libido, because we fornicate mainly for pleasure, because men are genetically polygamous and live by the rules of monogamy, our specie has become unnatural and stressed.

We have to get back to some form of equilibrium, and perhaps the only way to do that is to understand our ANS. If we choose to be monogamous and have a family, it must be for life. We don't have to get married, for we have the wherewithal to have sex while avoiding pregnancy and disease, but if we do, it should be for the duration and for the purpose of raising a family. Loving and nurturing one's children, and later, one's grand-children, is the greatest human experience of all, but we have to make it happen, it's not free. Forever wanting more, bigger and better stuff in order to feel important, and changing pseudo life partners on a whim is not the way to go. If we choose to be bonded with another, the strength gained in sharing makes us feel secure, gives us confidence and encourages us to do what we love to do. And as we age, the love and satisfaction generated within the family largely compensates for the effort required to keep our sexual drive under control. Sex is not love, for sex is a violent temporary action imposed on us by our ANS while love is the art of maintaining intimacy throughout a lifetime.

The art of intimacy

Meaningful rewarding relationships, whether sex is involved or not, are impossible unless one learns to be intimate. I choose to replace the word love with intimacy because love is used in all sorts of concoctions, like in 'making love', a totally absurd expression. Though sexual attraction can morph into love over time, sex is not love. Sex lasts an instant, sexual attraction can last a few years, but love like the one felt for a parent lasts a lifetime.

Intimacy is the cornerstone of our happiness, for if we don't learn how to be intimate as a child, we are condemned to having lame relationships throughout our whole life. Intimacy requires the ability to open and commit, that is, to trust to the point of being vulnerable, and that's not the easiest thing to do. It requires suspending control, while merging emotionally. We have an innate need to experience physical and emotional closeness with another human being in order to grow emotionally, and that need for connection is with us from the day we're born. If we are to have a chance at a fulfilling life, we have to be taught to connect at that time.

Historically, tribes were a critical part of our human experience, for we needed the group in order to survive. If one was banished from his tribe that was as good as a death sentence. In the global village, that is no longer the case, but if a child does not experience intimacy, it's akin to being banished from the whole world, for establishing meaningful future relationships will be impossible. From day one, the child must be treated as a full member of the family team, he must be shown intimacy, valorized and supported on an ongoing basis, or else he will spend his whole life unconnected in a great but sad virtual world. The secret to a good life is to belong to a family where children are intimately connected to parents and siblings, which in turn allows the child to later repeat the process when he starts his own family.

The following is a summary of what the American Psychological Association says on how parents can connect with their children. 'Parents must be available for their children at bedtime, before dinner, and in the car, in order to let them know they care about what's happening in their lives. Conversations should be started when they feel the need to share thoughts and feelings that affect both parties. Parents have to make sure they let their kids know they're listening by stopping whatever they're doing. They should respect their privacy by treating matters one on one. They should express interest in what the child is saying without being intrusive. Letting them complete their point before responding and repeating to make sure they know that the parent understands them correctly is highly recommended. Parents should soften strong reactions; kids will tune them out if they appear angry or defensive. Parents should express their opinion without putting down theirs, while acknowledging that it's okay to disagree. Letting them know that nobody is necessarily right or wrong, that circumstances have to be weighed in, while focusing on the child's feelings is a wise modus operandi.

Parents should ask their children what they may want or need from them in a conversation, such as advice, simply listening, help in dealing with feelings or help solving a problem. Kids learn by imitating. Most often, they will follow the parents' lead in how they deal with anger, solve problems and work through difficult feelings. Because kids also learn from their own choices, parents shouldn't feel they have to step in as long as the consequences are not dangerous. Realizing their children may test them by telling them only a small part of what is bothering them, parents can encourage them to talk and may even get them to share the rest of the story if they listen carefully to what they say.

Listening and talking is the key to a healthy connection between parents and children. To the small child, a mother's or father's words are important, comforting, and soothing. Parents should use this to their advantage, for communicating thoughts and ideas is not a skill they or their children are born with. If parents create a trusting intimate relationship from the day their child is born, it'll naturally carry on into the very difficult teen years and beyond.'

If a child is to have the best quality of life in the best of all possible worlds, he or she has to be familiar with intimacy. As for the parents who have never been connected, the cycle can be broken and their kids spared if they know why they have difficulty being intimate and if they try to make up for their inadequacy by talking to their child. Being completely frank and open with a child and making him reveal his inner thoughts by creating a safe, protective mood so that he doesn't fear being punished or reprimanded is a good way to proceed.

Because too many of us have never known intimacy, the 100-year-old sexual revolution that we're undergoing is a social disaster. Since I am an enlightened victim of that revolution, I intend to shed light on how important it is to have a child and even more important to learn to communicate with him or her. It is extremely hard to use words one has never learned, especially those regarding feelings. But one can have a semblance of intimacy with his child if one takes time to have an honest tête-à-tête with him when circumstances warrant it, or for no reason at all, while making the child feel he's an important and full-fledged member of the family.

So far, although not exhaustive in nature, I have given what I think is a plausible account of how we got to this wonderful world of credit. That was the easy part. Those who accept my synopsis of history will most certainly find innovative ways to take advantage of the great world they find themselves in. To be of further use, I decided to depict the life of two imaginary horny teens who both have been taught intimacy by their parents, and who are both intent on finding the key to having a family that'll defy the test of time. By showing how they go about planning for a permanent family dream team, and especially how they intend to deal with the sexual minefield that lies before them, it should create a mood for further reflection.

The ideal couple

The hypothetical couple that I've chosen consists of two eighteen-year-old heterosexuals. They have been having regular sex for two years with both their parents' approval, and they are both intent on avoiding disease and pregnancy. She has a LARC arm implant, and they can't get enough of each other, so for now, fidelity and pregnancy are not a problem. They both agree to be answerable to all four parents who support them unconditionally, and this fosters mutual affection and trust.

They share thoughts and feelings concerning their parents, siblings, teachers, friends and pets, and talk about everything under the sun. They are aware they are living in the best of all possible worlds. They know they are both 100% animal of the ape family and that their specie became intelligent some three million years ago. As intelligent animals, they realize they have the possibility of exercising some control over their autonomic nervous system. By curbing the disruptive forces of their ANS, mainly with regards to reproduction, they realize they can look forward to a lifelong relationship in a happy family context.

They are aware that all beings are beautiful and fulfilled when in a nurturing or creative mode, and that's why they both want to form a lifelong family team and do what they love doing for a living. They have just finished high school, but do not plan to go to college until they are absolutely sure of what they want to do for a living. For now, he wants to become an architect. He has been working summers for a local building contractor and the latter has agreed to employ him full time. His passion is to conceive and eventually build self-sustaining buildings. She is very interested in animals and wants to be a veterinarian. After working summers at a local zoo, she has been offered an assistant's position fulltime. Her passion is living with plants and animals and learning how to take care of them. They have rented a modest house on the outskirts of the city in order to have the full experience of living together. They want the responsibilities of looking after a house, having a garden and pets, and doing daily chores. His father gave them his car when he upgraded to a hybrid, and that takes care of transportation. They are committed to living together three years and will not marry or have kids till the end of that period, if they so decide. If one of them changes his or her mind during the trial period, they will go their separate ways, no matter how painful. All four parents are partners to this agreement and will support them in any way they can.

As they go about working in the real world as apprentices, they will pay for their own living expenses. As for college tuition, their parents have already planned ahead by creating a fund for that very purpose. In the meantime, they will glean all the knowledge they possibly can from their coworkers and sign up for all pertinent online university courses while waiting to physically register at a university in order to terminate their degrees and pursue their life's passion.

They are active teens who jog and swim on a regular basis and have no intention of stopping. They each have a smartphone but use them strictly for meaningful communication. Like her mother, she refuses to wear the badge of femininity, no matter how great the social pressures. But of course, she doesn't intend giving up on bizarre hairdos, fun clothing, and junky jewellery. They intend to cut the cable and stick to reading, watching movies and making and listening to music. Inviting friends over for simple home prepared meals made with natural ingredients will be a lot of fun. His father already makes his own wine, and he plans to team up with him, for making wine with his dad will be a nice way for them to bond. Enjoying the odd glass of wine with his wife-to-be and friends over home-cooked meals will also make for heart-warming experiences.

Accumulating wealth will never be their main objective. However, because they live in a world where it's rather easy to make money, it's not to be dismissed out of hand. Real estate values tend to rise, so owning one's own home is a starting point. As for making real money, the couple will sit down and decide which multinational they want working for them, for having thousands of people working for you is better than doing it all by yourself. They'll choose one that makes things they personally believe in and that are indispensable to the human race, like food, transport, communication, biotechnology and energy. Once they're convinced that they have the right company, they'll buy shares in it every time they have spare money. Buying shares via the internet is a rather cheap and easy way to go about doing just that. Once the shares are bought, they'll forget about them. They'll never play the market. Their capital will grow as the world markets grow, and by adding to their capital little by little, down the road, they'll have more than enough for their children's education and their own retirement. If they adopt a healthy lifestyle, are passionate about their work, own their own home, and invest their extra cash in their chosen multinationals, they'll have done away with most material obstacles that usually prove disastrous to young married couples, and thus be free to have and raise children. However, the greatest destructive force that they'll have to face in their relationship is still lurking in the wings.

This young couple has seriously reflected on the problem where males are genetically programmed to reproduce well into old age while females cease to reproduce at menopause. They know that when she reaches menopause, he will no longer be sexually aroused by her. Since his ANS will continue to incite him to reproduce, he will be looking at younger women, and they must get ready to counter this genetic injustice. When a couple reaches that stage, it's what I call hitting the wall.

Fortunately, they know that human means intelligent, and that they have some say in complying with their ANS. For instance, if one is hungry, one can have an apple or a processed meat sandwich, and if one is thirsty, one can have a glass of water or a can of pop laced with sugar. The individual has no choice but to quench his thirst or satiate his hunger, but because he's intelligent, he can choose how to do it, and with what. In a similar manner, they can control their libido to some degree if they learn how to counter the destructive forces of their ANS.

They know they are animals that became intelligent when hominids broke the time barrier some three million years ago. They know that being intelligent means they can connect past experiences with the present and use that knowledge to make a better future. They know that sex is not love. Sex is forced upon them by their ANS in order to reproduce, whereas love is the result of intimacy and sharing. All beings are forced to have sex, regardless of specie, therefore, when the couple's sex life is on the wane and his ANS incites him to look at younger women, they'll both know what's happening and he will categorically refuse to take Viagra or give in to his ANS. And because our ideal couple are fortunate to be intimate with each other, both intellectually and physically, when they hit the wall, they will refuse to let their libido define them as humans, and she may even be able to poke fun at him when he starts looking sideways at younger women.

Their love will grow as their family grows, and not much self-control will be needed to resist having sex with a stranger. Why would he knowingly risk losing the warmth and joy that a loving family provides and that took years to build for the pleasure of having sashimi served by a young geisha? One thing is certain, as their mutual affection grows, and as they go gaga over their grandchildren, they'll both know that destroying their family life for a furtive romp in the sack with another is totally insane. Love will win over sex, especially if they are fully aware of the pressures that the ANS is putting on them, and they are.

If they're really lucky, they'll discover that one of the most beautiful things in the world, is growing old gracefully. An older woman sitting at her computer writing her book, nursing an animal back to health in her veterinarian clinic, or giving TLC to the plants in her garden, are beautiful sights to behold. And what about an older man teaching his grandson how to build a tree house, or his granddaughter how to play violin! What's so bad about growing old? Does the woman have to become a wrinkled Barbie, or the man a ridiculous Casanova?

Facing society

At 21 years of age, as planned, our imaginary young couple has decided to commit to marriage and have children. At this time, they are both in the final year of their respective bachelor's degree. She has been accepted at a veterinary school, and he is to start his internship with a local architectural firm the following year.

Since the architectural firm and the veterinary school happen to be in the city where their parents live, and since all four parents are anxious to have grandchildren, they will go ahead and have their first child in the summer months prior to her entering veterinary school. With so many available and willing babysitters, having her first child at that time will not interfere with her studies.

As it turned out, their first child was a boy, and the following few years were pure bliss as they got more involved in their individual fields of study and worked at making the third member of the family team feel welcome. Four years later, they had a girl. It was also the time to get the boy ready to face the world, that is to enter primary school.

They soon realized how awesome a challenge it was to have a child integrate the outside world. The traditional Judeo-Christian education system was not in sync with what he was being taught at home, and it had to be countered in three main areas: religion, evolution and reproduction. After meeting with the school principal, they were relieved to find that he did not believe in nor promote creationism. Having raised the child to be confident in what he believes, the child will be able to handle the disturbing effects of religious challenges on his own, in the classroom and the schoolyard.

The 5-year-old has been introduced to Charles Darwin's laws of natural selection and knows that all living things on earth have evolved from a common source of life and that humans belong to the ape family. He knows that all living things like trees, fish, birds, and bears, and natural inanimate things like prairies, mountains and rivers are interconnected, and if all thrive, people thrive. He also knows that because humans are the only intelligent beings, they have the responsibility of protecting all the other living things along with their habitats.

He knows that when humans broke the time barrier and became intelligent a very long time ago, they became aware of their mortality and were overcome with fear. In trying to appease the spirits and the natural forces that were now perceived as supernatural threats, they invoked them in thousands of ways. When loved ones died, in order to show respect and make sure the spirit of the deceased was given time to leave the body and reach the world of spirits safely, they were interred. Some 5000 years ago, religious myths started being put to paper, and the child realizes that it was an effective way to deal with the fears relating to death and the after world. Judaism was the first religion to be set to paper, followed by the eastern religions, but it was Christianity created in 325 CE that gave us the world we find ourselves in today, notwithstanding the fact that Islam, which was created several centuries later, does play an important role in the world, especially in the Middle East.

The child knows that though Judaism, Christianity and Islam all lay claim to one God, each group has a different godly connection. Abraham, the prophet for Judaism, Jesus-Christ, the Son of God for Christians, and Mohammed, the prophet for Islam. And because each group thinks his prophet or god figure knows best and is willing to fight the others to prove it, the boy has been told that it's wise not to join these groups, and instead, to live in peace with the spirits of the natural world by respecting and protecting their habitats. Like his parents, he has a deep respect for Mother Nature, the giver of life, and like them, he believes that all matter is part of a whole. Like his parents he believes there is no hard and fast distinction between the spiritual and physical world, and that 'soul' is not limited to humans. All living things, all the mountains and rivers, all the seasons and forests, and all the natural entities have essence, and their presence affects our lives as we affect theirs.

Like his parents, he will speak softly and carry a big stick when challenged on troublesome religious topics. He'll never refute one's belief in a creator or a god, but if asked, he will clearly state that he believes that Mother Nature is all powerful, and though he doesn't understand that force, he can easily observe it and respect it. He will never put down those who speak to their god through prayer, and he will not take sides regarding the different prophets. That should keep him out of trouble.

He has been told time and time again by both parents that he was dearly wanted, that he is loved and that he is an indispensable part of the family. He has been told that though he may not know as many things as his parents, he is surely as intelligent as they are, and perhaps more so. His parents will always guide him when making life choices, but he's the one who has to make the final decision. His parents will support him unconditionally, and if ever he needs their help, they'll defend him no matter what. If they disagree with the path he follows or the decisions he makes, they will clearly tell him why and refrain from passing judgment. They want to have him around for a very long time, and later, when he decides to create his own family, they want him to do what he loves doing for a living and to have a loving intimate partner with whom to share his life. If he succeeds, it will make them happy, especially if he has children and doesn't live too far.

Making babies

Children must start out knowing that they are of the 100% animal of the ape family and that they are completely controlled by their ANS like all living beings. They may have already been taught to deal with certain impositions of the ANS, like eating and drinking with utensils, defecating and urinating in a toilet, but a successful human being must know intimacy as a child and be fully aware of his libido and how he will be forced to make babies. And he should be taught how his libido will take over his body when he reaches puberty.

Sex education can start at an early age by explaining how the apple blossom becomes an apple and how its seed becomes a tree. We start by saying that each blossom or flower has two sex organs, one male and one female. When mature, the female organ produces an ovule and the male organ produces sperm called pollen. When a bee or some other insect comes along to drink the nectar found in the flower cup, pollen gets stuck to its legs. As the bee goes from flower to flower the sticky sperm gets stuck on the female organ of another flower. The sperm then grows a shoot downward to the ovule, and once joined, the sperm and the ovule develop into a seed. The apple that we eat is the food that surrounds the seed and is necessary for its development if and when the apple falls to the ground. The food gives the seed enough time to develop and root and thus become a new apple tree.

Animals make babies as well, and we can tell our child how salmon do it. When the young salmon are strong enough, they leave the river where they were born and head for the ocean. They spend years travelling long distances in the oceans of the world. When they are fully mature, they return to their river of origin to spawn. It's a life and death battle as they spend all their energy swimming up river against strong currents in order to find the right spot for reproducing. The female then builds a gravel nest on the river bottom in which she deposits thousands of eggs or ovules. Her mate then releases huge quantities of sperm over the nest. When a sperm reaches an ovule, it penetrates it and the egg is fertilized. Many weeks later, a baby salmon, called a fry, hatches. When the young salmon are big and strong enough, they head out to the ocean and start the process all over again.

In the meantime, parents should take their children to zoos and animal farms as often as possible. The more familiar they become with the baby animals running around, and perhaps with the males mounting the females, the more questions they'll ask. After many visits to the said areas, and seeing many appropriately selected films on the matter, it is then relatively easy to explain how the male sperm gets to the female ovule in bigger animals. They already know how that happens with flowers and salmon, and going one step further is a no brainer.

So, when the dreaded question is asked, when the child asks the parents if they did it too, they'll be ready. A wise parent may want to deflect the question by talking about what happens to the child's body as he enters puberty. The child will be told in a nonsense manner that his body will soon be transformed as it gets ready to reproduce and he should be told what to expect. He may already be aware that something is happening to his body. No matter, it's a good time to tell him that signs of maturity for the girl are the development of breasts, hips and pubic hair, while for the boy, it's facial hair, pubic hair, muscle and a deep voice. Then he has to be told about his ANS and the urges he or she will experience, like wanting to touch the person of the other sex, innocent urges that society mistakenly calls puppy love, but that can easily turn into a horrific life experience if not handled properly.

He is aware that his ANS has total control over him, and knows the role the hypothalamus plays. He knows it is a tiny primitive brain that sits on top of the spinal chord and forces living beings to breathe, eat, drink, urinate, defecate and reproduce, just to name a few of the vital functions involved. Sexual stimulus begins when the hypothalamus sends hormones (a chemical message) to the pituitary gland telling it to produce the appropriate hormones which are then sent on to the concerned reproductive organs. The child will be told that in a very short while, his body will have to deal with such sex stimulus. When this happens, the boy will get an erection and the girl will feel tingling as the clitoris and labia become engorged. The sensations are pleasant but uncomfortable. The girl who is looking at the cute boy with the angel curls or the boy who is looking at the bumps on a girl's t-shirt can go crazy thinking about it as more and more sex hormones are sent from the hypothalamus to the erotic areas of the body.

Our ANS forces us to do things independently of our will. When we're hungry we have no choice but to grab something to eat, and the same goes when we're thirsty. But what are we to do when we're sexually aroused? We can go for a long run or take a cold shower in order to take our mind off it, or we might want to masturbate. Wise parents will already have told their children that self-stimulation not only relieves tension but gives pleasure, and that it's a perfectly safe and healthy thing to do as long as relieving tension is the main goal. After all, the body is not a toy. Again, there is much information on the subject on the net, and parents should encourage them to seek out the information that is of interest to them and be readily available to answer the ensuing questions. They should especially insist on the fact that masturbation is not a demeaning act, while at the same time teach them about their main erotic zones, the frenulum and the clitoris.

At this time, the child will no doubt be curious about what their parents did when they were their age and how they met. The best way for the parents to answer is to say that they went through exactly the same thing, and that they did what their parents did before them, because that's what healthy humans do. They must talk openly about it, for letting the child act out of ignorance at such a time can only lead to bad feelings, unacceptable behavior, or worse. If parents have established an intimate relationship with the child, they should find it easy to tell him or her how mom and dad met, how they became lovers, and when they decided to have the beautiful child that's before them. The child can only find such a story beautiful and admire his parents all the more for having the courage to tell it.

The budding libido

We are apes, but we are unique animals in that we are intelligent, which means we can connect the past, the present and the future. The more we can do that the more intelligent we are. However, on the happiness scale, intelligence is a great asset only when we are in a nurturing or creative mode.

When we became intelligent, we left the world of natural selection, and therein lies a major human problem. We kept on living according to the laws of natural selection that encourage us to adopt a 'survival of the fittest' attitude instead of striving to establish an enduring, loving and connected family, and identifying what we really love to do and doing it for a living. We always want more of everything. We want to be or give the impression that we are smarter, richer and stronger, and we seek better diplomas, more money, a bigger house, a more expensive car and many other 'mores'. We are absolutely blind to the fact that we live in the best of all possible worlds, a world of credit that gives us every opportunity to be happy. It's not that the 'mores' are bad in themselves, it's just that we choose them to the detriment of happiness. Creating a family that endures one's lifespan and doing what we love doing for a living are the things that make us happy, yet, we opt for the 'mores'. Pursuing nurturing and creative lifestyles definitely takes second place. Putting it another way, we're more concerned about impressing others than doing things that make us happy, or again, we let others define us, and therefore, we never quite know who we are, what our innate talents are, and what we really love doing.

I discovered that the great world of credit was created by the greatest man that ever lived, and if my findings are sound, and they are, I really hope others will be inspired by them and take advantage of that world. Knowing how democracy really works, thrashing the laws of survival of the fittest that forever make us reach for the 'mores', and searching for what nurturing and creative activities suit our talents, would be a good way to do just that.

We have all the bad traits of apes, because that's what we are. It could even be said that we display more despicable behaviors than our wild cousins because we're more resourceful, more intelligent. And though we've learned to deal with hunger, thirst, urination and defecation, we are lost when it comes to our libido. That's why if we helped our children understand and manage their emerging libido it would have a huge positive effect on the life path they choose.

We are psychologically constructed in two stages. The foundation is laid when we are taught to be intimate as a newborn. That's when the lucky ones learn that they're somebody and feel good about themselves. The second stage occurs when the child's libido awakens. The first thoughts, dreams and impressions are innocent enough, but when the libido takes hold and causes physical changes to the child's body, he or she is thrown in total disarray. That's when the child tends to stray from his parents' influence and compare himself to his peers in order to find out where he stands in the world. He will stray more or less depending on how well connected he is to his parents. He will try in every which way to find out if he's attractive to others. He will test those around him to see if what he thinks is sound, and he will use any bad faith subterfuge in doing so. At this stage, he may become introverted or extraverted, for at puberty very few humans can look at facts objectively, reacting mostly to what the peer group says and thinks of them.

To make matters worse, we find ourselves in a world of leisure since early twentieth century, and virtual reality has taken over our lives via the smartphone. We are not in an enviable position. In spite of the fact that our libido, unlike thirst and hunger, is not essential to the teen's survival, he will spend most of his waking hours thinking about it because the sexual urge being forced upon him promises such exquisite pleasure, especially if he has already experienced an orgasm.

So, if the child knows that his ANS is about to unleash a serious attack on his body and that he will be forced to make babies, he has a fighting chance in dealing properly with this assault. He learned to cope with bodily functions when he was two, and how to eat properly when he was four, but now he must deal with the imposition of creating life. He will be hit with a bodily function that nobody feels comfortable with and that few feel free to talk about. Its doubly complicated because in forcing him to reproduce, his ANS forces him to find a partner as well. And since sticking one's body parts in the orifices of another body is not something very esthetic, nor very flattering for the intelligent human's self image, he will be faced with a serious dilemma. So, the parent has to help the child deal with his libido just as he did with toilet training.

The boy will soon feel the urgent need to stick his erect penis into any available target, but he should be told to absolutely refrain from penetrating a girl's vagina, at least until he knows what it implies, emotionally, physically and socially. By this time, he should be aware that having and raising a child is one of the greatest experiences one can ever have. The sexual act is definitely not as banal as making a sandwich to feed his hunger, drinking a glass of milk to quench his thirst, or going to the toilet to alleviate his bowels or his bladder. He is forced to do all those things, but he must never forget that having sex is for making babies, first and foremost.

The part where the parent explains the mechanics of producing a baby need not be too worrying, for there are many good web sites that show how sperm is fabricated and how it is released into the female body where a female egg may be waiting to be fertilized. Learning how the baby grows and how it is born is also quite straightforward, thanks to the web. Learning how we can physically stop the sperm from reaching the female egg, or how the female can use the pill to chemically halt its progress in her body is also very well explained. The only thing the parent has to do is be available in order to guide the child and answer his questions.

The difficult part is explaining what follows the birth of a baby. The teen must be made to realize the enormous emotional investment that's involved. Genetically, a parent, no matter how old, will genetically be disposed to sacrifice his or her own life in order to protect the offspring. So how does a teen feel if the baby has to be given up for adoption or if the pregnancy has to be terminated. How does a youth handle those life and death decisions? That is an awesome load to carry through life if one has to make such a decision. So, the teen should be told not to experiment, especially if he doesn't use some solid means of contraception. If one is stupid enough to play with sex as he would a video game, the least he can do is avoid pregnancy and disease.

Parents should make a point of telling the youth that having sex without developing a relationship is not gratifying and certainly not conducive to feeling good about oneself. One has to respect the partner as a person, not just as a sexual object. From the boy's standpoint, having an orgasm is a no-brainer, so he would be wise to masturbate instead of forcing himself on some unwary partner. He may be motivated to relate his sexual conquests to others in order to be popular, but it can only do a lot of harm, to both the girl and the boy. Doing things to impress others is a catastrophic modus operandi. On the other hand, if he develops a real relationship with his partner, if the couple decides together to experiment, and if they take the necessary steps to avoid pregnancy, that can be constructive. Later, if they go their separate ways, they'll remember their past relationship as a wonderful experience with a nice human being. If that can't be guaranteed, they shouldn't experiment in the first place.

There's also a social factor that can have a colossal impact on a teen's life, especially the girl. If a girl decides to take the pill and have sex with every Tom, Dick and Harry, she'll be quickly labelled a slut, or worse. That is not a way to start on a life journey. If both teens decide to have sex, they should both do so after establishing a genuine relationship, taking necessary contraceptive measures, and having, if at all possible, the tacit approval of the parents.

The wall

We have seen how two teens, each brought up in an intimate family environment, established a serious relationship that led to a great marriage, a great family and fabulous life occupations. Even if one is lucky enough to be in such an enviable position, like them, that person will still have to face the wall, for nobody is spared.

Genetically, females are not programmed to receive the male's sperm past menopause, a reality that is often ignored or even denied. Though some men, for reasons of nostalgia, domination, money, deprivation or perversion, occasionally ignore this imposition by having sex with post-menopausal women, the fact remains that when the female runs out of ovarian follicles she can no longer reproduce, and when this happens, males, who have a longer reproductive life, genetically stop desiring her sexually and unconsciously want to have sex with a female who can reproduce. It's a great injustice done to women by Mother Nature. When women reach menopause, they stop sending the magical pheromone signals to their partner. Moreover, humans have practically lost their sense of smell since becoming intelligent millions of years ago, and to make matters worse, perfumes and synthetic products of all kinds tend to block the transmission of pheromones that trigger sexual arousal. These mysterious agents are not well understood by science, but be they visual, tactile or gustatory, we know pheromones are associated with sexual arousal. When these misunderstood messengers stop triggering the partner's hypothalamus through his senses, the latter is no longer sexually stimulated by the sender. Although very little is known about the interaction of pheromones between partners, they exist in the entire animal kingdom.

As a further injustice to women, for the last two thousand years, Christianity has taught us to equate sex with love. So, when the mature husband ceases to want to have sex with his mature wife, the latter believes her mate doesn't love her anymore. The irony is that just when this situation arises, it's often the time when males love their partners most. However, this usually means the end of a relationship unless it's understood and dealt with.

Since the wife feels that it's her fault for not being attractive enough, she may double the coats of paint and flaunt her badge of femininity with greater determination. Naturally, in doing so, the more clownish and vulgar looking she becomes, and the male is less and less apt to be aroused by her.

Though women are the ones who often initiate divorce, the root cause is male genetic make-up. The husband may love his menopausal wife dearly, but genetically, he is less interested in having sex with her for reasons even he doesn't understand. And when the husband ceases to desire his wife, the couple seems to become hell bent on destroying their lifetime emotional investment, and two things happen. On the one hand, since modern couples measure their worth against their libido, the wife feels unwanted, unattractive and unloved, and on the other, she can't help showing her displeasure. The situation escalates to the point where it gives the husband an excuse to have sex with the young secretary wearing the cute badge of femininity, the one who has always shown interest in him. Divorce is almost sure to follow. If, in some cases, divorce happens sooner, it's for other reasons, the main one being that the couple never established a real relationship in the first place.

Barely 100 years ago, we left the world of self-empowerment for that of mass-empowerment, and that turned out to be a disaster. Although the consumer world that followed was the greatest one that we could possibly imagine, it made us disconnect from the natural world. The world of leisure we found ourselves in was extremely attractive, but it soon became obvious that our specie is not genetically programmed for such a world. Naturally, with more time on our hands, our faky (virtual) and lusty (sexual) dispositions as human animals were exploited to the fullest, and paradoxically, individuals started running on empty in a world of plenty.

A lusty faky approach to life just can't make us happy. And because our libido in all its disguises is driving our lives, and since relationships based on trust, emotional honesty and commitment have fallen by the wayside, we are forced into a corner. If we want to have a fulfilled life, we have to decide between instant gratification or lasting relationships. It's really about lust or trust, yet today, when people get married, the first thing they do is sign a prenuptial agreement. Does that mean that they're already thinking of divorce? Go figure!

Few people have been taught to live in intimacy, a key ingredient in a trusting and fulfilling relationship hopefully learned in early childhood. If we are not in the privileged position of knowing intimacy, then we must start off with trust instead of lust, and we need outside help. Matchmaking, a solution that is completely taboo in our mass-empowerment world, would be the most obvious path to follow. Hassidic Jews are very good at matchmaking and we should learn from them. However, it's not an easy thing to do, for in our consumer society most matchmaking venues try to match up the faky and lusty penchants of the couple before them in order to make easy money. So, if an emotionally honest person has enough fortitude to choose the taboo solution of matchmaking, he or she has a further task of finding a matchmaker whose prime concern is creating a successful emotional partnership.

A genuine matchmaker will stress above all the need to create a partnership. While he may take physical attraction into consideration, he will certainly not delve on lust. If he succeeds in combining all the qualities of one individual necessary to enhance the strengths and counter the weaknesses of the other, the matchmaker will have done a great job. If trust and honesty is mutually achieved, romance and love is almost sure to follow, in spite of the fact that becoming trusting and emotionally connected for the first time in one's life is an almost impossible thing to do. No matter, matchmaking would be a serious option for achieving happiness if society did not berate it so.

Nonetheless, whether in the case of the ideal couple mentioned earlier, where they started with the lust option with the full support of the four parents, whether in the case of those who are not supported by family or those who want to establish a genuine partnership through the matchmaking process, all couples have to eventually face the wall mentioned earlier. Sexual attraction lasts only a short while, but love lasts a lifetime, and a couple will be able to go from sex mode to love mode and circumvent the wall only if their marriage is built on the basis of a strong partnership.

For two thousand years, Christianity has taught us that sex and love are one and the same, or at least should be, and that line of thinking has to be thrashed. We have even adopted the phrases 'to fall in love' when we're horny, and 'making love' when we fornicate. Why can't we simply 'love'? Things are definitely askew when it comes to sex. If a couple wants a shot at the brass ring, it has to establish real intimacy in a real relationship right from the beginning, have children that they both treat as their most important assets, stop using the words sex and love interchangeably, and be fully aware that they will have to face the wall.

At the beginning of most marriages, the husband can't possibly imagine that one day he will not want to have sex with his wife, yet it is a certainty. It may be construed as a negative thing to do, and it may be very hard, but they should talk about that matter in the early stages of their marriage, even if it's just in jest.

In a nutshell, the ideal couple mentioned earlier has been intimately connected since forever, they have had a sex life that would put Bonobos to shame, they have two adorable children that are following in their footsteps, they are very successful and fulfilled in what they do for a living, and they love each other. However, though he will still want to hug her and caress her after she reaches menopause, he will no longer wants to have sex with her. So, what should such a couple do?

If they both are convinced that sex is not love, the menopausal wife may feel relieved that she doesn't have to pretend any more. Nonetheless, the husband's testosterone keeps pumping, and he doesn't know how to get rid of his wad. At this stage, it's mainly about what to do with the husband's libido, for the wife's libido is no longer a factor although social pressure may tell her otherwise. Because the group tells us we're nonentities if we're not sexually active, both tend to pretend they are. Nonetheless, an enlightened couple seeking happiness and fulfillment will want to take full measure of the wall and go around or over it. But they not only have social pressure to overcome, they also have the fond memories of their sexual deeds of yesteryears to deal with. When all is said and done, they have to be very strong to come to the conclusion that their sex life has come to an end and that family is what is most important even if the children have by now left the nest. If they are, they then can talk frankly about what to do with their libido, especially the husband's

At this point in the relationship, both parties must accept the fact that they are facing the wall and agree it's a genetic, not a personal, thing. The couple must zero in on that problem and find ways on how the husband can relieve himself sexually in order to save the family. The husband can masturbate, go to a brothel, take on a mistress, have a live-in young concubine, or rent a bachelor pad where he keeps a sexbot, but these solutions are far from ideal. If he has a fatberg between the ears, he might even try to seduce his daughter's girl friend or the girl next door, or rape his co-worker, but these criminal alternatives are not what a sane mature man would want to do. When a man ceases to want to have sex with his wife and is continually turned on by younger women, it just means he is being ruled by his ANS. If he knows that's the case, and if he loves his wife, he's in a real bind. The more stupid men will blame their partner and even beat them up, others, spurred on by their wives, will even take Viagra in order to re-establish a sexual relationship which is a perfectly insane thing to do. A healthy man taking Viagra is like an obese person taking a pill to stimulate hunger. If the couple really knows what is happening to their libido, they should be thinking of diminishing not increasing the husband's libido.

If the man doesn't let his libido define him as a person, and if he doesn't entertain the idea of having children in the future, orchiectomy is definitely a serious option. At menopause, many wives no longer want to be bothered with sex anyway, unless they're tuned in to the 'desperate housewives' thing, so why should the husband not want to stop the production of sperm? The sad truth is that both partners think a man is no longer a man if he gets an orchiectomy, and the wife is not a woman if she doesn't have a man. Nonetheless, if he is a psychologically well-constructed male, and has had a healthy sex life and built a loving family, he may not want to destroy his assets by seeking action left and right, by divorcing, or worse, by committing a crime. So, the best thing to do is to get rid of the urge to reproduce. Getting an orchiectomy to reduce libido could be compared to someone getting gastric bypass surgery in order to lose weight.

Orchiectomy is a banal outpatient operation. There is no physical deformation if saline implants are used to replace the gonads, and the operation is relatively side-effect free. If the husband loves his wife and family, maintains a healthy diet and keeps fit, he will be as fulfilled as can be. The only thing he may require, if it comes down to that, is wear a hormone patch to compensate for the loss of testosterone. Orchiectomy is not meant for those with a poor self-image or a fragile ego, for it goes against the whole post-sapiens human culture that says one is not a man if one doesn't screw.

High school jungle

A baby who is intimately connected to his parents is not only a beautiful sight to behold but it guarantees the baby a shot at the brass ring. When official education begins in grade school, it is also a wonderful experience, for children are surrounded by nurturing teachers who gently teach them reading, writing, arithmetic and socializing. Later, if he's lucky, the teen will not go to a middle school, but rather straight from grade school to high school. School becomes a jungle when students become teens, for that is when their libido kicks in. If middle school is integrated into the grade school, then the same nurturing and caring atmosphere will likely reign until they reach high school. When all is said and done, high school is the best training ground for those who still live by the laws of 'survival of the fittest', the bullies.

In high school, that's when the smelly stuff hits the proverbial fan. Because the teens are now more interested in knowing where they stand with regards to their peer group than listening to the wise counsel of parents and teachers. That's when the nurturing mode goes out the window. It could be said that the students are now on their own in a virtual jungle. The school is ruled by a student dictatorship composed of dorks who surround themselves with molls and goons that sit in the school hallways at lunchtime. This ruling class treat students involved in creative activities, be it shops, music, art, or computer science as lowly nerds, or worse. The goons and molls are mean and nasty and outdo themselves to be well perceived by the dorks. If good girls want to be accepted, they may have to do demeaning sexual acts such as fellatio on the dorks, and the molls are often the enforcers. As for the homosexuals, they are bullied in despicable ways, and everybody lives by the law of omerta. If one knows how high schools tick, one can understand why there are so many suicides and shootings during those 'learning' years.

The question then is how does this come about. A good answer would be to say that it's because children are entering the world of libido and the defunct yet very real world of survival of the fittest while at the same time leaving their parents' direct influence. Though survival of the fittest and natural selection no longer apply to the human race, students are bent on living by those very laws. The teens are simply getting ready for the consumer world that seems to be built on those laws. The tragedy is that they're motivated to live by the archaic laws of 'survival of the fittest' to the detriment of the values that make all humans happy, because that's what society tells them to do. They want to be perceived as alphas, in a world where altruistic alphas have long ceased to exist, instead of trying to identify what they really love to do and learning how to establish meaningful relationships. In the wild, the alpha was absolutely indispensable to the survival of the group, but humans have become intelligent, and now live in a world of credit. The genuine altruistic alphas have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Those who still try to be alphas are selfish bullies and are harmful to the group.

High schools are baby-sitting institutions ruled by wannabe pseudo alphas, excluding the teaching staff, of course, who are on standby mode. We could ask, at this point, how dorks become dorks or how hierarchy is established. Well, it has to do with their dong. When boys grow up, they want to know how their wee-wee compares to others. They have all kinds of games and tricks in order to accomplish this. At first, they may have long distance peeing contests, and later, even ejaculating contests, and all this with one thing in mind, how big is my dork compared to the others, or how much of a man am I. As boys get older, the ones with the small dongs know better than to become athletes that have to use the communal showers. They especially don't want to give a moll, a dork groupie, the opportunity to humiliate them as a male, and that limits their social ambitions. Hierarchy is established just like in the animal kingdom at large. It has to do mainly with strength and size, and if a dork happens to be tall, good-looking and smart and belongs to an 'important' family, there's no telling how far he will go on the road to becoming a pseudo-alpha, or a full blown out bully.

Bullying is normal and genetically sound, for all males in the animal kingdom try to become alphas in that very way. It's necessary for the survival of each specie because alphas spread the best genes and protect the group. Individuals of a group will force any outsider, who is in the slightest different from them, out of the group. Bullying and exclusion are still very much part of our genetic make-up, but these genetic tendencies must remain latent in the global village of intelligent humans. We will always have those genetic tendencies, but because we are intelligent, and especially because we have been living in this wonderful world of credit for more than 100 years, a growing number of citizens realize they do more harm than good, that they no longer contribute to the welfare of society.

If we are to counter these genetic tendencies, we can only do it through education. However, we first have to face the fact that we are 100% animal, and admit we have those archaic genetic tendencies. Like in an AA meeting, individuals can only fight their addiction if they first admit they're addicted. Since most religious groups refuse to face up to the fact that we're apes, and since our societies are morally guided by those groups, it seems like an impossible task. Some well-meaning and caring individuals use band-aid approaches by pushing for stronger legal deterrents against bullying, but nothing can be done until schools start teaching Darwinism instead of creationism as a starter.

Not only do we have those 'survival of the fittest' predispositions in all of us, but parents are the ones who promote those tendencies in their offspring which accounts for the proliferation of bullies. Insensitive parenting and unpredictable or negligent care, over-praising and excessive pampering where parents focus intensely on a particular talent or physical trait of their child as a result of their own self-esteem issues, wreaking criticism and abuse that leads to trauma, and later, having extremely high expectations, are sure ways to create a misfit who suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, or worse, who wants to hit back.

We can wean ourselves off the 'survival of the fittest' syndrome by undergoing an educational process based on apprenticeships. The American kick-ass system and the English queenie system have to be reset. Chances are, if one helps his child accept his animal origins and discover his genuine talents, he'll cope very nicely, knowing he is heading for a lifetime of fulfillment. Making one's primary goal the obtention of the most prestigious diploma in the most prestigious institution, is not the way to go, but discovering what one loves doing and then honing his natural talents, that may or may not require diplomas, is. If one does what he loves doing for a living, he will never work a day in his life. Not only will he be successful, but he will be a beacon of well-being, fulfillment and happiness for others. Being nurturing and creative is what makes humans beautiful.

Know your bully

Knowing who and what you are is knowing your bully because we are all potential bullies. If we don't introduce the child to Darwinism and teach him the origins of life and the laws of natural selection, there is no hope of taking away the bully's power. The child has to know that he is 100% animal like his parents and that he is forced to live by the dictates of his ANS just like all animals on earth. If he understands how chimpanzees behave in their natural selection world, and knows that humans behave just like them, though in more sophisticated ways, since they broke the time barrier and became intelligent, he'll know that it's natural to be a racist and a bully. He'll hopefully realize that he is genetically programmed like the ape in spite of the fact that he uses a knife and fork when he sits down to eat. He may even deduce, that being intelligent allows humans to be much more inventive in acting out all the dastardly tendencies in the ape's inventory.

Fighting tooth and nail in order to become an alpha is genetically sound in the animal kingdom, but when we broke the time barrier and became intelligent we ceased being subjected to the laws of natural selection. So, genetically, we are meant to become bullies, but because we are intelligent and protected by Big Brother established in the City, bullying is definitely not needed and has become a negative social force. Intelligence being the ability to connect past experiences with future experiences while making sense of the present, if we know how Big Brother came to be, we can only conclude that bullying is counterproductive. Real genuine survival skills are no longer needed.

The alpha male of yesteryear was altruistic, for his only purpose was to ensure the quality of the genetic stock within the group while protecting the members of the group. Today, those prancing around pretending to be alphas are bullies, mean and nasty individuals who are bent on pursuing their own agenda. We left the 24/7 world of survival a long time ago, but we still live by its archaic laws. Because we have less and less to do, because we are ever more mass-empowered, and because we are genuine apes that need to be told what to do in spite of our efforts to prove the contrary, it's a situation that fosters the proliferation of pseudo alphas or bullies. Getting ass, kicking ass and making money are the bullies' main preoccupations, and we admire those who succeed.

We are surrounded by bullies, thieves, megalomaniacs, perverts and abusers of all kinds, but we survive as a group because we have developed systems of law and order. The people who perpetrate despicable deeds are mainly motivated by money and sex, and all they're doing is letting their ANS lead them by the nose. The wimps, the do-gooders and the bleeding hearts think that they are exempt of this genetic force, and that mainly those in a position of power are crooked and corrupt, with the bankers leading the way, but what do they do when they feel nobody is looking?

The talking heads in academia, politics and the media have even coined a name for the alleged super evil financial power that bullies the world, they call it the 'deep state', a term associated with the military-industrial complex. Movies like the James Bond series and novels that deal in conspiracy theories have treated this unfathomable evil entity in a thousand and one ways. The truth is that the 'deep state' does exist, but it's not at all what we think it is. It's not a state, it's a dynasty of bankers in the City in London that is completely devoted to protecting the great world of credit that their patriarch created, and we are the lucky beneficiaries of the decisions taken by this altruistic group. It would perhaps be better to call this entity Big Brother, and if we think of the world as one big family, we can think of it as being the alpha that rules it, and what is good for the world is good for Big Brother, and vice-versa.

The original Big Brother, the patriarch, was born in a ghetto in Frankfurt in 1744 where he lived his whole life. He lived in complete anonymity which explains his fabulous success as the first international banker. He was the gentlest and most generous man one can imagine. He was a loving family man with an extraordinary wife who outlived him and remained in the ghetto until she died many years later. To think of this man as an evil force is the height of ignorance, and yes, small mindedness.

Today, the existence of the World Bank, UNESCO, World Heritage, Green Peace, WWF, and all the UN agencies and private institutions like National Geographic and the Smithsonian, along with the thousands of NGO's and thousands of university labs and research centers around the world are the result of the altruism of this great man's dynasty. The Pacific garbage patches will be cleaned up, wildlife will survive as the numerous UNESCO protected parks are joined by corridors in Africa as well as North America. We will have abundant clean energy by way of fusion, hydrogen and solar, we will grow all the food we need, and all this because the City dynasty of bankers are intent on investing in the protection and improvement of the global village their patriarch created. Unfortunately, because we are being mass-empowered while needing to be told what to do every step of the way, we have become a fragile specie. The only way Big Brother has of dealing with this dichotomy is to make ever greater use of the crop mentioned earlier on, that is, by imposing more controls and restrictions in order to ensure our security and productivity.

No matter, Big Brother knows we are not genetically programmed for a world of leisure, and that's why he invests in numerous ways to occupy our leisure time. Right up until the start of the 20th century, people were busy just plain surviving 24/7, as many in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Russia still do today. Survival, religion and politics kept the masses busy for the longest time, but when the three Gorgon Sisters were created in mid 19th century, and especially when the use of steam power and electricity became widespread at the end of that century, we had more leisure time. After two world wars that kept us more than busy, after the signing of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, and especially after the new market economies started roaring, providing us jobs in the process, more ways had to be developed to occupy people's leisure time. Shopping and accumulating material things is still a very seductive way of spending time, but it's definitely counterproductive in fulfillment terms.

That's why Big Brother has been investing more R&D money to promote our well-being. Making money, consuming and watching television got us through most of the 20th century, and though being hard-wired to the Gorgon Sisters through our smartphones turned out to be a much more efficient way of occupying our idle moments, it's far from being enough. Since sports, travel, rallies and concerts of all kinds are saner ways to occupy the masses, that is what is being financed today at breakneck speed, for it allows the whole world to join in as participant or spectator. The hundreds of world and international competitions, starting with the Olympics, winter, summer and para, involving hundreds of sports, with new ones being developed everyday, seen worldwide on television or our smartphones, along with the thousands of rallies and concerts, are proof that sports, entertainment and cybernetics are replacing religion as the opium of the people. In the last hundred years, sports participation, passive and active, has increased exponentially and there is no slow-down in sight, thanks to the research and development money dished out by Big Brother.

However, we not only ignore that we are not genetically programmed to live in a world of leisure, but we also forget that we are genetically programmed to be violent, and that that violence has to be somehow released. During millions of years, we were forced to kill wild animals for food and were often killed in the process, and we had to get through deadly winters and summer droughts on empty stomachs. The memories of those violent ways are genetically imprinted in us. Thankfully, we started being less violent around 20k years ago when we settled down and grew food, and more so 5k years ago when writing and religion were created, but we only started living in a leisurely fashion in early 20th century when electricity was made available to the masses. Though ever more political rallies, sports events, concerts and travel are all good ways to release the tension that builds up in us, such activities should be accompanied by an educational system that addresses who and what we are, and how and why we behave the way we do. The video games and movies filled with bloody and violent scenes that occupy most of our waking hours may dissipate the endemic violence in all of us, but understanding the human animal is a far better way to fight stress.

Because we come from a violent past, and because we still march to the archaic drum of survival of the fittest, it makes us all potential bullies. Give someone a badge, a uniform, a title, a rank, wealth or a high salary, and you can make him do just about anything you want. Napoleon was the first bright recruit, then there were the Hitler's, the Stalin's, the Mao's, and the Tojo's, while today, it's clowns like Trump, Putin and Johnson that are recruited. Before 1944, Big Brother used henchmen to bulldoze the ancien regimes of the world, today, it uses clowns to entertain us.

To learn Darwinism is to learn humility. Knowledge is not weakness, it is strength. Self-empowerment is based on strength and humility, while mass-empowerment is based on arrogance and weakness. If we want to feel fulfilled, we have no choice but to use mass-empowerment, which requires very little effort, in order to reclaim self-empowerment which requires a good deal of effort. The key to accomplishing this is to become convinced that we are most happy when we are involved in nurturing or creative activities. If we cultivate immediate gratification and nurture greed at the expense of a life that focuses on our nurturing and creative talents, we are sure to become stressed and even depressed. The universe encourages us to follow the path of least resistance and, because we live in a world of well-being and idleness, we must resist all the more. Making the effort to find what we really like to do and a lifetime partner to share it with is the only antidote to stress and anxiety.

LGBTQ

Since forever, homosexual men have been battered about. That's because, in spite of the fact that we are no longer subjected to the laws of natural selection, we still live by those laws, and we even apply them to ludicrous situations. For instance, in pre-sapiens days, homosexuals were just ignored as they continue to be in Bonobo groups today because they simply didn't challenge the alpha male. However, when we became intelligent, the now pseudo-alpha males, or more exactly, the bullies, could tell homosexuals behaved differently, and though their behavior didn't harm the group any more than it ever had, the pseudo-alphas started oppressing them. The pseudo-alphas were applying the laws of natural selection, not to guarantee the quality of the breeding stock, but just because they were non-hetero. Homophobia is unfounded and the product of our twisted collective imagination. If we continue persecuting non-heterosexuals, it's because we don't even try to understand that they are not only a harmless part of the group but a productive one, and that we are no longer subjected to the laws of natural selection. Homosexuals have always been part of the group and there is no reason to want to exclude them from the group. We just seem to take pleasure in bullying them because our intelligence tells us they are different.

Homosexuality seems to have been a genetically sound occurrence in the pre-sapiens world of survival of the fittest or natural selection. During our pre-sapiens existence, if all males had been aggressive heterosexuals, there would have been too much violence generated in their quest to become alpha males. So much aggression among the males would have been counterproductive to the survival of the group, and in the same way, too few aggressive males would have meant a gene pool of lesser quality and would have negatively affected the survival of the group. So, for any group of animals in the wild, there has to be an acceptable balance of aggressive males, not too many, not too few. It would seem that Mother Nature has developed a way of maintaining the equilibrium to ensure the best genetic stock possible within the group without destroying it. Though we left the world of natural selection when we broke the time barrier some three million years ago, this equilibrium still holds today because we are unchanged genetically.

We know that every female has a given number of oocytes at birth. While she may have a million or so at the outset, the number declines rapidly to zero after age forty. Each oocyte is genetically preprogrammed as to the type and quantity of sex hormones it will produce. Let's say the sex hormone scale, like the PH scale, goes from 0 to 14 with one indicating the most maleness and 14 the most femaleness. As we read the scale from left to right, we have less and less aggressive males right up to the middle section where we have a hodgepodge of LGBTQ, and then as we continue reading further right, we have more and more femaleness. A good estimate of all embryos developing from oocytes favoring the LGBTQ traits (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) would be around 10%. This appears to be the case worldwide. We would probably find the same percentage in wild animals, and the bonobos would be an obvious group to study.

One reason we keep ostracising the LGBTQ group is because, in the last 100 years or so, more and more individuals have come out of the closet. Therefore, not only is the general public more aware of their presence but they also feel uncomfortable in their presence, and naturally, bullies react ever more vigorously against them because of their sexual differences. During the 20th century, many people suffering from this genetic variant reacted and developed what could be called a BNS (Boy Named Sue) syndrome. As more and more gays came out of the closet, and as the public at large was made more and more aware of their existence, it became clear that a disproportionate number of them were in the high rungs of society, be it in politics, arts, sport or academia. In wanting to avoid being persecuted and in their need to prove they were as good or better than any hetero, they did their utmost to overachieve in their chosen field, and many reached their goal. That must also account in part for the negative feelings directed at them by the bullies

One can only be glad that the LGBTQ group is today slowly taking its rightful place in society. As they integrate society openly, on an equal footing, they won't feel the need to shock heterosexuals in order to have them face reality and won't act like silly overactive sex perverts in pride parades. Why shouldn't they be allowed to marry, adopt children and live next door? If we base ourselves on the hetero divorce rates and the damage done to their offspring, it would be difficult for the LGBTQ to do worse.

Gorgon Sisters

By now, some of us accept the fact that we are 100% animal of the ape family. For those who do, it becomes obvious that due to our gregarious nature we want to identify with our ethnic group, live in it, and be led by it, taking care not to stick out to the point of being ostracized by it. Because we're intelligent, we do everything we can to be different while doing everything we possibly can to be like everybody else in the group. In a word, we want to be told what to wear, what to eat, what to do and where to go, while doing everything we can to show we're smart and independent. A good example is when we do our darndest to be first to do what the fashion industry and the media say is a cool thing to do. If we looked at a picture of the crowd on 5th avenue in 1929, and one from the same angle in 2019, we could easily identify the first one as having been taken in 1929, and the second in 2019. The people in both pictures are all dressed in a similar fashion, and yet we can see that they are all dressed differently. It shows that we want to be like everybody else while doing our best to look different. During those same time frames, the bonobos in Congo didn't change one iota. By looking at pictures of bonobos taken in those two time periods we can't tell if it's 1929 or 2019, only the materials used to make the actual photo can help us date the picture. We can easily see how intelligence affects our genetic make-up. Not surprisingly, democracy is founded on the human foible where we want to be first to do whatever is cool in order to show were astute, and when credit became available, we were eager to go into debt in order to do so. That's why credit and democracy are interdependent.

The story of democracy is a story of finance. Today's misguided intelligentsia even call the financial power that rules democracies, 'deep state'. However, if we understood what democracy really is, we'd understand that the ultimate financial power we are ruled by is the greatest thing that ever happened to us. In spite of the fact that bankers in the City have the last word as to what is to be financed worldwide, and that people have to be imperatively convinced that they control things while being totally controlled by the bankers, democracy is the greatest political concept imaginable. The Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 was a world game changer, and, thereafter, the City bankers were so successful that world population went from 2 to 8 billion. The majority of humans today live a life of plenty that hardly anyone could have imagined at the turn of the 20th century. If we believe that Big Brother is responsible for all this, that is, if we like running water, water treatment plants, housing, cars and planes, super markets, internet and smartphones, then we should consider ourselves very lucky to have him looking after us.

Most people think that the richest men in the world are people like Bill Gates, and somehow, they think these men are powerful. Maybe we should reflect on the meaning of power, and the best way to do that is to study bank notes. The first US paper dollars were issued by the First Bank of the United States in 1791. They were crude handwritten bank notes for the most part, and there were no more than millions of dollars' worth issued at that time. A bank note is a loan made to countries, businesses and individuals who want to build bridges, cars or houses and who willingly pay interest for that service.

In 1791, Big Brother printed dollars in the millions, in 1810, it was printing pounds and dollars in the billions, and in 1944, it was printing trillions of dollars worth, for they were not only printing the nominal US dollar but all the currencies that were locked in to it. Today, it produces quadrillions of dollars, including all the currencies tied to it, and the distribution of bank notes became so unmanageable that ETF's had to replace the paper.

However, if interest rates were around 6% in 1791 but merely 1% today, does that mean Big Brother has lost power and has less control? Well, we know the amount of interest paid on 100 million dollars in 1791 would have been 6 million dollars, but how much does 1% of interest paid on thousands of quadrillions of dollars represent? Clearly, it's so huge that we can't talk in terms of wealth any more, we are forced to use the term power. Bill Gates might be the wealthiest man in the world, but how does that compare to the financial power wielded by Big Brother who is the sole lender to all the nations of the world and who makes 1% on thousands of quadrillions of dollars? No matter, that's power, and we are lucky to be in the hands of Big Brother.

Because of this power and because communications and censorship have been inseparable ever since the Gutenberg Press started rolling in 1452, the City has made very good use of the medias in order to create and maintain democracy. In spite of the fact that we can be exquisitely beautiful beings when we pursue nurturing and creative activities, we are genetically disposed to be mean, nasty, selfish, envious, conniving, lusty and greedy. Our dastardly penchants must be controlled in spite of the fact that we are convinced that it doesn't concern us, and that it's the bankers that are the most despicable breed of all, just like President Andrew Jackson said a long time ago. Altruism and power on the part of Big Brother is similar to that of the alpha male in the ape world, and we will never believe that such a state of affairs is possible in our world because we judge others as we do ourselves. We don't even know that Mayer Amschel Rothschild existed, let alone know that he was the greatest man who ever lived. He succeeded in creating the great world of credit because he lived in complete anonymity, and it had to be that way or it never would have worked.

The three Gorgon sisters are the communications arm of the dynasty of bankers in the City, and they support and even promote concepts like the 'deep state', for it keeps us guessing about the 'overpowering evil society' that wants to destroy us. Keeping us wary is one of many control techniques used to keep us in line, security checks at airports being another. And if we want to really want to be Zen in this magnificent world created by Mayer, we have to know that we are hardwired to the three Gorgon Sisters that manipulate us on an ongoing basis via the medias. If we knew how that indoctrination sorority works and why, we could ignore them. Unfortunately, most of us can't possibly ignore them any more than we can our smartphone when it's ringing.

The Gorgon sisters were created in mid 19th century with the advent of the telegraph. Havas was the first agency to work for Emperor Napoleon III, followed by Reuters in the UK and AP in the USA. When the western world was being ruled by the Christian Church, from 325 CE to 1789 CE, the Holy See burned people and books and scared people using the threat of excommunication in order to maintain relative order, but luckily for us, following the advent of the telegraph in 1837, the ultimate indoctrination machine was created. As the Gorgon Sisters started giving news feeds to all the newspapers of the world, anybody could say anything they believed in, for whatever they said could easily be countered by the 'suits', or beneficiaries of the new economic regime, and that hasn't changed.

And because we have become smombies (smartphone zombies), because we are affected by the FOMO syndrome (fear of missing out), because we suffer from greed and envy more than ever, because we are constantly being made wary by a thousand and one news items streamed live from around the world, we have no choice but to cut the cord if we want to achieve a certain level of well-being. We don't have to become like the citizens described in George Orwell's '1984'. We can instead make a point of knowing how Christianity and democracy were created and do everything we possibly can to bring to the fore our talents, that is, what we love doing. If we came to realize that we live in the best of all possible worlds and understood that we are not genetically programmed for such a world, we'd soon conclude that the pursuit of nurturing and creative lifestyles should be our main goal. Unearthing our talents is very difficult, but using them to earn a living is very easy in this wonderful world we find ourselves in.

The art of Kintsugi

When we broke the time barrier some three million years ago, we became intelligent beings, which meant the past, the present and the future components of our brain were now interconnected. We now had a three-dimensional brain. However, because of this time distortion we became aware of our mortality and bestiality, and we were terror-stricken. We became unnatural apes. Eons later, religion, especially Christianity, made an attempt at making us whole by inventing a god that came down on earth to teach us how to earn our way to a great place in the sky after death. But in forcing all the citizens of the Holy Roman Empire to accept the idea of God made man, and by promoting intolerance and the virtues of ignorance and poverty, the Church Fathers not only controlled us very inefficiently, but made two serious enemies in the process, the Jews and the Huguenots. However, that was a lucky break for us, for the union of these two enemies would eventually give rise to democracy as we know it. Unfortunately, because the financial power that ensued, a power that could rightly be called Big Brother, was too successful. As electricity started powering the Industrial Revolution in early 20th century, people left the farm for the city, and world population grew from one to eight billion. As full-fledged consumers in a world of leisure, the unnatural apes that we had become at the dawn of time, now became unnatural humans. Since consumerism has to do in large part with instant gratification, we began living in the present and our brain went back to operating in one-dimensional mode.

Before electricity came along, we were producers, and we were forced to use our three-dimensional brain, for we had to figure things out on our own. Our survival depended on the experience accumulated within our family and that of our neighbors. No electricity meant no medias and no communication other than the almanac and the occasional newspaper. At night, around the kitchen stove, neighbors gathered and talked about crops, livestock and weather in order to make the best decisions possible regarding future crops and their livelihood in general.

When we moved to the city, we only thought about getting a job, making money, and spending it. We were happy to leave the cows and the hay stacks behind us, and as for the future, all we wanted was to make money in order to be secure. Though we started living in the present, and though we have since become broken humans, all is not lost. In an allegorical fashion, we could recalibrate our three-dimensional brain if we used the method used in the Japanese art of Kintsugi. We can never go backwards and be like the one-dimensional brain apes we were, nor should we want to, but if we became good Kintsugi art students, we could make ourselves whole again as humans by putting our three-dimensional brain back together.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together. It's built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, one can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Every break is unique and instead of repairing an item like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the fractures as part of the design. It teaches us that in the process of putting a broken piece of pottery back together, we can actually create something more beautiful than the original.

To be sure, if we want to reconstruct our three-dimensional brain, we must have access to its past, present and future components, in other words, we must have all the pieces in hand. Only then can we piece together our flawed or imperfect brain locked in the present and render it all its beauty. If our three-dimensional brain cracked in the first place, it's because we took the path of least resistance by wallowing in instant gratification, and that's what has to change. 'Who cares about the past' and 'what future do we have' we ask, and those questions have to be thrashed. We have to tamper our consumer ways and regulate our use of the social medias where we live with virtual friends, and where we worry about being left out in the cold when it comes to choosing the right color of the latest Jordan shoe release.

If we want to rebuild our three-dimensional brain, we must first of all recover the elements of the past that made us what we are. Since this component is largely dependent on the parents, it would be desirable for the adolescent to have had the good fortune of having parents similar to the ideal couple presented earlier. However, he can succeed even if he does not have perfect parents. If he is really interested in his human origins, if he wants to understand how he is controlled, and if he wants to reconnect with his essential values , he will then be able to manage the present and future components. He will be able to juggle the three components, restart his three-dimensional brain and become a productive and fulfilled human being.

It is ideally the parents who facilitate the learning of human values by making the child feel loved and supported and an integral part of the family. In that way, he is connected, he has roots, and feels good about himself. If the parents teach him that all living things on earth come from a common source and that the child is a unique member of that whole, and that because he's intelligent he has the responsibility for protecting the natural world around him, so much the better. He will hopefully know that although he is no longer subject to the laws of natural selection his body is still controlled by his ANS, and that although his parents taught him to manage hunger, thirst, urination and defecation, he knows he will soon have to personally deal with the greatest life force of all, his libido.

Being fully aware of his ANS and his bestiality, understanding how his species broke the time barrier and what intelligence means, how and why the Christian god was created in 325 CE, and how Big Brother, born in a ghetto in 1744, created democracy, he now has the 'past' component well in hand.

In the 'present' component of his brain, the teen will know that there are three factors, libido, hierarchy and talent, to be dealt with. Regarding libido, Mother Nature has already started transforming the teen's body in order to prepare it for reproduction, and the teen is aware of the changes taking place. He knows that soon, feeling the vital need to reproduce, he will be seriously attracted to the opposite sex and will tend to lose his self control. But he knows how important it is to develop real relationships with the opposite sex, and having learned the art of intimacy from his parents, he knows how to do it. So, if a teen couple then establishes a relationship based on honesty and respect, they may decide to have sex, and that's OK, as long as they make sure to avoid pregnancy and disease. It is unwise to play with sex, but if they make sure they have a meaningful experience that they'll remember as a memorable one, who can condemn them. Regardless, they know that a 'wham bam thank you mam' affair has to be avoided at all cost, for it can only cause grief, and if a baby is conceived in these conditions, it can ruin many lives.

As for hierarchy, though humans have left the natural selection world, teens still want to know where they stand in their group. Animals in the wild sort that out very early on. They determine which one among them is stronger and wilier by play fighting. Once their rank is established within the group, it stays that way throughout their life. But because teens are intelligent, they have more wiggle room, and if they want to know where they best fit, they should want to bring their talents to the fore, and everybody has talent. If the teens become avid readers, pursue their creative penchants, hopefully with the encouragement of their parents, and don't discard the idea of apprenticeships, nor shy away from shop or art classes in high school, they will find their place. If the teens are not forced to get a diploma for the sake of a diploma, and if they are lucky enough to do what they love doing for a living, which may or may not necessitate a diploma, they have it made. Do they have the talent to become a builder, a musician, an architect, an engineer, a farmer, a landscaper, a park ranger, a veterinarian, a doctor, a scientist or have the desire to work in a sub category of these noble professions? If they find what they are good at, they may even reach the lofty heights of a Bill Gates, a Marie Curie or a Gustave Eiffel, or simply be a happy Jean-Guy. In a pre-consumer world, Jean-Guy was the village idiot who was always willing to help his neighbors, and he was loved and protected in return.

As for the future, it is the last component to put in place, it is the component where teens have to make choices. If they find a way to do what they love doing for a living and establish honest respectful relationships, they'll have a beautiful Kintsugi result. They know that in this day and age they don't have to marry their sex partner, but that if they do, it must be with the intention of raising a family that includes grandchildren, it must be for life. And to achieve that, they will have to surmount the upcoming wall mentioned earlier. Hopefully, the wall has been explained to them and they are determined to manage that overwhelming ANS life force that often makes people lose their head. They well know that the exquisite pleasure that their libido promises can be the cause of horrific behavior in the early years and deadly in midlife when menopause comes into the picture.

When all is said and done, the teens may want to look at life very simply. Instead of saying smoking is my only pleasure, make-up makes me feel like a woman, I'm not a man if I don't screw, I'm not a woman if I don't have a man, or I don't want others to think I'm a loser, they'll choose to be passionate producers in a field dictated by their talent. In the producer world, one's worth is established by what one does, whereas in the consumer world, it is dependent on what others think of one. That's why one should define one's own self by defining and exploiting one's talents, and not let someone else do it for him or her.

The two life partners with the most enviable Kintsugi brains could very well be the ones who plant carrots from seed and have the pleasure of watching them grow before serving them to their family.

