by Jim Marrs
Additional Trilateralists in the Obama administration include: Tim Geithner; Susan Rice; the deputy national security adviser, Thomas Donilon; the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair; the assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, Kurt M. Campbell; the deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg; and State Department special envoys Richard Haass, Dennis Ross, and Richard Holbrooke.
“According to official Trilateral Commission membership lists, there are only 87 members from the United States (the other 337 members are from other countries). Thus, within two weeks of his inauguration, Obama’s appointments encompassed more than 12 percent of [the] Commission’s entire U.S. membership,” noted researchers at Project Censored.
Patrick Wood, author of the Project Censored paper “Obama: Trilateral Commission Endgame,” stated, “The concept of ‘undue influence’ comes to mind when considering the number of Trilateral Commission members in the Obama administration. They control the areas of our most urgent national needs: financial and economic crisis, national security, and foreign policy. The conflict of interest is glaring. With 75 percent of the Trilateral membership consisting of non-U.S. individuals, what influence does this super-majority have on the remaining 25 percent? For example, when Chrysler entered bankruptcy under the oversight and control of the Obama administration, it was quickly decided that the Italian carmaker Fiat would take over Chrysler. The deal’s point man, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is a member of the Trilateral Commission. Would you be surprised to know that the chairman of Fiat, Luca di Montezemolo, is also a fellow member? Congress should have halted this deal the moment it was suggested.”
In his book With No Apologies, the late senator Barry Goldwater described the commission with distrust: “In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future.” Trilateralists and others within globalist societies have displayed very little concern for the United States as a sovereign nation. Their policies often run counter to the best interests of the United States and, in fact, appear to support the allegation that they seek a one-world government.
A COMFORTABLE STAFF
IT MAY BE THAT President Obama is connected to too many of the nation’s elite globalists to affect policy in any one direction without appearing hypocritical. He also came under fire for perceived conflicts of interest, such as the time he golfed with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank and the chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas. Wolf had been an early supporter of Obama and had raised $250,000 for his campaign back in 2006. Moreover, according to ProPublica reporter Sharona Coutts and Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, their golf game took place only three days after UBS had reached an agreement with the IRS to give up the names of forty-five hundred American clients suspected of hiding billions in secret Swiss bank accounts. This was done in an effort to avoid criminal charges. UBS already had admitted to aiding the clients in tax evasion and agreed to pay a $780 million fine. In February 2009, Wolf was appointed to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, tasked with trying to fix America’s new depression.
What is perhaps both ironic and tragic about the UBS situation is that the man who had been the whistle-blower on UBS’s shady dealings was sentenced to a forty-month prison sentence. As a UBS banker involved with the Swiss accounts, Bradley Birkenfeld had initiated the investigation. It was Birkenfeld’s disclosures and cooperation with authorities that provided inside information into the bank’s conduct and allowed the government to gain $780 billion in fines and stop a massive tax-evasion scheme. Yet, for his trouble, Birkenfeld was given a harsher sentence by Fort Lauderdale federal judge William Zloch than was asked for by the case’s prosecutors.
Stephen Kohn pointed out that while the government announced it would investigate the forty-five hundred names handed over by UBS, Birkenfeld had actually turned in fifty-two thousand account identifications. “But the whole case is puzzling,” Kohn added, “because if the United States wants to crack tax fraud, if they want to crack money laundering or stop these practices in secret banks, why are they putting into prison for forty months the whistleblower? The billionaire to whom he was serving got probation. How are they ever going to get another banker to step forward and cooperate with an investigation?”
But it was not just Obama’s corporate buddies that raised the ire of many citizens. His wife took flak as more outrage resulted from the news of First Lady Michelle Obama’s well-paid staff.
“No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession,” wrote Dr. Paul L. Williams in the Canada Free Press. “Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.”
Williams quoted Mrs. Obama’s statement from the Democratic National Convention—“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service.” Paul Williams then lamented, “If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michelle are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public.”
The listing of White House staffers assigned to the first lady and their salaries made ripples through the Internet. They included:
Susan Sher (Chief of Staff)—$172,200
Jocelyn C. Frye (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)—$140,000
Desiree G. Rogers (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)—$113,000
Camille Y. Johnston (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)—$102,000
Melissa E. Winter (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady)—$100,000
David S. Medina (Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady)—$90,000
Catherine M. Lelyveld (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)—$84,000
Frances M. Starkey (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)—$75,000
Trooper Sanders (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)—$70,000
Erinn J. Burnough (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)—$65,000
Joseph B. Reinstein (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)—$64,000
Jennifer R. Goodman (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator for the First Lady)—$62,000
Alan O. Fitts (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady)—$60,000
Dana M. Lewis (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)—$57,500
Semonti M. Mustaphi (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary to the First Lady)—$52,500
Kristen E. Jarvis (Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide to the First Lady)—$50,000
Tyler A. Lechtenberg (Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)—$45,000
Samantha Tubman (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)—$43,000
Joseph
J. Boswell (Executive Assistant to the Chief of Staff to the First Lady)—$40,000
Sally M. Armbruster (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)—$36,000
Natalie Bookey (Staff Assistant)—$35,000
Deilia A. Jackson (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)—$35,000
Williams noted this list did not include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, age forty-nine, and “First Hairstylist” Johnny Wright, thirty-one, both of whom traveled to Europe with the Obamas aboard Air Force One.
While to many the first lady’s staff seems excessively large, “Michelle Obama’s staff is not ‘unprecedented,’ but rather on a par with her predecessor’s,” according to the Internet fact-checking site, snopes.com. Though Michelle Obama has more than twenty staffers working for her, the 2008 White House staff list included sixteen names working for First Lady Laura Bush.
HELPING HAMAS TERRORISTS
MANY BELIEVED OBAMA’S POLICY of unrestrained illegal immigration would destroy the last vestiges of national cohesion, especially when he issued Presidential Determination No. 2009-15, entitled “Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related to Gaza.” In early 2009, alternative news outlets reported that Obama actually was aiding immigration through organizations formerly linked to terrorism, such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
In Presidential Determination No. 2009-15, sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January 2009, Obama claimed authority under the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 to spend up to $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for assistance in relocating Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza to the United States. Though Obama’s action received little notice in the corporate mass media, it nevertheless stirred up both the anti-Obama crowd as well as the pro-Israel lobby.
Such actions play into the hands of those who decry Obama as pro-Muslim. They remember the words of Libya’s Mu’ammar Gadhafi, who, in 2008, said, “There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.”
OBAMA’S “CIVILIAN ARMY”
ANY VIABLE SOCIALIST SYSTEM has needed to indoctrinate its citizenry and use government snitches to gather intelligence. Under President Obama, the United States is no different. President Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, have tried to create a seven-million-person “civilian army” reportable to only the president. In July 2008, Obama stated, “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
In 2008, Obama’s official campaign website, Change.gov, announced that President-elect Obama would expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps and create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in low-income schools. Additionally, Obama planned to create a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps for his civilian army.
Originally, Change.gov stated, “Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America by developing a plan to require [emphasis added] 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.”
Following a barrage of criticism over drafting children into Obama’s “national security force,” the website’s wording was softened to read, “Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and be developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.”
Some critics, such as those writing for WorldNetDaily.com and Modern Conservative, found Obama’s “civilian security force” reminiscent of Hitler’s brownshirts, the Hitler Youth, and youth brigades in Russia and other Communist countries. Scarier words came from Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. In his 2006 book The Plan: Big Ideas for America, Emanuel wrote, “It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation, and community service.”
Due to public resistance, such a plan for universal civilian service languished until passage of Obama’s health-care plan, euphemistically called the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, on March 23, 2010. The Senate version, adopted by the House, included a provision for establishing both a National Health Service Corps as well as a Ready Reserve appointed by the president. The purpose of the Ready Reserve was to meet a perceived need for “additional Commissioned Corps personnel available on short notice (similar to the uniformed service’s reserve program) to assist regular Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.” Is this Obama’s “civilian army”?
ACORN AND SEIU
ZOMBIES LIKE TO FLOCK together in packs or large crowds under the control of a master. In the horror movies, one rarely saw a zombie roaming about alone. Today, American zombies prefer to gather in large groups and they too are likely to follow some master, whether it be a gang boss, guru, or political chieftain.
Political leaders do not work alone. Rather, they are surrounded by staffs, mentors, guides, advisers, and other string pullers, and they have minions working for them in the form of nonprofit organizations. Liberals during the 2000 presidential election accused Bush’s Republican supporters of Nazi-style Stormtrooper tactics when they surrounded and occupied a building conducting a recount vote in Palm Beach County, Florida.
But those who cause problems haven’t always sat on the right side of the political fence. Another example of Stormtrooper tactics can be seen in an attack by a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) member on Kenneth Gladney, a young black man who was trying to distribute small flags with a Revolutionary War motto on them at a St. Louis Tea Party meeting. According to Gladney’s attorney, David B. Brown, “Kenneth was approached by an SEIU representative as Kenneth was handing out ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags to other conservatives…. The SEIU representative demanded to know why a black man was handing out these flags. The SEIU member used a racial slur against Kenneth, [and] then punched him in the face. Kenneth fell to the ground. Another SEIU member yelled racial epithets at Kenneth as he kicked him in the head and back. Kenneth was also brutally attacked by one other male SEIU member and an unidentified woman.”
Also consider the recent activities of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), SEIU, and the political action group MoveOn. In 2009, the Census Bureau enlisted ACORN to promote the 2010 census, already under criticism for marking individual homes with global positioning system (GPS) satellite coordinates. Census director Robert Groves, in a letter to ACORN president Maude Hurd, stated that the community organization had become a distraction. ACORN national deputy director, Brian Kettenring, said, “We will continue to do what we’ve said we’ll do, which is encourage people in communities to participate fully in the census.” On September 11, 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau discontinued its partnership with ACORN in the 2010 census after hidden-camera videos recorded four ACORN employees giving tax advice on running a brothel.
Furor arose after a young activist named James O’Keefe posed as an aspiring politician and told ACORN workers he planned to use his girl-friend’s prostitution income to fund future campaigns. He claimed to want advice on how to obtain a
loan for a house from which to conduct her profession. In the videos, ACORN workers gave instructions for creating a company in order to prove they had enough income for a house that could serve as a brothel and home for teenage prostitutes.
After secretly filming at the ACORN’s Baltimore office, and later in Washington, D.C., the activists posted the videos on YouTube. ACORN officials said the four offending workers were fired. Yet despite the terminations and assurances from the president and the executive director of ACORN Housing that ACORN Housing staff members are expected to behave ethically and comply with the law, a growing number of Republican politicians began calling for congressional hearings and IRS audits of ACORN.
After the ACORN videos were released on YouTube, the Senate voted 83–7 to block the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) from giving grants to ACORN, which ended housing and community funding to the organization. This meant that ACORN would not receive grants for programs such as counseling low-income people on how to get mortgages and for fair housing education and outreach.