In 1975 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson published The Illuminatus! Trilogy. It remains a seminal work of conspiracy fiction. Today, The Omnivore continues a serial-fiction experiment: Illuminoimia.
Everything You're Afraid Of Is True.
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Previously On Illuminoimia
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| What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? |
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| This Will Be On The Test |
University of Florida, Three Days after Seattle Restaurant Shooting
Professor of History Timothy Tracer placed his hands in his pockets and looked out over the sea of freshman faces. Tenure, he thought, was like an (almost) invincible force-field: Try as it might, the university would not be able to stop him from forcing some actual learning--or at least a few, straggling, facts--into their empty little heads. His two hour lecture, A History of Central and Fractional-Reserve Banking was, despite its title, never a sleeper.
That was because there was always some student who was ready and willing to stand up and be counted--to cloak themselves in the ‘protection’ of the Official Narrative--to challenge the professor. There was always someone who thought they knew their shit.
If there was one immutable fact of the universe that Professor Tracer had come to recognize in his years of teaching, it was this: No one in freshman history knew their shit.
In 48 BC Julius Caesar crossed his economic Rubicon when he took the power of minting coins away from the money changers. Do you remember how he wound up?In 1024 AD the goldsmiths of Europe discovered that they needed hoard only a small percentage of the money left with them--as it was rare or almost impossible--that all their depositors would come and demand their money at once. Thus they could loan more than they actually had--provided they could collect interest! This created Fractional-Reserve Banking--the effective, and, at the time, fraudulent--“creation” of money on paper (which is distinct from paper-money where script is used instead of metal).
It took over two-hundred years before St. Thomas Aquinas tried to close the barn doors by declaring the charging of interest a sin--the practice of usury. That held--for a little while--but throughout the continent more and more of the royalty relaxed the laws against such practices (as well as others) until, seeing the economy moving into the hands of the bankers, in 1588 Queen Elizabeth decided to take back control and issue only gold and silver coins. This was the financial equivalent of a first strike.
The response from the money-changers was the economic equivalent of an atom bomb: in 1609 the Netherlands established the first central bank in history--opening in Amsterdam. A “Central Bank” is a private institution--not a government run one--which manages a state's currency, money supply, and interest rates. It has a monopoly on increasing the amount of a nation’s money that is allowed to be in circulation and it usually oversees the entire banking system for the country in which it operates. A system of banking similar to that of a Central Bank was run by none other than the Knights Templar--but the Bank of Amsterdam was the first to offer accounts “not directly convertible to coin”--meaning it combined the practices of Central Banking, Fractional Reserve Banking, and paper currency. It was something new--and, for its creators (both those on the historical record and off it) it was a sea change in the way the world worked.
While central banking seemed to be a bulwark against certain kinds of malfeasance on the part of the crown (such as wantonly printing your own paper money) the political powers soon found that the control of currency was a kind of bondage that even an army could not easily throw off.
When America declared its great experiment in Republic open for business, its founding fathers were strongly opposed to the establishment of a central bank. They had seen the Bank of England’s control of currency as “the last straw” and Benjamin Franklin had told officials in Britain that prosperity in America was directly linked to the Colonies’ ability to create their own money, thank you very much. Thomas Jefferson had stated that “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Tim Tracer’s PowerPoint would show a homeless man with a cardboard sign saying “I OCCUPIED WALL STREET BEFORE IT WAS COOL.”
The powers that be regarded the newly minted America with their intellects vast, cool, and unsympathetic (here the Professor was unashamed to plagiarize) and in 1790, with the newly minted Constitution, barely cooled, the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed a bill to congress calling for a privately owned Central Bank.
By 1796 the First Bank of the United States had lent over eight million dollars to the US Government and prices had increased by 72 percent. By 1812 the bank had outstayed its welcome and, by a single vote--despite a threat by British central banker Nathan Rothschild that, were it not renewed America would find itself in a “most disastrous” war--the bank was terminated. You may have heard of the War of 1812: good to Mr. Rothschild’s word, the British attacked.
America renewed the charter in 1816. Andrew Jackson vetoed the charter on July 19, 1832. Someone tried (unsuccessfully) to kill him. He told his vice president Martin Van Buren it was the banks.
In 1864 Lincoln, running for reelection, declared “I have two great enemies, the Southern army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. And of the two, the bankers are my greatest foe.”His printing of “Greenbacks” against the will of central banking authorities angered the bankers. This time the assassin’s bullet found its home.
James Garfield was openly opposed to private control of currency. On July 1881 he was killed at a railroad station. John F. Kennedy spoke out against a shadow organization with incredible power. We all know what happened to him. Coincidence?
Today America’s Central Bank is the Federal Reserve (professor Tim Tracer shows an image of the Federal Reserve card from the Steve Jackson card game Illuminati). It controls the United States economy, sets interest rates, and is the gatekeeper by which money created in the US Mint enters circulation. There are 12 branches of the bank and the largest, in New York City, contains the world’s biggest deposit of gold.
The Fed itself is not controlled by the US Government which has no direct oversithe ght of the bank--but rather by eight families. Rockefellers, Sachs, Stillmans, and, of course, Rothschilds, whose scion Mayer Amschel Rothschild, had once bragged of his investment strategy: “When the streets of Paris are running in blood, I buy.” It worked out well for him. These are the ones we know: the full list of shareholders is considered a matter of national security despite the fact that many--possibly most--live in Europe.
By the time Tracer is finished, he adds the kicker: the concept of Deep Politics (and Deep Events)--a term, coined by Peter Dale Scott--for the practice of political processes that are below the level of public discussion. The idea being that these deep politics--and their attendant deep events--are either not discussed or, if they are, take on an entirely different character from what the actuality is.
Professor Tim Tracer likens this to a protective shell that an oyster forms around a grain of sand when creating a pearl. In this case, he says, the “pretty” pearl is what everyone sees and responds to. The reality underneath--the grain of sand--is still quite real--but if you discuss it, he says, you are out of step. You are ostracized.
It takes, he points out, no plan or central agency (even a bank) to cause this. It works because it is how humans respond to deep events: they take the pretty story (however bad it might be) and reject anything else (however easily the ‘pearl’ might be falsified).
Then he uses as his example 9/11. He always makes sure he has at least thirty minutes remaining on the lecture time. He is especially pleased when there is an agent of the administration in the audience, put there to frown dismally at him--to take notes like some East German neophyte Stasi investigator.
His reveal (the slide: the smoking towers) never fails to get someone to take the bait. In this case the young man who has stood up (Tracer gestures, magnanimously, for him to stand--it’s a collegial atmosphere … after all, this is a college) is, apparently, named Brad.
Brad is offended. Brad was probably three years old when the towers fell so Brad is offended on behalf of dead Americans (and a few others) he has never met and, likely, has no connection to. Brad is offended, of course, because it gives him an excuse to be righteous. Tim Tracer knows this--but he doesn’t get tired of it anyway: there is so little satisfaction in modern education after all.
“Are you saying,” Brad asks--rising to the challenge, a faint smirk on his face, “that the Federal Reserve Bank flew airplanes into the World Trade Center?”
Tim smiles: “No--but who did? Can you, for example, name the pilot who flew the plane into, oh, say WTC-1--the north tower?” He sounds like he’s chosen the tower at random. Brad just shakes his head.
“No--”
Tim holds up a hand: “I’m sure someone is googling it right now. I can see the smart phones going. Maybe they’re just tweeting, though.” That gets a laugh. Although he would never admit this, Professor Tracer is greatly proud of his low student-rating on RateMyProfessor.com.
One of the girls is fastest: “Waleed Al Shehri. Named by the FBI … Attended flight training in Daytona Beach …”
Tracer nods. To Brad: “Good enough?” Brad nods--standing up in class is hard--even if you’re among the seats. Brad is ‘offended,’ sure--but he’s maybe nineteen and he’s hardly experienced in a lecture hall. If he were more experienced he might not agree so quickly.
Tracer pushes the button: A BBC News page ‘HIJACK ‘SUSPECTS’ ALIVE AND WELL’ comes up. “Looks like he survived his crash,” he jokes. The class is alive now--silent (well, mostly silent) and paying attention: those that don’t have their smart phones going. Their smart phones are the only thing smart about this lot, Tracer thinks.
“He’s right,” says the girl. “It’s a real page. It’s the BBC …”
Brad is thrown. “I--well--that’s …”
Professor Tim Tracer throws him a lifeline: “Mistaken identity--it seems--right? A lot happened that day and they got a few things wrong?” Brad is silent--seething. “It turns out at least seven of the named hijackers have turned up--quite alive.”
He clicks to another page. “These are mainstream reports. Why do you think no one discusses them?”
Brad is furious. Tim, for his part, was hoping for more--this guy didn’t last two rounds, he thinks, dismally.
“So let me get this straight,” Brad seethes in the face of being proven wrong only an over-entitled undergrad can truly muster, “the whole 9/11 story is a lie--you know the truth--and … what, no one listens to you?”
“Well, I can at least empirically prove from 101 and 102 test scores that vanishingly few students are listening to me,” he says. The class laughs--more nervously.
“Right,” Brad, “You find some--any--hole in the story and now it’s a coverup by the Jews and the bankers--right? It’s not the three-thousand people in the tower who died that day who are the real victims--it’s you.”
That’s not a new statement to Professor Tracer--he’s been getting hate mail for years: he’s heard it all. He even keeps a folder of the particularly unhinged or inadvertently funny ones.
“There are real victims,” he says. “But I’m not one of them--you are. These deep events--which happen with more and more regularity keep you scared--keep you off balance. They infect your thinking and breed hate and insecurity which the powers that be can feed off of. They make you--” he gestures at the class “--controllable.”
Brad: “Controlled how?”
“Well,” asks Tim, “how do you--show of hands--feel about gun control. Should we ban AR-15 style rifles?” He actually has a slide showing the weapons--but he doesn’t click to it. It feels too much like a pro-team running up the score against a bunch of amateurs. Now the class is decidedly outside their comfort zone. The nation is still reeling from the recent mass shooting.
Tracer’s blog is awash with pictures for which the official narrative offers no plausible explanation but the trauma is real--however real the event was. The discussion has crossed from ancient history (9/11) to too soon. People shuffle. He’s not going there!? And: ‘OMG Prof Tracer Off Deep End. #SeattleShooting.’
Hands go up. Lots of them. Of course at first it’s a few--but as more go up, more follow. He nods.
“Five decades ago students in your chairs--many of whom would actually have had experience with guns and would have known how to shoot--would have answered quite differently. But for you--after a decade of pushing the narrative of lone-gunman-tragedy--you are will to relinquish your Constitutional rights without even a fight--without even discussion.”
He looks at the faces. Some are angry. Some--many--are frightened. One student above the traditional age up in the back is leaning forward--but for now? They’re scared--an authority figure talking about this is something they simply do not know how to process.
Tracer goes on: “I know you’ve all seen the news. One can only hope that a few of you are even following it--but do you know that there still is no death certificate released for Adam Lanza who shot up the Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012? That still is not released. Do you know why? Because it would interfere with the narrative: it is possible--maybe even probable--that Adam Lanza doesn’t even exist.”
He looks at Brad: “Many of these events are nothing at all what they appear to be on the news. Many of them are complicated drills or performances set up by our emergency agencies. If you look at the actual footage this is irrefutable.”
Brad, now bursting from emotional pressure, explodes: “You--this is--you are obscene, Professor!” he shrieks it--and he’s gone--turning and rushing for the door.
“Drop deadline is the sixteenth,” calls out Tracer. It gets a laugh--barely. The girl with the smartphone looks at him, horrified.
Tracer meets her stare: “You think I beat up on him?” he asks.
She doesn’t move--bunny like--in his gaze. He sits on the desk. “That kind of outrage,” he tells her, “is just Station Identification.” She’s never heard the term--her look is blank--wide eyed. “Brad is looking for some--a tribe--a team. Someone to fit in with. He chooses the national dialog because, hey, it can’t be wrong. If someone questions it he imagines he has the weight of everyone--every news anchor--ever congressman (except a few), certainly anyone they would let be President--and they’re all on his side. They’re wearing his colors.”
“So when I don’t bow down to the same idols he’s arrayed he loses his chance to be superior--to be right--and like air rushing out of a balloon he’s spinning all around and then out the door. I didn’t beat him up--it was a tiny, tiny little pin-prick.”
He watches her think about this.
“You can all go,” he says, releasing the class from its spell. The result is instant--noise and motion.
The girl still hasn’t moved.
“You think it was -- the Seattle thing--was a drill?” she asks, incredulous.
“I think what we were told cannot be true,” he answers her. “The physical and photographic evidence is clear. But, yes: I think it was a drill reported as fact.”
“What could keep the people quiet,” she asks.
He shakes his head: “They could be under nondisclosure--they could feel threatened. If you think people would talk against the government easily--against the media--you are terribly and wonderfully naive.”
“It’s because they’re a bunch of drug-addicted ex-military who are part of some kind of super-shady ass fucked up drill team,” says the older-than-the-traditional student who has come down from his back row seat. “I know: I was fucking part of it.”
Tim Tracer turns to look at him. This, he had not expected.
“Theodore Odell,” says the man. “And I have got to talk to you.”
Continue to Chapter 5: The Nicest Man In The World
* 9/11 HIJACK 'SUSPECTS' ALIVE AND WELL
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