Walker, Icke, Hedges, Lipton, Rothschild and Rockefeller

What does Jubilee Justice have to do with it?

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Currently there is a bruhaha about Alice Walker being accused of ant-Semitism for her positive mention of the writings of David Icke and Chris Hedges coming to the defense of Walker after finding Icke not guilty of anti-Semitism.  

On the Action Greens list Carol Lipton wrote several clear points detailing why Icke is in fact dog whistling anti-Semitic tropes and that therefore she disagrees with Hedges with whom she says she usually agrees. Lipton also thinks that those who reference “globalists” and “banksters” and “multiple references to the Rothschilds or George Soros as dictating world or US policy are all expressions of anti-Semitism” about which I disagree, at least to a degree.

When I refer to "banksters" I do not think of Jews and therefore do not consider the word “bankster” to be anti-Semitic. The problem as I see it is that the analysis of many who look at wealth and power inequality stumble upon the money and banking problem with whom Rothschild is associated. 

Unfortunately, they leave out the other major issue which is the land and resource control problem, with which Rockefeller is associated. Icke does not propose solutions to either of these major concerns nor does he understand their interrelationship.

Here is how I have come to understand the land and money problem informed by a brief glimpse at the Rothschild and Rockefeller stories:

The original Rothschild (b. 1744) got his name from the "red shield" in front of his house that was the original base of operations for his little family banking business. His name was Amschel Mayer and he had been just another poor Jew living in the Frankfort ghetto. Jews were not allowed to own land or trade in luxury goods, even cotton cloth (then a luxury item). There were very few economic niches for Jewish people at the time. Amschel started collecting rare coins and thus connected with the Hesse Kassel land baron who would buy his coins. The land baron came to know and trust Amschel and so asked him to transport cash payments to other barons. Amschel discovered that in the process he could make short-term loans from some of that cash and thus obtained some personal profit on the side.

Fast forward to the Rothschild banking empire that became wealthier than all the aristocrats of Europe and continues to this day with major ownership of not only banking establishments but also natural resources and other valuable assets worldwide. 

John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 into a poor and dysfunctional family in upstate New York. Through cunning, bullying and underhanded tactics he eventually became the winner in the wild western Pennsylvania oil rush and established Standard Oil. His descendants became major investment bankers and owners and controllers of much of the world's wealth. 

How to best view the shenanigans of the billionaire class and their claim to excessive unearned income from ownership and control of land resources and banking establishments? Perhaps we can grasp the origins of wealth and power inequality as examples of the abrogation of the natural laws of justice which hold that the gifts of nature should be viewed as a commons and a trust to be fairly shared by all people and that the money system should be used to fairly exchange produced wealth, not as a mechanism of usury and private profit. 

Our political democracy was not established upon economic democracy based on these Jubilee Justice (Leviticus) principles regarding land and money. Thus, our current situation of the implosion of the Republic was inevitable starting from day one and the both real and symbolic Crack in the Liberty Bell. Perhaps we should pay some attention to the inscription on the Liberty Bell - "Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof” – that is a Biblical reference from the Book of Leviticus (25:10).

In short, I suggest that the two Rs - Rothschild and Rockefeller - should be mentioned together as stand-in code for the Land and Money problems. The Land and Money problems are intertwined and must be solved together. Hence my support for Public Banks and Commons Rent based public finance.