The Obama Deception Debunked Part II

I'm going to go into a little more depth at this point. The first eight minutes or so I have already covered in my initial post; Jones makes very few claims here and mostly has dolts like Jesse Ventura and Joe Rogan pushing his argument.

First unfair bit: About a minute in, they show somebody talking about "Where did you come up with the number $700 billion." The answer is indeed a little shameworthy:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

But the real shame is that the quote comes from September of last year, when the Bush Administration ran the show. So here we are a minute into the movie and they're trying to blame Obama for things that the Bush Administration did and said? Ditto with the bit a few moments later, where the congressman mentions that there were claims that martial law would result if they didn't vote for the bailout package. This is invalid because a) it happened under Bush and b) it wasn't a threat by any means, just typical political hyperbole about the reaction from the "people" if the stimulus bill wasn't passed.

Webster Tarpley appears to make the claim that the New World Order (ooga booga!) is secretly a plot by the British Empire and the American Empire to unite the globe, but by calling it the "New" World Order they make it sound like it ain't the same as the old boss.

We meet Gerald Celente, a supposed "trends" forecaster, who says that all of American history has been about the people resisting the central banks. Who knew?

Well, Alex is about to inform us. We learn that:

Agents of the Bank of England attempted to assassinate President Andrew Jackson on multiple occasions because of his resistance against a private central bank.

Actually an unemployed English housepainter attempted to assassinate Jackson on one occasion but both his guns misfired and reportedly Jackson gave the man a good thrashing with his cane. The Bank of England surely had better assassins than that?

The part that is true of course is that Jackson was an opponent of the Bank of the United States and the housepainter (apparently) a supporter. But it does leave one to wonder why it's the Bank of England that Jones thinks was behind it. Maybe because the Bank of England is still around to get everybody to say ooga-booga? Also this ties in with Tarpley's former LaRouche connection; LaRouche was famous for thinking the Queen of England was behind the drug trade.

Celente returns to give a bogus quote from Abraham Lincoln:

I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me & the financial institutions at the rear, the latter is my greatest foe. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.

Ooga-booga, the evil banks. Except that Lincoln never said this; it was debunked in an 1896 letter to the New York Times. Snopes also deals with the second half of the quote here. Note as well that Celente claims that this was why Lincoln was really killed.

Tarpley claims that Obama's inner circle is made up entirely of Wall Street insiders:

"Nobody from heavy industry, nobody from the auto sector, nobody from Silicon Valley, nobody from big oil, nobody from defense, no labor, no women, no retirees, no small businessmen, nothing. It's pure Wall Street."

Of course, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is from Silicon Valley, and Hillary Clinton is allegedly of the female persuasion. So is Hilda L. Solis of Labor, nominee Kathleen Sebelius of HHS, and Janet Napolitano of DHS. If anything Obama's cabinet (like most presidential cabinets) is made up of politicians not Wall Streeters; Sebilius, Arne Duncan, Gary Locke and Napolitano are former governors while Clinton and Ken Salazar are former Senators. Solis was formerly in the House of Representatives.

Jones reports that before he died Woodrow Wilson regretted instituting the Fed. Jones does not give the full quote, but Salon debunked this awhile ago:

John M. Cooper, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, and the author of several books on Woodrow Wilson, writes:

"I can tell you categorically that this is not a statement of regret for having created the Federal Reserve. Wilson never had any regrets for having done that. It was an accomplishment in which he took great pride."

Tarpley returns to talk about how Kennedy was supposed to be a puppet but because of his "personal suffering" he started standing up to his masters and was going to (insert fantasy here) so they had to kill him.

Jones claims that Executive Order #11110, signed by Kennedy, started the process of dismantling the Fed. Wikipedia notes this is a common conspiracy theory claim about that order, which actually had to do with issuing silver certificates:

Silver certificates were printed without interest. The Order was for the Treasury to issue silver certificates against all silver held by the government which did not already have certificates against it. The Order was needed due to the passage of Public Law 88-36 which repealed the Silver Purchase Act and other related monetary measures. One result was that after the repeals, only the President could issue new silver certificates.

Update: See also here for a more thorough discussion of EO 11110. Kudos to commenter Ktesibios for pointing this out.

Jones also claims that Kennedy "had begun the process of pulling the troops out of Vietnam". This is a fantasy that was popular on the fringe left back in the 1960s and 1970s; somehow they managed to convince themselves that Kennedy, a hardline anti-communist, would not have gotten bogged down in Vietnam like Johnson.

Jones claims that the media are all using the term New World Order; this is actually true, although of course the media use it in the generally benign sense of a transfer of power from the GOP to the Democrats. He says that suddenly the Wall Street Journal is talking positively about a North American currency.

That stems from this single column by a Marketwatch reporter named Todd Harrison, who appears to be an Alex Jones fan from his column:

The New World Order is upon us, full of hope, promise and a fair amount of fear. In our recent discussion regarding the direction of our country, we noted the risks of catering to conventional wisdom and the implications for the U.S. dollar.

A columnist for the Financial Times called for a World Government! Ooga-booga! Rahm Emanuel admitted that they don't want to let the crisis go to waste. Kissinger mentioned the New World Order! Oooooga-booooooga!

You know of course how this goes. Take some idiotic mumbo-jumbo that politicians like to use a lot, and translate it to mean something evil. "Bipartisan support" from now on means that they want to turn us all into flesh-eating ghouls. So the next time you see Ted Kennedy talking about bipartisan support for his next bill, get your shotgun loaded because the zombies are going to be popping out of their graves at any moment. Oooga-boooga!

We are now about 20 minutes into the movie, and that seems to be a good time for a break.