Paul Singer and the Universality of "Anti-Semitism"
August 1, 2015
Andrew Joyce
Paul Singer, founder and president of Elliott Management Corp., speaks during the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Singer said he's betting the price of 30-year sovereign debt in the U.S., Europe, and Japan will fall. (Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
One of the most fundamental positions for White advocates concerned with Jewish influence must be the conviction that antagonism against Jews lies in Jewish behavior, rather than solely the cultural pathology or psychological tendencies of non-Jews. A major testing ground for this position is the necessity for anti-Jewish attitudes to be present among geographically, racially, and culturally diverse peoples, and for the reasons behind this antagonism to be fairly uniform. In Separation and Its Discontents, Kevin MacDonald argued that a social identity theory of anti-Semitism is highly compatible with supposing that anti-Semitism will be a very common characteristic of human societies in general. Reasons for this pervasiveness lie in Jewish cultural separatism leading to the perception of the Jewish group as an alien entity; inter-group resource and reproductive competition; and finally, the fact that Jews are, for cultural and genetic reasons, highly adept in resource competition against non-Jews. Additionally, Jews are adept at influencing culture and creating and influencing intellectual and political movements which often run contrary to the interests of the host population. Wherever these behaviors and circumstances are present, they contribute to the arousal of hostility in a host population.
Despite overwhelming evidence in support of our position, the vast majority of Jewish historiography and apologetics continue to argue something quite different. Our opponents have successfully disseminated the view that anti-Semitism is a peculiarly Western phenomenon, rooted more or less in a cocktail of evil Christian theology, the implicit frustrations of capitalist society, the despotic nature of the Western family, and even repressed sexual desires. A key aspect of maintaining this narrative has been to downplay non-Western (mainly Muslim) anti-Semitism, or attempt to give it different features. However, as MacDonald has noted, "the remarkable thing about anti-Semitism is that there is an overwhelming similarity in the complaints made about Jews in different places and over very long periods of historical time."[1] Of the universal themes noted by MacDonald, the theme of resource competition and economic domination is perhaps foremost.
I was moved to reflect on the universality of this theme recently when surveying media coverage on Korean and Argentinian responses to the activities of Paul Singer and his co-ethnic shareholders at Elliott Associates, an arm of Singer's Elliott Management hedge fund. The Korean story has its origins in the efforts of Samsung's holding company, Cheil Industries, to buy Samsung C&T, the engineering and construction arm of the wider Samsung family of businesses. The move can be seen as part of an effort to reinforce control of the conglomerate by the founding Lee family and its heir apparent, Lee Jae-yong. Trouble emerged when Singer's company, which holds a 7.12% stake in Samsung C&T and is itself attempting to expand its influence and control over Far East tech companies, objected to the move. The story is fairly typical of Jewish difficulties in penetrating business cultures in the Far East, where impenetrable family monopolies, known in Korea as chaebols, are common. This new story reminded me very strongly of last year's efforts by Jewish financier Daniel Loeb to obtain a board seat at Sony. Loeb was repeatedly rebuffed by COO Kazuo Hirai, eventually selling his stake in Sony Corp. in frustration.
The predominantly Jewish-owned and operated Elliott Associates has a wealth of self-interest in preventing the Lee family from consolidating its control over the Samsung conglomerate. As racial outsiders, however, Singer's firm were forced into several tactical measures in their 52-day attempt to thwart the merger. First came lawsuits. When those failed, Singer and his associates then postured themselves as defending Korean interests, starting a Korean-language website and arguing that their position was really just in aid of helping domestic Korean shareholders. This variation on the familiar theme of Jewish crypsis was quite unsuccessful. The Lee family went on the offensive immediately and, unlike many Westerners, were not shy in drawing attention to the Jewish nature of Singer's interference and the sordid and intensely parasitic nature of his fund's other ventures.
The Lee offensive started with a series of cartoons posted on the Samsung website. Most singled out the manner in which Elliott Associates has enjoyed its remarkable growth by focusing on the purchase of national debts from struggling countries at a fraction of their worth, before using ruthless legal measures to sue those countries for values far exceeding the original debt. On its most basic level, the practice is really just the same as Jewish involvement in medieval tax farming. On the older practice, Salo Baron writes in Economic History of the Jews that Jewish speculators would pay a lump sum to the treasury before mercilessly turning on the peasantry to obtain "considerable surpluses … if need be, by ruthless methods."[2] The activities of Elliott Associates are really the same speculation in debt, except here the trade in usury is practiced on a global scale, with the feudal peasants of old now replaced with whole nations. The above cartoon refers to the specific activities of Elliott Associates in Congo, where it originally bought $32.6 million in sovereign debt incurred by that country for the knockdown price of under $20 million. In 2002 and 2003, a British court (tactically chosen) forced the Congolese government to settle for an estimated $90 million, which included that all-important interest and fees. Elliott Associates rapidly became known as the quintessential "vulture fund."
As I noted in my previous examination of contemporary Jewish usury, Jews have been at the forefront of innovation in debt for many centuries, and remain its most adroit auteurs. Although obviously rooted in centuries of Jewish financial practice, Singer and his co-ethnics (all four equity partners of Elliott are Jewish, and its COO is the charmingly-named Zion Shohet) pioneered the finer points of the vulture-fund concept. The firm was born in 1977 when Singer pooled $1.3 million from family and friends, but it only really took off in October 1995, when Elliott Associates L.P. purchased $28.7 million of Panamanian sovereign debt for the discounted price of $17.5 million. The banks holding those bonds, a group that included heavy hitters like Citi and Credit Suisse, had given up on repayment from Panama. To cut their losses, they sold their holdings to Elliott which, like a medieval tax farmer, went in with a heavy hand. When Panama's government asked for a restructuring of its foreign debt in 1995, the vast majority of its bondholders agreed – apart from Elliott. In July 1996, Elliott Associates, represented by one of the world's most high-profile securities law firms, filed a lawsuit against Panama in a New York district court, seeking full repayment of the original $28.7 million – plus interest and fees. The case made its way from a district court in Manhattan to the New York State Supreme Court, which sided with Elliott. In the end, Panama's government had to pay the Jewish group over $57 million, with an additional $14 million going to other creditors. Overnight, Singer's group made $40 million, and the people of Panama found their original sovereign debt had more than doubled.
Foreign Policy described the court's decision as "a groundbreaking moment in the modern history of finance." By taking the case to a New York district court, Elliott broke with long-standing international law and custom, according to which sovereign governments are not sued in regular courts meant to deal with questions internal to a nation state. Further, the presiding judge accepted the case – another break with custom. It set the stage for two decades of similar parasitism on struggling countries by Elliott Associates, a practice that has reaped billions for Jewish financiers. Just one year after the Panama decision, Singer spent about $11 million on government-backed Peruvian bank debt in 1996. After Singer took Peru to court in the U.S., U.K., Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and Canada, the struggling nation finally agreed in 2000 to pay him $58 million. That meant he got better than a 400 percent return. In 2001, Elliott Associates purchased an Argentinian default for $48 million; the face value of that debt today is $630 million. The fund wants repayment for the full value of the debt to all of Argentina's creditors, as it did in 1995 with Panama. This amounts to $1.5 billion, which could rise to $3 billion including, again, that all-important interest and fees.
The merciless nature of these Jewish vulture funds has provoked some comment, but the general populations of many countries aren't familiar with enough of the facts to start joining the dots. Nevertheless, this type of financial parasitism has had a devastating impact on a number of nations. A sovereign's money is technically owned by its citizens. Making the Panamanian, Argentinian, Congolese, Ecuadorian, Polish, or Vietnamese government pay for the full value of the debt, plus interest and fees, even as the major creditors accepted a discounted payment, meant handing citizens' money to a hedge fund rather than investing in, for example, roads, schools, hospitals, clean water projects, or social welfare programs. In the aftermath of Elliott's judgment against Congo, the Congolese were forced to abandon water purification programs, leading to widespread dehydration. It was to this context that the Samsung cartoon referred.
Other cartoons appearing at the same time represented Elliott, literally, as humanoid vultures, with captions referring to the well-known history of the fund. In the above cartoon, the vulture offers assistance to a needy and destitute figure, but conceals an axe with which to later bludgeon the unsuspecting pauper.
After the cartoons appeared, Singer and other influential Jews, including Abraham Foxman, cried anti-Semitism. This was despite the fact the cartoons contain no reference whatsoever to Judaism – unless of course one defines savage economic predation as a Jewish trait. Samsung denied the cartoons were anti-Semitic and took them off the website, but the uproar over the cartoons only seemed to spur on even more discussion about Jewish influence in South Korea than was previously the case. In a piece published a fortnight ago, Media Pen columnist Kim Ji-ho claimed "Jewish money has long been known to be ruthless and merciless." Last week, the former South Korean ambassador to Morocco, Park Jae-seon, expressed his concern about the influence of Jews in finance when he said, "The scary thing about Jews is they are grabbing the currency markets and financial investment companies. Their network is tight-knit beyond one's imagination." The next day, cable news channel YTN aired similar comments by local journalist Park Seong-ho, who stated on air that "it is a fact that Jews use financial networks and have influence wherever they are born." It goes without saying that comments like these are unambiguously similar to complaints about Jewish economic practices in Europe over the course of centuries. The only common denominator between the context of fourteenth-century France and the context of twenty-first-century South Korea is, you guessed it, Jewish economic practices.
In the end, the Lee strategy, based on drawing attention to the alien and exploitative nature of Elliott Associates, was overwhelmingly effective. Before a crucial shareholder vote on the Lee's planned merger, Samsung Securities CEO Yoon Yong-am said: "We should score a victory by a big margin in the first battle, in order to take the upper hand in a looming war against Elliott, and keep other speculative hedge funds from taking short-term gains in the domestic market." When the vote finally took place a few days ago, a conclusive 69.5% of Samsung shareholders voted in favor of the Lee proposal, leaving Elliott licking its wounds and complaining about the "patriotic marketing" of those behind the merger.
Jewish difficulties in penetrating close-knit Far Eastern monopolies, many of which are open in their belief that Jews are capable and ruthless opponents in business, thus persist. East Asians are seemingly aware that giving Jewish businessmen an inch will normally lead to non-Jews losing a mile. It is this honest grappling with the facts that kept Daniel Loeb off the board at Sony, and prevented Elliott Associates from making even slight gains at Samsung.
The Far East also appears less prone to Jewish moralizing about the "dangers" of anti-Semitism, and one finds that criticism of Jewish behaviors enjoys a considerably higher level of intellectual and cultural respectability. A good example is when Foumiko Kometani won the 1986 Akutagawa award, Japan's top literary prize, for her novel Passover. Based on her real-life experiences with her Jewish husband and severely retarded bi-racial son, Kometani's novel was subjected to excoriating criticism from Jewish critics, who denounced her unflattering (but presumably quite accurate) depictions of Jewish figures in the book as "anti-Semitic." Japanese critics, on the other hand, were notably unaffected by negative Jewish press treatment of the book, and found the treatment of Jewish clannishness and "distasteful" religious practices to be enriching qualities which gave the work a greater sense of authenticity and honesty.
Switching our focus to South America, high-profile figures in Argentina have also been accused of pushing "anti-Semitic conspiracy theories" for their responses to Elliott's parasitism. After Singer's firm won an extortionate judgment against Argentina at the U.S. Supreme Court last year, Argentina's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, described Singer on her personal website as the "Vulture Lord." But Jewish power-brokers were left even more aghast at Kirchner's open denunciation of a "global modus operandi" that "generates international political operations of any type, shape, and color." They "contribute to financial attacks or simultaneous international media operations, or even worse, covert actions of various 'services' designed to destabilize governments."
What Kirchner was referring to was the underlying issue at the heart of Singer's particularly venomous pursuit of Argentine debt. You see, Argentina has cultivated relations with Iran for a number of decades now, and rumor has it that Kirchner and her foreign minister conspired with Iran to cover up its involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Two years ago, Jewish prosecutor Alberto Nisman lobbied the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA) – which represents the country's Jews – to mount a legal challenge against a memorandum of understanding between Argentina and Iran. Nisman is reported to have told the Delegation that "if necessary, Paul Singer will help us." Nisman then turned his attention to pursuing Kirchner for the alleged cover-up over the bombing. Argentina thus came under Jewish financial, political, diplomatic, and legal attack. In January this year, however, Nisman was found dead with a single bullet wound to the head, just hours before he was due to take his final report to Congress. Israelis and diaspora Jews have been crying foul ever since. In retaliation, Kirchner has pointed out that Singer is indeed one of the major funders of The Israel Project (TIP), the most vocal lobby in Washington against diplomacy with Iran. Kirchner argues that Singer's effort to financially ravage Argentina is merely an extension of denunciations of Argentine–Iranian relations by AIPAC and Mark Dubowitz's Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Also, by his own admission, Dubowitz was a personal friend of Nisman's. Or, in Kirchner's words, "Everything has to do with everything."
Of course, openly stating that Jews are powerful and work together for financial and political goals breaks one of the most cherished of contemporary taboos. Despite the astonishing level and deeply entwined nature of Jewish wealth and political power on display, I'm guessing the kosher script would have us all believe that what we are observing is just a bunch of coincidences, and that Jews are in fact as poor and powerless as the next guy. "It's a lie," said DAIA's vice-president Waldo Wolff. "It's terrible, it's incredible." A spokesman for Elliott Management denied the accusations, saying the suggestion "that Mr. Singer had any contact whatsoever with Mr. Nisman is categorically false. This is just another desperate attempt by Cristina Kirchner to blame creditors for her administration's multiplying scandals and failed economic policies." Of course, with reference to the facts outlined above, both Jewish groups are simply lying. Their lies didn't assist the investigation of the 1994 bombing, with a new prosecutor dismissing all claims against Kirchner in April. Also, Nisman's murder remains unsolved.
As Singer continues to tighten the screws on Argentina, the nation and its President continue to provoke accusations of "anti-Semitism." During a July 2 visit to a Buenos Aires school, Kirchner told students that to better understand Argentina's economic crisis, they should read Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. On Twitter, Kirchner recounted how she had asked students she met which Shakespeare play they were studying. When they told the president they were studying Romeo and Juliet, Kirchner said she responded, "I said, 'Have you read The Merchant of Venice to understand the vulture funds?' They all laughed. "No, don't laugh," I said, "Usury and the bloodsuckers were immortalized by the best literature for centuries." The Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations quickly issued a statement condemning Kirchner's comments, and accused her of having "anti-Semitic" motivations behind her invocation of the play. Abraham Foxman then waddled onto the stage, urging Kirchner to "stop reinforcing anti-Semitic stereotypes." "We are deeply concerned that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is once again promoting anti-Semitic stereotypes," whined Foxman. "The Merchant of Venice – with its nefarious character Shylock – reinforces stereotypes of Jews and presents them as money-hungry, conniving, and cruel; and by suggesting students to study this play, she is sending a message to Argentina's youth that Jews are somehow connected to the economic woes of her country."
God forbid Argentine youth should ever come to such a view! How unfair that would be when the firm behind its pauperization is so thoroughly staffed by such Anglo-Saxons as Paul Singer, Zion Shohet, Jesse Cohn, Stephen Taub, Elliot Greenberg, and Richard Zabel.
A final note about the Vulture Fund Jews. As hinted above in relation to their pro-Israel, anti-Iran activities, they are not just financially predatory. As Kirchner has stated, "Everything is connected to everything." At TOO, we are aware of the fact that strongly identifying as Jewish normally involves a great deal of hostility toward the traditions of the European peoples. This has very often led to attempts by powerful Jewish financiers and intellectuals to open our borders to mass immigration and overturn traditional values. I was recently sent a piece from CNBC which highlighted the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage was welcomed by "a perhaps surprising group: conservative hedge fund managers."
The news might have surprised CNBC, but won't surprise TOO readers, or indeed anyone remotely familiar with the nature of the Jewish conflict with the West. There is nothing at all genuinely "conservative" about these people. The hedge fund managers included Dan Loeb, who failed to get the board seat at Sony; Paul Singer; Steve Cohen of Point72 Asset Management; and Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management. All have been vocal in disapproving of President Barack Obama, mainly for his diplomacy with Iran, but all have worked for years in support of gay marriage. "It's a gratifying day for equality under the law," Asness said after the Supreme Court ruling. "We're pleased with the Court's ruling because we believe in social justice for all Americans and hope this serves as a catalyst for global change," added Cohen. Singer created American Unity PAC in 2012 to support the cause, and plowed $11 million into making gay marriage a reality. Other donors to American Unity PAC included Loeb, Asness, Seth Klarman of Baupost Group, and David Tepper of Appaloosa Management. According to CNBC, Loeb, Cohen, Singer, and other Jewish debt speculators helped to successfully push the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York in 2011. And backers of non-profit Freedom to Marry included Loeb, Klarman, Singer, and Asness. So in case you're wondering where a lot of that plundered international cash went, I can tell you that it ended up in places like the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and in myriad efforts to deconstruct the traditional fabric of your society (while still being called "conservative" by MSNBC).
"Anti-Semitism" isn't a peculiarly Western phenomenon. Nor is it a Korean phenomenon, or an Argentine phenomenon. It is a Jewish phenomenon, and it has followed the Jewish people through the centuries and across the oceans. As long as Jews remain unchanged, so too will the response to them remain unchanged. Efforts to ameliorate "anti-Semitism" through vacuous appeals that it has its origins in sexual repression, Christianity, or family structure may succeed in a West which has grown fat, lazy, navel-gazing, and maudlin, and is inundated by pro-Jewish propaganda in the media and educational system. But elsewhere on this Earth, such Talmudic theorizing doesn't go far. The inscrutable Asian will smile and nod at the Hebrew mogul, while patiently and knowingly keeping him from taking a seat or position in his financial affairs. Those in the Second or Third World, at the sharp end of Jewish usury, will remain unconvinced by the pious weeping of the perennial "victim" of world oppression who, paradoxically, possesses the whip hand over them. When the flagship of the Argentinian Navy was seized and detained in Ghana back in 2012 on the say-so of Paul Singer, there was no doubting the level of power that had now been attained by Jewish finance.
Western youth today is engaged in squeezing itself into skinny jeans and protesting on behalf of African and Mexican invaders. While this pampered generation sips on artisanal coffee, and parades its empathy with alien criminals and a multitude of "trans" aberrations of nature, it remains ignorantly unaware that a cabal of vultures circles above them, just waiting for a fateful slip of their national economies. The U.S. government, it has been said, has made a point of siding with Argentina in its conflict with Elliott Management – the reason being that there are fears in Washington that it too may one day end up under the vulture's talons.
The man on the street will deny the existence of such a threat, but we know it to be an empirically observable and documented fact. We can only hope for, and work towards, a time when our people will awaken, and allow us to secure a future for our children before it is too late.
80 Comments
____________
[1] Kevin MacDonald, Separation and Its Discontents: Toward and Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (first paperpack edition, 2004), 38.
[2] Salo Baron (ed.), Economic History of the Jews (New York, 1976), 46-7.
Samsung seeks to win big against Elliott (Korea Times, 2015-07-15)
Argentina: A Case Study of Israel's Zionist–Wall Street Destabilization Campaign (James Petras, 2015-04-26)
Nisman was 'wary of own bodyguards' before death, assistant says (The Ugly Truth, 2015-01-29)
Samsung Removes Cartoons Depicting Fund Founder as Ruthless "Vulture"
Battle between Samsung C＆T, Elliott Management heats up
Elliott in Court Over Samsung C&T
Greg Palast with Max Keiser on vulture funds (2010)
Vulture Funds in the Congo (2011)
Argentina - Vulture Capitalism Takes Another Step (2015)
Argentina Alleges Extortion After Supreme Court Sides With Vulture Funds Preying on Sovereign Debt (2014)
The Vulture Capitalists Plan to Smear Argentina (2013)
US-based vulture funds target another Argentinian naval ship (2012)
Paul Singer: Looking Ahead to 2015 and Risks to the World Economy
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.