Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 10, Number 26, July 5, 1983

Centuries of Swiss expertise: usury, Jacobinism, 'one worldism,' and dirtymoney

Switzerland, in the middle of devastated Europe, came out system that matters, and for purposes of contemporary stra­ of the war on top. The Masson-Guisan-de Rougemont de­ tegic analysis, it is the system rather than any of its individual ployment had succeeded. embodiments that should be taken into account. WlJ.o was it that was so shamelessly-in fact, in typical Even before becoming the "Protestant Rome," as it was Calvinist or Evangelical fashion, self-righteously-rubbing to be called under John Calvin, Geneva was a center of bellies with the SS murderers and ensuring their metastasis legalized usury. While it had served as a pivot of trade and in the postwar, contemporary world? It was the usurers of transportation during the Roman Empire, for reason of its Geneva, Basel, and Ziirich, the old military power of Berne, exceptional geographic position, and received the Imperial the Swiss patrician caste which had been set up as a "little dignity of "city" as early as 350 A.D., it was under the first Venice" in the 16th century by Venice and Genoa, a north­ Burgundian Empire that Geneva first came to prominence. bound dispatching center at a time when the world's center By 1032, it was a Holy Roman Imperial City, and led a of gravity shifted from the Mediterranean-to-Baltic arc to the secular fight to break loose of the grip of the Counts of Savoy Atlantic world. and the Bishop of Geneva. By the end of the 13th century, Geneva had 2,000 inhabitants, and started developing an Leurs Excellences de Berne, extremelysuccessful tradefair, for which purpose'it was built Ces Messieurs de Geneve up by the "Lombard" (North Italian) bankers.By 1450, the By 1387 A.D., the "Franchises of Geneva," the consti­ commune boasted 15,000 inhabitants. tution of the city-state, had already legalized the pagan prac­ The financiers of Genoa were in the process of making it tice of usury, and indeed enshrined the principle of usury in a major station in their international network, which domi­ the law of the land: nated world finance. Genoa's Giustiniani family (one of the "Ditto, that if any cleric or lay man that be a usurer or an top Venice-Genoa families) opened shop in 1464, as well as other citizen or inhabitant of the city passes away and dies, the Grimaldis of Genoa (now ruling Monaco), the Pazzis, whether testament be made or not: what goods he had at such and others.By then, the great humanist king of France Louis a time that he died must not and can not by us or our other XI was already in a pitched battle against Geneva's gold­ officerswhosoever they be, betaken and detained and neither draining operations against the kingdom.Having been com­ because of such usury can or could a listing of such wealth mercially beaten by the French king and held to ransom after be drawn but by the inheritor even though he be himself a a military defeat, Geneva signed an association (combour­ usurer and he can take and appropriate the goods of the said geoisie) with Berne, then a world power in trade, banking dead man without incurring impediment nor difficulty of any and military affairs, and Fribourg. sort.... But until the arrival of John Calvin, there were essentially "Ditto, that no one for cause of usury publicly done by no "native" Geneva bankers. It is only when the Council of anyone so ever, bourgeois, citizen, cleric, or lay, or man or the 200, the patrician families of the town, who had designed woman, may be by us or successors, or clerks or other offi­ a constitutional model of oligarchical republic directly mo­ cers, persecuted, accused, charged or in any manner molest­ delled on that of Venice, adopted theRefonnation and called ed; nor his or her goods seized, sequestered, brought into our in the French "Ayatollah" Calvin, until then an agent provo­ hands or part-confiscated; nor seize the goods or he or she cateur against the ecumenical efforts of Erasmus of Rotter­ when dead nor capture;nor inany other manner ofclaim. . . ." dam and his European humanist network. Calvin set up a Geneva is taken here as representative of Switzerland at theocratic dictatorship, with a feared Gestapo accustomed to large, or of the patrician elites that have run that country for burning people at the stake whose sole crime had been to centuries.We will unfold the history of Geneva as a case question some trivial utterance by the Ayatollah. study, whose general principles obtain equally for Berne, When the Protestants fled France to escape religious per­ Basel, Ziirich, Lausanne, and lesser towns: it is the Swiss secution, first in the 1550s and in a second wave after 1685,

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© 1983 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. a new impetus was given to Geneva: dynasties such as the off the king's ailing treasury, by issuing an unprecedented Mallets, the de Neufiizes, the Lullins, the de la Rives, the amount of high-interest debt. When bankruptcy loomed, Andres, opened business, as well as refugees from Italy, Necker proposed a violent "austerity" cure, and was ousted whose family names still loom large in the Geneva caste by the king; but the mob imposed his recall in 1789. A 1795 system today: the Turrettinis, Burlamacchis, Calandrinis, speech by one of the members of the Directoire in Paris, and others. They engaged in extensive financial relations Cambon, provides insight into the destabilizing role of the with northern Italian bankers, and soon became their corre­ Genevans: "It is perhaps to the existence of these loans that spondents--at a time when theoligarchical masters of Venice we owe the commencement of the Revolution; the govern­ and Genoa were transfering their wealth out of Italy and ment was squeezed and could not honor the commitments it relocating the family fortunes (fondi) toward the north of had incurred, convened the Estates General in order to ad­ Europe. dress these commitments. Portfolios werestuffed with claims The 17th century saw the prosperity of a cluster of many­ against the royal treasury; the owners of these claims, fearing times-intermarried families, Bordier, Darien, Lombard, the loss of their capital, put on the revolutionary mask and Odier, Mirabaud, Pictet, Lullin, Ferrier, Saladin, Boissier, gathered at the Amis de la Republique [club]; thenceforth, Turrettini,Mallet, Tronchin: Thus Geneva was becoming the the Palais-Royal [the residence of Philippe Duke of Orleans] vicar of the /ondi, and becoming banker to the world. became the place where patriots congregated, and from that Geneva was a major shareholder in the Dutch and English hotbed arose the sacred fire that set the souls ablaze on July East India Companies, in the Bank of England and the Bank 14 [Bastille Day]. . . ." of Amsterdam, and its tradingarms reached out to Muscovy, From Britain, Lord Shelburnedirected the destabilization Barbary, the Ottoman Empire. Under the protection of the of France, and his chief aide, de Romilly, was a Genevan. Geneva citizenship, Protestant bankers returned in droves to Mallet du Pan in London directed the British intelligence Paris, and established a virtual financial dictatorship--they effort against France, where the ever-present archetype of held three-fourths of the French national debt at the death of corruption, Talleyrand, was paid by Geneva. In the young King Louis XIV. Each patrician family had one or several United States, Genevan agents such as Gallatin, Iselin, Pre­ members established in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, vost, Andre, and Mallet, were subverting the nation espe­ Cadiz, London, Amsterdam. In 1750, Pictet opened shop in cially through its finances, as Anton Chaitkin has recently New Orleans. Shortly thereafter,there also arosethe Gallatin documented (see the Campaigner magazine, Apri11983). In Bankof New York, now known under the name of Manufac­ Petersburg, Russia, de l'Harpe, scion of one of the leading turers Hanover Trust. A spider-net of financial and intelli­ families of Geneva, was an adviser to the czar. When Napo­ gence contacts was established which vastly enhanced Ge­ leon took power and created the Banque de France, Geneva neva's weight in banking, insurance, reinsurance, and colo­ bankers provided a majority of shareholders and the paid-in nial and maritime trade. capital. The Napoleonic occupation of Switzerland was so It is Geneva that pioneered modem actuarial methods; a far from harming the messieurs of Geneva that in 1815, Pictet published in 1746 "An Essay on the Duration of Human Talleyrand could say, "There are five continents: Europe, Life, When It Adduced the Manner of Determining the Life America, Asia, Africa, and Geneva." Annuities Both Simple Ones and in Tontine." Extremely Geneva kept serving as one of the headquarters for the sophisticated methods of risk-spreading were developed, European/ondithroughout the 19th century. Its families mar­ along with advanced methods of financial looting: Geneva ried into the oligarchies of the world. The Calvinist bankers was skimming the wealth of nations, and manipUlating them were now assisting in the founding oflarger banks. Switzer­ into developing colonial policies on its own behalf. Thus land was creating its Grossbanken, Swiss Bank Corporation France developed its triangular trade in the Atlantic and its (1872), Union Bank of Switzerland (1862), Credit Suisse large Caribbean sugar plantations at the initiative of the Ge­ (1856), which were each case the amalgam of a score of/ondi nevans, who acted through their Protestant banker and trader which sought to acquire broader financial maneuverability. correspondents in Marseilles, Bordeaux,Nantes, and so forth. Geneva was established firmlyas one of the major powers Geneva played a prime role in the preparation, the out­ in world finance. Add the power accumulated by the private break, and the unfolding of the French Revolution. First, banks of Basel and ZUrich: a small, sparsely populated coun­ citizen of Geneva Jean-Jacques Rousseau, recruited to the . try in the middle of the Alps played a most significant role in Venetian intelligence service during his stint as French Em­ world affairs. In insurance too, Swiss giants boast l�ading bassy Secretary in Venice, became a linchpin of the vast international positions, including Winterthur, ZUrich·, .La brainwashing operation known as the "Enlightenment." His Suisse, Swiss Reinsurance, and La Baloise. job was to provide rationalizations for mob violence, and a To take one illustrative family case, the de Neufiizes, fascist theory of the state, known as the "Social Contract," . whose branch of the Andres was trading in Genoa by 1667, whose best model was the Venetian republic. With the ple­ was one of the major operativesfor the centuries-old Genoese bians thus· in good hands, Geneva sent bankerJacques Necker oligarchy's bank, the Banco di San Giorgio. Offspring were tobecome France's financeminister in 1786. Necker finished involved in the New World-{)ne son being hanged as a spy

32 Special Report EIR July 5, 1983 by the Americans for managing the Benedict Arnold treason. thesis that threatened to engulf German culture in a wave of This mishap did not prevent the family from becoming a immoral "back-to-nature" romanticist bathos. Jacob Burk­ world power in insurance, financing the leading "liberal" hardt's defense of irrationality, Ferdinand de Saussure's politicians of the 19th century, and acquiring immense inter­ founding of that hideous pseudo-science "linguistics" to de­ ests in colonial ventures.The bank merged in 1945 with the stroy classical philology, Jean Piaget's structuralist destruc­ parvenu Protestant bank of Schlumberger, and merged again tion of classical education, indicate how the Swiss oligarchy, in 1966 with Mallet Freres (for more than a century, de assigning some of its brightest sons to intellectual tasks, Neuflizes had intermarried with Mallets), creating the de operates in world affairs as gamemasters who understand that N'euflize, Mallet, Schlumberger bank. it is ultimately the control of ideas, of cultures and the ma­ the Mallets were made barons by Denmark's King Fred­ trixes that determine culture, that determines control of na­ erick V; they ran the drugtrade of the Ottoman Empire in the tions and populations, rather than raw force, money, or or­ 19th century. Part of the family moved to Britain, where Sir dinary power and influence. Victor Mallet was Queen Victoria's secretary; the de Neu­ For that reason, when the establishment of the League of flizes' British branch is the Earls of Bessborough. The Nations in Geneva consecrated that country's international Schlumbergers have a prominent position in Houston, Tex­ role, the intellectual role of the country grew accordingly. as-Madame Dominique Schlumberger de Menil sponsored The Institut Universitaires de Hautes Etudes Internationales a conference of the leaders of Palestinian and Arab terrorism represents today one of the most significant centers for inter­ at her family-built Rothko Chapel in Houston in October national policy making, or rather policy plotting. The insti­ 1981. The Schlumbergers' heavy interests in the Soviet Union tute trains international civil servants in postgraduate studies (and Schlumberger chief Jean Riboud's links to the French while serving as a focal point for high-level think-tank activ­ Communist Party) are not alien to that orientation. ities. The personality of its 25-year director, Jacques Frey­ . It is not only to money that the Swiss owed their worldly mond, a founding member of the Club of Rome who made fortune,but also to the extraordinary attention devoted by the the institute a hotbed of anti-growth, world-federalist influ­ patriciansto the development of intellectual means of control ences, indicates sufficiently the content of the work done and subversion of nations and populations. there. Typically, the role played by Germaine de Stael, daugh­ Our old acquaintance Denis de Rougemont teaches at one ter of Necker, in the French revolution and even more, in the of many sub-centers of the institute, the University Institute spreadingthe wave of mass-irrationalismknown as "Roman­ for European Studies, Europe's coordination point for fed­ ticism." Her lying, incompetent book On Germany, which eralist-environmentalist ferment. De Rougemont, founder of was made a tremendousbest-seller internationally, offered a ECOROPA and the European Cultural Foundation, is a pro­ "blood and soil" medievalist version of German culture which tector of the terrorist Longo Mai communities in Europe and was most instrumental in generating the anti-science, anti­ Central America, anda close friend of Remy Schlumberger, culture reaction in Germany as well as the rest of Europe. who was a member of the notorious "Curiel network" of Heinrich Heine had to write a whole book in refutation of a Moscow-run terrorists. De Rougemont works closely with

Albert Hoffman at the time he invented LSD, one of the Swiss strategists' cultural subversion tools; Fritz Leutwiler of the evil Bank for International Settlements; Hans Kung, "Dark Ages" theologian.

EIR July 5, 1983 Special Report 33 the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, whose founder, Swiss busi­ Pratiques de la Negociation Internationale (Center for Ap­ nessman Duttweiler, worked closely with the Abwehr net­ plied International Negotiations) "trains," or brainwashes, works during the war, Baron von der Heydt in particular. In international civil servants that populate the offices of the the postwar period, the institute and its luminary Heinrich United Nations, the finance and foreign ministries of their Pestalozzi have servedas a major trainingand planning center respective countries. The Centre Internationale d'Etudes for the European Green movement and the spreading of en­ Monetaires et Bancaires (International Center for Monetary vironmentalist ideas since the early 1970s. and Banking Studies) serves the same purpose for central In all cases, it is hatred of America as the representative banks and private banks, and "experts" in monetary affairs. of industrial culture and a sovereign nation-state that is the The Institut Universitaire d'Etudes du Developpement (In­ detclminant of that ideology. "Europe of the Regions," ternational Institute for Development Studies) targets specif­ "grassroots democracy," are the catchwords. "There is no ically the young elites of Third World nations. The Institut imperative other than that of nature, there is none from tech­ Internationale d'Etudes Sociales (International Institute for nology," Pestalozzi writes, "no other imperative than that of Social Studies) provides the intellectual substance of the In­ life, and none from the economy, only of desire and none ternational Labor Organization. And the Association de Ge­ from your profit," adds this aristocratic spokesman for the neve (International Association for the Study of Insurance "Swiss way of life." Prometheus, he explains in one of his Economics), run by Club of Rome member Orio Giarini, an leitmotifs, is history's "worst criminal: he stole the fire of associate of GIIS, is the privately formed club of the world's science and technology, not that of spirituality. . . . The biggest insurance companies' board chairmen, and "studies religion of growth and the population bomb will have to stop economic systems from the standpoint of their vulnerabili­ some day, or the cancerous proliferation of population, or ties," in other words, generates the parameters for economic urban life, of cities, will produce disaster through mass­ warfare. ification, pollution, exhaustion of resources." In economic, monetary, and financial terms of reference, The typical Club of Rome diatribes? Definitely-but you the contents of Swiss policy are clear: the Swiss National are reading here the ideas for whose propagation the Club of Bank as well as the private and commercial banks defend a Rome was created. De Rougemont was instrumental in the policy of international triage. 1950 founding of the Societe Europeenne de Culture (SEC), "Why should we save these unsalvageable, bankrupt a Venice-based branch of the modem Inquisition: Umberto countries, these bankrupt banks? Many of us here would Campagnolo, educated in Geneva at the Institut Universi­ prefer to 'pull the plug' and let the dust settle," one associate taires de Hautes Etudes Internationales, established as "a of National Bank chief Fritz Leutwiler explains. "Developing bridge between East and West," in thethick of the Cold War. countries will have to adjust. It will mean a lot of pain, and a The SEC was the unique location where top intellectuals, lowering of the standard of living even for countries where a scientists and writers of East and West could engage in col­ majority of the population is already living below the vital lective "back-channel" negotiations, and, more importantly, minimum," said Fritz Leutwiler himself, "even if our own long-range intellectual planning. industry suffers in the process." An unpublished study by Pietro Cicconi documents the The pure, unadulterated monetarism that governs Swiss extraordinary role played by the SEC in determining the economics is best expressed by Friedrich von Hayek, who "paradigm shifts" in the culture accepted by the average privately advocates a financial crash as the solution to the populations of the Easternand Western world alike in the last . world's ills. Hayek founded-in Switzerland-the Mont Pe­ 30 years. The SEC's program, as articulated in 1950, com­ lerin Society, which has brainwashed so many statesmen in plained bitterly that theUnited Nations, still based on nation­ the insipid balderdash of "free-market economics,"- while states, still dependent on national governments, did not rep­ fanatically opposing the spread of industrial development and resent the powerful, radical sort of instrumentality required the application of the state's power to direct scientific and to establish a one-world power! What passes for modem technological progress. "culture" has been entirely steeped in that Swiss brew. Seven years ago, the author accompanied EIR founder It will come as no surprise then that the international Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. to a meeting held in Basel with headquarters of the leading East-West, Malthusian "back­ one Alfred Matter, then a prominent board member of the channel" negotiation forum, the Pugwash Conference, is lo­ Swiss Bank Corporation. LaRouche developed the idea that cated inGeneva, at the Institut Universitairesde Hautes Etudes the growing world debt was going to choke the world econ­ Internationales.Under the "neutral aegis" provided by the omy, provoke depression, debt defaults, and untold sUffer­ Swiss, Pugwash, as documented by EIR (June 7), brought ing. Matter reclined in his comfortable chair, looked to the together British, American, and Russian policy-makers com­ ceiling as a good Zwinglist (Basel Protestant) should, and mitted to definitively "freezing" technological progress and replied: "You are right, you are right, but, you know, we are weakening the United States. not philanthropists, we are bankers." The Institut Universitaires de Hautes Etudes Internation­ These bankers indeed founded the International Red Cross ales houses many more such institutions: the Centre d'Etudes in the last century, through banker Henry Dunant, and the

34 Special Report EIR July 5, 1983 Freemasonic networks of the Grande Loge Alpina and run Skorzeny. Schaefer was also the financial adviser to the late . the Red Cross as a vast intelligence operation, with the best Shah of Iran.Middle Easternnetworks of Swiss banks-built of covers. At present, the Red Cross is headed by the former on a centuries-old tradition of Islam-ology in Swiss univers­ deputy governorof the Swiss National Bank, Alexander Hay. ities, including the famous Arab studies expert J. J. Hottin­ They have created an immense smuggling empire which, as ger, scion of one of the major banking families of Zurich, Judge Sengelin of France has documented, works in smooth whose descendent, ajoumalist at the too well informed Neue c?Operation with the KGB and the intelligence services of Zurcher Zeitung, runs Swiss Middle East intelligence from Eastern European nations, in particular Bulgaria. Cyprus-are more than congruent with those of the Swiss­ Smuggling in Switzerland is not illegal-since in Swiss based parts of the Nazi international, notably those run through law, it only starts once the border has been crossed, in which Fran<;ois Genoud, former head of Banque Commerciale Ar­ case it does not fall any longer within the purview of Swiss abe. Switzerland is probably the Western nation with the law. An Italian judge is presently investigating the role of the highest density of Moslem converts among the native popu­ Union Bank of Switzerland in handling, during the war, the lation. So strong is the Swiss grip on this asset that no Israeli gold jewelry stolen by the SS from the Rome Jewish com­ officialwill darechallenge Genoud andthe other Swiss-Arab munity, and passed on through the Banca d'Italia, as a lead Nazis for fear of retaliation, financial in particular, and the into today's extraordinary Swiss-centered gold, diamond, breakup of intelligence relations. jewelry, arms, and other smuggling operations. The Swiss The case of Ahmed Huber, a Swiss convert and a Nazi, bankers' priests run the Moscow-allied World Council of is illustrative: he introducedGenoud to Gamal Abdel Nasser, Churches, based in Geneva, which has become "an instru­ set up (with Skorzeny) aspects of the Egyptian missile pro­ ment of the Russian Orthodox Church ever since it joined it," gram of the 1950s, ran part of Genoud protege Ahmed Ben a Swiss intelligence expert acknowledged. The schismatic Bella's security services in Algeria. Today, Huber is an in­ "Concilium" organization around heretic Swiss theologian timate friend of Qaddafi, of Ayatollah Khomeini, just as he Hans Kung, a pupil of theologian Karl Barth who worked was a close friend of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Huber closely with de Rougemont, is centered in Fribourg, Switz­ runsparts of Yasser Arafat's PLO, including prominently its erland. The Anthroposophic world center, Rudolf Steiner's dissidents. Huber's world-outlook, in his own words, is to "Goetheanum," is based in Switzerland. maintain "a Swiss lobby.that will succeed in de-American­ The Swiss ruling elite are the chief organizers of an ex­ izing Switzerland and Europe," an enterprise that offers many traordinary amount of "technological leakage" from West to areas of collaboration with the KGB; in fact, Huber travels East, to the point that the U.S. administration decided to to East Germany very regularly. suspend any scientific-technological cooperation with the Thecenter for subversion of the Middle East, the Geneva­ Swiss until such "leakage" be brought to an end. The Swiss based Islam and theWest organization,is based at the Institut cooperationwith Moscow is no news either: a majority of the Universitairesde Hautes Etudes Internationales, and recruits membership of both the Menshevik and Boshevik parties from the institutes based there. In close, constitutional asso­ lived in Berneand ZUrich, under protection, just as anarchist­ ciation with the Club of Rome, Islam and the West has been fascist herald Mikhail Bakunin had, half a century before; for years theMuslim Brotherhood'smain Western support­ and a Swiss became the secretary-general of the Comintern along with the Schlumbergers' Rothko Chapel in Houston in the late 1920s-who was later allowed to become, after a Texas. Once more, the gutter-level Nazis of the Huber type, phony, cosmetic "split" with Moscow, the head of the highly and therespectable Nazis at so-called elite level, work on the respectableSwiss Socialist Party.Jules Humbert- Droz was a same track. Moscow agent all along, to the full knowledge of Swiss Fran<;ois Genoud's close collaborator Gaston Guy intelligence. Business is business, and geopolitical coopera­ Amaudruz, often tagged as "the head" of the Nazi Interna­ tion even above business. tional, because he heads the New European Order fascist offspringof theMalmo International, candidly expresses his Switzerland today: the Fourth Reich world-outlook: "There is no split between left and right wing. In 1958, Dr. Alfred Schaefer, whose personal connec­ Thesystem is a dictatorship of the center. It is very important tions with the Hitler entourage have been mentioned, took to have the extremes working together to bring down the over theI. G. Farbenfront Interhandel AG of Basel. Renting system." Prinz Radziwill for the purpose, he sent the prince to his "America," Amaudruz continued in a recent interview, brother-in-law Robert Kennedy, then U.S. Attorney Gener­ "is the world's main problem, the main obstacle to peace. al, and obtained a settlement of an affair that had been kept The white man should never have gone to America. The under litigation for 20 years: that of the frozen I. G. Farben white race should have stayed in Europe. They repressed the assets in the United States. Schaefer worked in Cairo in the American Indians there, it was a brutal repression. America 1950s with Hjalmar Schacht and Nazi Fran<;ois Genoud. is the main threat to the world. The peace movement's re­ Schaefer was at the center of the network of postwar Nazi sistance against the United States is perfectly justified . investment, working very closely with retired SS leader Ott!' the collapse will come."

EIR July 5, 1983 Special Report 35