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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34964 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Apropo of the discussion below, I decided to look into these oft-repeated claims about Jewish overrepresentation in certain sectors of the economy. So I decided to look at the banking industry. I looked at the top executives of the 25 largest US banks by total assets; anyone listed on the bank's website under "leadership team" or some other such designation counts as a top executive, usually between 10 and 25 people for each bank. As far as determining who's Jewish, I mostly went by last names, although if someone was obviously black or Asian I skipped the name entirely. The results? Of 414 total executives, I found 19 Jews, or about 4.3%. Considering that only a little over 2% of the country is Jewish, this is significant overrepresentation. Or is it?

The first problem is that I had to rely on names to determine if someone was Jewish as that isn't the kind of information included in most corporate bios. And most of the names I came across weren't Cohen and Leibowitz but generic names like Weiss and Stein or something else that's German or Russian-sounding. For my purposes I assumed all these people were Jewish unless their bio specifically mentioned working for a Christian charity or something (like Jason Schugel), so I probably overestimated the total number of Jews by a few, though on the flip side there are Jews with gentile names I may have missed. And then there's the fact that a significant number of these Jews were women. In addition to the whole problem of married names, the stereotypical image of a Jewish banker is not a woman. Additionally, a lot of these executives were general counsel, or HR execs, or were involved in some other aspect of the business not directly related to banking, but I didn't bother to account for this because they're still obviously influential and are top executives at large banks, but one could make the argument that they shouldn't be counted.

Methodological issues aside, though, the more salient point is that while 4.3% may be a significant overrepresentation in a strict statistical sense (it's about double the expected number), this isn't the kind of overrepresentation most people have in mind when they talk about Jews and banking. It's hard to make the argument that at 4.5% Jews in any way control the industry, or even have any significant impact on it as a group. Relatively speaking, this is about half the number of Christians in Egypt. When you look at the individual banks, 11 of them, or nearly half, don't have any Jews in top leadership positions. An additional 10 have 1, and the remaining 4 have 2. The most Jewish bank on the list is Goldman Sachs at number 5, with 2 of 9 top executives, including the CEO, being Jewish. In other words, even the most obviously Jewish big bank in the country still has 80% gentiles in top leadership positions.

Is my methodology off? Probably. I limited myself to the top 25 banks because that's what I had time for, but I doubt that including the top 100 would have made much difference considering that below that you start getting into regional banks from areas where the Jewish population isn't particularly high and US divisions of foreign banks. But it's still something to look at. I could have included more people than the top executives, though any cutoff is arbitrary; I'm sure if you go all the way down to including branch employees the number of Jews would thin considerably. You could use boards of directors instead of executives. I don't know what kind of effect this would have but I avoided boards because they don't concern themselves with the day-to-day operations of the company and their members aren't necessarily in the banking industry at all, but you can make the argument. Whatever you think about my methodology, though, if you're going to challenge it, at least do the work. Don't just tell me my methodology is bad and you're just sure if I had used a different methodology I would have found that the whole industry is totally dominated by Jews. Because this is what people have been doing for years, and it's obviously bullshit. People have been talking about Jewish domination of various industries in the United States for years, but as soon as I take a cursory look at the most stereotypical Jewish business this "dominance" doesn't even crack 5%.

Instead of looking at individual banks you should look at the most important parts of the banking and finance sector. Jewish prominence is clearest in the leaders of each sector. Disney leads in entertainment, the New York Times leads in information. Facebook leads in its class of social media. Google leads in search. All are led/co-led by Jews.

Blackrock leads in finance. They hold about $10 Trillion in assets. They set standards for the financial world. ESG was their invention. They've been referred to as the informal 4th branch of the US govt, on par with the legislative and judiciary branches. This is because they were given the job of conducting massive 500 billion dollar bond and debt buybacks during COVID. They are the largest shareholder of major companies like Apple, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, J. P Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank.

BlackRock states these shares are ultimately owned by the company's clients, not by BlackRock itself – a view shared by multiple independent academics – but acknowledges it can exercise shareholder votes on behalf of these clients, in many cases without client input.

You can see that Blackrock enjoys considerable influence over the most important companies on the planet. Larry Fink is chairman, founder and CEO. Robert S. Kapito is President. Both are Jewish.

The US Federal Reserve is possibly the biggest decision-maker in the world economy. They effectively control the price of the US dollar. The current president, Jerome Powell, isn't Jewish but the last three were. That takes us back to the late 1980s.

Let's look at raw political power. Donald Trump was perhaps the biggest cheerleader of Israel of any US president. He was actually Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel, a ritual which really sounds like something a vassal state does to show homage to its overlord. He made these rather mask-off comments about how 10-15 years ago, Israel rightfully controlled Congress and now that control is slipping. Then he went on to complain about how Jews weren't voting for him, despite doing so much for Israel when he was in office.

"The biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that — 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it's almost the opposite," Trump told the conservative Ari Hoffman Show.

You've got the US secretary of state, Pompeo, saying: "There is no more important task of the Secretary of State than standing for Israel and there is no more important ally to the United States than Israel. There is much more work to do."

I would've thought that advancing US interests was the role of the Secretary of State. Perhaps countries like Australia or the UK (who actually fight alongside the US in wartime, unlike Israel) would be more important, valued allies. The UK doesn't make a habit of selling US technology to China. Australia doesn't undermine the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or drag the US into toxic territorial squabbles. But no, Israel gets extremely generous aid and unconditional US support, often going to development of indigenous Israeli weapons like the Merkava tank rather than just purchasing American technology.

You've got Nancy Pelosi saying things like: "If this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are"

Who were the biggest individual political donors to Biden in 2020? Mr Sussman, Mr Simons, Ms Simon make up the top 3. All three are Jewish (Simons is the multi-billionaire founder of Renaissance capital, Sussman founded another finance company and and Simon is a real estate heiress).

Other notable spenders in the election were Bloomberg and Steyer, who ran failed electoral campaigns of their own. Steyer is half-Jewish. Bloomberg is Jewish. On the Republican side we have 'kingmaker' Sheldon Adelson, who was the largest Trump donor in 2016 and probably 2020. Jewish. We've got Uihlein, Griffin, Mellon, Ricketts & Eyechaner non-Jewish. Dustin Moskovitz, Jewish. Paul Singer, Jewish (he supported Republicans but also tried to get them to support LGBT). And then there's Soros whose exact donation figures are hard to discern due to it mostly being dodgy websites that discuss it, though probably very large if not the highest of all. Zuckerberg provided hundreds of millions for election offices, which is vaguely political. I can't believe it doesn't buy influence, especially in conditions where the format and methods used were in a state of flux due to COVID.

I observe a general trend where extremely rich Jews support Democrats and LGBT - their fortunes mostly from finance. There's Adelson who's on the other side of course. In contrast, we have gentiles who usually support Republicans and are fairly right-wing. This is from reading their wikipedia blurbs. Of the twelve 2020 megadonors CNN described as 'white', 7 are Jewish. 6.5 depending on how you class Steyer.

I think we can safely conclude that there's vastly disproportionate Jewish influence in finance, vastly disproportionate Jewish-Israeli influence in US politics. Just look at anti BDS laws, laws designed to obstruct people boycotting Israel! Despite most Americans opposing such laws, they've been passed in 35 US states. If anyone wants more proof or citations, I can provide excerpts from Mearsheimer's Isreal Lobby or provide links.

ESG was their invention.

No, it wasn't. I remember a few years back, they refused to participate in stuff like that, after most of their peers have succumbed.

I guess 'invention' is a strong word. But they were certainly ideologically committed to it, which clashed with their pursuit of profit somewhat.

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/missouri-pulls-500-mln-blackrock-over-asset-managers-esg-push-2022-10-18/

Missouri State Employees' Retirement System had asked BlackRock to abstain from proxy voting at companies on its behalf, but the asset manager refused its demand, Fitzpatrick said. Proxy voting is done by asset management firms on behalf of shareholders.

They certainly have chutzpah, refusing to vote as customers wish.

Let's look at raw political power. Donald Trump was perhaps the biggest cheerleader of Israel of any US president. He was actually Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel, a ritual which really sounds like something a vassal state does to show homage to its overlord. He made these rather mask-off comments about how 10-15 years ago, Israel rightfully controlled Congress and now that control is slipping. Then he went on to complain about how Jews weren't voting for him, despite doing so much for Israel when he was in office.

Cannot be more pro-Israel than George .W Bush , who used Israel as a pretext for war. At least Trump was trying to end the wars

George .W Bush , who used Israel as a pretext for war

I remember him using as pretexts for war, in order, WMDs, vague insinuations of Iraq's culpability for 9/11, fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here, and democracy being on the march. I don't recall him ever naming Israel as a reason to invade Iraq. I think the notion that defending Israel's interests were the motivation came largely from looking at the backgrounds of the people who ran Project for a New American Century, and who brought that agenda with them as they accepted cabinet positions in the W. Bush's administration. Other motivations likely included some sort of ill-planned view that we'd get their oil, and some daddy issues (combination of reliving his dad's glory days in the Gulf War and avenging Saddam's attempt on his dad's life in 1993). But the Israel part wasn't spoken out loud, as far as I can remember.

One of Bush's arguments was that Hussein had a documented history of funding terrorism--specifically, providing funds to the families of dead Palestinian terrorists. "Iraq contributed to 9/11" wasn't an administration argument; they pointed to Hussain funding Palestinian terrorism and having at least diplomatic relations with AQ higher-ups, and then argued that those starting points could lead to closer collaboration in the future to the detriment of America and the West in general.

In the US, Bush's arguments were WMD, funding terrorism, and genocide/human rights abuses. At the UN, the Bush administration focused on the WMD angle, because non-proliferation of nuke/bio/chem was the strongest argument (both practically and legally) for getting one or more resolutions through the Security Council.

I'd argue that Bush was used by Israel rather than a user of Israel (though he obviously still bears enormous responsibility for the war and bringing warmongers to power). Israel had a fairly obvious interest in getting rid of Saddam Hussein - he hated them and they hated him. He fired some missiles at them in the first Gulf War. Saddam was an obvious threat to Israeli security but not American security. America is on the other side of the world to Iraq.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on September 15, 2001, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the United States and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Wolfowitz was so insistent on conquering Iraq that five days later Cheney had to tell him to "stop agitating for targeting Saddam."According to one Republican lawmaker, he "was like a parrot bringing [Iraq] up all the time. It was getting on the President's nerves.

Israel was the only country outside of the United States where a majority of politicians and the public enthusiastically favored war. A poll taken in early 2002 found that 58 percent of Israeli Jews believed that "Israel should encourage the United States to attack Iraq."4 6 Another poll taken a year later in February 2003 found that 77.5 percent of Israeli Jews wanted the United States to invade Iraq

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001 - 03), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2005 - 06) , told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002, that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

General Wesley Clark, the retired NATO commander and former presidential candidate, said in August 2002 that "those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid that at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel." In January 2003 , a German journalist asked Ruth Wedgwood, a prominent neoconservative academic and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board (chaired by Richard Perle), why the journalist should support the war. I could "be impolite," Wedgwood said, "and remind Germany of its special relationship with Israel. Saddam presents an existential threat to Israel. That is simply true." Wedgwood did not justify the war by saying that Iraq posed a direct threat to Germany or the United States.

In mid-May, Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister now serving as foreign minister, appeared on CNN , where he said that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and the United States "cannot sit and wait" while he builds a nuclear arsenal. Instead, Peres insisted, it was time to topple the Iraqi leader

Trump himself had a rather schizophrenic foreign policy. He was supposedly trying to withdraw from the Middle East - but kept US troops in Syria to 'seize the oil'. US troops are still there today, keeping the conflict frozen and unending. He assassinated a high-ranking Iranian general, not an obviously dovish tactic. I think he was listening to hawkish, fanatically pro-Israeli voices like John Bolton. Or perhaps killing Iranian generals was just part of his general pro-Israel stance. He tore up the Iran nuclear deal as well.

I literally just cited a poll that showed broad Israeli support for the war. A bunch of US insiders admitted that it was to support Israel:

Former Senator Ernest Hollings made a similar argument in May 2004 . After noting that Iraq was not a direct threat to the United States, he asked why we invaded that country.7 "The answer," which he said "everyone knows," is "because we want to secure our friend Israel."

Hollings, Clark, Zelikow admitted it. Wolfowitz was such a warmonger he had to be restrained by Cheney of all people!

They bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, they considered Iraq an enemy. If they could somehow get rid of him without taking on the cost themselves they'd leap at the opportunity.

In fact, Haaretz reported on February 2 6 , 2001, that "Sharon believes that Iraq poses more of a threat to regional stability than Iran, due to the errant, irresponsible behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Sharon wanted Saddam toppled, along with war in Iran. There was an early period where they thought maybe the US would only fight one war and maybe they might prefer targeting Iran to Iraq but then they changed their minds. Gung ho in favor of war with Iraq.

A few weeks later, Ra'anan Gissen, Sharon's spokesman, told a Cleveland reporter that "if Saddam Hussein is not stopped now, five years from now, six years from now, we will have to deal with an Iraq that is armed with nuclear weapons, with an Iraq that has delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction.

In mid-May, Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister now serving as foreign minister, appeared on CNN , where he said that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and the United States "cannot sit and wait" while he builds a nuclear arsenal. Instead, Peres insisted, it was time to topple the Iraqi leader.

On August 12, 2002 , Sharon told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset that Iraq "is the greatest danger facing Israel

They also provided some false intelligence to the US, to go along with all the false intelligence the US and UK were producing on their own.

Haaretz, for example, ran a story on February 17, 2003, titled "Enthusiastic IDF Awaits War in Iraq," which said that Israel's "military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.

I personally am repulsed by this attitude. They were all gung-ho about the war others would fight, advancing their interests. But they don't send a single soldier to fight. No skin in the game.

Mearsheimer & Walt have a pretty interesting blow by blow of the ideation phase of the Iraq War starting on p233 of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy:

In short, Israel did not initiate the campaign for war against Iraq. As will become clear, it was the neoconservatives in the United States who conceived that idea and were principally responsible for pushing it forward in the wake of September 11. But Israel did join forces with the neoconservatives to help sell the war to the Bush administration and the American people, well before the president had made the final decision to invade. Indeed, Israeli leaders worried constantly in the months before the war that President Bush might decide not to go to war after all, and they did what they could to ensure Bush did not get cold feet.

The Israelis began their efforts int he spring of 2002...

Cannot be more pro-Jewish than George .W Bush , who used Israel as a pretext for war. At least Trump was trying to end the wars

This was not the case. The official, public reasons of war were:

1/ WMD

2/ WMD

3/ WMD

4/ bringing freedom and democracy

5/ TL;DR legal arguments

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