This Bud's for John

John McCain's family

By John Dougherty and Amy Silverman

Published: March 2, 2000

• 

  John McCain, doing one of his Nixon impressions.

By now, anyone who follows American presidential politics -- heck, anyone who owns a television set -- knows Arizona Senator John McCain's family story. His best-selling memoir, Faith of My Fathers, chronicles the lives of the senator's father and grandfather, distinguished admirals. The book takes readers up through John McCain's own military service, including his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. But Faith of My Fathers ends there, a few years short of John McCain's marriage to Cindy Lou Hensley and the advent of his political career.

Faith is only half the family story.

The rest could be called "Cash of My Father-in-Law," a tale of how beer baron James Willis Hensley's money and influence provided a complement to McCain's charisma and compelling personal story and launched him to a seat in Congress -- and perhaps to the White House.

Most Americans know Cindy Hensley McCain as the smiling blonde at John McCain's side. But what they don't know is that Cindy is John's meal ticket; the seed money for McCain's first congressional race came from her father's beer business -- today one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributorships in the country.

Both McCain and Hensley declined to be interviewed for this column. But the public record provides a glimpse into Hensley's history and how McCain has benefited from it -- and how Hensley, in turn, benefits from McCain's powerful post as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where the champion of reform in the tobacco and campaign finance areas has virtually turned his back on another subject in need of attention: alcohol regulation.

The story of Hensley's start in the liquor business is not the stuff of presidential campaign commercials, although it might well make a best seller. The family saga swirls with bygone accounts of illicit booze, gambling, horse racing, deceit and crime. James Hensley embarked on his road to riches as a bootlegger.

In 1945, James Hensley returned home to Arizona from the war, and joined his older brother, Eugene, in the liquor business. The brothers partnered with a powerful Phoenix businessman named Kemper Marley who had cornered a large share of Arizona's wholesale liquor business after Prohibition was lifted in 1933.

During and after World War II, the sale of whiskey was tightly regulated by the federal government. Demand for whiskey was high, particularly on the black market, where prices were more than double the regulated market price.

But the Hensleys figured out a way around the rules. According to a federal indictment that led to a 1948 trial, between April 1945 and January 1947 the Hensley brothers made approximately 1,284 false entries in documents related to the sale of thousands of cases of liquor by their two companies, United Sales Company of Phoenix and United Distributors of Tucson.

James and Eugene Hensley were convicted in U.S. District Court on federal charges of conspiracy, "with the intent and design to hide and conceal from the United States of America, the names and addresses of the person or persons to whom the said distilled spirits were sent, and the prices obtained from the sale thereof."

Besides the conspiracy findings, James was convicted on seven counts of filing false liquor records, and Eugene was convicted on 23 counts of filing false statements. Eugene was sentenced to one year in prison, and James to six months. Neither brother testified during the trial. The men were fined $2,000 each; United Sales and United Distributors were also convicted and fined $2,000 apiece.

In 1953, James Hensley once again found himself charged with federal liquor crimes. This time, the government alleged that Hensley and other officers of United Liquor Company and United Liquor Supply Company falsified records to reduce the company's tax bill. But on the opening day of trial, the judge dismissed all charges against Hensley and other individuals. The case continued against the two companies, which were ultimately acquitted.

In the early 1950s, James Hensley joined his brother Eugene in the purchase of Ruidoso Racing Association in south central New Mexico. The venture proved to be more trouble for the Hensley brothers, who became embroiled in a controversy with the New Mexico Racing Commission over hidden ownership.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, the Hensleys misled the racing commission by concealing the fact that a notorious Phoenix bookie -- Clareance "Teak" Baldwin -- held a one-third ownership in the race track. The commission asked the New Mexico State Police to investigate; the probe linked Baldwin to the Hensley's old liquor partner, Kemper Marley. A report from the 1953 probe noted that Marley financed Phoenix gambling operations and that Marley owned "a wire service formerly operated in connection with bookmaking of the Al Capone gang."

James Hensley sold his interest in the race track in 1955, soon after Baldwin's hidden ownership came to light. He returned to Phoenix, where he launched a Budweiser distributorship, a franchise reportedly bestowed upon him by Marley. Marley was never indicted in the 1948 federal liquor-law-violation case that led to the Hensleys' convictions, nor the 1953 case -- despite Marley's controlling financial role in the liquor distribution businesses.

James Hensley's conviction didn't deter the state of Arizona from granting him a wholesale liquor license in the mid-1950s. In subsequent years, the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control turned a blind eye to repeated liquor-law violations at the company. State liquor regulators did nothing when James Hensley failed to disclose his federal felony conviction on a sworn 1988 disclosure statement to the department and the City of Phoenix.

Hensley also needed a federal liquor license to operate his beer distributorship. Federal officials could not explain how Hensley -- convicted of federal liquor violations -- would have been able to get the "basic permit" required for liquor wholesalers. Such permits can remain in effect for many decades. It is extremely unlikely that a person with a similar conviction today would get a federal liquor license, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Today, Phoenix-based Hensley & Company, the nation's fifth-largest beer wholesaler, is a privately held business that 79-year-old James Hensley still controls. Now one of the wealthiest men in Arizona, Hensley built the Budweiser distributorship into at least a $200 million-a-year business, with annual sales of about 20 million cases of beer.

James Hensley controls nearly all of the voting stock, and most of the rest of the closely held shares in the firm are placed in trusts for his grandchildren or owned by his daughter, 45-year-old Cindy Hensley McCain, wife of U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain.

In the late 1970s, John McCain was at a crossroads, both personally and professionally. His marriage to his first wife, Carol, was falling apart; the two were in the midst of a number of trial separations. And McCain, who would never fully recover from injuries he sustained in Vietnam, finally accepted the fact that he would never fly again. He liked his job as the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate, but it had done more to whet his appetite for politics than satisfy his career goals.

Then he met beer heiress Cindy Lou Hensley, an event that transformed his life. She was 25, he was 42.

McCain retired from the Navy in 1980, got divorced, and married Cindy Hensley. Although Hensley wealth has helped propel McCain's political career, the senator doesn't have direct access to the Hensley fortune because of an agreement the couple signed before their marriage.

Still, Hensley's power and money have been instrumental in McCain's political success. At its peak, McCain's pay as a naval captain was about $45,000. His first job in Arizona was as a public affairs agent for Hensley & Company. He was paid $50,000 in 1982 to travel the state, touting the company's wares. But he was promoting himself as much as he was Budweiser beer. A better job description might have been "candidate."

That same year, Cindy drew more than $700,000 in salary and bonuses from Hensley-related enterprises as her husband campaigned for the U.S. House of Representatives. The Hensleys loaned John's campaign more than $160,000, about a third of what he raised in the hotly contested race.

McCain was considered an outsider to many rank-and-file Republicans in the conservative First District, which had been left open by retiring House Minority Leader John Rhodes. McCain benefited not only from Hensley money, but also from his father-in-law's friendship with Darrow Duke Tully, the publisher of the largest daily newspaper in the state. Tully was enamored with McCain's military record and gave McCain copious free space on the editorial pages of the defunct Phoenix Gazette and an entrée to the power structure in Phoenix.

McCain won the Republican primary and coasted to victory in the 1982 general election. McCain rose to power the old-fashioned way -- by tapping into wealth, rubbing elbows with the powerful, and manipulating a fawning and gullible press. Ironically, a centerpiece in McCain's remarkable and sudden rise to national prominence is his promise of campaign-finance reform.

Yet McCain has relied heavily on the financial contributions from big corporate donors -- with the liquor and beer industry near the top of the list. McCain won -- one could say bought -- his first election to the House of Representatives in 1982 with lavish sums of Hensley beer money.

James Hensley wasn't just giving McCain money just because he was his son-in-law. In a rare 1988 interview, James Hensley gave a glimpse of his political savvy.

"The neo-prohibitionists are real active about trying to dry us up all the time," he told the Phoenix Business Journal. "They're a constant battle. They're going after us in different ways now than they did in those days, trying to ban advertising, things like that ... We're legislatively involved very heavily ... It's a way of life to protect our industry."

Since 1982, Hensley & Company employees have donated almost $200,000 to federal political candidates and campaigns.

McCain himself has received more than $60,000 from James Hensley and his employees -- and tens of thousands more from other beer-related interests.

Today, McCain is ranked the 26th wealthiest member of Congress by Roll Call magazine. There are 535 members in the House and Senate.

John McCain benefits from James Hensley's money.

James Hensley benefits from John McCain's political power.

While McCain blasts his colleagues for falling prey to the influences of campaign contributions, the senator's record reveals his quiet support for the business that launched and has helped maintain his career.

John McCain hasn't always been a champion of change. He voted against campaign finance reform repeatedly in the 1980s. Until recently, he took money from tobacco companies. He was a member of the Keating Five, senators accused of improper actions on behalf of wealthy contributor Charles H Keating and the focus of the most extensive Senate Ethics Committee hearings in 100 years.

But all of that is ancient history for much of the American electorate. Today McCain is reaping the benefits of his recent maverick act, as scores of Democrats and Independents across the country vote for him in GOP primaries.

But there is one area where it is unlikely that John McCain will ever emerge as a champion of reform: alcohol.

When he was elected to Congress, McCain swore he'd recuse himself on all votes related to the alcohol industry, given his father-in-law's and wife's business. And he has. But such votes are relatively insignificant when compared to other powers endowed on a senator -- particularly a senior senator who chairs an influential committee.

Particularly if the senator is John McCain, the committee is the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, and the issue is alcohol.

The Senate Commerce Committee has a number of alcohol-related issues in its purview, including the labeling of alcoholic beverages and the regulation of alcohol advertising. But you wouldn't know it from looking at the committee's agenda since McCain took its reins three years ago.

John McCain's influence regarding alcohol-related legislation comes from his inaction, rather than action. As a committee chairman, McCain has the unilateral power to kill a bill simply by refusing to put it on a committee agenda or schedule hearings.

And since McCain was elected chairman of the committee in January 1997, that's exactly what has happened.

George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says it's very hard to get alcohol-related legislation heard in Congress, and more difficult since McCain took the helm of the Senate Commerce Committee. "Having someone with no interest and who really refuses to take an interest in alcohol is a serious problem in the Commerce Committee," Hacker says.

But does mere indifference actually benefit the liquor industry?

"Well, sure," Hacker replies. "If the chairman has a problem dealing with these issues, he'll go on to something else."

In fact, three alcohol-related bills have been assigned to McCain's committee since he became chairman, and none has been taken up. All three were sponsored by Senator Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican. All deal with alcoholic beverage labeling and are vociferously opposed by alcohol interests.

And then there's the matter of the alcohol advertising hearings the Senate Commerce Committee was set to hold in early 1997. Scheduled in late 1996, before McCain became chairman, they were rescheduled, put off, and, in the end, never held.

Last month, Anheuser-Busch announced it would once again serve as the primary sponsor of the four official presidential debates to be held this fall -- the last one in St. Louis, the company's hometown. The cost of the St. Louis debate, $550,000, was released, but the total amount Anheuser-Busch will spend to sponsor the events was not made available.

Unless George W. Bush delivers a powerful counterpunch to McCain's swelling bandwagon, John McCain will be standing on the Republican party podium at debates paid for by the King of Beers.

At his side will be Cindy.

Beer baron James Willis Hensley will probably be back home in Phoenix.

This article can be found at:

http://www.houston-press.com/2000-03-02/news/this-bud-s-for-john/full

Dope, Inc. - Part 3: Organized Crime

Dope, Inc. - Part 3: Organized Crime

Written by Konstandinos Kalimtgis, David Goldman, Jeffrey Steinberg

Monday, 26 May 2008 ZioPedia

Introduction We have now taken the reader through the production and wholesaling phase of Dope, Incorporated. We have introduced the Far East clearinghouse bank, the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank and the gold and diamond houses that with HongShang feed the black market with invisible forms of payment. In the following pages we will concentrate on the distribution side of Dope, Incorporated's business cycle. We will first enter the Canadian board rooms where the Keswicks, the Inchcapes and their representatives brush shoulders with the wholesalers of the drug trade — the Zionist Hofjuden middlemen — whose assigned task is to ensure swift and secure delivery of that "most valuable source of revenue" to Britain's retail distributors: the mob. The Bronfman family of Canada is our leading case, since they are the top middlemen for the U.S. market which, in turn, is the richest in the world. Beneath the respectable veneer of the Bronfmans' corporate financial empire we will uncover Dope, Incorporated subsidiaries that control the criminal underworld of North America. We will look closely at Meyer Lansky, the Marcello family, and other "Mafia" figures and discover that like China's Green Gang, the mob is a secret army, a fifth column controlled by Britain against the United States. We will trace the drug money to the gambling casinos and other "legitimate" enterprises that are the syndicate's indispensable storefront cover for the drug trade. From these respectable enterprises we will trace the drug money into the halls of the state assemblies, city councils, congressional offices, and into the pockets of America's contemporary Benedict Arnolds and Aaron Burrs, among whom we will find Edward Kennedy, Jacob Javits, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, and other leading lights of the Zionist Lobby. We will find tainted heroin money being funneled into Zionist organizations and from Zionist fronts back into political machines for the dual purpose of buying protection for the drug trade and shaping U.S. policy. We will then take a grand tour through the Anglo-Dutch offshore banking centers, watching money being laundered through Basel, Liechtenstein, Tel Aviv, and the Bahamas; tracing it carefully as it changes ownership from the mob, to the Bronfmans, to British banks, to the Israeli Mossad — finally ending up in dummy corporations to finance international terrorism and a privately owned worldwide assassination bureau. By the time we finish, the reader will have a view of organized crime that tears to shreds all the fairy tales of the drugstores novels and Grade-B Hollywood productions. The image of gangsters and thieves lurking in the dark underworld will dissipate before the fact that we are dealing with the most highly integrated, top-down political machinery in the world — one that enjoys the logistical support of a $200 billion per annum international cartel and the "protection" of every political entity Britain has created through these vast "invisible earnings."

The Jacobs Family's Emprise: Sports and Crime

On June 2, 1976, moments after a bomb exploded in his car and inflicted fatal injuries, dying Arizona investigative reporter Don Bolles whispered three words to the rescue team that pulled him from the wreckage: "Mafia . . . Emprise . . . Adamson."

Bolles was on the verge of completing a seven-year investigation of laundered drug traffic money in the state of Arizona, including organized crime takeovers of dog tracks and horse racing—areas the Buffalo-based Jacobs family began moving into in 1959.

A Phoenix resident, John Adamson, pleaded guilty to the murder in January 1977, naming a local real estate developer, Max Dunlop, as the man who hired him to murder Bolles. Mysteriously, no investigation ever took place of Emprise, the leading vehicle since 1916 of the Jacobs family, which had been the primary target of Bolles's investigation and the subject of his last words.

Emprise was one of the largest nonpublic, family-owned corporations in the world, a conglomerate with control or partial control over 450 separate companies. Its stated annual profit is $350 million, from holdings in North American and British sports complexes, race tracks, and food consortia. It is probably the biggest quasi-legitimate cover for organized crime's money laundering in the United States. Were it a public company, it would rank about 150 in the Fortune 500.

The Jacobs family's only concession to the numerous attempts by law enforcement agencies to shut them down was to change Emprise's name to Sportsystems in 1972.

The vast extent of the present Jacobs empire is approximated by Sportsystems' 1977 declared holdings. The pattern that emerges conforms to the requisites of an international laundering racket for narcotics, prostitution, and gambling receipts.

Sportsystems Corporation maintains:

*majority interest or significant minority interests in over 20 horse racing tracks in the United States and Canada;
*food concessions at over 40 horse racing tracks in the United States and Canada plus another 15 in England. Those in Great Britain are maintained in the name of Sportsystems' wholly owned subsidiary, Letheby and Christopher Ltd., chaired by a retired British Army colonel, Livingstone Learmouth;
*over ten greyhound racing tracks in the United States and Canada, including majority holdings in nearly every track in the heavily drug-trafficked state of Arizona;
*24 concession contracts with major-league baseball teams in the United States, including Chicago's Comiskey Park and Detroit's Tiger Stadium;
*ownership of the Boston Garden indoor professional sports complex and the Boston Bruins professional ice hockey team;
*ownership of Professional Sports Publications, Inc., the largest U.S. publisher of sports events programs;
*161 concessions at theaters and bowling alleys in the United States;
*15 airport concessions, including in-flight and ground-level concessions at Washington, D.C. airports and Palm Springs, Florida;
*two jai alai stadiums (legal gambling facilities) in Florida;
*industrial food catering services at such locations as the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling platforms; and
*one Alaska-to-Seattle cargo fleet comprised of six ships. This route curiously parallels the prime entry point to the U.S. of Chinese heroin.

Within this maze of operations, each characterized by a high volume of cash turnover, the $350 million figure is a fraud, published for tax purposes. Law enforcement sources estimate the annual flowthrough of tainted cash in the range of several billions of dollars.

That is not conjecture. Emprise and its incarnation, Sport-systems, left a broad trail of investigations, indictments, and convictions, occurring mainly during the years of Nixon's War on Drugs—a trail that ended with the Bolles murder. In 1972, the family firm was convicted of conspiracy to take over a gambling casino in Las Vegas by illegal means. That incident, among other things, provoked the change of the Emprise name. Indicted along with the Jacobs brothers were some of the best-known faces in the mug files of the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force. Among the co-conspirators were top racketeers, drug traffickers, and the entire leadership of the Detroit mob, including

*Anthony Zerilli, son of Joseph Zerilli, Detroit's mob boss and an official of the Emprise subsidiary, Hazel Park Racing Association;
*Michael B. Polizzi of Grosse Point, Michigan, an owner of the Valley Die Cast Association, identified as a Detroit mob lieutenant in police files;
*Anthony Giordano of the "St. Louis Banana Distributing Company," the kingpin of St. Louis drug traffic;
*Peter J. Bellanca, also a director of the Emprise-owned Hazel Park Racing Association; and
*Jacob Shapiro, a Detroit-Miami mobster, with interests in Las Vegas' Silver Slipper casino.

Conviction in the same dock with known mobsters did not deter the Jacobs family. Since 1972, they have continued to act as money-movers and bagmen for a whole list of organized crime figures. Several large loans to crime syndicates are on the record, including a $2 million 1972 loan to the Montreal Expos—owned by their old sponsors and counterparts across the Canadian border, the Bronfman family of Montreal. An earlier recipient was convicted murderer Raymond Patriarcha, the crime boss of Rhode Island. Louis Jacobs, one of the three brothers, brought Patriarcha into a partnership in the Chicago Lion Manufacturing Company, since renamed the Bally Manufacturing company, the largest American producer of pinball and slot machines and the source of supply for the mob's pinball distribution. Also on the list of the Jacobs' "loan" recipients are a number of associates of syndicate financier Meyer Lansky, including Morris Dalitz, according to testimony introduced into the Congressional Record (1).

A Michigan grand jury is currently hearing a case implicating the Jacobs' Sportsystems and the Jacobs brothers personally in an attempt to tamper with Michigan state criminal records involving members of the Zerilli mob and St. Louis crime figure Morris Shenker.

Despite a record of criminal activity stretching back to the 1910s—and never interrupted—the Jacobs family remains one of the open, "legitimate" fronts for Dope, Incorporated. Not only is the Jacobs family protected, but, as we will document below, it retains a group of veterans of the Kennedy Administration's Organized Crime Strike Force as its legal department.

Emprise appeared in 1916, the year that the Bronfmans and the Hudson's Bay Company began bootlegging through the "Pure Drug Distribution Company," using the three Jacobs brothers as contacts right across the border in Buffalo. The original Jacobs brothers, Louis, Marvin, and Charles, used the old smugglers' cover of "food concessions" for a chain of vaudeville theaters on the Canadian border crossing points at Buffalo and Cleveland. (2) The modus operandi is pretty much the one Mitchell Bronfman used during the early 1970s for smuggling heroin into the United States. Once established, the Jacobs machine became a leading distributor for Bronfman liquor as the United States went dry.

Functionally, Emprise represented the "throttle" through which shipments of liquor could be turned on or off to the American mob. The Jacobs family, enduring a half-dozen criminal indictments through the 1920s, controlled the supply and financing of illegal booze for most of American organized crime.

Their dependents included the Purple Gang of Detroit, the gang convicted with the Jacobs brothers in the 1972 Las Vegas incident; the Morris Dalitz Cleveland-Las Vegas crime syndicate: and the Crown-Lundheimer mob in Chicago, the Zionist controllers of the colorful "cutout" Al Capone. (3) Not only are these ties still in place; every man who tried to do something about them is either dead, like reporter Don Bolles, or broken, like former Arizona Congressman Sam Steiger.

The Steiger investigation

Beginning in 1970, five-term Arizona conservative Congressman Sam Steiger began an investigation into Emprise's activities in his home state. Working closely with Bolles, Steiger prepared a series of reports for the House Select Committee on Crime, of which he was a member. Steiger placed two damning reports on Emprise in the Congressional Record in 1970 and 1972 (4). He also widely publicized the finding of an Arizona State Auditor General report charging Emprise with falsifying figures to get a tax-break bill through the State Legislature. By 1972, in conjunction with the Nixon Justice Department, he succeeded in getting grand jury charges and federal court convictions against Emprise and the six Detroit area mobsters already cited. On May 24, 1972, pressure on Emprise had reached such a public crescendo that even Sports Illustrated ran a lengthy expose titled "Jacobs — Godfather of Sports"; the magazine was promptly sued for $20 million and settled out of court.

At that point, Democratic Party politicians and prominent figures in the Zionist Lobby went into action on Emprise's behalf. Not coincidentally, the same forces that came forward for Emprise were also preparing the Watergate scandal to bring down President Richard Nixon. (5)

Democratic members of the House Select Panel on Crime denounced the majority report prepared by Steiger exposing Emprise's ties to organized crime. As admitted by Max and Jeremy Jacobs in congressional testimony, Emprise hired New York public relations man Hal Antin to defeat Steiger in his 1976 re-election bid. A Phoenix underworld figure, George H. Johnson, was paid to wiretap and survey Steiger and manufacture scandals against him. Arnold Weiss, a Buffalo attorney on the Emprise payroll, was sent to meet with Steiger and deliver a series of ultimatums. Weiss reportedly threatened to ruin Steiger by planting rumors that his marriage had broken up after his wife caught him in illicit relations with their three-year-old daughter. Such rumors, in fact, did appear in various Arizona media. (6)

In 1972, Senator Robert Dole, a Kansas Republican, publicly protested the House Select Panel's decision to terminate the hearings on Emprise. Dole revealed that the decision had followed a private meeting between Jeremy Jacobs and Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien. O'Brien subsequently left his Democratic Party post and assumed a lucrative job as president of the National Basketball Association—an organization with heavy representation by the Jacobs family.

As the Watergate campaign broke down Nixon's resistance and dismantled the core of his efforts to suppress organized crime, the attack against Emprise faded. By June 1976, Don Bolles was dead. On November 3, 1976, in an election heavily shaped by nationwide vote fraud (7), Rep. Steiger lost his bid for a sixth term in Congress. By this time a broken man fearing for his life, Steiger met with Jeremy Jacobs to "apologize" for his accusations against Emprise. At this time Emprise-Sportsystems had three pending civil suits against Steiger. In a last act of humiliation, Steiger wrote to Attorney General Edward Levi as a spokesman for Emprise on behalf of a presidential pardon for the 1972 federal racketeering conviction. Incoming Attorney General Griffin Bell turned down the request as "not deserving." (8)

Jacobs and Royal Crown

The second generation of Jacobs brothers, Max, Jeremy, and Lawrence, underwent the same "washing" into respectable society as their old Prohibition business partners, the Bronfmans. Ironically, the Jacobs brothers used their longstanding association with the Bronfmans, since married into the upper reaches of the European Hofjuden, to lend them an air of respectability somewhat above that of the outright thugs with whom they still do most of their business. For example, a third-generation Jacobs, Jeremy, took his "higher education" not at a university, but at the Toronto Jockey Club, after his 1960 high school graduation. The Bronfman-run Toronto Jockey Club, like its counterpart in Hong Kong, is not only one of Canada's best protected dirty money-gathering outfits, but a place where Hofjuden and gangsters can amiably mix in safety. Regular denizens of the Toronto Club include Viscount Hardinge and Canadian organized-crime figure Murray Koffler. Koffler's role as a retail outlet for Bronfman dope-running came into the public domain in 1976, when an associate's chain of retail drug stores was indicted for maintaining an amphetamine factory and a national army of pill-pushers. That distinction did not prevent Koffler from attending the wedding of Britain's Princess Anne, or from maintaining his close friendship with Anne's husband. Captain Mark Phillips. (9)

So far the Jacobs have been barred from marriage into the leading Hofjuden circles. However, the Jacobs have been awarded a respectable role in the train of the British monarchy, in a service capacity. The "crown jewel" of the Jacobs' operations is the British firm, Letheby and Christopher Ltd.—the caterers, by Her Majesty's appointment, to "all events with a royal presence." (10) Their concessions through Letheby and Christopher include the Tate Gallery, the Ascot Races, and other gathering places of the Royal Family and the British aristocracy. L & C, as it is affectionately known in Britain, was awarded the management of Ascot through the Bank of Norfolk, whose trustees include the Marquis of Abergavemy and Lord Tyron—the Keeper of the Queen's Privy Purse, third in aristocratic rank to the Keeper of the Queen's Horse, and the Keeper of the Queen's Bedchamber.

Apart from its royal honors, the Jacobs subsidiary manages 12 other racetracks in Great Britain including the national track at Liverpool, the site of the Grand National, and Wembly Stadium, Britain's equivalent of Madison Square Garden.

More than their retailing services for British dope-peddlers, however, accounts for the Jacobs family's honored position at the British court. They have conducted crucial—and dangerous—political errands for the British oligarchy over a period of years. One such mission involved the successful sabotage of Richard Nixon's 1972 plan for detente with the Soviet Union. Their instrument for the act of sabotage—the man whose presidential campaign they funded lavishly—was Senator Scoop Jackson.

"Scoopsie," Max Jacobs once said, "is the best friend Israel has in the Congress." Max and brother Jeremy were funders of their torpedo's run for the White House. (11)

Jackson authored the "Jackson-Vanik" Amendment to destroy the effectiveness of Nixon's 1972 treaty for expanded trade and scientific cooperation, which rested, among other things, on American credits for Siberian development. Jackson's operation prevented the United States from extending any credits to the Soviet Union until the Soviets "liberalized" their Jewish emigration policy. (Under the Nixon Administration, such emigration had already increased fourfold.)

The Jacobs brothers had hamstrung a treaty the British Crown viewed as a mortal enemy, one the Rothschild-owned London Economist denounced as a "waltz of the elephants." Jackson has continued to work as a pawn of the Jacobs crime family, advocating, among other projects, a military alliance with and weapons sales to China, Britain's partner in world dope traffic.

In the Jacobs group, America has its homegrown version of the Green Gangs, the fifth column Britain used to destroy China.

McCain Warns Of ‘Hard Struggle’ On The ‘Iraq-Pakistan Border’»

Today on Good Morning America, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to call the situation in Afghanistan “precarious and urgent,” but admitted that “We have a lot of work to do.” He warned of a “very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.” Watch it:

Of course, Iraq is nowhere near Pakistan. In fact, Baghdad — the capital of Iraq — is over 1,500 miles from Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad:

Before McCain repeats his claim to “know how to win wars,” he should probably look at a map.

Pakistan does have border problems, however: with Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and the Taliban have reconstituted themselves. A Center for American Progress report recommends establishing an inter-Pashtun political dialogue across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan as a way of addressing the increasing threats.

Carl Oglesby

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Carl Oglesby is a writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the term 1965-1966.

Biography

Early years

Carl Oglesby's father was from South Carolina, and his mother from Alabama. They met in Akron, Ohio, where Carl's father worked in the rubber mills. Carl progressed through the Akron Public School System, even winning a prize in his final year for a speech in favor of America's Cold War stance. He went to Kent State University; but dropped out in his third year to try to make his way as an actor and playwright in Greenwich Village, a bohemian area of New York. After a year, he returned to Kent State and graduated, writing three plays and an unfinished novel. He worked at odd jobs until, around 1960, he came to Michigan.

Contact with SDS

He first came into contact with members of SDS in Michigan in 1964. At the time he was thirty years old and had a young family (a wife and three children). He was a technical writer for the Systems Division of Bendix (a defense contractor); at the same time trying to get a part time degree from the University of Michigan. He wrote a critical article on American foreign policy in the Far East in the campus magazine. SDSers read it, and went to meet Carl at his family home to see if he might become a supporter of the SDS. As Oglebsy put it, 'We talked. I got to thinking about things. As a writer, I needed a mode of action [...] I was that people were already moving, so I joined up.' He became a full time Research, Information, Publications (RIP) worker for SDS.

He became so impressed by the spirit and intellectual strength of the SDS that he rapidly became deeply involved in the organization, becoming its President within a year. Carl's first project was to be a 'grass-roots theatre', but that project was soon superseded by the opposition to escalating American activity in Vietnam; he helped organize a teach-in in Michigan, and to build for the massive SDS peace march in Washington on 1965-04-17. The National Council meeting after was Oglesby's first national SDS meeting. He records: 'A fantastic experience. For three days there was debate on various subjects, and I was absolutely convinced by every speaker. One would get up and defend a point and I would be convinced. Then another guy would get up and refute the point so well I thought he was right. One after the other they got better and smarter. It was the first time I'd seen a debate when it wasn't an ego game. They were really beautiful people. Students! I had no idea until then that young people - anyone - could think so well.'

On 1965-11-27, Oglesby gave a speech before tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators in Washington, which became one of the most important documents to come out of the anti-war movement. According to Kirkpatrick Sale: "It was a devastating performance: skilled, moderate, learned, and compassionate, but uncompromising, angry, radical, and above all persuasive. It drew the only standing ovation of the afternoon... for years afterward it would continue to be one of the most popular items of SDS literature."

Later years

After the collapse of SDS in the summer of 1969 Carl became a writer, a musician and an academic. Oglesby wrote several books on the JFK assassination, and the various competing theories that attempt to explain it. He is skeptical of the 'lone gunman' theory. He also recorded two albums, roughly in the folk-rock genre. He taught Politics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dartmouth College. Oglesby attended the April 2006 North-Eastern Regional Conference of the 'new SDS', and gave a speech. A video of part of the speech can be viewed here, and general documents relating to the convention - including several accounts of Oglesby's speech - can be seen here. He currently resides in Amherst, Massachusetts.

References

• Sale, Kirkpatrick. 'SDS: Ten Years Towards a Revolution' New York: Vintage Books (1974) ISBN 0-394-71965-4. It is available online [1] See especially pages 194-199.
• Short biography, with extracts from texts by and about Carl Oglesby. Site information is in the context of a debate about the JFK assassination.
• "Writer of the Storm - Former New Left leader Carl Oglesby on the '60s, his old friend Hillary Clinton, and the dream of a left-libertarian alliance." April 2008. Bill Kauffman.

Books by Carl Oglesby

• Containment and Change, Macmillan (1969).
• The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate Sheed Andrews and McMeel (1976) ISBN 0-8362-0688-6.
• Who Killed JFK? (The Real Story Series) Odonian Press (1991) ISBN 1-878825-10-0.
• The JFK Assassination : The Facts and Theories, Signet (1992) ISBN 0-451-17476-3.
• Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960's Antiwar Movement (2008) ISBN 1-4165-4736-3.

External links

• Archive of SDS documents, including two speeches by Carl Oglesby:
  • Democracy is Nothing if Not Dangerous (speech)

Quotes

• "It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels."
• "What gives you hope gives me bitterness - this balmy night, soft spring, sweet air. Life looks so little and death looks so big. You don't misunderstand me. What's worth working for is simply worth working for - on its own present terms, on the face value of what it is. I mean, I'm not in the movement like a businessman's in business, waiting for the payoff on the investment. The value of my commitment is not pending anything, the commitment isn't waiting to be ratified by success or refuted by failure. Life is better than death, one sides with life always... To the barricades!" Private note to Paul Booth in May 1965.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Oglesby"

Categories: 1930s births | Living people | American anti-Vietnam War activists | American democracy activists | American libertarians | American political writers | American tax resisters | COINTELPRO targets | Conspiracy theorists | Members of Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization) | Researchers of the John F. Kennedy assassination | Dartmouth College faculty | Kent State University alumni | Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty | University of Michigan alumni

The Coming Catastrophe?

The Coming Catastrophe?

Editor's Note: This is a very thought provoking piece by David DeBatto that was posted over at Global Research on the implications of an attack on Iran by either the war crazed neocon Bush-Cheney junta desperate to close the deal on 9/11 as a transformative event or an even more paranoid and delusional Israeli government intent on turning the Middle East into a raging piece of hell on Earth. This is the attack that will most certainly ignite World War III, destroy the United States as a functional entity as well as forever chain it to historical infamy much like the Nazis and quite possibly bring on that much desired Armageddon by the Christian Zionist tools of the Mossad and other extremist elements of that human rights abusing shitbox that through either infiltration, bribery or blackmail gained an extraordinary amount of control over American foreign and domestic policy. Suppose they threw a Rapture party and nobody flew up dirty nasty butt naked to sit at the foot of God's throne and watch the show but just perished along with the rest of us heathens in the conflagration?

The Coming Catastrophe?

The finishing touches on several contingency plans for attacking Iran

By David DeBatto (Global Research)

"Israel has said a strike on Iran will be "unavoidable" if the Islamic regime continues to press ahead with alleged plans for building an atom-bomb." (London Daily Telegraph, 6/11/2008)

"Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany joined President Bush on Wednesday in calling for further sanctions against Iran if it does not suspend its uranium enrichment program." Mr. Bush stressed again that "all options are on the table," which would include military force. (New York Times, 6/11/2008)

We are fast approaching the final six months of the Bush administration. The quagmire in Iraq is in its sixth painful year with no real end in sight and the forgotten war in Afghanistan is well into its seventh year. The "dead enders" and other armed factions are still alive and well in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan again controls most of that country. Gas prices have now reached an average of $4.00 a gallon nationally and several analysts predict the price will rise to $5.00-$6.00 dollars per gallon at the pump by Labor Day. This, despite assurances by some major supporters of the decision to invade Iraq that the Iraq war "will pay for itself" (Paul Wolfowitz) or that we will see "$20.00 per barrel" oil prices if we invade Iraq (Rupert Murdoch).

One thing the Pentagon routinely does (and does very well) is conduct war games. Top brass there are constantly developing strategies for conducting any number of theoretical missions based on real or perceived threats to our national security or vital interests. This was also done prior to the invasion of Iraq, but the Bush administration chose not to listen to the dire warnings about that mission given to him by Pentagon leaders, or for that matter, by his own senior intelligence officials. Nevertheless, war gaming is in full swing again right now with the bullseye just to the right of our current mess – Iran.

It’s no secret that the U.S. is currently putting the finishing touches on several contingency plans for attacking Iranian nuclear and military facilities. With our ground forces stretched to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan, none of the most likely scenarios involve a ground invasion. Not that this administration wouldn’t prefer to march into the seat of Shiite Islam behind a solid, moving line of M1 Abrams tanks and proclaim the country for democracy. The fact is that even the President knows we can’t pull that off any more so he and the neo-cons will have to settle for Shock and Awe Lite.

If we invade Iran this year it will be done using hundreds of sorties by carrier based aircraft already stationed in the Persian Gulf and from land based aircraft located in Iraq and Qatar. They will strike the known nuclear facilities located in and around Tehran and the rest of the country as well as bases containing major units of the Iranian military, anti-aircraft installations and units of the Revolutionary Guard (a separate and potent Iranian para-military organization).

Will this military action stop Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons? Probably not. It will probably not even destroy all of their nuclear research facilities, the most sensitive of which are known to be underground, protected by tons of earth and reinforced concrete and steel designed to survive almost all attacks using conventional munitions. The Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard will most likely survive as well, although they will suffer significant casualties and major bases and command centers will undoubtedly be destroyed. However, since Iran has both a functioning Air Force, Navy (including submarines) and modern anti-aircraft capabilities, U.S. fighter-bombers will suffer casualties as well. This will not be a "Cake Walk" as with the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when the Iraqi Army simply melted away and the Iraqi Air Force never even launched a single aircraft.

Not even close.

If the United States attacks Iran either this summer or this fall, the American people had better be prepared for a shock that may perhaps be even greater to the national psyche (and economy) than 9/11. First of all, there will be significant U.S. casualties in the initial invasion. American jets will be shot down and the American pilots who are not killed will be taken prisoner - including female pilots. Iranian Yakhonts 26, Sunburn 22 and Exocet missiles will seek out and strike U.S. naval battle groups bottled up in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf with very deadly results. American sailors will be killed and U.S. ships will be badly damaged and perhaps sunk. We may even witness the first attack on an American Aircraft carrier since World War II.

That’s just the opening act.

Israel (who had thus far stayed out of the fray by letting the U.S. military do the heavy lifting) is attacked by Hezbollah in a coordinated and large scale effort. Widespread and grisly casualties effectively paralyze the nation, a notion once thought impossible. Iran’s newest ally in the region, Syria, then unleashes a barrage of over 200 Scud B, C and D missiles at Israel, each armed with VX gas. Since all of Israel is within range of these Russian built weapons, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and virtually all major civilian centers and several military bases are struck, often with a result of massive casualties.

The Israeli Air Force orders all three squadrons of their F-16I Sufa fighter/bombers into the air with orders to bomb Tehran and as many military and nuclear bases as they can before they are either shot down or run out of fuel. It is a one way trip for some of these pilots. Their ancient homeland lies in ruins. Many have family that is already dead or dying. They do not wait for permission from Washington, DC or U.S. regional military commanders. The Israeli aircraft are carrying the majority of their country’s nuclear arsenal under their wings.

Just after the first waves of U.S. bombers cross into Iranian airspace, the Iranian Navy, using shore based missiles and small, fast attack craft sinks several oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, sealing off the Persian Gulf and all its oil from the rest of the world. They then mine the area, making it difficult and even deadly for American minesweepers to clear the straits. Whatever is left of the Iranian Navy and Air Force harasses our Navy as it attempts minesweeping operations. More U.S casualties.

The day after the invasion Wall Street (and to a lesser extent, Tokyo, London and Frankfurt) acts as it always does in an international crisis – irrational speculative and spot buying reaches fever pitch and sends the cost of oil skyrocketing. In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iran, the price of oil goes to $200.00 - $300.00 dollars a barrel on the open market. If the war is not resolved in a few weeks, that price could rise even higher. This will send the price of gasoline at the pump in this country to $8.00-$10.00 per gallon immediately and subsequently to even higher unthinkable levels.

If that happens, this country shuts down. Most Americans are not be able to afford gas to go to work. Truckers pull their big rigs to the side of the road and simply walk away. Food, medicine and other critical products are not be brought to stores. Gas and electricity (what is left of the short supply) are too expensive for most people to afford. Children, the sick and elderly die from lack of air-conditioned homes and hospitals in the summer. Children, the sick and elderly die in the winter for lack of heat. There are food riots across the country. A barter system takes the place of currency and credit as the economy dissolves and banks close or limit withdrawals. Civil unrest builds.

The police are unable to contain the violence and are themselves victims of the same crisis as the rest of the population. Civilian rule dissolves and Martial Law is declared under provisions approved under the Patriot Act. Regular U.S. Army and Marine troops patrol the streets. The federal government apparatus is moved to an unknown but secure location. The United States descends into chaos and becomes a third world country. Its time as the lone superpower is over.

It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Then the first Israeli bomber drops its nuclear payload on Tehran.

David DeBatto is a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, Iraqi war veteran and co-author the "CI" series from Warner Books and the upcoming "Counter to Intelligence" from Praeger Security International.

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Sovereign Military Order of Malta

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Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme di Rodi e di Malta Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta
Motto: "Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum" (Latin) "Defence of the faith and assistance to the poor"
Anthem: "Ave Crux Alba" (Latin) "Hail, thou White Cross"
Capital		Magistral Palace, Rome
Official languages		Italian
Government
-	Prince & Grand Master	Fra' Matthew Festing
Currency		Scudo

The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), Order of Malta or Knights of Malta for short) is a Catholic order based in Rome, Italy. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a sovereign subject of international law.^[1]

It takes its origins from the Knights Hospitaller, an organization founded in Jerusalem in 1050 as an Amalfitan hospital to provide care for poor and sick pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, it became a Catholic military order under its own charter. Following the loss of Christian territory in the Holy Land, the Order operated from Rhodes (1310-1523), and later from Malta (1530-1798), over which it was sovereign.

Although this state came to an end with the ejection of the Order from Malta by Napoleon, the Order as such survived. It retains its claims of sovereignty under international law and has been granted permanent observer status at the United Nations. SMOM is considered to be the main successor to the medieval Knights Hospitaller.

Today the order has 12,500 members, 80,000 permanent volunteers, 13,000 medical personnel including doctors, nurses, auxiliaries and paramedics. The goal is to assist the elderly, the handicapped, refugees, children, the homeless, those with terminal illness and leprosy in five continents of the world, without distinction of race or religion.^[2] Through its worldwide relief corps, Malteser International, the Order is also engaged to aid victims of natural disasters, epidemics and armed conflicts.

Name and insignia

The full official name is Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta (in English) or Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme di Rodi e di Malta (in Italian). Conventionally, they are also known as the Order of Malta. The Order has a large number of local priories and associations around the world but there also exist a number of organizations with similar-sounding names that are unrelated, including numerous fraudulent (self-styled) orders seeking to capitalize on the name ^[3].

In ecclesiastical heraldry, the Order of Malta is one of only two Orders whose insignia may be displayed in a clerical coat of arms. (Laypersons have no such restriction.) The shield is surrounded with a silver rosary for professed knights, or for others the ribbon of their rank. Members may also display the Maltese Cross behind their shield instead of the ribbon (Noonan 1996).

International status of the Order

Coat of Arms of the Knights, from the facade of the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri, Florence.

With its unique history and unusual present circumstances the exact status of the Order has been the subject of debate: it claims to be a traditional example of a sovereign entity other than a state. Its two headquarters in Rome, namely the Palazzo Malta in Via dei Condotti 68 (where the Grand Master resides and Government Bodies meet), and the Villa Malta on the Aventine (which hosts the Grand Priory of Rome, the Embassy of the Order to Holy See and the Embassy of the Order to Italy), are granted extraterritoriality.

Flags of Knights Hospitaller in St. Peter's Castle, Bodrum, Turkey
(from left to right : Fabrizio Carretto (1513-1514); Amaury d'Amboise (1503-1512); Pierre d'Aubusson (1476-1503); Jacques de Milly (1454-1451)

However, unlike the Holy See, which is sovereign over the Vatican City, SMOM has had no sovereign territory (other than a few properties in Italy with extraterritoriality only) since the loss of the island of Malta in 1798. The United Nations does not classify it as a "non-member state" but as one of the "entities and intergovernmental organizations having received a standing invitation to participate as observers". For instance, while the International Telecommunication Union has granted radio identification prefixes to such quasi-sovereign jurisdictions as the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority, SMOM has never received one. For awards purposes, amateur radio operators consider SMOM to be a separate "entity", but stations transmitting from there use an entirely unofficial callsign starting with the prefix "1A".^[4] Likewise, for internet identification the SMOM has not sought, nor been granted, a top level domain (such as .com or.uk), while Vatican City uses its own domain (.va).

There are differing opinions on whether a claim to sovereign status has been recognized. Some say it has.^{[citation needed]} Others experts in international law do not. The latter include Ian Brownlie, Helmut Steinberger, and Wilhelm Wengler. Even taking into account its ambassadorial status among many nations, such a claim is sometimes rejected.

Wilhelm Wengler, a German Professor of International law, addresses this point in his book "Völkerrecht", and rejects the notion that recognition of the Order by some states can make it a subject of international law. Conversely, Professor Rebecca Wallace, writing more recently in her book "International Law", explains that a sovereign entity does not have to be a country, and that SMOM is an example of this. This position appears to be supported by the number of nations extending diplomatic relations to the Order, which more than doubled from 49 to 100 in the 20 year period to 2008.^[5] The Holy See in 1953 proclaimed "in the Lord's name" that the Order of Malta was only a "functional sovereignty" - due to the fact that it did not have all that pertained to true sovereignty, such as territory.

Foreign relations with the SMOM diplomatic relations other relations

SMOM has formal diplomatic relations with 100 states^[6] (many of which are non-Catholic), and has official relations with another 5 countries, non-state subjects of international law like the European Community and International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of international organizations.^[7] Its international nature is useful in enabling it to pursue its humanitarian activities without being seen as an operative of any particular nation. Its claimed sovereignty is also expressed in the issuance of passports, licence plates,^[8] stamps,^[9] and coins.^[10] The coincidence of Rome being the capital of the Italian Republic, the Holy See and the Order of Malta leads to a high density of diplomatic instances in the city.
The coins are appreciated more for their subject matter rather than for use as currency, however, their postage stamps have been gaining acceptances among UPU member nations. Starting in 2005, SMOM issues stamps with the euro as the unit of postage, while Scudo (pl. Scudi) remains the SMOM's official currency. Also, in 2005, the Italian Post made an agreement with SMOM to deliver most classes of mail internationally except for Registered, Insured and Express Mail. Prior to the Italia Post agreement, the following countries recognized SMOM stamps for franking purposes:

Argentina, Austria, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Macao, Madagascar, Mali, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, São Tomé & Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, Togo and Uruguay.

A Conventional Chaplain of the Order in 21st century habit

Governance of the Order

The proceedings of the Order are governed by its Constitutional Charter and the Order's Code. It is divided internationally into various territorial Grand Priories (6), Sub-Priories (5), and (47) national associations.

The supreme head of the Order is the Grand Master, who is elected for life by the Council Complete of State. Fra' Matthew Festing was elected by the Council as 79th Grand Master on 11th March 2008, succeeding Fra' Andrew Bertie, who was Grand Master until his death on 7th February 2008. Electors in the Council include the members of the Sovereign Council, other office-holders and representatives of the members of the Order. The Grand Master is aided by the Sovereign Council (the government of the Order), which is elected by the Chapter General, the legislative body of the Order. The Chapter General meets every five years; at each meeting, all seats of the Sovereign Council are up for election. The Sovereign Council includes six members and four High Officers: the Grand Commander, the Grand Chancellor, the Grand Hospitaller and the Receiver of the Common Treasure. The Grand Commander is the chief religious officer of the Order and serves as "Interim Lieutenant" during a vacancy in the office of Grand Master. The Grand Chancellor whose office includes those of the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is the head of the executive branch. He is responsible for the Diplomatic Missions of the Order and relations with the national Associations. The Grand Hospitaller's responsibilities include the offices of Minister for Humanitarian Action and Minister for International Cooperation. He coordinates the Order's humanitarian and charitable activities. Finally, the Receiver of the Common Treasure is the Minister of Finance and Budget and directs the administration of the finances and property of the Order

Prior to the 1990s, all officers of the Order had to be of noble birth, i.e. armigerous for at least 100 years. However, Knights of Magistral Grace (i.e. those without noble proofs), may make the Promise of Obedience and may, at the discretion of the Grand Master and Sovereign Council, enter the novitiate to become professed Knights of Justice. The latter are religious, essentially monks practising the triple vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, although seldom living in monastic community. Worldwide there are over 12,500 knights and dames, a small minority of whom are professed religious. Others choose to be a "Knight of Obedience". Membership of the Order is by invitation only and solicitations are not entertained.

The Order's finances are audited by a Board of Auditors, which includes a President and four Councillors, all elected by the Chapter General. The Order's judicial powers are exercised by a group of Magistral Courts, whose judges are appointed by the Grand Master and Sovereign Council.

Military Corps of the Order

Soldiers of the Military Corps of SMOM in Rome

The Order's official website states that it was the hospitaller role that enabled the Order to survive the end of the crusading era; nonetheless, it retains its military title and function. As a sovereign body it has the right to maintain a military force, and does so at its Rome headquarters.

Commonly referred to as The Military Corps of the Order, the military force in its present form was raised in 1877 and has enjoyed a continuous existence since that date. Armed and uniformed members of the Corps attend grand ceremonials of the Order, and stand guard around the coffins of high officers of the Order before and during funeral rites.^[11] By agreement with the Italian Government in 1877 the Military Corps came into being under the official title of 'Auxiliary Military Corps of the Italian Army - Sovereign Military Order of Malta',^[12] to assist the Italian army's injured or sick (in peace or war). In 1908 the agreement was modified so that the Corps, whilst remaining the official military unit of the Order, and under the command of the Order, also became a fully integral part of the Italian army. Fausto Solaro del Borgo, President of the Italian Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, stated in a speech given in London in November 2007:^[12]

I believe that it is a unique case in the world that a unit of the army of one country is supervised by a body of another sovereign country. Just think that whenever our staff (medical officers mainly) is engaged in a military mission abroad, there is the flag of the Order flying below the Italian flag.

The Corps has become known in mainland Europe for its operation of hospital trains,^[13] a service which was carried out intensively during both World Wars. As part of the post-World War Two peace treaty 36 military aircraft of the Italian Airforce were transferred to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and flew under the Order's flag, to allow the Military Corps to continue its medical function within the (then limited) Italian armed forces. One of these aircraft, still in Order colours, is preserved in the Italian Museum of Aeronautics.