Conspiracy has a long and notorious history in this country. Ever since the secret meeting of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, conspiracy rumors have flared up and been nourished by the discontented and cynical. They blossomed after Abraham Lincoln's assassination; after the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and after JFK's murder.

But never has anyone produced positive proof to unmask the "conspirators" of these acts. No specific persons have dared be accused for fear of libel-or physical retribution.. Identification has been restricted to the vague and anonymous term "they."

Does this mean they don't exist, that they are a figment of someone's imagination? Of course it doesn't. These individuals and families exist as surely as you and I. Although we can not definitely name them without a great deal of digging into corporate files and legal shenanigans, we know with certainty what they have done over the past 200 years of our republic's existence.

And what they have done is more than necessary to prompt serious thoughts about changing the American System so that they, individually or in groups cannot accumulate vast wealth or grasp control of the narrows to the republic's survival.

Following are only some of what they, in their anonymity, have done over the past two hundred years.

They are the individuals and families who caused the deliberate murder of untold numbers of American Indians, and stolen millions of square miles of Indian lands.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1805, denied working shoemakers the right to unite for fairer wages, and had them fined for trying. They are the individuals and families who, in 1812, had war declared against England, presumably, in retaliation for England's capture of American ships and sailors, but more likely, an attempt to steal the vast Canadian territories.

They are the individuals and families who, in the 1830s, had American troops sent to Argentina and Peru to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families who, in the 1840s, had Congress declare war upon Mexico, presenting them the opportunity to steal half of our southern neighbor's lands. They, also, legally stole millions of acres of federal lands to build their cattle, mining, lumber, and railroad empires.

They are the individuals and families whose greed and stupidity caused an economic panic in 1850, and who later in the decade had American troops sent to China and the San Juan Islands to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families of the North who, through their insane drive for profit and disregard of human life, refused to compromise with the South causing the Civil War of 1861, in which 600,000 Americans killed one another.

They are the individuals and families who, after the Civil War, allowed and encouraged the plundering of the South by northern carpetbaggers.

They are also the individuals and families who, in the 1860s allowed some of their group to use prison inmates in their factories to weaken the demands of striking employees, and had American troops sent to Japan, Uruguay, and Colombia to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families who devised strategies, including residency requirements, literacy tests, poll taxes, voting registration during work hours, and complex and confusing registration forms, to discourage common Americans from voting.

They are the individuals and families who, in the 1890s, decided to drastically change the direction of public attention from domestic problems—that neither political party could solve—to international affairs, hoping the strategy would increase party influence over domestic affairs, transform the republic into an international player, and create additional markets for American products.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1894, had American troops sent to Nicaragua to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and groups who, in 1887, tried to provoke war with England over a boundary dispute in Venezuela, but failed.

They are the individuals and families who, the following year, tried to instigate a war with Cuba by sending the battleship Maine to sit smack in the center of Havana Harbor.

They are the individuals and families who, when the battleship suddenly and mysteriously exploded killing 252 Americans, had Congress declare war upon Spain, despite Spanish denial of involvement, and despite lack of proof to the contrary.

They are the individuals and families who influenced Congress to order the American Asiatic fleet—which had conveniently been positioned in Hong Kong—to treacherously attack and destroy the unsuspecting Spanish fleet in Manila Harbor.

They are the individuals and families who intimidated Congress to immediately send 150,000 American troops to invade the Philippines, provoking a long, bitter war that ended in 1904 with nearly 4,000 American lives lost and more than 50,000 Filipinos killed. The Americans treated captured Filipino guerrillas as murderers, not prisoners of war, executing many of them, burning farms and crops to prevent guerrillas from obtaining food, and placing entire communities into concentration camps. It was a nasty business in which a people professing to believe in "freedom" should never have been involved.

They are the individuals and families who, at the beginning of the 20th century, adopted two strategies suggested by their hired psychologists as ways to increase productivity and investments. First: reduce the male's authority within the family and increase the female's—because she does most of the buying. Second: target advertising and public relations campaigns at young people, for young, immature, undisciplined people will be easier to mold into active consumers than older people who have developed habits of thrift imposed by economic deprivation.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1904, had troops sent to Honduras to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families whose reckless investments in 1907 caused the nation to plunge into the worst economic crisis it had yet experienced.

They are the individuals and families who were instrumental in forming the nation's first spy agency—the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation—to spy upon American workers.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1909, had American troops sent to Nicaragua, and in 1912 to China, to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1913, intimidated the men of Congress into passing a Federal Reserve Act, giving the country the central bank that common Americans had rejected in 1910. The law presumably gave the republic a banking system owned by the people, but it was merely another deception created by men who knew how to manipulate word images. There was little "federal" about the new Federal Reserve System. Its banks were all privately owned and operated, and men chosen for the Federal Reserve Board were private citizens who weren't required, or obligated, to report their activities to Congress or the President of the United States.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1914 and 1915, had American troops sent to Haiti to protect their investments, and to Nicaragua to support its dictator, a man hated and unwanted by Nicaraguan commoners. In 1916, they had American troops sent to Santo Domingo to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1917, deliberately involved this country in World War I by propagandizing the American people and intimidating Congress, despite pleas from the European combatants asking the U.S. to stay out of the conflict. It was another unnecessary war in which more than 120,000 American boys lost their lives.

They are the individuals and families who, expecting to continue profitable business relations with German businessmen after the war, refused to enforce the punishment of war criminals.

They are the individuals and families who, after the World War I ended, participated in joint ventures with German corporations, giving their telecommunications, automotive, chemical, electrical, electronic, and other American industrial corporations access to European markets.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1919, with little regard for due process of law, had the Justice Department raid labor union halls in twelve cities, arresting, brutally beating, and deporting hundreds of workers.

They are the individuals and families who instructed their advertising and public relations agencies to follow the advice of the man considered "The Father of Public Relations," when he advised them that the way to overcome cultural prejudices and resistance of common citizens to the ideas and needs of capitalism:

is by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious...

They are the individuals and families whose greed and stupidity caused the economic crash of 1920.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1920, had American troops sent to Haiti and Cuba, in 1925 into Panama, and in 1926 into Nicaragua to protect their investments.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1929, influenced the modification of the League of Nations' order forbidding German rearmament, thus allowing Germany to rearm.

They are the individuals and families whose greed and stupidity, caused the 1929 collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, resulting in the disappearance of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and the start of the worst economic depression the republic had ever experienced.

They are the individuals and families who had police ruthlessly attack all bands of unemployed, protesting workers with clubs and tear gas.

They are the individuals and families who, by 1940, had sent American troops into foreign lands nearly 150 times since the ratification of the constitution; always for their benefit, always to the detriment of the common citizens of those countries.

They are the individuals and families who, after 1929, invested heavily in Germany, and whose German subsidiaries supplied the Nazis with military vehicles and whose Latin American subsidiaries continued selling oil to the Nazis in 1942, despite all out war with Nazi Germany.

They are the individuals and families who, at the end of WWII, took the opportunity to secure a foothold in Asia to secure sources of raw materials and new markets by having American troops kept in Korea. The strategy enabled them to meddle in the affairs of the Korean people resulting in its division into North and South, and causing the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of American boys (8,000 still listed as missing) and almost four million innocent Asians.

They are the individuals and families who after WWII, influenced limiting the official list of accused World War II criminals from over a million Nazi officers, government officials, and industrialists suspected of war crimes and imprisoned immediately at war's end, to a mere few hundred.

They are the individuals and families who influenced the U.S. to withdraw from the allied war criminals trials and to hold their own trials. Known as the "Subsequent Proceedings," only 180 people were tried and convicted.

They are the individuals and families who directly, and indirectly, assisted thousands of Nazis to escape to Latin America or to the United States, and who provided jobs to those escaping to this country.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1949, tried to prevent the election of a popular Chilean leader whom they feared. They had the CIA finance the campaign of the man's fascist opponent, and they also, tried to destroy Chile's economy by reducing importation of essential spare machinery parts.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1950, had the U.S. commissioner to Germany grant clemency to every German businessman convicted at Nuremberg.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1954, had U.S. troops invade Guatemala to protect their investments.

They are the individuals who, in 1954, mimicked the success of their Korean adventure by meddling in the affairs of Vietnam. As with Korea, the U.S. also partitioned Vietnam into North and South. The deliberately contrived war eventually caused the deaths of more than 58,000 American boys and untold millions of innocent Asians.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1960, interfered in the internal affairs of El Salvador by aiding the military overthrow of the new popular government.

They are the individuals and families who, in the 1960,s had the CIA interfere in the internal affairs of the Congolese people by secretly supplying money and arms to the Congolese Establishment—that was defending itself against a commoner uprising.

They are the individuals and families who, in 1965, had 20,000 U.S. troops sent into the Dominican Republic to oust commoners who had toppled the U.S. supported government.

They are the individuals and families who had American troops invade Cambodia and destroy the tiny country's economy with more than 35,000 bombing missions.

They are the individuals and families who, in the 1950s and 1960s, supported and encouraged the House Un-American Activities Committee's witch-hunts for "communists," when in reality their objectives were to intimidate American liberals, freethinkers and humanists to keep their mouths shut; to stop making movies or writing books favorable to other social systems, to stop teaching the dark side of our country's true history to young students, and to stop annoying the American Establishment.

They are the individuals and families who had the U.S. military train Salvadoran forces which, in 1981, invaded El Salvador and overthrew the popular government.

They are the individuals and families who, between 1983 and 1988, moved their factories overseas to take advantage of cheap labor sources and low taxes, becoming role models for hundreds of American executives, causing 10 million Americans to lose their jobs.

They are the individuals and families who, without the knowledge or approval of Congress, had troops sent into the small nation of Grenada to protect American investments and to rebuke its government for business relations with Cuba. Eighteen American boys were killed in the action. Thirty innocent civilians were killed when U.S. planes accidentally bombed a mental hospital, .

They are the individuals and families who are the largest owners of Central and South American lands, factories, farms, railroads, and mines, who finance and support the continual oppression of the area's workers and peasants. By the end of 1983, they had influenced the Congress of the U.S. to approve the installation of nine military governments in Central America; all supportive of elite families, military dictators, and American businessmen.

They are the individuals and families whose public relations agencies are responsible for the propaganda blaming big government for the nation's problems, despite the truth that our national problems are caused by the greed and callous abuse of corporate owners and executives.

They are the individuals and families responsible for the Republican attacks on programs instituted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal to help commoners survive the callous abuse of rich American corporate owners and executives.

They are the individuals and families who intimidated Congress to use military force in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Although it was obvious from the very beginning that the war in the Mid East was totally orchestrated, the Establishment media overwhelmed the American citizenry in its attempt to justify American aggression and program the American people to accept not only the war, but female American soldiers as part of the war. Television and print, editorials and commentaries explained the bombing of civilians as the only way to win a necessary war. Every effort was made to justify the logic of war, and to convince young Americans that going to war and murdering thousands of innocent people were the right things to do. As a consequence, U.S. forces applied more destruction in a shorter time than in either of the two great World Wars. The conflict ended quickly. Almost 100,000 Iraqi's were killed; Americans suffered fewer than one hundred deaths. All the scare talk, all the projected terror of a dangerous Iraqi military proved to be mere fiction, nothing more than Establishment hype. The Iraqi ruler—a CIA agent—remained alive, and in power.

They are the individuals and families who devastated Kosovo under pretense of humanitarian reasons, managing to destroy the country's economy and productive resources: a condition necessary for capitalism to take root, just as Americans did in Korea and Vietnam .

They are the individuals and families who have had Congress repeatedly reject the claims of our most knowledgeable people that marijuana is harmless, and that the country's drug policies are doing more harm than good. They are the ones who have had Congress authorize building hundreds of new prisons to house drug "criminals".

They are the individuals and families who influence the men and women of Congress to ignore the warnings of our most learned scientists that we must change our reckless and arrogant use of natural resources and try to stop the rapid and unusual warming of the planet.

They are the individuals and families who have had Congress authorize the importation of millions of Asian and Latin American people to weaken the demands of American workers, and to enlarge the "American" market for their corporate products.

They are the individuals and families who have had the Congress of the United States violate the sovereignty of other countries, and break international law by authorizing invasion by American troops to kidnap and bring individuals to the U.S. to stand trial for "alleged" crimes.

They are the individuals and families whose giant corporations have merged with others to accumulate greater economic and political power, or to eliminate competition.

They are the individuals and families who have lied to and betrayed the American people for more than 200 years, who have bilked American workers of trillions of dollars with overpriced corporate products and pork-barrel congressional projects.

They are the individuals and families whose stranglehold on the economic and political narrows to the American republic's survival has true freedom gasping for breathe, and whose callous indifference to human rights is quickly transforming the republic into a more deceptively, oppressive environment than the oppressive Old World that birthed it more than four hundred years ago.