28 January 2008

We are ruled by monsters

We are ruled by monsters: "This is an unbelievable statement from one of our top medical advisors. Heroin overdoses kill many people; there is a cheap rescue option, though, kits called Narcan that cost a mere $9.50 and allow people to save lives. The Bush administration opposes their distribution."

We are indeed ruled by monsters. As Myers points out:

And it just gets worse. She opposes saving lives because watching a friend go into delirium, spasm, turn blue, and die in front of you is a pretty good deterrent to drug use. Even better, if you turn blue and die you won't be repeating your filthy drug habits ever again — the War on Drugs chalks up a win! We have a public health official advocating more deaths among victims of drug abuse as part of their compassionate approach to improving the health of our citizens.

(Via Pharyngula.)

ei: Closure turns Gaza's streets into sewers

ei: Closure turns Gaza's streets into sewers: "GAZA CITY, 28 January (IPS) - A stream of dark and putrid sludge snakes through Gaza's streets. It is a noxious mix of human and animal waste. The stench is overwhelming. The occasional passer-by vomits.

Over recent days this has been a more common sight than the sale of food on the streets of Gaza, choked by a relentless Israeli siege."

For how long will this barbarism continue? The world looks on and does nothing. Seventy-six more Palestinians have died and 293 have been injured since the first of the year.

The future of the Palestinians is your future and my future. The pathocrats are using Palestine as the test case, a place to try out their weapons, their strategies. It will end up on your doorstep because for the pathocrats, we are as insignificant and subhuman as the Zionists consider the Palestinians.

The fundamentalist Chrsitians think Jesus is going to come and haul their butts out of the fire before it gets too rough. It is obvious that such an idea is wishful thinking to the extreme.

What is your excuse?

Probably a lot more subtle.

The Disappeared: SOTT.net and Google's conspicuous omissions

Google omitting SOTT.net from search results?

A few days ago one of our readers brought this curious detail to our attention. While searching for an article on Google, they discovered a problem with results from SOTT.net being consistently omitted from Google listings.

Our correspondent writes:

"I find just now that if you search any of the text in "quotes" from Henry See's 'Provoking Stupidity and Violence' piece on Hal Turner, Google brings back zero results from SOTT. The same text will be brought up from other sites carrying the story though.

So, say you grab the first few words from it: "Dave Neiwert at Orincus" and search it, according to Google it doesn't exist on SOTT!

But if you do the same with the title: "Provoking Stupidity and Violence", the article is there!

Other search engines do bring back the SOTT page though. Now how might that happen!?"

How indeed!

Well, our curiosity piqued, we thought it best to go have a look. Was it possible that original articles written by the SOTT team were being 'disappeared' by Google, the thread back to the author snipped? Well, lets see...

Agents, Witches and other omissions

First up is the article brought to our attention:

Provoking Stupidity and Violence: Hal Turner outed as Agent Provocateur

Click for larger view.

Sure enough, if you copy the first few words of the article - "Dave Neiwert at Orincus" - as a search term for Google, the above is what you get and no, no sign of SOTT in there. To find SOTT we had to click "repeat the search with the omitted results included" and dig for another five pages to find where the original article lay buried.

Now that might just be some quirk of the system, so to be fair we gave it another shot with this next article written around the same time:

Wars Pestilence and Witches

This time taking the key phrase "triggered by reading Victor Clube", something specific so as not to have results diluted by any possible returns from other articles. The result, one return!

So you're thinking, well that has to be SOTT right? Wrong! Click below to see the results, on the left is the solitary return from Google, on the right the "repeat the search with the omitted results included" results - where once again we find SOTT and the Laura-Knight-Jadczyk blog.

Well, maybe these articles are 'too new' and for some reason not yet picked up by Google as 'relevant' enough. Though how a copy of an article on a lone blog in the example above is more 'relevant' than the article's originating page would seem more than a little nonsensical.

So for good measure, here we have some 'not so new' examples, to see if time has made any difference (apparently not). As above, initial quoted text search results are on the left, Google's 'omitted' results to the right.

Ultra-terrestrials and 9-11

Transmarginal Inhibition

The Bushes and The Lost King

Seems SOTT.net is one site that Google does not want inquiring minds to visit!

25 January 2008

Rice: U.S. has no permanent enemies_English_Xinhua

Rice: U.S. has no permanent enemies_English_Xinhua: ""I can assure you that America has no permanent enemies, because we harbor no permanent hatreds," Rice said in a speech to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos."

Choke, gurggle, gurggle. No permanent hatreds? How about the Palestinians, the Iraqis, and anyone else that tries to resist US wishes?
"If Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities ...we could begin negotiations, and we could work over time to build a new, more normal relationship," Rice told political and business leaders at the meeting.
Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons development according to US intelligence.
"We do not want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, and we will continue to hold Iran to its international obligations," she said.
What about Israel? Oh, yeah. Israel doesn't have any international obligations because it never signed the treaty.

Terrorist Blah Blah: U.S. says threat against airlines remains high

U.S. says threat against airlines remains high: "DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States is likely to keep a high threat designation for the airline industry because militants still see air travel as a target, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said."

Give me a break! Keep the people humiliated and cowed is more like it.

(Via Reuters: Top News.)

Spain: Suing the victim's family to repair his Audi

Espagne: il poursuit la famille de sa victime pour réparer son Audi: ""

Tomas Delgado Bartolomé was going 160 km/h on a road where the limit was 90. He hit and killed a seventeen year old cyclist. The parents of the victim received 33,000 euros as compensation. Now, the driver is seeking compensation as well:

"I'm also a victim", he says. "We can't fix what happened to the boy, but mine we can". He is asking for 14,000 euros for damages to his car, an Audi A8 and another 6,000 euros to pay for the rental of a replacement car while his was being repaired.

(Via Rue 89.)

20 January 2008

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (7)

From chapter 2 of The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Shoenman

The South African Connection

There is a particular dimension to this secret consort between Balfour and the Zionist leadership to betray the aspirations of the Palestinian people. It was Weizmann's close friend and future Prime Minister of South Africa, General Jan Smuts, who, as South African delegate to the British War Cabinet during World War I, helped push the British government to adopt the Balfour Declaration and to make a commitment to construct a Zionist colony under British direction.

The relationship between the Zionist movement and the South African settlers had evolved earlier, as had the friendship between General Smuts and Chaim Weizmann. By the turn of the century, a large Jewish population, primarily from Lithuania, had settled in South Africa. The Zionist movement regarded this population as particularly susceptible to Zionist ideas because of their already established settler status in South Africa. Zionist leaders travelled constantly to South Africa seeking political and financial support.

N. Kirschner, former chairperson of the South African Zionist Federation, provides a vivid account of the intimate interaction between Zionist and South African leaders, the identification of Zionists like Weizmann and Herzl with the South African conception of a racially distinct colonizing populace, and the importance of a virtual pact between the two movements. [22]

In identifying Zionism with South African settler ideology, Chaim Weizmann was following the early admiration expressed by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, for the quintessential colonial ideologue, Sir Cecil Rhodes. Herzl attempted to model his own political future on the achievements of Rhodes:

Naturally, there are big differences between Cecil Rhodes and my humble self, the personal ones very much in my disfavor; the objective ones are greatly in favor of the Zionist movement. [23]

Herzl advocated achieving Zionist dispersal of the Palestinians by using the methods pioneered by Rhodes, and he urged the formation of a Jewish counterpart to a colonial chartered company, an amalgam of colonial and entrepreneurial exploitation:

The Jewish Company is partly modelled on the lines of a great acquisition company. It might be called a Jewish Chartered Company, though it cannot exercise sovereign power, and has no other than purely colonial tasks. [24]

The poorest will go first to cultivate the soil. In accordance with a preconceived plan they will construct roads, bridges, railways and telegraph installations, regulate rivers and build their own habitations; their labor will create trade, trade will create markets, and markets will attract new settlers. [25]

By 1934, a major group of South African investors and large capitalists had established Africa-Israel Investments to purchase land in Palestine. The company still exists after 54 years with South Africans as joint stockholders, the assets held by Israel's Bank Leumi. [26]

General Jan Smuts was an active member of the Milner Group and had also gotten on well with Rhodes.

Footnotes:

22. N. Kirschner, Zionism and the Union of South Africa: Fifty Years of Friendship and Understanding, Jewish Affairs, South Africa, May 1960.
23. Theodor Herzl, Diaries, Vol.II, p.793.
24. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question, p.33. Cited in Uri Davis, Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, Ltd., 1987), p.4.
25. Ibid., p.28.

13 January 2008

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (6)

Concentric Circles

The Society of the Elect, the secret society founded and funded by Cecil Rhodes, was structured as follows:

1. General of the Society: Rhodes
2. Junta of the Three: Stead, Brett, Milner
3. Circle of Initiates: Cardinal Manning, General Booth, Bramwell Booth, "Little" Johnson, Albert Grey, Arthur Balfour
4. The Association of Helpers
5. A College, under Professor Seely, to be established "to train people in the English-speaking idea". [Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment,p. 39]

The structure was inspired by the structure of the Jesuits.

The fourth group, the Association of Helpers, were people who would be involved in promoting and implementing the policies of the group without being aware of the group's existence. For example, the Round Table groups organized in English-speaking countries around the globe were part of this Association of Helpers, but few of its members would have been aware of the secret group. The Round Table provided the official academic aura to the ideas, much the way the Israeli lobby groups like PNAC give legitimacy to the ideas of the neocons today. If public opinion needed to be turned for or against some idea, The Times could call in a member of the Round Table for the official justification of policy, just as the New York Times or the Washington Post, or Fox News or CNN can do the same today.

Back then, as today, the people who seel to influence the body politic know that if something is repeated often enough it will be believed by enough people that these policies can be justified, regardless of whether the arguments are nothing but a pack of lies. Just look at the repeated assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that Saddam was linked to al Quaeda.

So it seems clear that a small group of people, with access to larger numbers of people, can influence events and can play what W.T. Stead called, in the quote cited in the first post of this series, "so large a part in the history of the world". Rhodes, Stead, and Milner obviously thought so, and Quigley's book looks at their influence as individuals and as a group over a period of more than 50 years.

It is also obvious that the very rich have more influence than those who are poor. Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or David Rockefellar are heard in places that even people who are very comfortable are not. We also know that there are many people who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Why, then, do so many people have trouble accepting that much of what happens in the world may well be the result of the influence of small groups of people?

And if one group were able to have members in several or many others, all without the knowledge of the other members, why could it not be able to influence a wide selection of these groups?

11 January 2008

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (5)

Now let's look a little more closely at the interval of three years that Quigley suggests "is of some significance". The description given by Quigley of the removal of Lord Northcliffe from The Times hardly does justice to the story. The fight between Steed and Northcliffe is described in great detail by Douglas Reed in his book The Controversy of Zion. After explaining that with the easing of the censors after WWI, the free press reporting the actual facts on the ground in Palestine were the worst enemies of the Zionists, Reed describes how the most prominent of those enemies in Great Britain was taken off the scene:

At that stage in the affair England was of paramount importance to. the conspirators (I have shown that Dr. Weizmann and Mr. House both used this word) and in England the energetic Lord Northcliffe was a powerful man. The former Alfred Harmsworth, bulky and wearing a dank Napoleonic forelock, owned the two most widely read daily newspapers, various other journals and periodicals, and in addition was majority proprietor of the most influential newspaper in the world, at that time, The Times of London. Thus he had direct access to millions of people each day and, despite his business acumen, he was by nature a great newspaper editor, courageous, combative and patriotic. He was sometimes right and sometimes wrong in the causes he launched or espoused, but he was independent and unpurchasable. He somewhat resembled Mr. Randolph Hearst and Colone1 Robert McCormick in America, which is to say that he would do many things to increase the circulation of his newspapers, but only within the limits of national interest; he would not peddle blasphemy, obscenity, libel or sedition. He could not be cowed and was a force in the land.

Lord Northcliffe made himself the adversary of the conspiracy from Russia in two ways. In May 1920 he caused to be printed in The Times the article, previously mentioned, on the Protocols. It was headed, "The Jewish Peril, A Disturbing Pamphlet, Call for Enquiry". It concluded, "An impartial investigation of these would-be documents and of their history is most desirable . . . are we to dismiss the whole matter without inquiry and to let the influence of such a book as this work unchecked?"

Then in 1922 Lord Northcliffe visited Palestine, accompanied by a journalist, Mr. J.M.N. Jeffries (whose subsequent book, Palestine: The Reality, remains the classic work of reference for that period). This was a combination of a different sort from that formed by the editors of The Times and Manchester Guardian, who wrote their leading articles about Palestine in England and in consultation with the Zionist chieftain, Dr. Weizmann. Lord Northcliffe, on the spot, reached the same conclusion as all other impartial investigators, and wrote, "In my opinion we, without sufficient thought, guaranteed Palestine as a home for the Jews despite the fact that 700,000 Arab Moslems live there and own it . . . The Jews seemed to be under the impression that all England was devoted to the one cause of Zionism, enthusiastic for it in fact; and I told them that this was not so and to be careful that they do not tire out our people by secret importation of arms to fight 700,000 Arabs. . . There will be trouble in Palestine. . . people dare not tell the Jews the truth here. They have had some from me".

By stating this truth, Lord Northcliffe offended twice; he had already entered the forbidden room by demanding "inquiry" into the origins of the Protocols. Moreover, he was able to publish this truth in the mass-circulation newspapers owned by him, so that he became, to the conspirators, a dangerous man. He encountered one obstacle in the shape of Mr. Wickham Steed, who was editor of The Times and whose championship of Zionism Dr. Weizmann records.

In this contest Lord Northcliffe had an Achilles heel. He particularly wanted to get the truth about Palestine into The Times, but he was not sole proprietor of that paper, only chief proprietor. Thus his own newspapers published his series of articles about Palestine but The Times, in fact, refused to do so. Mr. Wickham Steed" though he had made such large proposals about the future of Palestine, declined to go there, and denied publicity to the anti-Zionist case.

These facts, and all that now follows, are related (again, with surprising candour) in the Official History of The Times (1952). It records that Mr. Wickham Steed "evaded" visiting Palestine when Lord Northcliffe requested him to go there; it also records Mr, Wickham Steed's "inaction" following Lord Northcliffe's telegraphed wish "for a leading article attacking Balfour's attitude towards Zionism".

In what follows the reader' s attention is particularly directed to dates.

In May 1920 Lord Northcliffe had caused publication of the article about the Protocols in The Times. Early in 1922 he visited Palestine and produced the series of articles above mentioned. On February 26, 1922 he left Palestine, after his request, which was ignored, to the editor of The Times. He was incensed against the incompliant editor and had a message, strongly critical of his editorial policy, read to an editorial conference which met on March 2, 1922. Lord Northcliffe wished that Mr. Wickham Steed should resign and was astonished that he remained after this open rebuke. The editor, instead of resigning, decided "to secure a lawyer's opinion on the degree of provocation necessary to constitute unlawful dismissal". For this purpose he consulted Lord Northcliffe's own special legal adviser (March 7, 1922), who informed Mr. Wickham Steed that Lord Northcliffe was "abnormal", "incapable of business" and, judging from his appearance, "unlikely to live long" and advised the editor to continue in his post! The editor then went to Pau, in France, to see Lord Northcliffe, in his turn decided that Lord Northcliffe was "abnormal" (March 31, 1922), and informed a director of The Times that Lord Northcliffe was "going mad".

The suggestion of madness thus was put out by an editor whom Lord Northcliffe desired to remove and the impressions of others therefore are obviously relevant. On May 3, 1922 Lord Northcliffe attended a farewell luncheon in London for a retiring editor of one of his papers and "was in fine form". On May 11, 1922 he made "an excellent and effective speech" to the Empire Press Union and "most people who had thought him 'abnormal' believed they were mistaken". A few days later Lord Northcliffe telegraphed instructions to the Managing Director of The Times to arrange for the editor's resignation. This Managing Director saw nothing "abnormal" in such an instruction and was not "in the least anxious about Northcliffe's health". Another director, who then saw him, "considered him to have quite as good a life risk as his own"; he "noticed nothing unusual in Northcliffe's manner or appearance" (May 24, 1922).

On June 8,1922 Lord Northcliffe, from Boulogne, asked Mr. Wickham Steed to meet him in Paris; they met there on June 11, 1922, and Lord Northcliffe told his visitor that he, Lord Northcliffe, would assume the editorship of The Times. On June 12,1922 the whole party left for Evian-les-Bains, a doctor being secreted on the train, as far as the Swiss frontier, by Mr. Wickham Steed. Arrived in Switzerland "a brilliant French nerve specialist" (unnamed) was summoned and in the evening certified Lord Northcliffe insane. On the strength of this Mr. Wickham Steed cabled instructions to The Times to disregard and not to publish anything received from Lord Northcliffe, and on June 13, 1922 he left, never to see Lord Northcliffe again. On June 18, 1922 Lord Northcliffe returned to London and was in fact removed from all control of, and even communication with his undertakings (especially The Times; his telephone was cut). The manager had police posted at the door to prevent him entering the office of The Times if he were able to reach it. All this, according to the Official History, was on the strength of certification in a foreign country (Switzerland) by an unnamed (French) doctor. On August 14, 1922 Lord Northcliffe died; the cause of death stated was ulcerative endocarditis, and his age was fifty-seven. He was buried, after a service at Westminster Abbey, amid a great array of mourning editors.

Such is the story as I have taken it from the official publication. None of this was known outside a small circle at the time; it only emerged in the Official History after three decades, and if it had all been published in 1922 would presumably have called forth many questions. I doubt if any comparable displacement of a powerful and wealthy man can be adduced, at any rate in such mysterious circumstances.

For the first time, I now appear in this narrative as a personal witness of events. In the 1914-1918 war I was one participant among uncomprehending millions, and only began to see its true shape long afterwards. In 1922 I was for an instant in, though not of the inner circle; looking back, I see myself closeted with Lord Northc1iffe (about to die) and quite ignorant of Zionism, Palestine, Protocols or any other matter in which he had raised his voice. My testimony may be of some interest; I cannot myself judge of its value.

I was in 1922, a young man fresh from the war who struggled to find a place in the world and had become a c1erk in the office of The Times. I was summoned thence, in that first week of June when Lord Northc1iffe was preparing to remove Mr. Wickham Steed and himself assume the editorship of The Times, to go as secretary to Lord Northc1iffe who was at Boulogne. I was warned beforehand that he was an unusual man whose every bidding must be quickly done. Possibly for that reason, everything he did seemed to me to be simply the expression of his unusual nature. No suspicion of anything more ever came to me, a week before he was "certified" and, in effect, put in captivity.

I was completely ignorant of "abnormal" Conditions, so that the expert might discount my testimony. Anyway, the behaviour I observed was just what I had been told to expect by those who had worked with him for many years. There was one exception to this. Lord Northcliffe was convinced that his life was in danger and several time said this; specifically, he said he had been poisoned. If this is in itself madness, then he was mad, but in that case many victims of poisoning have died of madness, not of what was fed to them. If by any chance it was true, he was not mad. I remember that I thought it feasible that such a man should have dangerous enemies, though at that time I had no inkling at all of any particular hostility he might have incurred. His belief certainly charged him with suspicion of those around him, but if by chance he had reason for it, then again it was not madness; if all this had transpired in the light of day such things could have been thrashed out.

I cannot judge, and can only record what I saw and thought at the time, as a young man who had no more idea of what went on around him than a babe knows the shape of the world. When I returned to London I was questioned about Lord Northcliffe by his brother, Lord Rothermere, and one of his chief associates, Sir George Sutton. The thought of madness must by that time have been in their minds (the "certification" had ensued) and therefore have underlain their questions, but not even then did any such suspicion occur to me, although I had been one of the last people to see him before he was certified and removed from control of his newspapers. I did not know of that when I saw them or for long afterwards. In such secrecy was all this done that, although I continued in the service of The Times for sixteen years, I only learned of the "madness" and "certification" thirty years late , from the Official History. By that time I was able to see what great consequences had flowed from an affair in which I was an uninitiated onlooker at the age of twenty-seven.

Lord Northcliffe therefore was out of circulation, and of the control of his newspapers, during the decisive period preceding the ratification of "the mandate" by the League of Nations, which c1inched the Palestinean transaction and bequeathed the effects of it to our present generation: The opposition of a widely-read chain of journals at that period might have changed the whole course of events. After Lord Northcliffe died the possibility of editorials in The Times "attacking Balfour's attitude towards Zionism" faded. From that time the submission of the press, in the manner described by the Protocols, grew ever more apparent and in time reached the condition which prevails today, when faithful reporting and impartial comment on this question has long been, in suspense.

Lord Northcliffe was removed from control of his newspapers and put under constraint on June 18, 1922; on July 24, 1922 the Council of the League of Nations met in London, secure from any possibility of loud public protest by Lord Northcliffe, to bestow on Britain a "mandate" to remain in Palestine and by arms to instal the Zionists there (I describe what events have shown to be the fact; the matter was not so depicted to the public, of course).

After reading the above account, I think you will agree that it throws an interesting light on the web we have been untangling that begins with Rhodes' 'vast semi-religious, quasi-political association'.

I note, as well, that the World Zionist Congress was also begun in the same decade as Rhodes' Society of the Elect. Coincidence?

10 January 2008

Acknowledging Reality

Some days it is really difficult to post articles to SOTT. I tend to generally go for the ones about Palestine or the plight of the Iraqis because this is what makes me angry and motivated. but some of the time recently I've been kind of avoiding those subjects (or at least diluting the impact, with some nice safe stuff about economic meltdown or cometary armageddon!) because the shock of some of these stories, about the rampant infliction of unimaginable suffering, is really... shocking. it hurts.

and it is cumulative. it is not just one mad senseless decapitation of a child somewhere in Sierra Leone. Instead it is layer upon layer of countless terror and misery and greed and pain and violence and wanton destruction that spans the globe whichever way I look. and every day there is more. It is crushingly horrific to contemplate.

Yet contemplate it, I must. Some stubborn part of me refuses to turn a blind eye, because to turn away in denial and to ignore the suffering of others, is somehow worse, denying a part of myself and making me complicit in perpetuating the world of pain.

It seems that facing up to and acknowledging this reality without flinching is a most important and most difficult task.

All I can do is take inspiration from others who work tirelessly on this day after day, and hope that my small contribution is of some value to the universe.

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (4)

The Milner group, according to Quigley, controlled The Times of London from 1912 on, although "[e]ven before this last date, members of the innermost circle of the Milner Group were swarming about the great newspaper." Quigley suggests that The Times had been controlled by what he calls the Cecil Bloc, a network of power and influence built up around the Cecil family, since 1884, and which had a great deal of overlapping with the later Milner Group. Quigley then remarks:

"When it became clear in 1911 that [Times editor] Buckle must soon retire [Geoffrey] Dawson was brought into the office in a rather vague capacity and, a year later, was made editor. The appointment was suggested and urged by Buckle. Dawson held the position from 1912 to 1941, except for the three years 1919-1922. This interval is of some significance, for it revealed to the Milner Group that they could not continue to control The Times without ownership. The Cecil Bloc had controlled The Times from 1884 to 1912 without ownership, and the Milner Group had done the same in the period 1912-1919, but, in this last year, Dawson quarreled with Lord Northcliffe (who was chief proprietor from 1908-1922) and left the editor's chair. As soon as the Milner Group, through the Astors, acquired the chief proprietorship of the paper in 1922, Dawson was restored to his post and held it for the next twenty-two years. Undoubtedly the skillful stroke which acquired the ownership of The Times from the Harmsworth estate in 1922 was engineered by Brand. During the interval of three years during which Dawson was no editor, Northcliffe entrusted the position to one of The Times' famous foreign correspondents, H.W. Steed." [Quigley, p. 102]

Northcliffe would come to regret his choice of Steed as editor and worked ardently to have him replaced in 1922, as we shall in another installment. We will also see what the "skillful stroke" really was.

The "Brand" mentioned is Lord Robert H. Brand who was one of the pillars of the Milner Group from the 1920s through the 1940s, after having served under Milner in South Africa in a group that came to be known as Milner's Kindergarten. He was the economist of the Round Table Group, an international organization set up by Milner to promote the ideas of his group. He was active at the Paris Peace Conference following WWI. Lord Brand was a partner and managing director of Lazard Brothers and Company.

Dawson was, according again to Wikipedia, "also a life-long friend and dining companion of Edward Wood, later Lord Halifax" who was instrumental in Britain's appeasement policy towards Hitler. Dawson was also a member of Milner's Kindergarten in South Africa.

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (3)


Lord Milner

Rhodes' Society of the Elect was formed in 1891 according to Quigley.

Among the first members of this "semi-religious, quasi-political association" were the aforementioned W.T. Stead, along with Baron Rothschild, Arthur Balfour, R.B. Brett, and Alfred Milner, who took over the direction of Rhodes' society upon the death of the latter in 1902. It then became known informally as the Milner Group.

Milner was an important figure in British politics from then until his death in the 1920s, but considering his role as heir to Rhodes, his importance is probably even greater than is appreciated. The most powerful member of the War Cabinet during the final years of the Great War, Milner made the remark that, "if the Arabs think that Palestine will become an Arab country they are much mistaken."

We should not be surprised, then, to learn that it was Lord Milner who drafted the 1917 letter declaring British support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the letter that came to be known as the Balfour Declaration. IT might also be noted that the letter was addressed to Lord Rothschild, the son of the Baron Rothschild who looked after the Rhodes fortune.

09 January 2008

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (2)


R.B. Brett, Lord Esher

R.B. Brett, later to become Lord Esher, was another of the charter members of the Society of the Elect. His journal contains the following remarks after talking with Rhodes at Lord Rothschild's country house in February 1890:

"Came here last night. Cecil Rhodes, Arthur Balfour, Harcourts, Albert Grey, Alfred Lyttleton. A long talk with Rhodes today. He has vast ideas. Imperial notions. He seems disinterested. But he is very ruse and, I suspect, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employs." [Quigley, C., The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 38]

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (1)


Cecil John Rhodes

"Mr. Rhodes was more than the founder of a dynasty. He aspired to be the creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty, and while he lived, he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola. It was this far-reaching, world-wide aspiration of the man which rendered, to those who knew him, so absurdly inane the speculations of his critics as to his real motives." [W.T. Stead, writing about Rhodes and cited in Quigley, C., The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 36]

William Thomas Stead was a journalist in late 19th century Great Britain. He was a close friend and confident of Cecil Rhodes, the man who funded the Rhodes Scholarships and gave his name, as they say, to Rhodesia. However, before founding the Rhodes Scholarships, Rhodes had drawn up four wills that mentioned a secret society called the Society of the Elect to be funded by his great fortune. Stead was a charter member and its chief representative in Britain.

Rhodes' fortune had come from his "business interests" in Africa that began in the diamond market. According to Wikipedia: "Financed by N.B. Rothschild & Sons, Rhodes achieved a virtual monopoly in the diamond mining industry. Rothschild also profiting on the yield from the future exploitation."

Emperor Sarkozy sparks storm

Emperor Sarko spoke yesterday. Sarkozy sparks storm with wish to end 35-hour week this year - Expatica:

[Fillon] said Sarkozy had set the course for 2008, "planning to press

ahead with getting our country into line with changes in the world, changes

which we have for so long refused to recognise"...

Sarkozy defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royale to win the presidency last year with a pledge to reform and modernise a France that many felt had lagged economic progress elsewhere, largely due to the burden of its generous social welfare system.

The neo-liberal discourse down to a T.

However, it is clear that the changes that the rest of the world are undergoing haven't been for the benefit of ordinary people. In country after country, their hard-won rights are being stripped away. Look at the current economic situation in the US, a country entering a new recession. The unions in the US have been effectively killed, first by buying them off, then by breaking them. Most workers get two weeks or less of vacation time a year compared to four, five, or six weeks for their co-workers in other countries, that is if they have any vacation time at all.

Is this the model the French want? It is certainly the model Sarko would like to impose. Of course, it isn't going to cut into his vacation time.

Look at the effects of neo-liberalism on Latin America. Look at the policies of globalization on agriculture, on small business, on the mom and pop corner stores, which mean the health of small communities as their downtowns die off at the hands of the chains like Wal-Mart or Leclerc.

The French have been wise to avoid it. Now Sarko is dragging them into it.

Just look at the reasoing hidden in the final paragraph. France's economic progress is hindered by its generous social programs! That translates as: the rich can't make as much money as they would like because the state is redirecting too much of it to the less fortunate.

Of course, in the neo-liberal economic discourse, that's OK. There should be no state aid for individuals, only for corporations.