- America's Global Financial War Strategy Is Escalating
Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
Cyber Wars And All That…
Behind the Huawei story, we must not forget there is a wider financial war being waged by America against China and Russia. Stories about China’s banks being short of dollars are incorrect: the shortage is of inward capital flows to support the US Government’s budget deficit. By attracting those global portfolio flows instead, China’s Belt and Road Initiative threatens US Government finances, so the financial war and associated disinformation can be expected to escalate. Hong Kong is likely to be in the firing line, due to its role in providing China with access to international finance.
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Introduction
Huawei is hitting the headlines. From ordering the arrest of its Chief Financial Officer in Vancouver last December to the latest efforts to dissuade its allies from adopting Huawei’s 5G mobile technology, it has been a classic deep state operation by the Americans. Admittedly, the Chinese have left themselves open to attack by introducing a loosely-drafted cybersecurity law in 2016/17 which according to Western defence circles appears to require all Chinese technology companies to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services.
Consequently, no one now knows whether to trust Huawei, who have some of the leading technology for 5G. The problem for network operators is who to believe. Intelligence services are in the business of dissembling, which they do through political puppets, all of which are professionals at being economical with the truth. Who can forget Weapons of Mass Destruction? More recently there was the Skripal poisoning mystery: the Russians would have been bang-to-rights, if it wasn’t for Skripal’s links through Pablo Miller to Christopher Steele, who put together the dodgy dossier on Trump’s alleged behaviour in a Russian hotel.
The safest course is to never believe anything emanating from a government security agency, which does not help hapless network operators. They, and the rest of us, should look at motives. The attack on Huawei is motivated by a desire to impede China’s technological progress, which is already eclipsing that of America, and America is using her leadership of the 5-eyes intelligence group of nations to impose her geostrategic will on her allies. The row in Britain this week escalated from a cabinet-level security breech on this subject, to American threats of withholding intelligence from the UK if UK companies are permitted to order Huawei 5G equipment, to the sacking of the Minister of Defence.
A threat to withhold intelligence sharing, if carried out, only serves to isolate the Americans. But you can see how desperate the Americans are to eliminate Huawei. Furthermore, the Huawei controversy is part of a wider conflict, with America determined to stop the Chinese changing the world’s power structure, moving it from under America’s control. When China was just a cheap manufacturing centre for low-tech goods, that was one thing. But when China started developing advanced technologies and began to dominate global trade, that was another. China must be put back in its box.
So far, all attempts to do so appear to have failed. Control of Afghanistan, seen as an important source of minerals ready to be exploited by China, has been a costly failure for the West. Attempts to wrest control of Syria from Russia’s sphere of influence also failed. Russia is China’s economic and military ally. America failed to bring Russia to her knees, so now the focus is directly on destroying, or at least containing China. China has already outspent America in Africa, Central and South America, buying influence away from America in her traditional spheres of influence. Attempts to neutralise North Korea are coming unstuck.
In truth, there is an undeclared war between China and Russia on one side, and America and her often reluctant allies on the other. It will now escalate, mainly because America increasingly needs global portfolio flows to cover her deficits.
America’s financial war strategy
Behind the cyber war, there is a financial war. In the financial war, America has the advantage of its currency hegemony, which it exercises to the full. It has allowed Americans to have lived beyond their means by importing more goods than they export, and the government spends more than it receives in taxes. In order to achieve these benefits, inward capital flows are necessary to finance them. To date, these have totalled in current value-terms some $25 trillion, being total foreign ownership of dollar assets and deposits.
America’s policy of living beyond its means now requires more than just recycled trade flows: inward portfolio flows are required as well. Global portfolios, comprised of commercial cash balances as well as investment money, periodically increase their exposure to other regions, potentially leaving America short. The problem is resolved by destabilising the region that has most recently benefited from capital investment, to encourage money to return to dollars and thus America’s domestic markets. Now that she is due to escalate infrastructure spending both in China and along the new silk roads, it is China’s turn.
This will be the opinion of Qiao Liang, who was a Major-General in the PLA and one of its chief strategists. It was his explanation for the South-East Asian crisis of 1997, when a run started on the Thai baht and spread to all neighbouring countries. In the decade prior to the crisis, the region saw substantial inward capital flows, so much so that countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia ran significant deficits on their balance of payments. This conflicted with the US’s trade balance, which was beginning to deteriorate. The solution was the collapse of the South-east Asia investment story, which stimulated the re-allocation of investment resources in favour of the dollar and America.
Qiao Liang cites a number of other examples from the Latin-American crisis in the early-1980s to Ukraine, whose yellow revolution reversed investment flows into Central Europe. This did not go to plan, with over a trillion dollars-worth of investment coming out of Europe, most being redirected to the Chinese economy, which was the most attractive destination at that time. Through the new Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, in April 2014 China facilitated inward investment and the ability for foreign investors to realise profits without going through exchange controls.
Being the gateway for foreign investors, our story now moves to Hong Kong. According to Chinese and Russian intelligence sources, America tried to destabilise it with covert support for the Occupy Hong Kong movement between September and December 2014. The Fed ended its QE that October, and international capital was needed back in the US. The Americans had also escalated the row over the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal at the beginning of that year, which effectively halted free trade negotiations between China, Japan, South Korea, Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The Chinese hoped this potential free trade area could be expanded to include the ASEAN FTA, which would then have been the largest in the world by GDP and an area in which they could develop the renminbi as the reserve currency.
These plans were effectively scuppered, but China was not provoked into a public response by these actions. Instead, they started reducing their US Treasury holdings in their dollar reserves from $1.27 trillion to $1.06 trillion in 2016 – not a great fall, but demonstrating they were not recycling their trade surpluses into dollars.
All that happened at a time when both the American and global economies were expanding – admittedly at muted rates. Trump’s trade protectionism has changed that, and early indications are that the US economy is now stalling. Tax revenues are falling short, while government expenditures are rising. America now urgently needs more inward capital flows to finance the growing budget deficit.
If Qiao Liang were to comment, doubtless his conclusion would be that America will increase its attack on China to precipitate disinvestment and reallocation to the dollar. And so, the attacks have begun; first by trying to break Huawei. Now, the mainstream media, perhaps with off-the-record briefings, are claiming China and Hong Kong are facing difficulties.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming China’s banks are running out of dollars. Clearly, this is untrue. China’s banks can acquire dollars any time they want, either by selling other foreign currencies in the market, or by selling renminbi to the People’s bank. They have their dollar position because they choose to have it, and furthermore all commercial banks use derivatives, which are effectively off-balance sheet exposure. Furthermore, with the US running a substantial trade deficit with China, dollars are flooding in all the time.
Following the WSJ article, various other commentators have come up with similar stories. How convenient, it seems, for the US Government to see these bearish stories about China, just when they need to ramp up inward portfolio flows to finance the budget deficit.
There is, anyway, a general antipathy among American investors to the China story, so we should not be surprised to see the China bears restating their case. One leading China bear, at least by reputation for his investment shrewdness, is Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management. According to Zero Hedge, he has written his first investment letter in three years, saying of Hong Kong, “Today, newly emergent economic and political risks threaten Hong Kong’s decades of stability. These risks are so large they merit immediate attention on both fronts.”
If only it were so simple. It is time to put the alternative case. Hong Kong is important, because China uses Hong Kong and London to avoid being dependent on the US banking system for international finances. And that’s why the US’s deep state want to nail Hong Kong.
Lop-sided analysis
Bass is correct in pointing out the Hong Kong property market appears highly geared, and that property prices for office, residential and retail sectors have rocketed since the 2003 trough. To a large extent it has been the inevitable consequence of the currency board link to the US dollar, which broadly transfers the Fed’s inflationary monetary policy to Hong Kong’s more dynamic economy. Bass’s description of the relationship between the banks, the way they finance themselves and property collateral is reminiscent of the factors that led to the secondary banking crisis in the UK in late-1973. Empirical evidence appears to be firmly on Bass’s side.
Except, that is, for a significant difference between events such as the UK’s secondary banking crisis, and virtually every other property crisis. Hong Kong is a truly international centre, and the banks’ role in property transactions is as currency facilitator rather than lender. In 2017, Hong Kong was the third largest recipient of foreign direct investment (substantially property) after the US and China. FDI inflows rose by £104bn to total nearly $2 trillion. Largest investors were China, followed by corporate money channelled through offshore centres.
So, yes, Hong Kong banks will be hurt by a property crisis, but not as much as Bass implies. It is foreign and Chinese banks that have much of the property as collateral. It is not the Hong Kong banks that have fuelled the property boom with domestic credit, but foreign money.
Bass fails to mention that a collapse in property prices and the banking system is unlikely to be confined to Hong Kong. Central banks have made significant progress in ensuring all banking systems are tied into the same credit cycle. Unwittingly, they have simply guarenteed that the next credit crisis will hit everyone at the same time. It won’t be just Hong Kong, but the EU, Japan, Britain and America. Everyone will be in difficulty to a greater or lesser extent.
Interestingly, the Lehman crisis, which occurred after Hong Kong property prices had already doubled from 2003, caused strong inflows to develop, driving the Hong Kong dollar to the top of its peg. The situation appears to be similar today, with US outward investment at low levels, but near-record levels of foreign ownership of dollar assets. Despite Hong Kong’s foreign direct investment standing at $2 trillion, the prospect of capital repatriation to Hong Kong should not be ignored.
Probably the most important claim in Bass’s letter is over the future of the currency peg operated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). He claims that the “aggregate balance”, which is a line-item in the HKMA’s balance sheet, is the equivalent of the US Fed’s excess reserves, and that “Once depleted, the pressure on the currency board will become untenable and the peg will break.”
The aggregate balance on the HKMA’s balance sheet has declined significantly over the last year, from HK$180bn to HK$54.4bn currently. The decision about changes in aggregate balances comes from the banks themselves, and for this reason they are commonly taken to reflect capital flows into and out of the Hong Kong dollar. This is different from aggregate balances reflecting actual pressures on the peg, as suggested by Bass.
The HKMA maintains a US dollar coverage of 105%-112.5% of base money (currently about 110%) and has further unallocated dollar reserves if necessary. The peg is maintained by the HKMA varying its base money, not just by managing a base lending rate giving a spread over the Fed’s fund rate, not just by influencing the commercial banks’ aggregate balances, but by addressing the three other components that make up the monetary base. These are Certificates of Indebtedness, Government notes and coins in circulation and Exchange Fund Bills and Notes (EFBNs). In practice, it is the EFBNs in conjunction with the aggregate balances that are used to adjust the monetary base and keep the currency secured in the Convertibility Zone of 7.75 and 7.85 to the US dollar.
In maintaining the peg, the HKMA prioritises maintaining it over managing the money supply. There is little doubt this goes against the grain of mainstream Western economists who believe inflation good, deflation bad. Over the last year base money in Hong Kong contracted from HK$1,695bn to HK1,635bn. Does this worry the HKMA? Not at all.
How the Chinese will act in the circumstances of a new global credit crisis is yet to be seen, but we should bear in mind that they are probably less Keynesian in their approach to economics and finance than Westerners. Admittedly, they have freely used credit expansion to finance economic development, but theirs is a mercantilist approach, which differs significantly from ours. We simply impoverish our factors of production through wealth transfer by monetary inflation. We think this can be offset by fuelling financial speculation and asset inflation. China enhances her production and innovation by generating personal savings. Wealth is created by and linked more directly to production.
The objectives and effects of monetary and credit inflation between China’s application of it and the way we do things in the West are dissimilar, and it is a common mistake to ignore these differences. The threat to China’s ability to manage its affairs in a credit crisis is significantly less than the threat to Western welfare-dependent nations whose governments are highly indebted, while China’s is not.
China is sure to see the financial and monetary stability of Hong Kong as being vital to the Mainland’s interests. Apart from the Bank of China’s Hong Kong subsidiary being the second largest issuer of bank notes, the Peoples’ Bank itself maintains reserve balances in Hong Kong dollars, which in the circumstances Kyle Bass believes likely, they can increase to support the HKMA’s management of the currency peg.
Conclusions
It is a mistake to think the Hong Kong property market is as much of a systemic danger as it first appears. Expectations of a devaluation of the peg appear to be wishful thinking by the bears.
Far more important are the consequences of the cyber and financial war being pursued against China and Russia, its close ally, by the American deep state. Under President Trump it was accelerated by his trade tariff policies, which are fundamentally an attack on China’s economy. China will be a hard nut to crack, and the effect of America’s trade protectionism has been to trigger a diminution in international trade, which is now becoming apparent. The negative effects on the American economy appear to be being underestimated.
The attempt to destroy Huawei’s 5G global ambitions is both the current and most visible part of an undeclared cyber and financial war. Trade protectionism was only a step along the way. The financial war is now escalating with the global economy facing at least a significant recession, almost certain to trigger an overdue credit crisis. The Chinese have long been on a financial war footing, as shown by Qiao Liang’s analysis of how America needs global portfolio flows and what they are prepared to do to attract them. Western thinking that the Chinese and their Russian allies are vulnerable to American hegemony has been disproved time and again. Financial analysts consistently fail to understand the Chinese are not muppets.
China will not be provoked, and by standing firm, they are sure to protect Hong Kong and get on with diverting investment flows from a failing US economy into its Belt and Road Initiative. This will force a financial crisis on the Americans of their own making. At least, that’s how China has always seen it and they see no need for their passive financial war strategy to change.
- CDC: Idiots Riding E-Scooters Suffering Easily Preventable Injuries
As the popularity of e-scooters rises across major US cities, there has been a surge in emergency room visits for easily preventable injuries, according to the CDC.
The cheap, motorized scooters from the likes of Uber, Lyft, Lime and Bird, whisk people around at around 20 mph – which has caused a spate of fractures, dislocations and head trauma according to CNBC.
The CDC has found that head injuries topped the list of accident-related incidents involving e-scooters at 45%. The study determined that many e-scooter injuries could have been prevented if riders wore helmets and were more careful around cars, according to summary of the study released on Wednesday. –CNBC
“A high proportion of e-scooter related injuries involved potentially preventable risk factors, such as lack of helmet use, or motor vehicle interaction,” reads a preliminary summary of the study.
The CDC launched a national e-scooter accident study in March after a request by the Texas health and transportation departments.
The dockless electric scooters and bikes have become a common sight in numerous cities and college towns, according to the report, as venture capital-flush companies such as Bird and Lime aim to solve so-called “last-mile” transportation with rentals.
While Uber and Lyft are effective in taking people longer distances outside of city centers, the ride-hailing services don’t work well in the downtown parts of densely populated cities, where traffic often slows to a crawl.
But along with the new motorized vehicles has come a host of safety problems and complaints about the lack of regulatory oversight, particularly in places without clear rules about where people can ride and park the devices. Injuries are the bigger problem, with some medical professionals warning of a public health crisis. –CNBC
A March CNBC story revealed that trauma centers across the country are experiencing a spike in e-scooter related injuries. The CDC, meanwhile, found that after head injuries – upper extremity fractures came in as the second most common at 27%, followed by lower extremity fractures at 12%. The three-month study found that the e-scooter injury rate is around 14.3 per 100,000 trips, with the median age for those injured at 29.
The majority of injuries occured on the street (duh), with 29% of those experienced by first-time riders. 18% of injuries involved motor vehicles.
“Interventions aimed at these risks and education to first-time riders could potentially reduce injury incidence and severity,” reads the report.
Half of those interviewed blamed a “pothole or crack in the street” for their crash, while over 1/3 of those surveyed said they would use a dockless electric scooter again.
The results of the study will be presented by the CDC at the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) annual conference happening right now.
“We hope to build upon the results of this study as more agencies nationwide may use it as a base to expand their research and knowledge about this new mode of transportation,” said a spokesperson with the Austin Public Health Department.
- Why Does Time Seem Like It's Speeding Up?
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
Does constant exposure to digital technology change the way we perceive time?
When human attention is hyperfocused on a single point, all other environmental stimuli tends to be cut off. When we completely cut our experience off from our surroundings, this often makes us feel as though we are suffering from what is sometimes called “time loss”. Add to this the never-ending quest for a new hit of dopamine that digital culture provides and you have a recipe for the mass warping of human brains.
Video produced by Truthstream Media
To add to the evidence supporting the video’s conclusion, I remember reading a story a few years back about a restaurant in New York which was losing business.
The restaurant found that customer complaints had skyrocketed that year, and that the vast majority of complaints were about food preparation times. In other words, the customers complained that the food was taking far too long to get to them. In order to identify the exact problem the restaurant owners hired a company to study their surveillance camera tapes on random days for multiple years, and compare how fast it took for food to get from kitchen to table in the past compared to today. What the company found was shocking. Regardless of the year, the food preparation time and delivery was the SAME. They had not slowed down at all. If anything, they had sped up their efforts.
So, what the hell was going on?
The company also discovered something else; the amount of time people were spending on their cell phones while in the restaurant had spiked.
It was concluded that the only thing that had changed in the restaurant was the attention span of the customers…which is rather frightening when you think about it…
- Pentagon Warns Of Chinese Nuclear Subs Expanding Into Arctic Via "Polar Silk Road"
A new Pentagon report released late this week has voiced deep concern over increased Chinese military presence in the Arctic region, including nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, which Beijing plans to produce at least five more of by 2020.
The Pentagon assessment explores and analyzes China’s potential to erect a “Polar Silk Road” as an extension of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. This would include likely deployment of security assets, such as submarines acting as nuclear deterrents and military bases in far-flung locations, found the report.
A Chinese nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine. Image source: Reuters Beijing itself hasn’t been secretive about this scenario, given it published an Arctic policy white paper last June, which outlined long term strategic expansion into the globe’s northernmost climes, despite China’s geography as a non-Arctic state.
Some of the highlights of the Pentagon report are as follows…
* * *
Military expansion under the guise of civilian research
“Civilian research could support a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean, which could include deploying submarines to the region as a deterrent against nuclear attacks,” according to the report.
“China’s leaders are leveraging China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military clout to establish regional preeminence and expand the country’s international influence.”
Rapid submarine production related to Arctic expansion
“The speed of growth of the submarine force has slowed and (it) will likely grow to between 65 and 70 submarines by 2020,” the report predicted.
BRI and military bases around the world
“China’s advancement of projects such as the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (OBOR) will probably drive military overseas basing through a perceived need to provide security for OBOR projects,” the Pentagon said.
“China will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries.”
The Pentagon addressed the Taiwan issue
“China could use missile attacks and precision air strikes against air defense systems, including air bases, radar sites, missiles, space assets, and communications facilities to degrade Taiwan’s defenses, neutralize Taiwan’s leadership, or break the Taiwan people’s resolve,” the report said.
The Pentagon report outlined a number of potential scenarios that China might take if Beijing decides to use military force on Taiwan, including a comprehensive campaign “designed to force Taiwan to capitulate to unification, or unification dialogue,” according to Reuters.
Next Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be in attendance at a meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council in Rovaniemi, Finland, where Arctic related economic and military cooperation will be discussed.
Notably, Scandinavian countries like Denmark have recently complained about China’s reach into Greenland, based in commercial interests on the energy rich island-continent.
- The Origins Of The Deep State In North America, Part 1
Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Duran,
Part One: The Rise of the Round Table Movement and the Sad Case of Canada (1864-1945).
“Two systems are before the world; the one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labor of all; while the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the laborer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits… One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.”
-Henry C. Carey (Lincoln’s advisor), Harmony of Interests, 1856
The British Hand Behind the Deep State Today
With the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, it has become apparent that America isn’t what many thought it was.
Suddenly, for the first time since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, there was no longer one America but rather two opposing forces within America itself, and the question was raised “which is the real America and what is it that Trump was re-activating?”
Here was a political leader who wasn’t from the technocratic establishment, and who campaigned to work with Russia and China, end regime change wars, reverse the nation-killing effects of NAFTA, reviving the JFK-era space mission and even discussed restoring Glass Steagall.
A clue to what he chose to represent can be witnessed in his defense of the “American System” when he said “this is the system our Founders wanted. Our greatest American leaders — including George Washington, Hamilton, Jackson, Lincoln — they all agreed that for America to be a strong nation it must also be a great manufacturing nation.”
Soon, it became apparent that this Deep State structure mobilized to stop the re-emergence of the American System was not even American as many had supposed, but rather of a purely British Imperial pedigree and was even caught working against British nationalists such as Jeremy Corbyn. It finally came to light that the British Empire had never gone away after WWII, but had evoked a powerful sleight of hand after FDR’s untimely death in 1945.
How did this happen? By what means and motives did this Deep State arise? Was it always there or were there key moments in history that give us clarity into its origins and how it took over both America and other nations alike?
By approaching history shaped by a battle between British and American systems of social order (which represents much more than merely British or American nations per se), a “master key” to unlock the secrets of Britain’s takeover of America (and Europe) can be found by exploring the strange case of Canada.
What is this “strange partly British/partly American monarchy of the Americas”? At the best of times it was uplifted by the best constitutional traditions of America cited by Donald Trump above, and at the worst of times it was a platform to spread British intrigues upon the world exemplified by the Montreal-based assassinations of American System leaders Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. Today those intrigues are led by such Rhodes Scholars as Chrystia Freeland and the modern Round Table movement of Ben Rowswell who have together played leading roles in the overthrow of Venezuela, the protection of fascists in Ukraine and advance of NATO against Russia and China.
The time has come to drag some skeletons out of the closet.
Lincoln’s American System Goes Global
Canada’s struggle for existence as a sovereign nation has been caught between two opposing views of mankind represented by the British and American System of social organization. As the great economist Henry C. Carey laid out while he was advancing the policy of Abraham Lincoln, the American System was designed to become a global system operating amongst sovereign nations for the progress and mutual benefit of each and all. By the end of the 19th century, American System thinking was resonating with statesmen and patriots in all corners of the globe who were fed up with the ancient imperial system of British Free Trade that had always strived to maintain a world divided and monopolized. This view for a post-colonial world was exemplified by Lincoln-ally and first Governor of Colorado William Gilpinwho described a world united by railways across all continents centered around the Bering Strait rail connection. This was outlined in his widely read 1890 “The Cosmopolitan Railway”.
Although British propagandists had made every attempt to keep the illusion of the sacredness of the British System alive in the minds of its subjects, the undeniable increase of quality of life, and creative thought expressed by the American System everywhere it was applied become too strong to ignore… especially within colonies such as Canada that had long suffered a fragmented, and underdeveloped identity as the price paid for loyalty to the British Empire.
In Germany, the American System-inspired Zollverein (customs union) had not only unified a divided nation, but elevated it to a level of productive power and sovereignty which had outpaced the monopoly power of the British East India Company. In Japan, American engineers helped assemble trains funded by a national banking system, and protective tariff during the Meiji Restoration.
In Russia, American System follower Sergei Witte, Transport Minister and close advisor to Czar Alexander II, revolutionized the Russian economy with the American made trains that rolled across the Trans-Siberian Railway. Under the influence of Witte and other American System allies Czar Nicholas II endorsed the Bering Strait rail connection in 1905, though a tragic turn of fate sabotaged it from unfolding.
Not even the Ottoman Empire remained untouched by the inspiration for progress, as the Berlin to Baghdad Railway was begun with the intention of unleashing a bold program of modernization of southwest Asia.
The American System Touches the Canadian Mind
In Canada, admirers of Lincoln and Henry C. Carey found their spokesman in the great American System statesman Isaac Buchanan (1). Buchanan rose to his highest position of political office in the Dominion of Canada when in April 1864, the new MacDonald-Taché Ministry appointed him the President of the Executive Council. This put him in firm opposition to the Imperial agenda of George Brown, and the later Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, of whom he and all patriotic co-thinkers counted as bitter enemies to Canada’s independence and progress. The policy which Buchanan advocated as he rose to higher prominence was outlined in his December 1863 speech:
“The adoption by England for herself of this transcendental principle [Free Trade] has all but lost the Colonies, and her madly attempting to make it the principle of the British Empire would entirely alienate the Colonies. Though pretending to unusual intelligence, the Manchester Schools are, as a class, as void of knowledge of the world as of patriotic principle… As a necessary consequence of the legislation of England, Canada will require England to assent to the establishment of two things: 1st, an American Zollverein [aka: Customs Union]. 2nd: Canada to be made neutral territory in time of any war between England and the United States”. (2)
While the customs union modelled on the Zollverein program of American System economist Friedrich List in Germany laid out by Buchanan, was temporarily defeated during the operation known as the Articles of Confederation in 1867, the potential for its re-emergence returned in 1896 with the election of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s next Prime Minister. By 1911, the customs union policy advanced by Laurier, who was a devout admirer of Abraham Lincoln, finally came to fruition. Laurier long recognized that Canada’s interests did not reside in the anti-American program of MacDonald which simply tied Canada into greater dependence towards the mother country, but rather with the interests of its southern neighbour. His Reciprocity program proposed to lower protective tariffs with the USA primarily on agriculture, but with the intention to electrify and industrialize Canada, a nation which Laurier saw as supporting 60 million people within two decades. With the collaboration of his close advisors, Adam Shortt, Oscar Skelton and later William Lyon Mackenzie King, Laurier navigated the mine field of his British enemies active throughout the Canadian landscape in the form of the Masonic “Orange Order” of Ontario, and later, the insidious Round Table movement.
While Laurier’s attempts to actualize a true Reciprocity Treaty of 1911 that involved free trade among North American economies united under a protective tariff against British dumping of cheap goods, it would not last, as every resource available to the British run Orange Order and Round Table were activated to ensure the Reciprocity’s final defeat and the downfall of Laurier’s Liberal government and its replacement by the Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden in its stead.(3) Laurier described the situation in Canada after this event:
“Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London, known as “The Round Table”, with ramifications in Toronto, in Winnipeg, in Victoria, with Tories and Grits receiving their ideas from London and insidiously forcing them on their respective parties.” (4)
Two years before Laurier uttered this warning, the founder of the Round Table movement, Lord Milner wrote to one of his co-conspirators laying out the strategic danger faced by Buchanan and Laurier’s program with America:
“As between the three possibilities of the future: 1. Closer Imperial Union, 2. Union with the U.S. and 3. Independence, I believe definitely that No. 2 is the real danger. I do not think the Canadians themselves are aware of it… they are wonderfully immature in political reflection on the big issues, and hardly realize how powerful the influences are…” (5)
Without understanding either the existential struggle between the two opposing systems related above, or the creation of the Round Table movement by a new breed of British Imperialist as a response to Lincoln’s international victory in the face of the total bankruptcy of the British Empire at the turn of the last century, then no Canadian could honestly ever make sense of what has shaped his or her cultural and political landscape. It is the purpose of this present report to shed a clear light upon some of the principal actors on this stage of universal history with the hope that the reader’s powers of insight may be strengthened such that those necessary powers of judgement required to lead both Canada and the world out of our current plunge into a new dark age may yet occur.
The Round Table Movement: New Racist Breed, Same Racist Species
The Round Table movement served as the intellectual center of the international operations to regain control of the British Empire and took on several incarnations over the 20th century. It worked in tandem with the Coefficients Club, the Fabian Society, and the Rhodes Trust, all of whom witnessed members moving in and out of each other’s ranks. The historian Carrol Quigley, of Georgetown University wrote of this cabal in his posthumously published “Anglo-American Establishment” (6):
“This organization has been able to conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its most influential members, satisfied to possess the reality rather than the appearance of power, are unknown even to close students of British history. This is the more surprising when we learn that one of the chief methods by which this Group works has been through propaganda.
It plotted the Jameson Raid of 1895; it caused the Boer War of 1899-1902; it set up and controls the Rhodes Trust; it created the Union of South Africa in 1906-1910; it established the South African periodical The State in 1908; it founded the British Empire periodical The Round Table in 1910, and this remains the mouthpiece of the Group; it has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation; it has controlled The Times for more than fifty years, with the exception of the three years 1919-1922, it publicized the idea of and the name “British Commonwealth of Nations” in the period 1908-1918, it was the chief influence in Lloyd George’s war administration in 1917-1919 and dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it; it was one of the chief influences on British policy toward Ireland, Palestine, and India in the period 1917-1945; it was a very important influence on the policy of appeasement of Germany during the years 1920-1940; and it controlled and still controls, to a very considerable extent, the sources and the writing of the history of British Imperial and foreign policy since the Boer War.” (7)
To understand the pedigree of the Round Table movement as it was “officially” unveiled in 1910 as the ideological shaper of the policies and paradigm of the new “managerial class” of international imperialists dedicated to the salvation of the British Empire under an “Imperial Federation”, it would be necessary to go back a few decades prior, to 1873-74. It was in this year that a young Canadian named George Parkin lectured at Oxford on the subject imperial union as the sacred duty of all Anglo Saxons to advance. Parkin is popularly heralded by Oxford historians as “the man who shifted the mind of England”.
1873-1902 Empire on the Verge of Collapse: Re-organize or Perish
During this same period, a grouping of Imperial intellectuals known as the “X Club” (f. 1865) centering on Thomas Huxley, Matthew Arnold, Herbert Spencer and Joseph Hooker were assigned the responsibility to overhaul the British Empire’s controlling ideological structures that had proven themselves worn out. Each would specialize on various branches of the sciences and would all promote gradualist interpretations of change to counteract explanations which required creative leaps. This program was applied with the intention of: 1) saving the collapsing empire and 2) establishing the foundation of a new scientific religion based upon Charles Darwin’s highly materialistic model of Natural Selection as the explanation for the evolution and differentiation of new species.
As X Club co-founder Herbert Spencer went on to elaborate the system of “social Darwinism” as the logical outgrowth of Darwin’s system into human affairs, the intention behind the propagation of the Darwinian program was never “the enlightenment liberalism in battle against the ignorant dogmas of religion”, as it is so often recounted by popular historians of science. Rather, the “revolution in science” initiated by the X Club was merely the re-packaging of an idea as old as Babylon: The control of the masses by a system of oligarchical rule, simply under a new type of “scientific dictatorship”. But how, when the demonstration of creative reason’s power to elevate humanity’s conditions of life by encouraging new discoveries and applied technologies, as promoted by the American System of Political Economy, would the world now accept the conditions of mental and political enslavement demanded by the imperialist in a fixed system struggle for diminishing returns?
This was the challenge upon which young Oxford men would set their creative energies using the “scientific” reasoning established by Thomas Huxley’s X Club and for the service of the ruling oligarchical families of Europe. George Parkin like all young Oxford men at this time, was highly influenced by this network’s ideas, and used them to justify the “natural scientific inevitability” of the hegemony of the strong over the weak. In this case, the Anglo Saxon master race dominating the inferior peoples of the earth. This message could be seen in his 1892 work Imperial Federation: “Nations take long to grow, but there are periods when, as in the long delayed flowering of certain plants, or in the crystallization of chemical solutions, new forms are taken with extreme rapidity. There are the strongest reasons for believing that the British nation has such a period immediately before it. The necessity for the creation of a body of sound public opinion upon the relations to each other of the various parts of the Empire is therefore urgent.” (8)
In elaborating upon the danger of the British System’s collapse in light of nationalist movements following the American System model, Parkin went on to ask:
“Has our capacity for political organization reached its utmost limit? For the British people this is the question of questions. In the whole range of possible political variations in the future there is no issue of such far reaching significance, not merely for our own people but for the world at large, as the question whether the British Empire shall remain a political unit… or yielding to disintegrating forces, shall allow the stream of the national life to be parted into many separate channels.” (9)
One of Parkin’s Oxford contemporaries was Alfred Milner, a character who plays a vicious role in our drama as the catalyzer behind the formation of the Round Table Movement. Milner credited Parkin with giving his life direction from that point on (10). It was during 1876 that another contemporary of Milner and Parkin, named Cecil Rhodes left Oxford in order to make a fortune on a cotton plantation in South Africa. All three characters were also highly influenced by John Ruskin, the leader of the “artistic” branch of British Intelligence led by the “Pre-Raphaelite Society”.
The proceeds of Rhodes’ cotton fortune were multiplied many times by ventures into the diamond industry of South Africa, allowing him to rise to gargantuan heights of political power and wealth, peaking with his appointment as Prime Minister of Cape Town and Founder of Rhodesia. The current London-centered mineral cartels Rio Tinto, De Beers, and Lonrho now pillaging Africa, as well as the legacy of Apartheid which has stained so much of South Africa’s history are among two aspects of the scarring legacy Rhodes has passed down to present times.
Between 1876 and his becoming High Commissioner to South Africa in 1897, Milner’s path slightly diverged from Rhodes. Milner was recruited by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette William T. Stead and became associate editor soon thereafter. The Gazette’s function was set out in the Pall Mall Gospel, a short mission statement which Stead demanded all of his employees abide to: “The Federation of the British Empire is the condition of its survival… as an Empire we must federate or perish.” The gospel also propagandized for the “inevitable destiny” that the USA and Britain “coalesce” (11). The role which the Pall Mall played in coordinating a cohesive vision of empire was the model followed by Milner and his minions later as they ran the Round Table periodicals. Stead was officially recruited to the grand design in 1889 which was instigated by Rhodes and his sponsor Lord Rothschild. It was when Stead had been recently released for prison due to his Gazette’s promotion of “organized vice” only to find his paper in serious financial trouble, when he was first called upon by Cecil Rhodes, a long time follower of his journal in South Africa. After their first meeting, Stead ecstatically wrote to his wife:
“Mr. Rhodes is my man! I have just had three hours talk with him. He is full of a far more gorgeous idea in connection with the paper than even I have had. I cannot tell you his scheme because it is too secret. But it involves millions. He had no idea that it would cost £250,000 to start a paper. But he offered me down as a free gift £20,000 to buy a share in the P.M. Gazette as a beginning… His ideas are federation, expansion, and consolidation of the Empire…. He took to me. Told me some things he has told no other man—save Lord Rothschild— and pressed me to take the £20,000, not to have any return, to give no receipt, to simply take it and use it to give me a freer hand on the P.M.G. It seems all like a fairy dream….” (12)
Quigley demonstrates that both Milner and Stead had become active members of the agenda laid out by Cecil Rhodes. But what was this agenda? In a series of seven wills written between 1879 and 1901,” Rhodes, the unapologetic racist, laid out his designs for the re-conquering of the world and indoctrinating young elites into his design:
“Let us form the same kind of society, a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his Country. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.’
In another will, Rhodes described in more detail his intention:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world. The colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, these aboard of China and Japan, [and] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” (13)
It was under this specific design to create an indoctrination system of talented young disciples that Rhodes’ dream of stealing the world and reconquering America that the Rhodes Trust was established upon his death in 1902. Some historians have maintained that since Rhodes doesn’t literally bring up his call for a secret society in his last two wills, he must have “matured” and left those notions behind him. Yet Professor Quigley points out, that the belief pushed by such “authoritative” historians is a farce, evidenced by George Parkin’s revealing observation taken from his book The Rhodes Scholarship, published in 1912: “It is essential to remember that this final will is consistent with those which had preceded it, that it was no late atonement for errors, as some have supposed, but was the realization of life-long dreams persistently pursued.” (14)
Upon Rhodes’ death, George Parkin became the first head of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust in 1902 leaving his post as Principal of Upper Canada College (1895-1902) to fulfill his duty. It was under this post that Parkin recruited fellow Upper Canada College professor Edward Peacock, who joined him as a Rhodes trustee and promoter of what became the Canadian branches of the Round Table movement. While organizing for the ouster of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and the defeat of the 1911 Reciprocity Treaty, this group recruited young talented disciples from their college connections along the way. The model of the Round Table involved a central coordinating body in London, with branches strategically placed throughout the Commonwealth in order to provide one vision and voice to the young and talented “upper managerial class” of the reformed British Empire. Parkin and Peacock were joined by Lord Alfred Milner, Sir Arthur Glazebrook, W.T. Stead, Arthur Balfour and Lord Nathan Rothschild as co-trustees.
Working in tandem with the eugenicists of the Fabian Society of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Balfour had founded the first International Eugenics Conference in 1912 alongside enthusiastic recruits such as young Roundtable member Winston Churchill. Charles Darwin’s cousin and founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton died mere weeks before being able to keynote the conference. The Fabian Society and its sister organization “The Co-efficients Club” featured such other prominent eugenicists as Bertrand Russell, Halford Mackinder, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, and later Harold Laski and John Maynard Keynes [see accompanying article on the Eugenics bent of the Fabian Society]. Membership rosters of either organization frequently overlapped (15)
Much of the dirty work conducted by the original Roundtable movement was run primarily by the group of young Oxford men who got their start managing imperial affairs under Milner during the Boer War suppression of the Transvaal (South African) uprising of 1899 to 1902. Of this Kindergarden, Philip Kerr and Lionel Curtis were tasked with coordinating the Canadian branches from London (with Parkin and Peacock leading from Canada). While Oxford had long been the indoctrination center of young elites for centuries prior, now with the Rhodes Scholarship program in place, a new level of standardization had been initiated. The new program provided scholarships to young talent primarily throughout the Anglo Saxon family of nations which Rhodes yearned to see re-absorbed under one Aryan umbrella. The Fabian Society had founded the London School of Economics (LSE) for similar purposes. Both the LSE and Oxford have worked hand in hand at crafting agents of imperial change throughout the entire 20th century (16).
Each student, upon selection, would be provided a scholarship to Oxford University, a generous stipend, and red carpet treatment into the upper echelons of the ruling oligarchical social networks, if the student so willed. Each student was returned to their home country enflamed with a burning desire to fulfill the objectives of the British Empire and advance “the scientific management of society”. Their talents were expressed either in elected office, working in the civil service, media, law, the private sector or in academia. In most cases, these scholars acted upon the Fabian method of ‘permeation theory’… slowly permeating all levels of society’s controlling structures in order to shape perception and shift the invisible structures controlling mass behaviour away from a current of progress and love of truth and towards a materialistic struggle for survival. Each year, one scholarship was granted to each of the Canadian provinces (with the exception of P.E.I) and 32 were granted to the United States. To the present date, approximately 7000 scholarships have been awarded with increasing openness to the non-Aryan countries to service the imperial agenda.
The Milnerite Vincent Massey and the Rebirth of Canadian Oligarchism
While the Canadian experiment has long been trapped by its loyalist (anti-republican) tendencies fueled by such oligarchical systems as the Family Compact (17), Canada has never had a self-contained ruling class as witnessed in the case of Britain. To this present day, the London centered oligarchy loyal to Babylonian traditions, is expressed by the imperial crown as the “fount of all honours” from which all legal and actual authority across the Commonwealth emanates. This has been the model upon which different generations of the Canadian oligarchy have been shaped. Similarly, the American oligarchy has tended to follow a similar model of organization with families recruited by the Crown’s agents such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, Harrimans and Duponts who have merely shaped their values and customs of behaviour around the system led by the British Crown, and represent nothing at all intrinsically “American”. All attempts to evaluate history from the bias of “an international bankers conspiracy” or even “American imperialism” without this higher understanding of the British Empire is thus doomed to failure.
One of the central figures in the Rhodes network in forming the character and structure of the Canadian oligarchy, as well as the general mass culture of Canada is a man named Vincent Massey. Massey is the son-in-law of George Parkin, who, following the Darwinian edict of “breeding with the best” married his four daughters to leading Round Table and Oxford men. Massey, born into the wealthy Hart-Massey family dynasty became an early recruit to the Round Table, working alongside Canadian Round Table co-founder Arthur Glazebrook in setting up a branch in Ontario in 1911. Glazebrook admired Parkin so much that he even named his son George Parkin de Twenebroker Glazebrook, himself a Rhodes Scholar of Balliol who went on to help run this group alongside Massey by the late 1930s and would head the Canadian secret service during World War II. Arthur Glazebrook wrote a shining letter of recommendation to Milner upon Massey’s departure for studies at Oxford’s Balliol College on Aug. 11, 1911:
“I have given a letter of introduction to you to a young man called Vincent Massey. He is about 23 or 24 years of age, very well off, and full of enthusiasm for the most invaluable assistance in the Roundtable and in connection with the junior groups… He is going home to Balliol, for a two year course in history, having already taken his degree at the Toronto University. At the end of his two years he expects to return to Canada and take up some kind of serious work, either as a professor at the university or at some other non-money making pursuit. I have become really very attached to him and I hope you will give him an occasional talk. I think it so important to get hold of these first rate young Canadians, and I know what a power you have over young men. I should like to feel that he could become definitely by knowledge a Milnerite” (18)
Upon his return to Canada, Massey quickly rose in the ranks of the Roundtable, becoming Crown Privy Councilor in 1925, then leading a delegation in 1926 at the Imperial Conference at which point his fellow Roundtabler Lord Balfour passed the Balfour Declaration as a means of appeasing the nationalist sentiment hot in many colonies striving for independence from the mother country. Massey then became Canada’s first Minister (aka: ambassador) to the United States (1926-1930), where he coordinated policy with controlling institutions around the intelligence institutions centered around the Council on Foreign Relations. During his time in Washington, Massey’s official biographer (and University of Toronto President from 1958-1971) Claude Bissel points out that he was a frequent guest in “The House of Truth”, a stronghold of Round Table ideas in the United States housing such luminaries as Walter Lipmann, Felix Frankfurter, Loring Christie, Eustace Percy, and featuring such frequent guests as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and McGeorge Bundy. Most of these characters were hardcore eugenicists affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations (the American branch of the Royal Institute for International Affairs) advancing the program of a British-led “Anglo-American Empire”. Oxford men Loring Christie, and Hume Wrong were both recruited to Massey’s staff during this period and played important roles in the postwar takeover of Canadian foreign policy. Hume’s father George Wrong was also an influential executive member of the Canadian Round Table and Massey ally.
Massey’s Washington deployment was followed by a stint as President of the Liberal Federation of Canada (1932-1935), and then Canadian High Commissioner to London (1935-1946). It was soon after this experience that Massey was assigned to unleash the second of a series of Royal Commissions (1949-1951) dedicated to destroy any lingering sentiments of the American System within the hearts, minds, political-artistic-scientific structures or economic behaviour of Canada, and reconstruct the Canadian identity based on his own twisted image. This operation had the dual effect of relieving responsibility from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations financial responsibility for crafting the Canadian identity (19). As a token for a job well done, Massey then became the first Canadian-born Governor General (1952-1959). During his career, Massey served as Governor for Upper Canada College, and the University of Toronto, as well as founder of a university modeled on All Souls, Oxford called Massey College (f.1962). Like All Souls, Massey College serves as a central coordinating node for various operations run through the major universities in Canada.
Through his various political positions, Massey pulled every string possible to recruit as many agents of the Roundtable Movement and Rhodes Trust networks into prominent positions within the Canadian civil service, cultural control, and academia. During this same period in the United States, Rhodes scholars had swarmed into various influential positions of authority, with a special focus on the State Department, in order to prepare to commandeer Roosevelt’s New Deal program and convert it into a Keynesian nightmare at the first available opportunity. These operations resulted in a third attempt by the British Empire to achieve an agenda that had largely failed in its first two attempts between 1902 and 1933 (20). It is proper to briefly go through the first two before continuing with our report.
The First Attempt Fails: Imperial Union 1911-1923
The First incarnation of the World Government agenda to supersede the principle of sovereignty as the basis for world affairs had been the Imperial Union thesis around which the Roundtable had first been created. This involved the creation of a Federation of nations united under one empire, in which representatives of various colonies could hold representatives within an Imperial Parliament, much like the European Union structure chaining nations under the Troika today. The obvious mission under this structure was the participation of the United States ruled by the “economic royalists” of whom Roosevelt said should have left the nation back in 1776. Under Parliamentary structures, little more than an illusion of democracy exists while its bureaucratic nature permits for optimal control by a ruling oligarchy.
By the end of World War I, forces within the Round Table were dreading the failure of this program, and had resolved to dedicate themselves instead to the League of Nations doctrine in its stead whereby essentially the same outcome could be achieved, but through different means. Under this changing of gears, it was arranged that the Round Table be phased out in place of something new. Two aging controllers of Milner’s Kindergarten writing to each other in 1931 laid this problem squarely on the table and even proposed a solution:
“As a brotherhood we have lost interest in the Empire and are no longer competent to deal with it. I think, therefore, that if The Round Table is to go on, it should quite definitely change its character, remove its subtitle, and become, what it is much more fitted to become at the present time, a publication connected with the Royal Institute of International Affairs… all the heart and soul of The Round Table movement is petering out and I really don’t know that we stand for anything in particular nowadays.” (21)
It was with this failure of its original blueprint in mind that the Roundtable Movement began a conversion into its new costume with the creation of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in 1919, followed immediately thereafter with branches in the United States under the heading of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and International Pacific Institute. Carrol Quigley demonstrates that the CFR and IPI featured crossovers of members from the RIIA, CIIA, while funding was provided through the Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Foundation and RIIA. While possessing nominally American names, these organizations and their members were fully British.
The Failure of the Second Attempt: The Round Table Transformed 1923-1930
Both the RIIA, CFR and IPI were financed through large grants by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations which themselves were set up merely as financial instruments to further the British Imperial agenda at the same time the Round Table Movement was unveiled in 1910. These were two of the core foundations which had been used to finance eugenics laws and the statistics-based “scientific” premises justifying their political implementation. Quigley documents in his works the extensive array of financial support which these “philanthropic” organizations bestowed upon their London controllers.
Due to the regaining of power of the Liberal Party, now under the leadership of Mackenzie King, the Canadian infiltration was not happening at the pace which some RIIA operatives would have liked. In fact, due to the influence of key Laurier Liberals such as Oscar Skelton and King’s Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe in the famous Imperial Conference of 1923, the last attempt to impose the Round Table thesis for Imperial Union was defeated in that form. By 1925, Roundtable controller Philip Kerr (aka: Lord Lothian) wrote of the anti-British situation in Canada guided by Lapointe and Skelton in the following terms:
“I am afraid that things in Canada are not at present as satisfactory as they are in the United States… I even found in places a certain feeling that it was a mistake for returned scholars to avow themselves as Rhodes scholars and that the best would be that they should merge themselves in the population and forget their unhappy past!” (22)
In 1925, O.D. Skelton, Laurier’s friend and biographer, as well as longtime friend and trusted collaborator of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, was made Undersecretary of External Affairs. It was also at this time that resistance to Rhodes Scholar penetration into guiding positions of national policy was obstinately begun.
Canadian cooperation with British foreign policy largely came undone beginning with the Canadian rejection of Britain’s demands that Canada commit its forces to Britain’s near-war with Turkey during the Chanak Crisis of 1922. In subsequent Imperial Conferences throughout the 1920s, the Laurier Liberals led by Skelton and Lapointe went on to flank and reject various attempts at binding foreign policy between Imperial Federation or the League of Nations. Collaboration with leaders of the Free Irish State against Imperial policy was key in the success of the Canadian patriots’ fending off the Round Table.
Mackenzie King’s Failed Personality
Massey’s biographers have commonly referenced his own frustration with Skelton whom he saw as a barrier between himself and the Prime Minister, a man who he could generally manipulate as long as no one with geostrategic insight was near him (23). King’s increasing lack of cooperation with British Foreign policy resulted in the following quote by Massey brother-in-law, and Round Table member William Grant in 1925:
“It is very difficult to make a permanent impression on him [King] for two reasons. 1) He is as selfish a man as I have ever known, the selfishness disguised by a thick smear of sentimentalism. He will, therefore, sacrifice anyone or anything to his ambition, and then sob about it. 2) He has a mind as lacking in edge as a jellyfish. Fortunately for you he has a real fund of dignified, though rather windy eloquence, and will do little harm if given plenty of speeches to make” (24)
The Grant quote is instructive as it provides the reader an insight into the singular character flaw of King which would taint him his entire life. That is, the pitiful fact of his “other-directedness”, such that his tendency to frustrate evil influences who wished to use him for their own nefarious ends was frequently balanced by the frustration of good influences who tried to influence him the other way. For good or for ill, King was never his own man but was, in the end, a mother-dominated mystic who could never sever his ideological affiliations with the Monarchy. He may have been a man of deep personal conviction in a higher cause… but like the poor Venetian Prince in Schiller’s “The Ghost Seer”, his convictions were never his own. After the death of Skelton in 1940, King’s neurotic insecurity would express itself in his relief to be liberated by Skelton’s domineering influence: “I have frequently been thrown off following my own judgement and wisdom in these matters by pressure from Skelton and the staff that I made up my mind I would not henceforth yield to anything of the kind” (25). In another diary entry a year later, King wrote: “One of the effects of Skelton’s passing will be to make me express my own views much more strongly”. (26)
King’s pro-monarchist inclinations permanently schismed his modus operandi from those influences who he otherwise respected, evidenced in the following diary recordings of Skelton and King during two Imperial Conferences: “I defend ultimate independence, which he [King] opposes”, while after another conference, King later wrote: “[Skelton] is at heart against the British Empire, which I am not. I believe in the larger whole, with complete independence of the parts united by cooperation in all common ends”. (27)
Chatham House Comes to Canada
The Canadian branch of the RIIA (aka:’ Chatham House’) was created only in 1928, (at the same time as its Australian counterpart) largely as a response to the anti-Round Table tendencies of the Laurier Liberals upon King. The CIIA’s first President was none other than former Canadian Prime Minister and Masonic Orangeman Sir Robert Borden. Its second president was Newton Rowell, who later became president of the Canadian Bar Association, and chaired the failed Rowell-Sirois Royal Commission of 1935-1937 (28). Sir Joseph Flavelle and Vincent Massey were Vice Presidents and George Parkin de T. Glazebrook was honorary secretary. Other founding members were financier and later Conservative Party Cabinet official J.M. Macdonnell, Carnegie Foundation Trustee N.A.M. Mackenzie, UCC President William Grant, Rhodes Scholar George Raleigh Parkin, financier Edgar Tarr, journalist J.W. Dafoe, and Henry Angus. Raleigh Parkin, Grant and Macdonnell also had the distinction of being brothers-in-law with Vincent Massey, and sons-in-law of George Parkin. In 1933, through a donation from the Massey Foundation (which served as a mini clone of the Rockefeller Foundation), the CIIA hired its first Permanent Secretary named Escott Reid. Reid was a Rhodes Scholar fanatically governed by a commitment to world government through the League of Nations, expressed by his following remarks:
“It would be easier and more self-respecting for Canada to give up to an international body on which it was represented, the decision on which it should go to war than to transfer the right to make that decision from the government in Ottawa to the government in Washington.. It would thus appear probable that effective military cooperation between Canada and the United States is possible only within the framework of an effective world order of which both Canada and the United States are loyal members.” (29)
The five years after the CIIA was established, an affiliate organization was founded called the Canadian Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) by similar networks associated with the CIIA, in order to shape national internal policy while the CIIA focused upon Canada’s foreign policy. Original featured speakers were the CIIA’s Norman Mackenzie, and the eugenicist leader of the newly created CCF Party J.S. Woodsworth. It would be another 20 years before both organizations began to jointly host conferences together. Today, CIPA exists in the form of the Couchiching Conferences and their regular brainwashing seminars have been broadcast across the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for over 70 years.
The CIPA was affiliated with the YMCA, itself a major British-run indoctrination asset as it focused spreading its ideology on conferences, and workshops the world over. It was through this network that a young Maurice Strong was recruited and rose to the highest echelons of the management of the oligarchy’s affairs in later years.
1932-1935: America’s New Deal Crushes the League of Nations
Before FDR came to power in 1932, the United States was brought to its knees after four years of Great Depression itself induced by the blowout of a housing bubble built up artificially by British-Wall Street agents such as U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. It was during this time of fear and want that the American population was at its most gullible, largely accepting the propaganda that immigration and bad genes were the cause of the rampant criminality in these painful years. The vast majority of the sterilization laws passed and fascist sympathy cultivated occurred during this time of fear.
As Franklin Roosevelt rallied the population behind the battle cry “there is nothing to fear but fear itself, and kicked the money lenders out of the temple through the implementation of Glass-Steagall and the activation of public credit issued through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RIIA running their networks in Canada and especially in the United States had to re-adjust their programs. The renewed faith in the powers of sovereign government in effecting progressive change by the activation of the American System principles were evaporating the belief that world government was the only option for peace to be ensured. However, change for an empire is not always easy, and after decades of investing energy into their reconquest of the United States, the British made a violent attempt to crush FDR.
A startling revelation swept through the press in 1933 with General Smedley Butler’s public unveiling of the Wall Street-backed attempt to run a coup d’état against Roosevelt using 500 000 legionnaires (30). General Butler’s unveiling of the plan to install himself as puppet dictator was recounted in Butler’s famous book “War is a Racket” (31). This attempted coup had occurred mere months after the thwarted Masonic-run assassination plot to kill FDR which resulted in the killing of Mayor Cermak of Chicago.
As Pierre Beaudry reported in his study on the Synarchy:
“It was not a mere coincidence that, at the same time the British promoted the Nazis in Europe, in 1934, the synarchist Lazard Freres and J.P. Morgan financial interests in the United States were staging a similar fascist dictatorial coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt, using the same disgruntled Veterans of Foreign Wars groupings with operatives from the French Croix de Feu deployed to the United States. They ultimately failed to capture the leadership of General Smedley Butler, who ended the U.S. plot by publicly denouncing the conspiracy as the fascist coup that it was.” (32)
After having failed miserably in applying aggressive fascism in America, as was being done in Europe as the “solution” to the economic woes of the depression orchestrated by agents of the British Empire on Wall Street, the Rhodes networks decided that the only chance to defeat FDR was through the old Fabian method of infiltration and co-option. Every attempt was made to infiltrate New Deal institutions at all costs such that their full co-opting could occur relatively seamlessly upon the first opportunity of Roosevelt’s fall from power. For this, leading Fabian Society eugenicist John Maynard Keynes’ theories were used to first mimic the outward form of Roosevelt’s program without any of the substance.
1932: The Rhodes Trust Hive in Canada Shifts Gears
Just as Roosevelt was coming to power in America in 1932, the Rhodes Trust networks of Canada centering on Escott Reid, Frank Underhill, Eugene Forsey, F.R. Scott, and David Lewis founded a self-described “Fabian modeled think tank” customized for Canada known as the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR). Reid, Forsey, Scott and Lewis were all Rhodes Scholars while Underhill was an Oxford trained Fabian who was tutored by Harold Laski and G.B. Shaw at Balliol College. The avowed intention of the group was to institute a system of “scientific management of society” under Fabian precepts and expressed itself in the group’s selecting of J.S. Woodsworth, another Oxford-trained Fabian, to head the new Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) as an outgrowth of the LSR. The CCF called for the complete destruction of capitalism in its Regina Manifesto of 1933. Woodsworth, an avowed eugenicist, vigorously endorsed the passage of Alberta’s 1927 sterilization laws to eliminate the unfit (32). Following the gospel of his Fabian mentors H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw, Woodsworth even advocated the abolishment of personal property. At its heart the CCF was not your typical “socialism”, but merely fascism with a “scientific” socialist face.
Knowing that a fearful mob tends to fall into extremes, the CIIA’s creation of a new polarized left and right did not produce the result as it should have. Under the logic of empire, the abysmal failure of the “right” wing conservative party of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett (1930-1935), should have created the conditions for a radical left turn by the time the CCF had been formed. Unemployment was over 25%, money tightening policies were choking what little production still existed and Bennett’s typically anti-American Tory stance was blocking any potential for increasing trade with the United States.
But something wasn’t working for the Empire’s agenda. While the political seeds for a “scientific socialist” world government were being planted on pace in Canada, the cultural fear and despair necessary for such programs to take root willingly by the choice of the masses were no longer in place. Indeed, the Canadian population was so inspired by the weekly Roosevelt Fireside Chats broadcast across the border, scattered with newspaper reports of inspiring.
New Deal projects, that hope for a better future and a national solution to the chaos of the Great Depression was close enough at hand such that no great polarization could occur. As such, the blind acceptance of a Woodsworth-CCF scientific dictatorship run by agents of Rhodes’s nightmare was avoided.
FDR’s power in the minds of the Canadian population forced even the radical anti-American blue-Tory Government of R.B. Bennett to eventually adapt to the language of the New Deal by trying to copy the U.S. program in a last ditch effort to save the 1935 election. This Delphic program was known as Bennett’s “New Deal for Canada” platform. The platform was a failure, as the program laid out by Bennett had two grave errors:
1) Promoting a vast array of social welfare proposals (ie: minimum wage, health insurance, unemployment insurance, expanded pension plan, minimum hours for the work week) but lacking any large scale nation building measures which defined the American success and gave meaning to the welfare measures, the Bennett knock-off simply copied the form without any of the substance of the true New Deal. The closest approximation to infrastructure programs involved slave labour driven “work camps” paying 25 cents per day which used and abused young desperate men so that piecemeal roads and patchwork building could occur devoid of any national mission (33).
2) The national credit system employed by Roosevelt through his understanding of American System thinkers as Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln was entirely absent from the mind of Bennett and his civil servants. While the creation of the Bank of Canada modeled on the privatized system of England’s Central Bank, was established in 1935 after an extensive Royal Commission run by Lord Macmillan (begun in 1933), its constitutional and structural mandate was designed to merely centralize control for the management of already existent wealth under the control of monetarist/accounting principles… not the creation of new wealth. This institution was designed as inherently monetarist/Keynesian, NOT Rooseveltian. Without a proper American styled credit system in place which tied credit to the increase of the productive powers of labour, then any large investments, even the superficial ones proposed by Bennett’s New Deal were doomed to failure. After the Conservative Party’s 1935 decimation at the hands of the Liberals, Bennett soon retired permanently to Britain, accepting a title of nobility as Viscount.
With a revival of the American System under Roosevelt, we can see why the Canadian culture was not induced to fall into the spider web set by London. However we have yet to explain how the CIIA/Rhodes Trust networks were prevented from fully taking over control of Canada’s foreign policy during the remainder of the 1930s.
The Laurier Liberals Rise again 1935-1940
On October 1935, the Liberals still under the leadership of Mackenzie King returned to power in Canadian politics attempting to gain a foothold amidst the two British controlled extremes of the left-wing CCF and right-wing Conservatives. At this point, Vincent Massey left his three year post as President of the Liberal Party to occupy his new position as the High Commissioner to Britain bringing into his staff such Oxford protégés as Lester B. Pearson as his personal secretary, as well as Rhodes Scholars George Ignatieff and Escott Reid. While most modern historians (often affiliated with the CIIA such as John English and Jack Granatstein (34) have held that the influx of Oxford men into the Department of External Affairs (DEA) was catalyzed by O.D. Skelton, the evidence demonstrates that none other than Vincent Massey himself and the CIIA networks were the true leaders in this process against the better intention of O.D. Skelton. The popular thesis cooked up by Granastein and his ilk, has merely been a mythology maintained in order to hide Canada’s true nation building heritage from present generations, as the following evidence will demonstrate.
While the CIIA had built up a large array of high level intellectuals which had successfully installed themselves at controlling nodes of all major universities across Canada, unlike its counterparts in the United States or Britain, the CIIA had been unsuccessful at permeating the Department of External Affairs (DEA). This was caused in large measure by the return of Oscar Skelton as Undersecretary of the DEA working alongside the Minister of External Affairs Mackenzie King. King was the only Prime Minister to occupy both posts simultaneously in Canadian history. Historian Adam Chapnick describes the suspicions of King and Skelton to CIIA infiltration in the following terms:
“He shared his prime minister’s suspicions of Britain’s political leadership and had never forgotten that following the British blindly into battle in 1914 had nearly destroyed his country… Skelton became the leader of “the isolationist intelligentsia” in the East Block”(35). This distrust was demonstrated in the words of the Prime Minister, who spoke to the Canadian population after the Imperial Conference of 1937 saying: “Those who looked to the conference to devise and formulate a joint imperial policy on foreign affairs defense or trade will find nothing to fulfill their expectations” (36).
As chaos began to spread and the echos of war could be heard, cracks began to appear in Skelton’s policy of keeping the CIIA nest from taking over Canadian foreign policy. In a diary entry of May 20, 1938, Skelton wrote the following ominous words:
“The British are doing their best to have the Czechs sacrifice themselves on the altar of European peace… apparently the French are softening in resistance. The Prime Minister said in council there seemed almost unanimous recognition of (the) impossibility of our staying out if Britain goes in: my 14 years effort here wasted” (37).
Chapnick describes the irony of the RIIA’s success in coordinating post war planning through the British Foreign Office as early as 1939, yet was unable to make any headway for similar planning in their Canadian branch:
“While Mackenzie King was bracing his country for the possibility of war, the RIIA’s world-order preparatory group held its first meeting at Chatham House on 17 July 1939. The discussion emphasized the importance of maintaining the rule of law in international relations. Unlike the CIIA, which struggled to be heard in Ottawa through much of 1941, the RIIA had already established close links to the government in London. Its impact was evident in October 1939 when Lord Lothian [aka: Philip Kerr], the British ambassador in Washington, alluded publicly to a future global federation. His comments foresaw an international order in which regional organizations would police the world under the umbrella of a unifying executive body.“ (38)
Historian Denis Stairs relates Philip Kerr`s frustration with Skelton`s influence on Mackenzie King when he wrote that “Kerr once pointedly observed to Vincent Massey that it “would be better if Skelton did not regard co-operation with anyone as a confession of inferiority”. Massey reported later in his memoirs that he agreed with the assessment.” (39) Massey, an enemy of Skelton since the 1923 Imperial Conference referred to Skelton in his diaries as “Herr Doktor Skelton”.
Upon the mysterious deaths of O.D. Skelton and Ernest Lapointe in 1941 (40), the gates holding back the CIIA’s hordes began to be lifted as Massey’s young recruit Norman Robertson (a Rhodes Scholar), was quickly installed as Skelton’s replacement as Undersecretary of External Affairs. With this veritable coup, things quickly changed for the CIIA’s role in shaping Canada’s foreign policy. Chapnick describes the situation in the following terms:
“Ironically, just as the CIIA abandoned its faith in the Canadian government, Norman Robertson finally began to mobilize the Department of External Affairs. Since wartime restrictions prevented him from hiring the additional staff necessary to pursue an internationalist agenda in the traditional way, he sought temporary help from his former academic colleagues. Himself a University of British Columbia graduate, Robertson first asked the professor of political science and economics Henry Angus to move to Ottawa and assume the position of departmental “special assistant.” Angus was a member of the CIIA and had studied the Versailles settlement in depth.
He was expected to contribute constructively to postwar discussions. George Glazebrook, known to Pearson from the History Department of the University of Toronto, soon joined him. Glazebrook had sat on the CIIA research committee that had been tasked with looking into the shape of the postwar world. In all, approximately twenty university professors eventually worked for External Affairs during the war, nearly all of whom had direct or at least indirect ties to the CIIA. The recruitment of these academics created a planning infrastructure within the Canadian civil service that was similar to those already established in Great Britain and the United States. Two years after the Anglo-American process of planning the postwar order had started, Canada was finally taking its first small step forward.” (41)
With the takeover of Canada’s foreign policy-making apparatus in the Department of External Affairs by the CIIA, Canada’s new program of the “Third Way” was set in place by the likes of Escott Reid, Lester Pearson, and later Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Under this program, Canada’s role in the post War world served as a counterweight to the bipolar Cold War dynamic of Mutually Assured Annihilation. Wherever possible Canada would disrupt America by befriending Communist Countries, while Britain’s Delphic foreign policy became one of closely mimicking the USA. The Third Way was described later by Pierre Trudeau when asked of his foreign policy approach as “the creation of counter-weights”. All this was done not for interests of Canada, a nation whose birth had become tragically aborted but in the service of the British Empire.
To be continued next week…
- Buffett Reveals The "Outrageous" Investments Behind A Small Iowa College's Giant Endowment
A small college in Iowa owes a lot of its endowment’s gains to Warren Buffett… and to some pretty “outrageous” investment strategies he helped deploy on the endowment’s behalf. Buffett’s strategies for the little known Grinnell College included highly risky strats like buyouts and arbitrage plays – and they worked: they helped turn the college’s endowment into a $2 billion financial powerhouse, according to Bloomberg.
Buffett reveals in a new book that his partnership with fellow Grinnell trustee and friend Joe Rosenfield helped him find joy in investing on behalf of the endowment. The results of the the Buffett/Rosenfield partnership still have a profound effect on the 1700 students that attend the Iowa college today.
Rosenfield was a Grinnell graduate in 1925, and an attorney whose family owned department stores across Iowa and the Midwest. Rosenfield saw growing the endowment as the college’s best path to survival and enlisted Buffett to help after a casual introduction by a cousin of his. The two spoke during late night phone calls about ideas, Buffett recalls.
“I can’t recall any committee assignments in my lifetime in which I experienced such pleasure. When Joe would call me at night to discuss some action that would swell Grinnell’s coffers, his enthusiasm was that of a kid in a candy shop. I couldn’t help but share it” the Omaha Octogenarian wrote.
“The more outrageous the act might seem for a college endowment, the better Joe and I liked it,’’ Buffett said in the forward to the recently released book “Mentor: Life and Legacy of Joe Rosenfield”.
He continued: “Every investment move was always entertaining for us and always (well, almost always) profitable. In fact, we truly had more fun making money for the college than we did in making investments for ourselves. We conspired to have the college buy convertible debentures in a startup (Intel); shorted securities in a ‘can’t-lose’ arbitrage (AT&T); made a leveraged buyout of a network television station (WDTN in Dayton); and the list goes on.”
Grinnell even purchased a TV station back in 1975. When Buffett called Rosenfield to tell him that stations in Cincinnati and
Dayton were up for sale, but that he couldn’t purchase them due to regulatory restraints, he told Rosenfield it would be good for Grinnell. The board invested $11 million in a Dayton TV station after “an extensive presentation from Joe and Warren Buffett, who had colluded before the meeting.’’Eventually, the station’s value more than quadrupled and was sold in the mid 1980’s. That’s when value investing still worked as markets hadn’t been taken over by central banks, high freaks, and the relentless inflows of “communist” ETF money.
Rosenfield, who was a college trustee for 59 years, passed away at the age of 96 in the year 2000.
“He was an extraordinary friend and one of the people I admired most in the world,” Buffett told Bloomberg in an email.
- Sharyl Attkisson: How Media Narratives Became More Important Than Facts
Authored by Sharyl Attkisson via The Epoch Times,
The day that I told CBS News I wished to leave my job as investigative correspondent ahead of my contract, I didn’t give a reason. I didn’t see the point because the problem wasn’t fixable.
Nor was it isolated to CBS News.
My own take is that – as our industry has changed in ways that have become undeniable to most – I was a bit of the canary in the coal mine. By that, I mean I believe I was among the first to really pay attention to the increasingly effective operations to shape and censor news—the movements to establish narratives rather than follow facts—and to see the growing influence of smear operations, political interests, and corporate interests on the news.
It’s not that I’m smarter than my peers, and I’m surely far less smart than many, but my particular brand of off-narrative reporting happened to draw the intense attention of the smear operators and propagandists, so I began to study it.
A case in point: the smear that was promulgated when I left CBS. It was often incorrectly reported that I told CBS management I was quitting due to liberal media bias. That false story turned out to be convenient for both political sides, and largely survives today. It simply wasn’t rooted in fact. And I don’t recall reporters even asking me whether it was true. Once a few articles reported that it was, others simply copied the claim and adopted it as if established fact, eventually without attribution. Now there would be no point in trying to clarify it. After all, Wikipedia says it’s true. No going back from that.
Powerful smear groups and certain interests—including some within CBS at the time—started the narrative that I was “conservative,” not because they necessarily believed it, but as a tool to “controversialize” the reporting I was doing that was contrary to powerful interests.
The idea is that if I can be portrayed as a partisan, then my reporting can be more easily dismissed.
The Narrative Requires
In fact, prior to the operation to push the narrative that I was “conservative,” my reporting had been lauded by a diverse group of observers, including the likes of Rachel Maddow, who once delivered an entire monologue on an investigative expose I did on the “charity” of then-Rep. Stephen Buyer (R- Ind.). My most recent Emmy award was for an undercover investigation into Republican fundraising.
But the narrative requests—nay, requires—that we forget all that. We must focus on the supposed miraculous metamorphosis. Depending on who’s spinning, they may insist I was a rational journalist who went crazy one day and flew to the dark side of conservatism. Or they may say I used to be a devoted liberal, but decided the big money was in pandering to Republicans, so I sold out. The details aren’t important. You are simply to come away with the notion that my reporting is now politically conflicted.
Another example of this narrative: Many news reports comment that I work for the “conservative” Sinclair Broadcast Group. Fair enough—Sinclair is run by a family that’s made no secret of their conservative political leanings. But the reporters who note this political connection apparently fail to recognize the inherent conflict in the fact that they eagerly label the conservative group; yet I don’t think they reported that I worked for the “liberal” CNN, the “liberal” PBS, or the “liberal” CBS.
Some reporters lack the self-awareness and objectivity to understand they are revealing themselves when they selectively apply labels in a one-sided fashion. They are servicing a narrative, even if unintentionally.
When I worked at CNN, it was owned by a billionaire Democrat donor (Ted Turner)—a good boss, by the way. When I worked for CBS, the management (Sumner Redstone, Les Moonves) were rich Democrat donors—also, a great company to work for during most of my 20 years there.
Sinclair has likewise been a terrific employer to date. They haven’t forced editorial biases in the reporting on my program. The program is mostly apolitical, addressing topics such as the underreported dangers of MRI dye or how American farmers are suffering under the current trade war with China. When we address politics, you are as likely to see an interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, as you are to see Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican.
Improvements
But there’s the narrative…
When a national print media reporter wrote about my program a couple of years ago, he incorrectly referred to it as “conservative.” Later, when asked if he’d ever actually seen the program, he admitted he hadn’t. It’s not that it would be difficult to—well—actually do a little bit of reporting rather than repeat a narrative: My weekly program is on at least a half-dozen times each week in the city where this reporter is based, and it’s posted online.
As easy as it was for him to do some first-hand reporting, he chose to repeat the narrative.
Lara Logan, who recently left CBS News, has also been speaking out about her observations regarding the decline of fair and objective journalism. She’s likewise been attacking the narratives. As such, she has been subjected to them. That’s how it works. Obviously (says the narrative), she is a disgruntled conservative who is not to be believed. Or (says the narrative), she’s perhaps a little unbalanced. (You know, all that war reporting and stress. Poor Lara.)
The truth is, Lara is extremely clear-eyed on these issues. And she and I are far from alone in our views on the state of the media. We agree there is terrific journalism being committed on a daily basis at organizations from The New York Times to local news stations. However, we agree that national media has also largely become co-opted by powerful interests who understand how to direct the news landscape in a way that services certain narratives and agendas.
I have heard support from hundreds of journalists, college professors, and media observers during the last several years. I have been reached out to by reporters in print and on TV, by national and local news, by students and a Pulitzer Prize winner.
The effort to expose flaws and conflicts in media reporting is growing stronger, not weaker, despite the narratives. The desire to affect improvements is building. Make no mistake: Not all of us are free to speak publicly, but there are a lot of us. And we aren’t going away.
- Mississippi River Breaks 1993 Flood Record
As severe rain and thunderstorms continue to hammer the Midwest, flooding along the Mississippi River has broken quarter-century record. Water levels at Rock Island, Illinois, reached a new record peak, and other spots along the river could also reach new record highs if the rain doesn’t stop.
The water level at Rock Island rose 7.7 feet (2.3 meters) above flood stage as of 8 am local time on Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Rock Island is about 175 miles west of Chicago, and the previous record was set in June 1993, when the upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers flooded the surrounding area, according to Bloomberg.
Though the area has experienced substantial precipitation in the past few months, in 1993 “we had rain after rain after rain throughout the spring and summer,” said Justin Palmer, a hydrologist with the U.S. North Central River Forecast Center in Chanhassen, Minn.
“It is kind of a one-off right now,” Palmer said. “But the potential is there as we get more rain for the river to stay high. We are definitely vulnerable to a rain event.”
But according to forecasts, the flooding could get worse. About 1.5 to 2 inches of rain is forecast to fall across Iowa and Illinois through May 10, the US Weather Prediction Center said. Between January and March, much of the Midwest will have had one of the 10 worst rain and snow seasons.
Between Jan. 1 and Thursday, 15.1 inches of rain fell in Davenport, Iowa, across the river from Rock Island.
High waters levels, which have persisted for months, have slowed the shipments of agriculture commodities like corn and grain, even forcing the CME Group to declare force majeure as some shipping stations became impossible to reach.
- Green Revolution: Washington State To Allow Composting Of Human Beings
Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Each Friday we highlight a number of important, and often bizarre stories from around the world that my team and I are closely following:
1. Washington State will allow human body composting
It doesn’t get much greener than this.
Staking his presidential run on climate change, the Governor of Washington is set to sign a bill legalizing composting of deceased humans.
An especially high percentage of the deceased in Washington are cremated, so this alternative will cut down on carbon emissions.
Instead, family members can pay around $5,500 to turn their loved ones into compost, and use the composted-remains to plant a tree.
Hell, why not throw it right into the vegetable garden. Then your loved ones become a part of you.
Friendly reminder though, soylent green is people.
Click here to read the full story.
2. Satanic Temple gets tax-exempt status
Surely a sign that the end times are nigh, the Satanic Temple has successfully gained tax exempt status like any other religion.
The thing is, they aren’t really all about worshipping Satan.
The church was founded as a bit of a joke. The group is meant to protest the meddling of government and religion.
For instance, if government functions start with a prayer, they want to open with a prayer to Satan. And if a courthouse lawn has a ten commandments statue, they want Lucifer spreading his wings right there beside it.
And now they have forced the government to recognize them as a religion, with all the tax exemptions that come with it.
Click here to read the full story.
3. Laying the groundwork for conscientious objection to taxes
Speaking of interesting tactics to avoid taxes…
Last year a man who refused to pay taxes since 1997 had his case dismissed by a federal court.
He refused to pay because some tax dollars fund abortions which he morally objects to.
But the reason his case got dismissed had nothing to do with that.
The government couldn’t prove he evaded taxes, because he never tried to hide it.
He was very open about why he wouldn’t pay taxes. That’s not evasion, that’s just refusal.
And when the IRS started garnishing his wages, the man simply cashed his work checks, and kept a low balance in his bank account. The court said not everything that makes collection harder is evasion, including simply cashing checks.
The man does still face misdemeanor charges for willful refusal to file tax returns.
I still prefer the legal ways of reducing my taxes, that won’t have be hauled in front of a judge.
Click here to read the full story.
4. Elizabeth Warren proposes canceling student loan debt, making college free
Desperate for attention in her 2020 bid for President, Senator Elizabeth Warren continues to roll out the most “progressive” policy proposals among the candidates.
She’s already proposed a wealth tax, jailing CEOs for civil crimes, and breaking up any large corporation she can get her hands on.
Now she wants to forgive almost all of the $1.5 TRILLION worth of student loan debt.
However you won’t be receiving any relief if you live in a household with income over $250,000 per year.
Since the United States government owns 90% of student loan debt, this just means that the taxpayers will be on the hook for all those wonderful underwater-basket-weaving and gender studies degrees.
Warren also proposed making college free. Because the government has done such a great job educating the youth in public schools…
Click here to read the full story.
5. Colorado becomes 15th state to approve gun confiscation
Beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard for criminal convictions. Only then can you be deprived of life, liberty, and property.
But all it takes under Colorado’s new red flag-laws to take your guns away is a preponderance of evidence.
And that weak standard of evidence doesn’t even have to apply to a crime.
The evidence just has to suggest that a person “poses a significant risk of causing personal risk to self or others in the near future.”
For a statute that can strip you of your rights, that’s pretty vague and arbitrary.
If a family member or former roommate testifies that you are a risk to yourself or others, the courts can confiscate your guns with an Extreme Risk Protective Order (ERPO).
After two weeks, the “suspect” (if you can even call them that, since they aren’t suspected of a crime) has a chance to prove his innocence in court. In other words, you are presumed guilty until you spend your own money to prove your innocence. Otherwise the ERPO can be extended for a full year.
And the same standard of proof can be used by the accuser to extend the ERPO year after year.
So forget due process. The whims of the cops and judges can strip you of your right to protect yourself.
Click here to read the full story.
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