WHO RUNS THE WORLD......?
          An overview of what’s really behind the “New World Order”….. 

     “The world is governed by far different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind  the scenes”      Benjamin Disraeli

        There he is – the fellow who blandly refuses to see any threat to our society – who reckons that if he does his little bit in his own regular groove, takes good care of the family and pays no attention to any alarm bells off stage, then the United Nations, the European Union or the Universal Declaration on Human Rights will ensure no harm ever comes to him – for him, all that stuff about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance is just outmoded rhetoric. Sophisticated wise guy that he is, he knows that if there was anything in these conspiracy or subversion scares, he would be hearing about it on the telly. He faithfully reads his newspapers – accepting both fact and comment – if it’s not true, he says, why on earth would it be printed? As for any hair raising stuff about centralised control, totalitarian police states etc. well it could never happen here could it? After all, western so called democracies are the epitome of freedom and tolerance committed to bringing peace and harmony in the world or so his elected representatives and the media have successfully convinced him. Forget it – let’s have a bit of light relief, there’s “”Who wants to be a Millionaire” and “Gardener’s World” on TV tonight and tomorrow Arsenal are playing Man United.  From J.S. Gibb “The Lemming Folk”
A little harsh perhaps – not everyone by any means is as myopic as this – and it can be very difficult to see what’s going on behind the scenes, one of the main reasons being…. 

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA….
 “There is no such thing.. as an independent press.. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.. they pull the strings and we dance.  We are intellectual prostitutes.” 
 John Swinton, a chief of staff to the New York Times addressing the New York Press Club 1953.
         “Journalism is grubbier, nastier and more trivial than ever before...” so said Polly Toynbee once, writing in the Independent. Look at the tabloids and a host of other publications, and see what a mass of trivial irrelevant material now passes for so called news, distracting us from thinking for ourselves about what really matters to us. The same applies to television - more and more channels turning out more and more soaps, quiz shows, comedy shows, chat shows, pop shows - an ever increasing diet of trivialisation, interspersed on commercial stations, with adverts that endlessly sell us all the things they tell us we have to have to make us happy - the dolly bird images that all women must live up to, and the macho images that all men must live up to. How miserable we can become if we don’t measure up to these smooth cultivated images, or can’t afford all the paraphernalia that goes with them. (And aren’t we always being persuaded to go more and more into debt by borrowing more and more money to get it, by “listening” banks and “action” banks who join in this orgy of advertising.)
      Ms. Toynbee went on to imply that broad-sheets such as the Independent, the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times were highly reliable and informative. However newspapers like these and mainstream radio and T.V. networks cannot possibly give us a full picture, or a comprehensive analysis, of what is going on in the world.  Look at the big corporate interests that own them and advertise in them. And even if they don’t actually own the BBC, look how these interests and their friends in government make and influence appointments to senior posts, and dominate the Board of Governors, ensuring that it is no more independent than any of the others. On top of this, it seems that a broad swathe of media people have a very limited view of the world – they get all their information from establishment sources – they don’t really pay attention to or investigate what protesters are saying. They enjoy good pay and lavish life styles and they simply can’t understand why anyone would see a problem with the world as it is – after all, it serves them well enough! 
     More than 200 years ago Thomas Jefferson said that he felt sorry for those who thought that they knew what was going on through reading the newspapers, and a little over 100 years ago Benjamin Disraeli made a similar remark, and the same applies today, in many areas, to the mainstream media.  Look how so much of it still unquestioningly promotes the dual concepts of “economic growth” and “free trade” without ever stopping to examine the real effect of the unrestricted pursuit of these aims on the planet and the millions who inhabit it. Why not? Because it is owned and/or controlled by the wealthy elite who see the whole system as being to their benefit. 
      No doubt today many media people would vigorously contest these sorts of remarks, claiming newspapers such as the Independent and Guardian, and T.V. programmes such as Granada’s “World in Action” and Channel 4’s “Despatches” do produce some good investigative journalism. However as some journalists know deep down, they can only go so far, and some absolutely crucial subjects are definitely off limits, not only for them, but also for other publications that are generally regarded as radical. The problem is that many people see these programmes, newspapers and other publications as providing the full picture, however their investigations are invariably isolated and do not provide a full and coherent picture. Let us take a closer look behind the scenes....
SECRECY & PRIVATE FORUMS
      Everywhere you look - government, big business and any other institution seeking to exercise power - the key is secrecy. Meetings such as those of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the G-8, World Trade Organisation, World Economic Forum, Central Banks, the European Union Council of Ministers and the EU Commission, EU summits, government cabinet meetings, numerous think tanks etc. are always conducted behind closed doors. The only possible reason for this is that they don’t want you and I to know what they are really up to. That well worn excuse for keeping things under wraps -“it is not in the public interest” really means that it is not in the interest of the powers that be that the public should know. However there is, in addition, a network of private forums and meetings that take place where the secrecy principle extends to the forums and meetings themselves – by and large, we don’t even know that they are taking place, let alone what is being planned and discussed….
The Bilderberg Group
      Did you know, for example, that some of the biggest names in world politics, media, banking and business met at Turnberry South Ayrshire from 14th. to 17th. May 1998 under the chairmanship of Lord Peter Carrington? If you didn't, this is your introduction to the Bilderberg Group – a private forum where powerful and influential figures from Europe and North America meet in great secrecy amid very tight security to plan and discuss global strategy and reach consensus on a wide range of issues. What then seems to happen is that ensuing consensus on various issues are then promoted by powerful commercial and business interests in the media at the same time becoming the policy of governments of supposedly different political persuasions. 
      Bilderberg was formed in 1954, named after the hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland where the first meeting took place. It has a main meeting annually in a heavily guarded location in Europe or North America. It brings together top people from a variety of spheres of influence and power on both sides of the Atlantic. Participants include Heads of State, prime ministers, other leading political figures, top corporate executives, industrialists, bankers, financiers, and an assortment of intellectuals, diplomats, influential representatives of the media and even the occasional trade unionist with demonstrated sympathy for establishment views. One insider apparently has observed that "..today, there are very few figures among governments on both sides of the Atlantic who have not attended at least one of these meetings."
      What sets this private forum, (and others mentioned later) apart from other gatherings of the politically and economically powerful such as the G-8 meetings, European Union summits etc. is that they are little or almost unknown to the public and they escape media attention. Much of the centralisation of power that is taking place in the world today - a process that has been going on for many years, but is now accelerating into top gear - can very likely be attributed to the agreements and consensus reached at these meetings. Human nature being what it is, there are people in power who would seek to bring about some form of centralised all powerful global government. Much of what we see happening around us today is bringing that prospect ever closer, with increasing power of multi-national corporations, the surrender of national sovereignty in the EU, governments handing over complete control of money supply and monetary policy to unaccountable central banks, the rules and regulations of the World Trade Organisation, the ability of the International Monetary Fund to dictate to national governments etc. – power concentrated in the hands of ever fewer people operating through more remote unaccountable institutions. Maybe that is O.K. if you trust the top people in power.. However remember the saying "all power tends to corrupt…”.
      Few journalists, reporters and news people in the mainstream media, until very recently, had even heard of Bilderberg, yet these are the people who claim to give us informed in-depth reporting of what is going on in the world. Even many M.Ps. in the House of Commons appear not to have heard of it, and those that have do not speak publicly about it. However some of the more prominent and "promising" ones will have actually attended its meetings.
       It is claimed by the organisers to be an "informal" gathering. Attendance is by invitation from the steering committee - an inner circle of permanent members, who meet regularly, setting the aims and agenda of the group, and reviewing progress. Everyone is invited to "speak freely" – which suggests perhaps they can say what they really think and believe rather than what they tell the public they think and believe! And it is all off the record.
       If you question anyone who has attended, about the group, the answers you get are either that it is just an informal airing of views in relaxed surroundings with no votes or formal resolutions. (However, one can build up consensus quite adequately without formal resolutions.) Alternatively it is claimed to be a gathering of political "has beens" who no longer wield any real power. An examination of the annual attendance lists reveals nothing could be further from the truth. Many a rising star has attended and the so called "has beens" who do attend are in fact still active and influential behind the scenes. Former Observer Editor Will Hutton attended the 1997 meeting. He did not disclose the content of any discussions, but he expressed the view, privately, that it is Bilderberg that sets the agenda for the forums and summits such as the G-8, Council of Europe and World Trade Organisation meetings that follow.
      Lord Carrington was chairman of the steering group until 2000, Lord Home was a former chairman. Kenneth Clarke and Henry Kissinger are current steering group members. Early steering group members included Denis Healey and Reginald Maudling, followed more recently by EU Commission President Romano Prodi, EU Commissioner Mario Monti and former Labour leader John Smith. In the past Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Roy Jenkins, Jeremy Thorpe, David Steele, the Duke of Edinburgh, Cyrus Vance, George Shultz, Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterand  have all attended. More recently it has been Bill and Hilary Clinton, Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Paddy Ashdown, Norman Lamont, William Waldegrave, Malcolm Rifkind, Alan Greenspan (Head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank), numerous EU Commissioners, Lord Roll of Ipsden (Labour Peer and former President of merchant bank Warburg, Dillon Read), Conrad Black (Chairman Hollinger Group which owns the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator), Andrew Knight (chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International media empire), Umberto Agnelli (President of Fiat SpA). In 1996, T.U.C. General Secretary John Monks attended, and in 1999 former Friends of the Earth Director and current Forum of the Future Director Jonathan Porrit attended. Ever since its inception, members of the Rothschild and Rockefeller families have always attended.
      What exactly has been going on here? There’s certainly a wide range of prominent people attending these meetings, and, when hearing about Bilderberg for the first time, some people say isn’t it great that so many different people come together to discuss global issues. Another perhaps more realistic interpretation is that it is the rich and powerful planning our future behind our backs without our knowledge and permission.  Previous meetings in Britain have taken place in Buxton, Cambridge, Torquay, and Gleneagles, right under our noses only we didn’t know about them. Only in very recent years has the veil of secrecy surrounding the event begun to break, with limited mention in the local press of the host country. Several Scottish newspapers made quite a splash that the 1998 meeting took place at Turnberry, but since then silence has returned. Nothing on 1999’s meeting at Sintra Portugal or 2000’s meeting at Chateau du Lac south of Brussels, or 2001’s meeting at a secluded island resort near Gothenberg, Sweden. The same applied to this year’s meeting which has just taken place at Chantilly, Virginia, USA. [1]
      Bilderberg is reckoned to be the most influential of the private forums, but there are other little known organisations such as the Trilateral Commission, the Pinay Circle, the Royal Institute of International Affairs- (RIIA is  said to be responsible for British foreign policy) and its United States counterpart, the Council on Foreign Relations. Except occasionally the RIIA, these organisations are almost never mentioned in the mainstream media, all meet behind the usual closed doors, yet they are almost certainly closely linked. Some of them are strongly Anglo-American in membership. Indeed it appears that the RIIA and the CFR may be essentially one and the same organisation, born at the same time in the early ‘20’s, out of an earlier grouping known as the Round Table, set up by those advocates of global domination, Cecil Rhodes and Lord Alfred Milner. Perhaps this gives true meaning to the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S.A.
Trilateral Commission 
       TC was born out of Bilderberg discussions in the early ‘70’s, and founded by David Rockefeller, chairman Chase Manhattan Bank and Zbigniew Brzezinski, later President Carter’s national security advisor.  Bilderberg is bilateral, taking in Europe and North America, TC is trilateral, taking in Japan and the far east as well. Its members are chiefly bankers, businessmen and top administrators. Included are heads of Japanese multi-nationals corporations,(e.g. Sony, Mitsui, Mitsubishi) top officials of international banks based in the far east,(e.g. Fuji Bank, Mitsubishi Bank) heads of major media organisations (e.g. Time Warner, CNN, Washington Post Co., Times Mirror Co.) Politician members include Jimmy Carter, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton, Cyrus Vance, Walter Mondale, Warren Christopher, and on this side, David Owen, Edward Heath, Roy Jenkins and Chris Patten.
Royal Institute of International Affairs
      This is a forum for the political elite - presidents, prime ministers and others. “The Chatham House rule” states..... “when a meeting is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity or the affiliation of speakers, nor that of any other participant may be revealed; nor may it be mentioned that the information was received at a meeting of the Institute.” It will not release the names of individual members, although both James Callaghan and Lord Carrington are honorary presidents.  Major global companies and banks fund it, along with the long suffering British taxpayer! Corporate members include B.P., Shell, Barclays Bank, Lloyds TSB, Nat West Bank, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Warburg Dillon Read, RTZ,  Unilever, The Economist, CBS, NBC, ABC, Channel 4 TV, ITN, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, Daily Telegraph, The Times, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC Radio, even Amnesty International and the African National Congress. Sounds great – such a diversity of organisations coming together – so why all the secrecy?
Council on Foreign Relations
      Funded largely by the Rockefeller Foundation, the CFR is a major force in the U.S.A. behind economic globalisation that first became very active during the last war, issuing many confidential memoranda to the U.S. government.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt was closely associated with it – literally. When governor of New York state, he had a town house next door to its headquarters in New York City. At that time, it set out a vision of huge areas of the globe (a “Grand Area”) that it was perceived would be necessary to come under effective U.S. economic and military control, in order to ensure materials for U.S. industries, following the defeat of Germany and Japan. It called for centralised world wide financial institutions and was a major force that led to the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire USA in 1944, which set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development now known as the World Bank. A CFR brainchild, the Marshall Plan helped Europe reconstruct after World War 2, but it also ensured the Americanisation of Europe as European political and economic elites became wedded to their American counterparts with no significant economic or political development taking place without U.S. approval. Today many meetings are forums where foreign diplomats can freely express their ideas to council members - “...Participants are assured that they may speak openly, as it is the tradition of the Council that others will not attribute or characterise their statements in public media or forums or knowingly transmit them to persons who will.” Familiar line? Even major summits of international importance are staged in secret such as the Middle East/North Africa Economic Summit co-chaired by Bill Clinton (CFR member) and Boris Yeltsin in Casablanca in 1994 - no mainstream media reports on that. The council claims “.....no affiliation with the U.S.  government...” but it just so happens that Clinton and almost all his cabinet members were apparently listed as CFR members. Other members are David Rockefeller , Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, Katherine Graham (publisher of the Washington Post) and a number of other well known presenters and newspeople in ABC, CBS, and NBC (e.g. Dan Rather, Robert McNeil, Jim Lehrer, Tom Brokaw, and David Brinkley). There are many others including Alan Greenspan head of the Federal Reserve Bank, previous head Paul Volcker, plus the usual array of big corporate bosses from Chrysler, Coca Cola, General Motors, Ford, AT&T, American Express, Exxon,  Shell, Mobil, etc.
The Group of Thirty
      Founded in 1978, this has become the world’s leading international financial consultative group, comprised of 30 leading figures from economic and financial arenas. It describes itself as a non political organisation that explores issues of business practice and public policy, suggesting measures to improve the functioning of the international financial system… (for bankers and big business etc. rather than the population as a whole?)  Members include Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, Stanley Fischer – Deputy managing Director of the IMF , the Governors of the Bank of France  and the Bank of Japan. The Chairman is Jacob Frenkel who recently took over from former US Federal Reserve boss Paul Volcker. Frenkel is chairman of international merchant bankers Merrill Lynch and a former Governor of the Bank of Israel. [2] 
      In reality, there are many more organisations and many possible links between them. For example, the US funded “British American Project for the Successor Generation” has been responsible, since the 1980s, for recruiting young up and coming British politicians and media people and taking them on expenses paid trips to the US to educate them in the virtues of the “American dream” . The message is – stick with us boys and girls and you will go far… And many have done just that, for example Neil Kinnock, Blair, Mandelson, Mo Mowlam, George Robertson plus various Labour party advisers and policy makers, not to mention Radio 4  “Today” programme presenter James Naughty and BBC 2 Newsnight presenter  Jeremy Paxman. [3]
      Of all these secretive private forums you might say, so what – it’s essential that top people get together to discuss and plan global affairs - what right has anyone to impugn any improper motives on their part – they are doing the best they can for us all. If that’s really the case, why the secrecy? And look at the evidence out there all around us. In a world where more than one billion people live in absolute poverty let’s take a careful look at what the outcome of all this really is.         
CORPORATE POWER
     “Trans-national corporations are the most tyrannical and totalitarian institutions society has yet devised.”      Professor Noam Chomsky                              
      A great feature of centralisation of power and the erosion of democracy and the power of nation states, is the trans-national corporation (TNC). These have largely been a development of the last 50 years or so. A constant drive to cut costs, maximise profits and expand markets and market share has led to buy outs, take-overs and amalgamations that have produced ever larger conglomerates. Today Corporations pretty much determine the basics of modern life. Corporate elites decide what most of us will read, what we see in cinemas, theatres and on TV, what subjects are public issues acceptable for discussion and debate, what ideas our children are taught in the classroom, how our food will be grown processed and marketed, what consumer products will be made with what technologies, whether or not we have widely available affordable health care, how work will be defined organised and compensated, what forms of energy will be available to us, how much toxic contamination there will be in our air water soil and food, who will have enough money to run an election campaign and who will not…
      A typical TNC straddles state boundaries with manufacturing operations spread throughout the world – its head office, where major decisions are taken, is located in a particular state, but TNC’s today have no loyalty to any state. They can effectively dictate to governments, as they rush around the globe to locate their operations, in the third world in states with the cheapest labour, the least stringent employment and environmental laws, or in the developed world, where they can extract the largest subsidies and tax free incentives. 
      Highly subsidised grain production in the U.S.A., and EU food surpluses are sold to third world countries, undercutting local production, creating dependence and destroying the livelihood of local producers. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a global body of appointees which emerged in 1997 out of  GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Armed with supra-national legislative and judicial powers, it has a mandate to press forward with the elimination of barriers to the free movement of goods and capital. The section of the GATT agreement setting it up, ran to 2000 pages, ensuring few would have had the chance to study what the real implications were, before national legislatures ratified it.
       Member countries must ensure that their laws comply with a mass of obligations and “international standards”. One member country can seek redress against another, if it considers that the law of another deprives it of the benefit it expects to receive from the new trade rules. In reality it is a TNC’s charter - such initiation is very likely to come from a TNC believing itself to be disadvantaged by a particular law in one country, and can find another country dependent on its presence, to put forward its case. For example Austria found itself unable to operate a ban on the import of tropical hardwoods from unsustainable sources, the U.S. is being forced to lower its requirements for the protection of dolphins in tuna fishing, the EU is facing demands to stop giving preferential treatment to small banana producers on Caribbean islands, which are highly dependent on banana exports, and also to lift a ban on beef from cattle from the U.S.A. raised with growth hormones, and now Canada is facing a challenge over a ban on the import of dangerous pesticides containing lindane.  A panel of just 3 so called experts decide on disputes initially, with no right of appeal beyond the WTO itself.
      The WTO, the European Union “single market”, NAFTA, APEC etc. are all based on the sacrosanct principle of “free trade”, but free trade is not fair trade. Many now see it for what it is - the freedom for the rich and strong to exploit the poor and weak, as more and more states are forced under these new rules, to remove tariffs designed to protect smaller local producers, local markets and the livelihoods of people associated with them and dependent on them.  A most recent example is India where domestic production of edible vegetable oil has been virtually wiped out with the import of subsidised US soya oil and palm oil from Malaysia, following the dramatic lowering of import duties.   
      People are now recognising that, globally, “free trade”, still hailed as the means to promote beneficial growth, trade and employment, has in fact ravaged the environment and destroyed traditional manufacturing industries and communities throughout the West. It has also helped spawn ghettos, slums and shanties in cities throughout Latin America, Asia and Africa, by creating conditions that force people off the land, as wealthy elites and big corporations have taken over the means of production. For example, in the last 15 years or so, Indonesia has become very popular with big corporations, especially sportswear manufacturers such as Adidas and Nike. Wages are rock bottom and work conditions often atrocious because of weak union organisation and a lack of safety and environmental standards under a corrupt military dictatorship. 
      The WTO free trade rules actually operate to the detriment of all reasonable employment, environmental and safety standards because such standards are considered to be obstacles to free trade - i.e. if one country adopts higher standards that restrict another country from exporting goods or produce that undermine them, based on industry that is more polluting, more dangerous and has lower paid jobs. It is regarded as “protectionist” to try to give preference to local businesses that hire local people at a decent living wage, produce things that local people need, pay their full share of local taxes, play by local rules and contribute to the livelihood and well being of the community. 
      This process is driven and promoted by TNC’s and the political establishment that supports them. It is also promoted by academics, universities and colleges which are increasingly funded by big business - not to mention numerous “foundations” and “think tanks” which are almost entirely funded by the same interests. It is claimed that TNCs create employment – they do provide work for a few - but at the same time they have been a part of a process that has destroyed large numbers of jobs and livelihoods based on small to medium sizes enterprises. In fact they destroy far more jobs, than they create. This entire process of opening up markets to so called free trade and unrestricted movement of capital is somewhat deviously referred to as “deregulation”. It is NOT… it is re-regulation in favour of TNCs., witness the mass of rules and regulations incorporated in the WTO. 
      The mass media is under corporate ownership, ensuring that the corporate agenda is vigorously promoted. The pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in drugs, which are often ineffective or have serious side effects.  Alternative proven successful treatments for cancer are suppressed in favour of drug based therapies with horrible side effects and little real success. There are constant efforts to get regulations imposed on alternative therapies which are in reality designed to make it near impossible to license these products and so drive them off the market, even though they have been in safe use for years. Then there are mass vaccination programmes –  a real money spinner if a government can be persuaded to promote one - in spite of the fact that their effectiveness may be very questionable and the vaccines themselves may have serious side effects in some cases – e.g. measles mumps rubella. And then the food chain - big corporations having control over our most fundamental needs – from the ownership of seed companies to supermarkets, they decide what we eat (or in some cases in the third world whether we eat at all) – add to that the latest macabre twist of seeking to patent seeds and to genetically modify them along with plants and animals, in order, it seems, to begin to take control of the very building blocs of life itself.  They claim that genetically modified crops are needed to feed the world, yet they ignore the little understood dangers and risks of cross pollination. They ignore also the fact that, in third world countries in particular, the real problem is poverty – the food is there but people can’t afford to buy it! There are radical technologies for non polluting power generation, such as zero point energy and cold nuclear fusion waiting for funding and development but these have been debunked and suppressed for years [4].
       Corporate power manifests itself in almost every sphere of life nowadays. Control of energy supplies, in particular oil – any state such as Iran, Iraq or Libya which has tried to take control over its own oil resources, has faced severe backlashes from the US and Britain and the big business interests they represent.  Here in Britain, our utilities no longer belong to the state, and are now in the hands of private corporations, many of which have since become foreign owned through take-overs and mergers. And of course they stand to increase their profits the more water gas and electricity we consume.  Even some of our railway operators are foreign owned - e.g Connex South Central is owned by a French corporation. These principles are dramatically extended in the latest  WTO promotion  - GATS (the General Agreement on Trade and Services). Services include schools, health care, rubbish collection, libraries, water, gas and electricity. The object is to remove restrictions and internal government regulations considered to be “barriers to trade” in the area of service delivery. Privatisation of such facilities in poor countries has serious consequences – with TNCs seeking to profit from supplying water, health and education, poor people who can’t afford much are losing out. Water privatisation in Puerto Rico saw poor communities going without water whilst US military bases and tourist facilities had unlimited supplies.   All these services in a truly democratic society are something in which the people have a say  - they are called public services. A most effective way to completely undermine democracy is to hand them all to private power, because private power is basically unaccountable. You can’t really find out what’s going on inside a private corporation  – they just tell you that it’s commercially confidential. If you can transfer the public arena into private hands, you can have elections in which the outcome makes no difference.             
    In his book “The Future of Money – creating new wealth, work and a wiser world” (Century 2001) Bernard Lietaer examines a possible future scenario referred to as the Corporate Millennium –  government by big business. It is a world in which private shopping malls, sports facilities, housing developments are available, but only to the better off. With a large, angry and increasingly violent excluded minority, these facilities are fenced off and heavily guarded with access only to those who are issued with smart cards implanted with microchips. Databases contain huge records of profiles on consumer preferences and the end of national government is forecast with everything from education, health, policing, army and security services in private hands.  The last prime minister finally relinquishes office, his government has no further function – Securicor is to take over the police franchise for the UK, Executive Solutions has the armed forces contract, and Social Services is run by Sonysoft – a merger of Sony and Microsoft. Consolidated Banks runs the economy, whilst NewsCorp has the education franchise. The Prime Minister will slip into retirement as easily as power has slipped into the hands of big business….  [5]           
MONEY DEBT and BANKS
“Give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who writes it’s laws…”     Meyer Armschel Rothschild    1790
 “If you want to be the slaves of banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create money…    Josiah Stamp, Governor of the Bank of England 1920
      Money is the medium which we use to exchange goods and services – so whoever controls the issue of money is potentially in a very powerful position.
      Money is essential - without it, buying and selling would only be possible through exchange of goods themselves – hopelessly inconvenient. To keep trade and economic activity going, there has to be enough of this medium of exchange called money in existence to allow all this buying and selling to take place. When there is plenty, the economy booms. When there is a shortage, there is a slump. In the Great Depression, people wanted to work to earn money to support themselves, they wanted goods and services, all the raw materials for industry were available etc. yet national economies collapsed  - why? …because there was far too little money in existence to allow full trading to take place. The only difference between boom and bust, growth and recession, is money supply. 
      So who is responsible for making sure that there is enough money in existence to cover all the buying and selling that people want to engage in? The answer is that it is almost entirely controlled by private banks through the process of “lending”. 
      The popular concept is that when a bank lends, it is simply lending money that other people have deposited with it. This is very misleading - the money loaned by banks is in fact new money created by them out of nothing. After all, when an overdraft  or loan is made to someone, nothing is transferred from the  accounts of those who have made deposits. All that happens is a note is made on the borrower’s account that he can spend up to, say, £5000. There may have been nothing in his account before that, but suddenly the borrower is allowed to make out cheques and draw cash to pay for goods and services, up to £5000. As he does so, this is actually new money being introduced into the economy. The people he pays will in turn use that money to pay for goods and services. Today in the developed world more than 95% of the total money supply has come into existence in this way as personal and business loans, mortgages, overdrafts etc. provided by commercial banks and financial institutions. However, borrowers must eventually repay the loans and pay interest to the banks in the meantime. So today’s money is in fact created by private interests for private profit. Only cash, which is provided by the government and now accounts for just 3% of the total money supply in Britain, (having fallen from nearly 50% just fifty years ago) is provided interest free.
      Since the money supply is now almost entirely made up of loans etc., more money must be lent out to keep the economy going. This is why most of us are inundated with offers of loans, credit cards etc. If people don’t borrow or banks don’t lend, there will be a fall in the amount of money circulating, resulting in a reduction in buying and selling - a recession, slump or total collapse will follow depending on how severe the shortage is. 
     The increase in loans etc. created by banks etc. over the years is conclusive proof that banks do create “money” out of nothing – in Britain it was £1.2 billion in 1948 up to £14 billion by 1963 up to £680 billion by 1997. These are big increases in real terms even allowing for inflation - they have enabled the economy to expand enormously, and as a result living standards for many people have improved substantially....  but it has been done on borrowed money. What is credit to the bank is debt to the rest of us. [6]

     This has some pretty far reaching implications - after all banks are businesses out to make profits from the interest on the loans they make. Since they decide to whom they will lend, they effectively decide what is produced, where it is produced and who produces it, all on the basis of profitability to the bank, rather than what is beneficial to the community. With bank created credit now at 95% + of money supply, entire economies are effectively run for the profit of financial institutions. This is the real power, rarely recognised or acknowledged, to which all of us including governments the world over are subject. Our money, instead of being supplied interest free as a means of exchange, now comes as a debt owed to bankers providing them with vast profits, power and control, as the rest of us struggle with an increasing burden of debt.... There is much less risk to making loans than investing in a business. Interest is payable regardless of the success of the venture. If it fails or cannot meet the interest payments, the bank may seize and later sell the borrower’s property. Borrowing is extremely costly to borrowers who may end up paying back 2 or 3 times the sum lent. The banks are acquiring an ever increasing stake in our land, housing and other assets through the indebtedness of individuals, industry, agriculture, services and government - to the extent that Britain and the world are today effectively owned by them.

      Furthermore, central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank which regulate the commercial banks and set interest rates are controlled not by elected governments but largely by private interests from the world of commercial banking. They are basically private banks. Even the Bank of England, although nationalised in 1946 (i.e.  its shares were acquired by the state) is still largely under private control by virtue of the fact that its Court of Directors, the Monetary Policy  Committee and its executive directors, who are responsible for the day to day running of the bank, are all dominated by bankers and conventional economists.  

     The debt burden on individuals and businesses is always going to increase under this system, because when a bank creates money by making a new loan, no extra money is created and fed into the economy to pay the interest on that loan… The existing money supply would soon be depleted by interest payments to the banks, if more money was not found from somewhere. The only way for interest payments to be kept up therefore, is for more loans to be taken out. Although some individuals and businesses may pay off their debts or get by without additional borrowing, overall people and industry must keep borrowing more and more to create the money in the economy required to service the overall burden of debt. The  level of debt which stood at £680 billion in 1997 means we are borrowing about £60 billion of new “money” into existence each year to cover interest payments. However, people and industry can’t go on increasing their debt indefinitely even with lower interest rates - sooner or later they will no longer be able to afford to, and will gradually stop borrowing more money into existence. When this happens, the economy will go into decline. The system thus contains the seeds of its own destruction.

      Not only are individuals and businesses in debt up to their eyeballs, but so are whole nations. Governments borrow money from banks in a similar way as individuals - in return they issue to the lender exchequer or treasury bonds - otherwise known as government stocks or securities. These are basically IOU’s - promises by government to repay the loan by a particular date, and to pay interest in the meantime.
      The result of government borrowing is the national debt. British national debt now stands at about £400 billion - the annual interest on that debt is around £25 - £30 billion. The government raises this money by taxing you and me. National debt is up from £26 billion in 1960 and £90 billion in 1980. Successive governments have borrowed this money into existence over the years. 
      However, if banks can create money out of nothing, then so can the state... in fact it already does so with the relatively very small amount of cash in the economy. Abraham Lincoln considered it a primary duty of the government to provide a nation with the medium of exchange to enable the economy to function. He proved the point by funding the Union war effort in the U.S. civil war with government created currency called “Greenbacks”, rather than taking out huge loans from the banks. He was of course assassinated and the creation of greenbacks was terminated. 100 years later John F. Kennedy had similar ideas. 
      So instead of creating it themselves and spending it into the economy on public services and projects, boosting the economy and providing jobs, governments get banks to create it for them and then borrow it at interest.
      It all started in 1694, when King William needed money to fight a war against France. He borrowed £1.2 million from a group of London bankers and goldsmiths. In return for the loan, they were incorporated by royal charter as the Bank of England, which became the government’s banker. Interest at 8% was payable on the loan and immediately taxes were imposed on a whole range of goods to pay the interest. This marked the birth of national debt. Ever since then the world over, governments have borrowed money from private banking interests and taxed the population as a whole to pay the interest. Governments could create as much money as is necessary to fund public projects and once spent by them into the economy when the projects are paid for, it would continue to circulate as interest free money. Instead the government constantly whines that there is never enough money for schools, hospitals etc. because it borrows much of what it needs, and this creates added expense through interest charges.

     To fund a war effort, governments borrow massive amounts from the banks – British national debt soared as a result of fighting two world wars (from £0.7 billion in 1914 to £23 billion by 1946) .. War can be very profitable for bankers. By supplying credit to those of whom they approve and denying it to those of whom they disapprove, international bankers can not only create boom or bust supporting or undermining governments, they can also determine the outcome of a war….

     Germany was not defeated on the battlefield in World War One – international bankers withdrew funding, whilst US banks funded Bolshevik agitators, armed by Moscow, who infiltrated Germany, triggering strikes and massive popular unrest.  All this disrupted supplies and totally undermined the war effort – Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and Germany was forced to surrender [7]. Thereafter, huge reparations were demanded, ensuring the total collapse into debt of the Weimar republic. International bankers set up the Dawes “recovery” plan which plunged Germany into even greater debt and economic chaos, creating the conditions for the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party. The same bankers went on, usually through highly covert means, to fund the rearmament of Germany and later the allies. As soon as a war was on the horizon, lending took place and the great depression came to an end almost over night. The names behind all this, such as Warburg, Rothschild and Rockefeller are still major power brokers in the banking world today [8].
     More recently, one of the greatest contributions to debt in the third world was the fourfold increase in the price of oil in the 1970’s. Third world countries in severe difficulties because of the oil price hike, took out loans on crippling terms, as interest rates were raised sky high in the mid to late ‘70’s ...and hey presto, the entire third world was suddenly indebted to the banks as well. Was this just some economic “accident”, was it just an OPEC decision to raise oil prices, or did someone else approve it as part of a bigger strategy? It is said that at the 1973 meeting of the Bilderberg group in Sweden, which was attended by top executives of the so called “Seven Sisters” oil cartel (the world’s 7 biggest oil companies B.P. Texaco etc.), a consensus was reached to bring about the oil price increases that subsequently followed.
     It is widely, but mistakenly, believed that the purpose of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to encourage development and relieve poverty in the third world, but in practice these organisations have added to the impoverishment of millions. They are based in Washington, they operate behind closed doors, they make loans, adding to the burden of debt and interest, and furthermore, the loans have strings attached in the form of “Structural Adjustment Programmes” (SAPs). SAPs are the response to the fact that so many countries could no longer meet the interest repayments on the big loans made since the ‘70s, thanks to the increased interest rates fixed by the banks. In practice, structural adjustment means major adjustments to economic and monetary policies to produce income to enable interest payments to be met. It has led to a corporate take-over with the sale of government and national assets by privatisation, and massive cuts in public spending at the expense of basic healthcare and education etc. - also big drives to increase exports of whatever can be exported. This for example, leads to clearance of forests by timber companies, often foreign, for timber export, or for raising cattle to supply beef to the west, use of prime agricultural land for growing cash crops for consumption in wealthy countries, which already have surpluses, e.g. “out of season” vegetables, cut flowers, rice paddies in India becoming prawn farms to supply Japan etc. etc. This reduces staple food production for local consumption, putting prices up, and is the process that forces people from the land into city slums and shanties. Big plantations in the hands of multi-nationals or a rich local elite (well illustrated in Brazil) become the order of the day. Finally, there is absolute adherence to the principles of the “free market” and “free trade” – the effects of which have been noted already. With tariff barriers down, there are more imports, which increases the trade deficit, necessitating more loans with more interest payable, leading to more S.A.Ps with more strings attached, such that countries are now being forced to hand over control of their resources to outsiders, such as Mexico has effectively done to the U.S. with its oil industry. 
      In 1997 we saw how even the much praised “tiger economies” of the far east were brought under pressure by international speculators, with currencies collapsing. Most have fallen into line - Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia have taken out IMF “rescue packages” involving the taking out big loans with interest and all the other usual strings attached, that have already been mentioned. The same thing happened to Russia a year or so later. Very recently Joe Stilgitz a former chief economist at the World Bank blew the whistle on both the World Bank and the IMF to investigative journalist Greg Palast. It was revealed that  nations were being required to sign detailed secret agreements,  which committed them to sell off their key assets, and to take devastating economic steps. If they didn’t  follow these steps they would be cut off from all international borrowing – clearly disastrous under the current system where no business, corporation or nation, can survive without credit. Palast now has recent inside documents from Argentina - the secret Argentine Plan -  signed by World Bank President, James Wolfensen. Argentina is now in chaos, having had 6 presidents in as many weeks, because the economy is in ruins. And this happened because, in the late ‘80s, the IMF and World Bank ordered them to sell off public assets, such as the water system. And this is just one country. The Buenos Aires water system was sold to the now notorious Enron as was the pipeline between Argentina and Chile. Furthermore it has been revealed that the leaders and chief ministers of these countries have salted away hundreds of millions of dollars  into Swiss bank accounts in the process, whilst the IMF and the World Bank with full knowledge of what was happening, have looked the other way. The water systems, railways, telephone companies, nationalised oil companies etc. are then transferred to western corporate interests  for next to nothing. They have been handed over, generally, to the likes of Citibank which grabbed half the Argentine banks, British Petroleum which grabbed pipelines in Ecuador and Enron which has grabbed water systems all over the place. To make matters worse they don’t even run the utilities properly - but this is much more than just a few fat cats getting rich at the public expense – it’s about absolute power and control and the cosy relationships between banking and big business. [9] 
      By raising interest rates the Bank of England has the power to raise the value of the pound against other currencies notably the Euro, making British goods expensive to sell in the rest of the EU. The European Central Bank may keep its interest rates down, depressing the value of the Euro. To avoid the trading problems that this can create, sections of industry involved in exporting to the rest of the EU, support the single currency. With power to adjust interest rates across the world, banking cartels could certainly put pressure on the British people so that we end up agreeing to accept the single currency, and with it, centralised control desired by many big corporations and financiers - those who have also shaped the EU. Indeed the heads of the central banks have their own banking forum in the form of the Bank of International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland. 
      Banks making losses is almost unknown. In a bust cycle, they make their profits by seizing the assets of those who can no longer repay the loans, as a result of a downturn in business, through banks putting up interest rates, which reduces the amount of money in circulation. Later they can sell the seized assets, when they issue money and make loans so that there is money for them to be purchased by others, in a wonderful example of having your cake and eating it. In the boom cycles, there are masses of interest payments coming in as more and more money is issued and lent. The 1980’s property boom came about as a result of a huge influx of new money coming into circulation through massive lending. Prices soared with all the credit available, ensuring we all went more and more into debt with ever larger mortgages to our homes. Then interest rates rose.... and bankruptcies and repossessions in 1991and 1992 reached record levels. A financial crisis, usually brought about by a big interest rate increase, results in the banks seizing assets and adding to their wealth. 
      Every time you make a purchase, you are making a payment into the banking system, for built in to the cost of whatever item you are purchasing, is the interest that the producer, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer has had to pay to a bank. Add to that, the fact that you might be paying interest on a mortgage, an overdraft, a credit card, or all three. You are also paying the interest on the national debt through your taxes, and your council tax is hiked because the local authority is in debt as well…. You begin to realise just how much wealth is siphoned off to the banks and how many extra hours you have to work and struggle to create this wealth. 
      This is the power and control that debt has over us all and gives to those to whom we are in debt. If you buy a house in this country with a large mortgage, by the time you have paid off the loan, you will have paid for the house about 3 times over, and in the meantime can you really say you own it, because if you can’t meet the repayments (and you have no control over the interest rates charged) you’re out. Is it any wonder that the traditional teachings of Christianity and Islam so wisely forbid the loan of money upon usury. Debt is truly the modern form of slavery.
      To return to where we started, money is the means of facilitating the exchange of goods and services. There is nothing wrong with creating it out of nothing, because this is the only way to provide the means of exchange. To avoid inflation, the amount that is printed or created must be matched to the amount of economic activity that is taking place. What is wrong is that the right to do this has almost  entirely passed  from the state to private interests who create it as loans for private profit. Consider for a moment a system where a democratically elected government takes over the issue of money and decides to stimulate the economy by making interest free loans through a national credit office (the cost of which could be met by a modest level of taxation or the levying of fixed administrative charges on borrowers or even a share in the profits of a borrower’s business venture or a combination of all three). Thousands of entrepreneurs would take up loans on such attractive terms, a major cause of inflation would be gone, and economic activity would boom creating masses of those ever elusive jobs that governments profess themselves to be so concerned about. However it is clear that many bankers, economists and almost all politicians do not really understand the existing system and its far reaching effects. They support it largely through ignorance, and the fact that it has been in use for years and there are no alternatives operating anywhere. However there have always been those who realise how the introduction and maintenance of an usury banking system can be used to retain power and control and they rely on the continuing ignorance of the majority. It is now so universal that there is hardly a man, woman or child on the planet, who is not paying the price of this iniquitous system.
THE FABIAN SOCIETY and NEW LABOUR
      There is occasional mention of the Fabian Society in the media – usually in connection with some report or other. However, many people have never heard of it, and of those that have, most probably have little idea of what it stands for. Significantly, Blair and most of his cabinet colleagues past and present including Straw, Mandelson, Brown, Mowlam and others are members of the centre left socialist intellectual Fabian Society.  
      Fabianism believes in what it describes as “the democratic control of society in all its activities.” The key word is control – whereas most people see democracy as based on the freedom and liberty of the individual, Fabian socialism places the emphasis on control of the individual – a sort of “we know what is best” attitude.  It sees this as being best achieved through some form of global government, a goal it shares with Communism, (which is also based on centralised control). Some time ago an elderly friend of mine told me how she had attended Fabian Society meetings in the 1930s, and she confirmed that world government was what was discussed even then. In short, those who adhere to Fabian philosophy, seek a highly centralised power base – the elimination of national sovereignty is fundamental to the process.  The emblem of the Fabian Society is the tortoise, which represents slow but steady progress. The Labour Party has always included Fabians, but  New Labour now seems riddled with them. This political philosophy, widespread throughout the so called centre left parties of Europe must explain so much about how and why the EU has developed in the way that it has and why our government is so committed to the single European state. It has also had influence within the U.S. Democratic party. Members of the Fabian Society founded the London School of Economics, which has traditionally ensured that budding socialists receive a  thorough grounding in traditional economics and monetary policy!  
      Fabianism would appear to have many adherents on the staff of the centre left newspapers such as the Independent, the Guardian and the Observer which have generally been very supportive of the EEC/EU over the years, not to mention the BBC which has singularly failed over the years to disclose the reality of the EEC/EU to the public.                         
      What Blair has described as the “third way” is in fact the coming together of Fabian socialism and the free market global economy. New Labour represents the radical restructuring of the party and its policies to fit in with the “global economy”, modelled on the U.S. Democratic party. New Labour now presides over the growing tendency towards short time short term lower paid jobs. Its leaders openly fraternise and seek favour with corporate interests from the City to the far east – it has unashamedly become the new party of big business, on which it now relies for a substantial part of its funding, and whose interests it does everything possible to promote – e.g. genetically modified crops. It has distanced itself from trade unions from which  few parliamentary candidates are now drawn. Policy is made at the top, its traditional commitments to employment, local authorities, pensions and benefits have all fallen by the wayside. Spending is kept under tight control and privatisation continues apace. Services in health care, education, care of the elderly and many other services traditionally provided by the state and local authorities, are all up for grabs by the big operators in the private sector under New Labour’s “private finance initiatives”. [10] 
THE EUROPEAN UNION – model for the future? 
      “Let’s stop pretending that the European Union is the product of some starry-eyed internationalism dedicated to peace and harmony….”      Spectre magazine 

      The European Union also represents the coming together of Fabian socialism and the corporate free market economy. The agenda is centralisation of power, ultimately leading to some form of global government. The destruction of sovereign nation states is clearly vital if that is to be achieved, and anyone who has examined the reality of European Union can be under no illusion that that is what is happening to the member states of the EU. It is very likely as a result of secret discussions such as those of the Bilderberg group, to which only a select few are party, that cross party consensus throughout Europe on the creation of the EU was established, ensuring that no choice on the EU has been offered to the people of Europe. The sudden imposition of a gigantic totalitarian police state, which is what the EU is becoming, would never be accepted. The key has been a gradual step by step stealth approach so that when people finally realise what the game is, it is too late. To get us to support membership initially, we were told it was just a free trade bloc entailing no loss of sovereignty - now rapidly we are being confronted with political union leading to a single federal state, with a mass of regulations and directives impinging on every aspect of our lives emanating from unelected bodies. The Maastricht Treaty is very complex, and has to be read in conjunction with the Treaty of Rome and the Single European Act in order to make sense. The Amsterdam Treaty also has to be read in conjunction with the Maastricht Treaty complicating matters even more. There is almost no possibility that any M.Ps or even government ministers in any member state will have read them - they simply wouldn’t have the time. How many of them really know what they entail?  What information was given to our M.Ps. when they were debated in Parliament? The Acts of Parliament incorporating them into our law simply refer to the treaties as a whole, and are only two pages long…
      The EU may be well be the global model for the future, so let’s look at it closely – first the major institutions: [11]
      The Council of Ministers, which meets behind closed doors is the policy making institution of the EU, backed by the powerful Committee of Permanent Representatives - a body of appointed paid civil servants. The make up of the Council depends on what is being discussed – foreign ministers discuss foreign policy, agriculture ministers farming, the Common Agricultural Policy etc. Decisions are made unanimously, or by “qualified majority”, which is being extended by each successive treaty. Its individual members are generally, as in the case of Britain, elected members of national parliaments, but as a body, it is not answerable to any elected institution nor can it be disbanded or dismissed. The process is one of reaching agreements at meetings, and then what has been agreed being implemented by legislation or otherwise across the EU by governments of member states. It has been and continues to be a very important method of developing the EU and its policy. It is also employed at the six monthly EU summits attended by the heads of governments of member states.
      The European Commission also meets in secret, made up presently of 20 appointed members, 1 to 2 per state. It alone initiates EU legislation by turning policy decisions of the Council of Ministers into legislative “proposals” which eventually become “Community acts” in the form of directives and regulations binding on member states, whose elected national parliaments must implement them forthwith. It is backed up by about 13000 appointed paid civil servants. Commissioners are forbidden by the Treaty of Rome to represent their national interests – they must promote and represent the interests of the Union. (whatever they may be – their own and those of big business perhaps which in practice has easy access  to the Commission, not readily granted to anyone else.) 
      European Parliament -  the only elected institution in the EU, with 626 members of which Britain returns 87.  In reality this is no more than an assembly - it cannot even initiate legislation, (it can only “ask” the Commission to do so) and it has no control over money supply or taxation. It often just gives opinions or only has the right to be  “consulted”. Even where its approval is required for legislative proposals, a very complex procedure involving strict time limits favours legislative proposals going through unchallenged. In practice the parliament is a farce - the number of legislative proposals in the form of regulations and directives is so great that MEPs have to vote on large numbers of them at a time with little or no knowledge as to what the proposals involve. Debate is virtually non-existent – and with strict time limits of just a few minutes imposed on how long an individual MEP can speak, this barely even qualifies as a talking shop. Sitting in Brussels and Strasbourg it is hopelessly inaccessible as far as the electors are concerned. Once elected, an MEP’s role is basically to promote the EU for which he or she is well paid with lavish expenses.
      European Central Bank  - The ECB is run by appointees, who are completely “independent” (they do not take any instructions from people such as members of the European Parliament who have been elected, or any other EU institution or member state government, none of whom are permitted to attempt to influence it.). They come from private banking interests and meet behind closed doors with complete control over the direction of European economic and monetary policy and interest rates, and are able, on their own, to issue regulations and directives carrying the same force as those issued through the community legislative procedures.  These people are totally unanswerable to anyone.
      This is where the real power lies. For those states that sign up to the single currency, the ECB will determine monetary policy and set interest rates that control  the amount of money and credit in circulation, and thus the general level of economic activity, at a given time throughout those member states which adopt the Euro.
      What it decides will determine levels of direct and indirect taxation, spending in every area of economic and social activity, wage deals, government borrowing, the budgets to be allocated to the newly created regional assemblies etc. National Central Banks become an integral part of the European System of Central Banks and must act in accordance with its instructions. It therefore has the power to controls cycles of “boom” and “bust”. Its regulations and directives do not require the approval or consent of any of the other institutions, which are obliged to recognise its “independence”, by not seeking to influence it. The only control is a judicial one exercised by the European Court of Justice which is limited to deciding whether or not it has acted in accordance with it’s very wide powers!
      The granting of full independence, and control of monetary policy to the Bank of England by the Labour Government immediately after it was elected, was essential  to prepare for the handing over of power to the ECB and the incorporation of the Bank of England into the European System of Central Banks.
      The Euro is fundamental to the continuing creation of a single European state. Our government, despite what some ministers may say publicly,  is almost certainly ideologically committed to getting us in. The so called 5 economic tests that have to be met are really just a smoke screen to conceal the political objective, and to allow time to try to convince people that the single currency should be adopted. The government will try to avoid calling a referendum on the issue until they are satisfied they will get a yes vote. Even the protocol in the Masstricht Treaty that permitted Britain to remain outside the single currency is something of a sham, because we are already committed to managing our economic and monetary policy for the benefit of the community as a whole, and with a view to entry into full monetary union, no matter how far in the future that may be. What is the difference between running policy in readiness for going in and actually being in? It certainly means public spending, taxation, public sector borrowing and public sector wage deals are being tightly controlled to comply with the so called “convergence criteria” for joining the Euro. On the economic front, the shots are called by big business and multinational corporations, through organisations such as the European Round Table of Industrialists, whose founder Etienne Davignon chaired  the Bilderberg Group meeting in 2000. So many new regulations seem designed to force small business people right out of business. 
      European Court of Justice - (NOT to be confused with the European Court of Human Rights which is separate and not an EU institution - yet) Its job is to interpret the rules of the treaties and all community legislative acts, regulations and directives made under them. Since the only law it applies is that contained in the treaties, which is designed to further European integration, it is essentially a political court, whose decisions and interpretations are intended to make sure member states give effect to that process.
       There are other general features that need looking at as well:
       Europol - A Europe wide police force known as Europol is being created. It has very wide powers but is not answerable to any elected body. It reports to a special committee appointed by the Council of Ministers. It exists ostensibly to fight crime, but it has a much wider function. Not only will it collect and store information on known and suspected criminals, but also on anyone's political and religious beliefs and activities. The building up of large databases is specifically provided for under the Maastricht Treaty. Europol has recently been empowered to form its own anti terrorist squad with access to information held by MI5 and MI6. All Europol personnel are immune from prosecution. 
       Corpus Juris - The European Commission and the European Parliament are pressing for the imposition of a uniform legal system throughout the EU known as Corpus Juris.  If fully implemented in Britain, all criminal prosecutions would be heard solely by judges or other professional paid officials appointed by the state. Trial by jury would be phased out, to be replaced by a single judge sitting alone. Recent attempts to get legislation through Parliament reducing those cases where an accused can demand trial by jury, should be seen as the start of this process.  In addition a Home Office report has recommended that lay magistrates should be replaced by stipendiary (i.e. professional paid) magistrates, another measure that clearly fits in with the Corpus Juris plan. In both cases the government claims the measures are simply in the interests of efficiency and cost effectiveness. The involvement of ordinary people in the judicial process as magistrates and jurors is fundamental to the system of justice employed through much of the English speaking world, and goes back hundreds of years  - it is designed to protect the citizen against the risk of arbitrary or malicious prosecution, and is a healthy feature in any democracy. Corpus Juris would also introduce detention without trial, since under this continental system, a person suspected of an offence can be arrested and held in custody for a period of six months or more, pending such further investigations and enquiries as the public prosecutor sees fit, before being brought before a court. This is radically different from our own system of Habeas Corpus  (which has its origins as far back as Magna Carta of 1215), whereby an accused person must be brought before a court within a very short period of arrest, and evidence against the arrested person produced.   The Anti –Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 rushed through parliament in the aftermath of September 11th  includes provisions enabling the Home Secretary to make changes such as these to our court system, by statutory instrument, rather than by a bill requiring full parliamentary debate.  A European public prosecutor has already been appointed and will have authority in Britain and throughout the EU, initially only in respect of cases involving fraud against the EU budget (e.g. people who make dishonest claims for EU grants and subsidies etc.) this is now being extended via Eurojust, a new agency which will have powers of investigation in all EU member states. 
      European Army - Under the new Nice treaty, an old European defence pact known as Western European Union is to be incorporated into the European Union itself. It will lay the foundation for a European Army, hailed by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer as another pillar in the process of European unification. The first steps to create the European army were taken at the EU Helsinki summit in December 1999, where agreement was reached to set up a so called “rapid reaction force” of 60,000 soldiers complete with command, planning and intelligence bases. It is likely to have an offensive role rather like NATO adopted and put into practice in Yugoslavia and Kosovo in 1999. More significantly, French PM Lionel Jospin has stated that “by pooling its armies, Europe will be able to maintain internal security, as well as prevent conflicts throughout the world..” Indeed, Foreign Office sources indicate that the setting up of a 5000 strong internal emergency reaction force was approved at the EU summit at Feira, Portugal in June 2000. In many parts of the EU, it is normal practice already for riot police, with tear gas and water cannon, to be  used to confront even peaceful protests   
      
     Banning Political Parties? - In April 2000, the European Parliament approved the Dimitrakopoulos-Leinen Report, article 6 of which makes provision for the setting up of EU wide political parties. However, this is subject to the proviso that “parties that do not respect human rights and democratic principles as set out in the Treaty of Rome shall be the subject of suspension proceedings in the European Court of Justice”. Despite the rhetoric in its preamble, the Treaty of Rome is not based on democratic principles but rather on European integration. Is the framework being created that any party opposed to the EU such as the United Kingdom Independence Party, could be subjected to such proceedings? The banning of political parties characterised the former Soviet Union. They never abolished elections - the ruling Communist party simply outlawed all other parties as “fascist” or “counter revolutionary” and maintained itself in power that way!
      
     EU Constitution etc.  The Treaty of Amsterdam, signed in October 1997, provided for the removal of border controls between EU member states, although Britain has a temporary opt out on this. Plans exist for a written constitution for the EU incorporating the existing treaties - the Nice Treaty declares that this will be presented to the next intergovernmental conference in 2004. The last intergovernmental conference that produced the Nice Treaty laid the foundations for this under the guise of a charter of fundamental rights – this may sound great… until you realise that the only rights you get are the ones specifically mentioned in the charter –  and that under article 51 all rights can be suspended if “the interests of the Union” so require. This along with the possible future replacement of the Council of Ministers by a president with power to appoint a cabinet would ensure that member states’ governments would no longer have any involvement in EU policy making, or be able to amend the treaties or a future EU constitution. The Nice Treaty also provides the framework for the enlargement of the EU from the present 15 states up to 27 – mainly the former communist states of eastern Europe and some of the old soviet republics. 

      Devolution - There’s been lots of spin and hype about bringing power closer to people by devolving power to Scotland and Wales. The devolved assemblies have very limited  powers  in practice – they have no revenue raising powers such as the council tax raised by county councils. Fixed sums are allocated to them annually by central government. What they can spend the money on is also limited to health, education and certain aspects of economic development. The devolution plan is fundamental to the ongoing creation of the single European state, which may explain why our government launched such massive campaigns in favour of a “yes” vote in the referenda for Scottish and Welsh devolution. The 1998 “Good Friday” agreement, presented as a breakthrough in the Northern Ireland peace process, was a vital part of the same plan, because, crucially, it set up an assembly for Northern Ireland.
      Under the umbrella of the Committee of the Regions (set up by the Maastricht Treaty) the EU is divided into 111 regions of which Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are each a region. England is divided into 9 regions and the plan is for these regions also to have assemblies  – John Prescott is a vigorous promoter of these. The first English assembly (Greater London) is already in place. The remaing eight  would complete the EU pattern. Their forerunners, the regional development agencies, have already been set up. These assemblies will play no part in the EU legislative process - they too simply decide how a budget allocated to them will be spent in limited areas such as health and education. Their voice in the EU will be confined to 2  members each appointed to the Committee of the Regions which is only consulted by the other institutions in very limited areas of legislation.
      In 1998, Tory MEP Roger Helmer was told seriously by a fellow Tory MEP that in 10 years Westminster would be gone, and by then, the U.K. would be 12 regions  governed from Brussels. With major constitutional and law making powers being transferred to the federal institutions of the EU, and limited spending powers being devolved to the regions, elected national parliaments are already becoming just “clearing houses” for passing on EU made policy, rules and regulations – part of major global moves intended to deprive democratic structures of any real power and substance. [12]

      Some people defend the EU saying without it we would all end up at war. This is nonsense  - it is thanks to such things as modern communications, television and travel that have brought us together in ways that were impossible 50 plus years ago, making it highly unlikely that we would ever fight each other again as in the past. They also ignore the fact that most wars in the world today are being fought within states with totalitarian regimes which refuse to accept minority and individual rights to run their own affairs. This is the pointer for the future – conflict in Europe with the grass roots rising up against undemocratic centralised control that the EU, especially an enlarged EU represents… Indeed mass protests are already starting to take place throughout the EU as more and more people see their livelihoods being sacrificed on the altar of what is becoming a banker corporate dictatorship. 

NAFTA, APEC and “DOLLARISATION” 
      A similar process as we have with the European Union is now beginning to take place on the other side of the Atlantic. The embryonic North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is presently comprised only of the U.S. Canada and Mexico. It is presented at this stage as no more than a free trade bloc, as was the EU’s forerunner the Common Market. However, Bill Clinton spoke latterly of expanding it to take in central and south American states and extending its powers. All central and South American countries are already tied into at least one of several free trade blocs of which Mercosur is the largest – these seem likely to be merged into NAFTA in due course. A vastly expanded NAFTA  to be known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas  was the central theme at the  “Summit of the Americas” held in Quebec City, Canada in April 2001.  This whole process is backed by George W. Bush and the New York based “Council of the Americas” comprised of bankers and big corporate bosses.
      Although there are rules and arbitration procedures and an enforcement tribunal, as yet NAFTA does not have formal institutions like the EU’s. However, in addition a process of “dollarisation” is afoot.  There has been serious debate in Canada and Argentina to scrap their currencies and adopt the U.S. dollar instead, and  Ecuador and Panama have already done so. Ultimately, a single currency for the Americas (the US dollar), like a single currency for the EU, is a probable objective in certain corporate banking and government circles.
       A third major bloc is starting to be formed, namely the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation zone (APEC) – within that region is AFTA (the Asian Free Trade Area.) which covers ten states in south east Asia. Are these the forerunners of  “the American Union” and “the Asia-Pacific Union”?

THE UNITED NATIONS AND NATO  

      The UN is not a very effective organisation these days. The problem is that, whilst at its inception at the end of World War 2, on the one hand the victorious powers may have sought to create an organisation that was supposed to tackle “worthy goals”, on the other hand  they sought an organisation to protect and promote their own interests. Thus the Security Council with its five permanent members drawn from the victors, was set up alongside the General Assembly of states. The five permanent members of the Security are also the leading purveyors of the weapons of war. The General Assembly has been sidelined by the Security Council and its powerful five permanent members each of whom has a veto over any proposal or resolution. None has used the veto more than the US and even when a resolution is made it is frequently ignored, and only heeded when it doesn’t interfere with its members plans, especially those of the US. Following the end of the cold war and the demise of Soviet power, many people say that today UN = US!
      However the UN is in the process of reinventing itself. Under the headline “Getting into bed with big business” journalist George Monbiot writing in the Guardian 31/8/00, concluded that the UN is turning itself into an enforcement agency for the global economy, helping western companies to penetrate new markets, whilst avoiding regulations which would be the only effective means of holding them to account. “By making peace with power, the UN is declaring war on the powerless…” It is the body responsible for imposing and maintaining the most appalling economic sanctions on the people of Iraq for the last 11 years. The UN Centre on Trans-national Corporations (TNCs), which tried to help weak nations protect themselves from predatory companies, was dissolved in 1993 – its place taken by the Business Council for Sustainable Development put together at the much hyped Earth Summit at Rio in 1992. Its chief recommendation is that companies regulate themselves. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is now saying that he wants to see more opportunities for companies, rather than governments or the UN, to set global standards. It was announced in June 1997 that corporations would be given a formal role in UN decision making. The UN Conference on Trade and Development now works with the International Chamber of Commerce, which is dominated by TNCs. In 1999, Annan launched the Business Humanitarian Forum, chaired jointly by the UN Commissioner on Refugees and the Chairman of Unocal, a US company which once operated in Burma helping to build a gas pipeline, during the construction of which Burmese government soldiers tortured and killed local people. Annan explained to BHF’s corporate members, such as Rio Tinto Zinc and Nestle, that the business community is fast becoming one of the UN’s most important allies. In March 1999 it was revealed that the UN Development Programme was receiving gifts from a variety of big corporations, in return for which they receive privileged access to UNDP offices.
        The UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 didn’t receive much media coverage. However, amongst its proposals were plans for a much enhanced UN military role – the present role of peace keepers made up of the soldiers of member states is no longer seen as adequate – the UN must have its own staff and troop training facilities to provide a permanent UN standing army along with an intelligence capability. Above all, it was contended, the UN should be able to crack down with full military might wherever a national government fails to treat its people in conformity with UN criteria on “human rights” and “social justice”. Its role was no longer to be just peace keeping, but “humanitarian intervention” and “peace enforcement”.  Tony Blair and Robin Cook were the prime movers behind these plans which appear to be very much in accord with their Fabian philosophy. [13]

        To get a good idea as to how this may work in practice and what the grounds might be for intervention let’s look at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ( NATO), and particularly its intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Just as the UN is seeking to provide itself with an enhanced military role, so too is NATO. As more states join NATO, it is possible that its military roles could eventually be merged with the UN. NATO was originally a defensive pact between the US and several European nations, created as a bastion against possible Soviet aggression – it would act if only a member state was attacked – it would not initiate an attack itself. But all that changed in 1999, when NATO declared that it had the right to intervene wherever it regards a state as not respecting human rights.
       Let’s be very clear about one thing - western governments and corporate business interests have no objection to states with repressive totalitarian regimes, provided they play the global game, allowing TNCs to invest in and exploit their resources - and provided these regimes take out loans from the big commercial banks, the World Bank or the IMF etc. -  for example Indonesia, the Phillipines and numerous tin pot dictatorships in sub Saharan Africa. Indeed western governments will help bring dictators and human rights abusers to power and support them, as the US did with General Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia.
      However if they do not play the game, instead seeking to be independent for the benefit of their own people, then, if they happen to have a dubious human rights record towards minorities, it will be seized upon to provide the excuse for armed intervention. Such states are now termed rogue states, and the old federal republic of Yugoslavia became a perfect example. It was a socialist country with state and co-operative ownership of business interests. It was unwilling to allow foreign companies to invest in or take over its industries and was not interested in joining the European Union or NATO. Economic collapse occurred in the late 80’s when international bankers called in Yugoslavia’s loans, which had the effect of rekindling old ethnic tensions as people began to squabble over increasingly scarce jobs and resources, and the ethnic groups blamed each other for the resulting economic collapse. (Against this backdrop, Milosevic was elected to power by a Serb majority.) Subsequent events produced favourable results for western finance and industry. The newly created states of Bosnia, Croatia etc. are all now open to  “foreign investment”, but Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo still made up Yugoslavia. [14]
      Within Kosovo lies the massive Trepca mining complex capable of producing up to £3 million worth of vital industrial minerals per day. It is one of the most concentrated mineral rich areas in the world and is a rich picking for TNCs. The Kosovo Liberation Army is in fact a terrorist organisation rather like the IRA and was actually supported covertly by the German secret service. The alleged mass atrocities by Milosevic against Albanians in Kosovo have never been established, although these were the excuse for armed intervention. Nearer the truth is perhaps, that the federal Yugoslav authorities used heavy handed tactics at times to deal with terrorists and guerrillas whose aim was (and still is) to create a greater Albania. The Rambouillet Accords ultimately put before Milosevic by NATO were a modern form of “gunboat diplomacy”, because they included demands that no leader of a sovereign nation could possibly accept - namely that NATO personnel have unrestricted access, to not just Kosovo, but the whole of Yugoslavia. Milosevic naturally refused to accept this, and NATO responded with the mass bombing of Serbia and Kosovo that followed. 
       The International Crisis Group is a high level think tank supported by financier and regular Bilderberg attendee George Soros. In November 1999 it sought to provide  policy guidance to governments involved in the NATO led reshaping of the Balkans, and issued a paper advising the take-over of the Trepca complex as soon as possible. On 14th. August 2000, NATO forces swooped down on the Zvecan smelter to seize the last remaining piece of the Trepca mining complex owned by the Yugoslav government. The excuse for this action was health reasons. It was claimed the plant produced dangerous atmospheric lead pollution and that it would remain closed until repairs could be made to reduce emissions. In an ironic disregard for health concerns, protesting  workers  were dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets… [15]
      In conjunction with the UN and NATO, the term “the international community” has become very popular. This loose and misleading term has no definition, but in reality it is the global power brokers - the movers and shakers who will deal ruthlessly with those who do not tow the line, as Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and others have found to their cost. 
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU ...... AND LISTENING TO YOU…..
      Surveillance cameras are in almost every high street now – part of what the Guardian, on 25/1/99, reported as little known EU proposals that would lead to a massive expansion of surveillance. Local councils and frequently the public, enthusiastically endorse the plans – it will prevent crime they say – maybe, but with masses of crime in some areas, there’s not a lot of evidence of that so far. Perhaps more important from the authorities point of view, these can also be used to identify anyone and monitor their activities and movements, particularly those of political activists and dissidents. With the introduction of driving licences with photographs and passport photographs, both of which are digitally duplicated in central computer banks, it is possible, through image comparison, to identify anyone in seconds. Speed check cameras, now common on many roads, by reading a number plate can also be used to track the movement of any vehicle across the country.
      If you go on any sort of protest march or demonstration, you will be filmed on video cameras by police or security personnel, and the surveillance cameras in the area will be working overtime...  Big Brother is watching you more and more... and he can also listen to you via the Echelon communications monitoring system run by the American "National Security Agency" operating out of bases at Morwenstow, Cornwall and Menwith Hills, North Yorkshire. This system monitors telephone, fax and e-mail communications throughout Europe and elsewhere. It is programmed to lock on to a particular communication for analysis if certain "key" words are used in that communication [16]. If you carry a mobile phone, even when switched off, it emits a radio signal to the nearest base station. With the co-operation of the mobile phone companies, your movements can be tracked.
      Under the Security Services Act, MI5 now has powers of policing with wide discretion to bug and burgle, but with no definition of what categories of people are liable to surveillance, and no limit on what activities can be subject to surveillance. In 1998, the EU came up with Enfopol 98, a plan requiring telecommunications companies to build tapping connections into every kind of communications system including mobile phones , the internet, fax machines, pagers and interactive cable TV services.  Pursuant to this, using a “fast track” bill and its huge majority in parliament, the government rushed through the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which gives the police and security services the power to monitor internet mailing lists. They can also order internet service providers to give them access to peoples’ private E-mail. The latest measures, contained in an EU directive, allow governments to require that phone and internet companies shall retain detailed logs of their customers communications for an unlimited period – presently these are kept for short periods for billing purposes and are destroyed thereafter. Whilst police still require a warrant to intercept the content of electronic communications, this legislation means they can build up a complete picture of peoples personal communications, including who they have e-mailed and telephoned and which internet websites they have visited [17]. As always, it is claimed that such measures are targeted at organised crime such as drug trafficking, paedophilia, terrorism etc., but clearly they can and will be used against any form of dissent or protest movements.

REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION
    There has been a dramatic increase in recent years of legislation that limits personal freedoms. An early example aimed at the right of people to gather peaceably was the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which made certain forms of trespass a criminal offence.  The first example of detention without trial in Britain are detention provisions for those said to be "mentally disturbed" and as a result "a danger to themselves or the public". Who decides what is meant by these terms and what is a threat to the public..? or perhaps the powers running the state.  Europol has a brief to monitor people critical of the existing order from a psychological angle –  perhaps they need “treatment”.  
    The Terrorism Act 2000 has widened the definition of terrorism enormously to include the threat of "serious violence" against any person or property. How could this definition be interpreted? The term “terrorist” has traditionally been used to refer to armed thugs who carry out shootings and plant bombs, but this Act can clearly embrace the likes of people who tear up genetically modified crops. Furthermore, could these provisions be used against, for example, protesting farmers where scuffles and damage to property has occurred? The Act goes further - organisations can be "outlawed" - addressing a meeting at which there is a member of such an organisation is an offence. There are additional stop and search powers for the police, and expressing support can be treated as "incitement". All newly created terrorist offences carry very severe penalties, as part of a process which seems intent on creating a state in which no dissent of any description will be tolerated. 
      The only way you can get the public to accept all this is by having a climate of fear in which people will forego their freedoms in the call for more "state protection". The Criminal Justice and Conspiracy Act 1998, universally condemned by human rights groups, followed the Omagh bomb outrage in Northern Ireland so quickly that one wonders if it was not already drafted even before the bomb went off….
    In 1999, we had horrific bombings in London aimed at black people and gays. These people naturally demand more "protection", but part of that "protection" will be more legislation restricting personal freedom, more surveillance cameras and increased powers for the police. So who really gains - is it not the authorities who wish to introduce repressive laws? And who exactly is responsible for these outrages….?

SECURITY & INTELLIGENCE SERVICES 

      In the murky world of the intelligence and security services, their trade is treachery - state backed terrorism using propaganda, disinformation, manipulation and murder. They have ties with all kinds of sinister extremist groups, which seem to be infiltrated as a matter of course by the security services. One might say this is essential to keep tabs on their activities, but it is now apparent that the infiltrators are often there to act as “agent provocateurs”. Combat 18, an extreme right wing racist group is actually reckoned to have been set up initially by the intelligence services. Agent provocateurs have clearly played a role in the violence seen recently in anti capitalist demonstrations in London, Gothenburg, Genoa, Barcelona etc, - in Gothenburg and Genoa there were eye witness accounts of violent “protesters” producing their ID cards to police and then being given safe passage behind police lines [18]. All this no doubt to try to bring the wider protest movement into disrepute. This is a world of subversion, where state agencies, media sharks, anarchists and the political fringe overlap. The magazine “the Searchlight” (NOT to be confused with the now defunct American investigative newspaper “the Spotlight”) is reckoned to be an M.I.5 mouthpiece and even ITV’s  “World in Action” programme is referred to as “M.I.5 in Action” in some circles. This reflects the fact that there are journalists and media workers who are deep cover intelligence service operatives whose prime task is to get misleading stories and disinformation into the newspapers etc.  
      If the powers that be want to bring in more surveillance and laws suppressing public freedom, what more effective way than to get involved with extremists, play “agent provocateur” and help perpetrate an atrocity? A year or two back, David Copeland, was convicted for the 1999 London bombs. From his associations it is clear that he encountered these sorts of people. It is now apparent that the security services knew of him and had identified him as the perpetrator of the first bomb attack, yet nothing was done and he went on to bomb the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho. Why not? In the aftermath of this type of atrocity, a fearful outraged public along with M.Ps. demand "something must be done..." They call for the very measures the authorities want in the first place.... more surveillance cameras, powers for the police, tracking devices to help identify and catch these terrible criminals etc." It is now clear that a warning about a major bomb attack was given to police in Northern Ireland just before the Omagh bombing which precipitated the Criminal Justice and Conspiracy Act … yet the information was not acted upon. It is also known that the IRA is infiltrated by undercover British military personnel [19].   Furthermore, unemployment, an ever tighter benefits system and restricted public spending on facilities in run down inner city areas – all this creates anger and despair  - the conditions that breed the sort of general crime that also causes people to demand surveillance etc. for protection. Are there people in power, perhaps behind the scenes, who reckon that social deprivation leading to increased crime is a convenient offshoot of such policies, thus creating the conditions that cause the public to demand more “protective” measures?
     In the United States, as awareness and alarm about the emerging “New World Order” grows, a few people are forming into militia groups willing to resort to armed resistance. The authorities claimed that Timothy McVeigh, who was found guilty of the Oklahoma City bomb outrage, had such connections. However, the size and sophistication of the explosive device(s) used was way beyond anything a small militia group could have produced. Investigators suspect a carefully planned sting operation to put the blame on militia groups, and to use this as an excuse to remove the right of  U.S.citizens to carry guns. Guns are hardly a good thing, but this should not be allowed to conceal the real reason why some in government want to ban guns. The government has also used the outrage as an excuse to increase the use of wiretaps and internet censorship. 
    In the U.S., the National Security Agency (NSA) or “No Such Agency” as it is sometimes known, is said to keep files and information on many thousands of U.S. citizens. Likewise here MI5 and Special Branch have thousands of files on British citizens. 

      The Kennedy’s, Martin Luther King, Olaf Palme, Yitzak Rabin, Diana Princess of Wales - every time a prominent figure is gunned down, it always gets blamed on a mad gunman acting alone – or in Diana’s case an “accident”. And in some cases, the alleged killer ends up being killed or witnesses conveniently have an accident - it’s all wearing a bit thin isn’t it?  Enter again the intelligence and security services – the international heavy mob. Both MI5 and MI6 are unaccountable to the British parliament and the CIA likewise unaccountable to Congress in the US . The CIA is reckoned to operate a substantial “black budget”- the proceeds of drug trafficking, in which it is heavily involved in the Caribbean and Colombia, are carefully laundered and kept separate so as to avoid congressional scrutiny. It then uses these to fund its “dirty tricks” campaigns world-wide –  e.g. seeking to destabilise governments that act in their own interests as opposed to those of the US.[20]
      Latest research into JFK’s murder reveals that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad worked with leading figures in the CIA supportive of Israel, particularly James Jesus Angleton, to eliminate Kennedy. Kennedy was determined to ensure that Israel did not develop nuclear weapons, he wanted friendly relations with Arabs states and he wanted to settle the problem of Palestinians forced from their homes when the state of Israel was created. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and the powerful Jewish lobby in the US saw this as a threat to the existence of the state of Israel… the rest as they say is history.[21]
     An example that came to light some time ago was the MI5/CIA killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan People’s Bureau in London in 1984. Blamed on Libya, this successfully turned British public opinion against Libya, and paved the way for the use of British air bases for American raids on Tripoli in 1986, the purpose of which were to kill Col. Qathafi [22]. Qathafi had already been wrongly blamed for involvement in terrorism in previous years - his real sin in the eyes of Britain and the U.S, was to take control of his country’s oil resources for the benefit of his own people - something the Anglo American oil companies will never accept.
     In  Russia a security service whistle-blower has recently revealed how the KGB’s successor the FSB was in 1999 responsible for bomb attacks on flats in Moscow and elsewhere which claimed 300 lives. Blamed on “Chechen terrorists”, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself an ex KGB boss, used these atrocities as the justification for an all out assault in Chechnya. [23]
      There is hardly a country in central and south America where the CIA has not been involved in covert operations to maintain a regime, or help impose a regime, no matter how ruthless, so long as it supports the interests of the U.S. elite. Chile, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua are the best known and all this ties in well with the “Grand Area” envisaged by the Council on Foreign Relations back in 1941. Indeed a terrorist training facility is maintained at home in the US. Set up in 1946, it was called the “School of the Americas” but has recently renamed itself the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation. Its victims run into many thousands. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by the US government. It has trained more than 60,000 soldiers and policemen in Central and South America. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. For example, in 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. In February 2001 an SOA graduate in Colombia was convicted of complicity in the torture and killing of 30 peasants by paramilitaries. The school's training manuals include top tips for terrorists such as blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.  [24]
      So who is behind the security services? Not being answerable to government, they appear to be a law unto themselves, but in reality they are actually corporately backed and receive corporate funding as well as state funding. They do the bidding of the military industrial complex with their orders coming from a cabal of financial, industrial and political godfathers.  Their sponsors include the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the Council for Foreign Relations, the European Round Table of Industrialists, the Bilderberg Group, the Tri lateral Commission, World Economic Forum etc.  They have their own forum too - the Pinay Circle, the membership of which reinforces the point, being made up as it is, of senior personnel from the CIA ,MI6, Mossad etc, along  with military chiefs, right wing politicians, bankers and corporate bosses [25].  MI6 and the CIA are essentially the same beast, and other agencies such as the German BDR and Israel’s Mossad are closely connected. The Special Air Services (SAS) is the military connection to MI6- SAS  units frequently implement “special operations” abroad designed to help achieve political objectives – e.g. training local guerrillas and dissidents to overthrow a national government not amenable to corporate aims. The training of Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq to fight against Saddam Hussein is a current long running example, and the recruitment and training in the 1980s, of the “Mujihadeen” to overthrow the socialist government of Afghanistan and remove the Russian presence that supported it, is another example.
      Whereas MI6 is essentially concerned with overseas operations, MI5 is concerned with domestic operations. One department deals with breaking into private property, bugging and intimidating targets, another with prying into the personal affairs of deemed “subversives” and yet another linking in with the SAS is involved in physical intimidation, beatings and murder [26] A classic example of the corporate agenda being pursued by an intelligence service that has come to light recently, is the CIA’s funding of the European Movement in Britain as far back as the 1950’s, the object of which was to promote British membership of the European Union’s forerunner the Common Market. [27]
MIND CONTROL
      Overt control always has a finite life, because in the end, as history shows, there will always be rebellion against it. However covert control can continue indefinitely, because people don’t rebel against something they don’t realise exists. People who think they are free will not complain that they are not. Thus it is, that the greatest barrier to freedom is the mistaken belief that it has already been attained, or put another way, the most effective form of slavery is to have slaves who think they are free….
      In other words to maintain control indefinitely, the only effective way ultimately of doing this is by directing and influencing the way people think. This is done in many subtle ways – the media presenting a view of world events in a particular way, political spin doctors using anything from half truths to out and out lies, public relations firms used to promote a favourable image for big corporations, TV soaps and dramas presenting violence, family abuse and infidelity as “normal” behaviour. Magazines galore denigrating the sexual experience as the ultimate in cheap thrills. Religions that have preached hell and damnation and branded everyone as unworthy sinners. An education system, based on obedience and conformity, which teaches children what to think rather than how to think, and designed to turn out people to take their place in a gigantic economic market place that daily becomes more like a war zone, where people compete for profits, pay and jobs in an ever more desperate battle to survive. The whole system is largely self perpetuating, because most people, at some level, prefer not to think for themselves. They prefer it if someone else tells them what to believe and what to do. They can recite the week’s entire TV schedule, they can tell you exactly what’s happening in Coronation Street, but they may never read a book which exercises their minds and from which they could really learn something. And how many of us have come up with truly original ideas as opposed to having picked them up from elsewhere…
      Most people do not fully understand the power of subliminal images – they are used for example, very successfully in TV adverts. They were also in widespread use in the Millennium Dome. On the face of it, the Dome was basically corporate promotion – big business sponsored most of the exhibits – yet it went further – everywhere you were bombarded with images on TV screens and messages from concealed loudspeakers – in the Money section a close up of a woman’s face on a screen was constantly saying “Spend spend spend..” In places, it was all so intense that at times it felt one’s mind was being scrambled. 
      However the security services take it all one step further. To be able to influence and control people’s behaviour directly by implanting thoughts, beliefs or instructions into their minds and wiping out memories -this is the ultimate form of control - and the CIA has been working on it for over 50 years through projects such as MK-Ultra and Monarch. It seems now that an individual could be "programmed" to carry out a killing or to plant a bomb, sometimes not recalling what they have done or why they did it, or even killing themselves afterwards... [28] Look at the fear generated by the horror of the Dunblane shootings in this country. A gun man goes beserk in a small Scottish town, and suddenly, no-one feels safe anywhere.  Some researchers are convinced that there is much more than meets the eye behind this and other killings like it [29]. People react by demanding more surveillance, and almost total abolition of guns too.
      Under the headline “The Battle for Children’s Minds” – “Ritalin made my son a demon” the Observer 9/4/2000 reported that nearly 200,000 children in Britain are being given the psychiatric drug Ritalin to treat what is described as “attention deficit /hyperactivity disorder”. One mother reported how her son became like something out of the Exorcist and stabbed his brother in the foot [30]. The use of psychiatric drugs in the U.S. is more widespread – little known research indicates that the teenagers who carried out the terrible school shootings were on such drugs [31].  As far as these drugs are concerned their widespread and increasing use is a big money spinner for the pharmaceutical industry which is perhaps a more obvious motivation for their promotion.  
     The CIA mind control programmes seem to have produced a particularly nasty off-shoot. There is evidence of depraved sexual and physical abuse of young women and even children too. The victims are apparently selected in early childhood, from children found to have been sexually abused. They are then subjected to mind control, involving torture and gross sexual abuse by their controllers to programme them to pander to the sexual depravities of a number of well known top level people in government, and also not to be able to recall their horrific experiences. For the full story and those involved, see the book “Trance Formation of America” by Cathy O’Brien, (Reality Marketing Inc. 1995) the only victim apparently to escape this vice ring, and to be able to recall and tell of her ordeal, and her rescuer and co-author Mark Philips. The fact that no legal action has been threatened or taken against the authors, but threats have been made against their lives, suggests that in spite of possible difficulties associated with bringing out repressed memories reliably, something very unpleasant has been and is still taking place. 

HISTORY …. TRUTH OR PROPAGANDA?
      “He who controls the past controls the present and he who controls the present controls the future…,”          George Orwell.
      The manipulation of history is nothing new – it is an age old art – Voltaire once described history as a lie commonly agreed upon. The Romans took it to its zenith –   following their adoption of Christianity, they destroyed the massive ancient library at Alexandria in Egypt, and with it was lost perhaps for ever, a host of esoteric knowledge and the true history of the ancient world. In their attempts to vanquish foes, they claimed that the Druids conducted human sacrifice on a gargantuan scale, broiling hundreds of victims in a huge wickerwork colossus. Military domination wasn’t enough – they had to manufacture false or exaggerated scenarios to turn the people against their enemies, thus ensuring public support. As Harry Elmer Barnes proclaimed “the truth is always the first casualty in war”. It the victors who write the history books in which their actions, causes and objectives will be fully justified, whilst the  vanquished will be portrayed in the worst possible light…. 
      This is well illustrated in relation to Germany in the 20th. century. Ever since the late 19th. century Germany had its own plans to become a major independent power in Europe and the world – this seems contrary to certain elite ideas for a still distant form of global control. It took two world wars to destroy German ambitions. Between the wars, attempts were made to dismember the German state – French troops illegally occupied the industrial heartland of the Ruhr in 1923 and at the same time communist agitators tried to form a separatist Bavaria, which came very close to succeeding [32]. Though not remotely in the same league as Stalin’s communist regime in Russia, which murdered many millions of their own people, the Nazi regime was manipulative, repressive and totalitarian, even though Hitler’s National Socialist party enjoyed substantial public support, becoming the largest single party following the 1932 election, as a result Hitler was requested by Chancellor Hindenberg to take over as his successor in 1933.  They successfully lifted Germany out of the great depression and couldn’t help but gain massive public support for doing so. Nor, it seems, was Hitler a madman intent on ruling the world, as he is now so often portrayed. What he was intent upon doing, was to unite all Germans in a single state, primarily as a bastion against a perceived Bolshevik Russian threat from the east, and in particular to recover the territories which were severed from Germany at the Versailles peace treaty in 1919. To understand German actions, one must be aware of the political aims of Bolshevism that “the revolution” was to be spread across the globe by whatever means were necessary – sooner or later expansion west into Europe by Stalin was seen as inevitable by the Nazis. Fearing this, the last thing Hitler wanted was a war against Britain and France, whom the Germans saw ultimately as facing the same threat from the east as themselves. In parts of Poland, which were German until 1919, Germans suffered serious discrimination which the Poles were unwilling to address. Furthermore, Poland had made a number of irregular military incursions into German territory at the end of August 1939 [33].  This was the catalyst for the German invasion on 1st. September 1939 which then caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany.
World War Two    For nine months there was a “phoney war” – very few hostilities between Germany and France and Britain, yet it is obvious that Germany’s vastly superior military machine could have annihilated British and French forces, which were wholly unprepared to fight a major war in 1939. Was the reason for not doing so, because Hitler still hoped that Britain and France could be persuaded to join Germany against the common foe Russia which, by May 1940 had already annexed part of Finland, and effectively taken military control of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and parts of eastern Europe? Only when it was clear that this was not to be the case, particularly after Britain was the first combatant to violate Norwegian neutrality and was hinting that Belgium might be the base for an attack on Germany  - only then did Germany move into Norway and launch blitzkrieg through the low countries and into France, hoping to knock out France and Britain in a short campaign, before dealing with the threat to the east. Even then, Hitler refrained from ordering his Panzer divisions to destroy the British army at Dunkirk, which they could so easily have done, allowing it to escape largely intact – in the belief that Britain might still sue for an honourable peace. However it was not to be – those in the British government such as Lord Halifax and Rab Butler who were in favour of peace were ousted in favour of Winston Churchill now seen by some as having always been intent on war whatever the cost [34]. The final attempt by Germany to secure peace with Britain, appears to have been the secret flight to Scotland by Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess on 10th. May 1941. By this time, Hitler knew what has never been made widely known, namely that Russia was massing a vast army along its western borders ready for an attack on to Germany. It is clear that the Red Army existed as an offensive army from the military principles agreed by Stalin before the war. “war preparations are preparations for attack – defensive measures serve solely to protect preparations for attack and the execution of attack – the red Army is the most offensive of all armies” [35]. Was the Hess mission a desperate bid by Germany to avoid a war on two fronts by securing peace in the west, and to persuade Britain that the real threat lay to the east? Hess was arrested soon after landing in Scotland.  Subsequently he was kept confined in Spandau jail, Berlin for 40 years or more after the war. Was this to ensure that he could never make public the real reasoning behind his mission?  In the end the Germans pre-empted a Russian invasion with a massive attack of their own – operation Barbarossa - designed to deal a quick knock out blow to the Russian military machine. By the end of 1941, it was clear that it had failed in its objective, but it led to the most horrific campaign of World War 2 in which both sides did terrible things.
      In the eastern theatre, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour which brought the U.S. into the war officially  took everyone completely by surprise. However a new book “Day of Deceit: the Truth about Roosevelt And Pearl Harbour” reveals that President Roosevelt and his top advisers were aware of a planned Japanese attack as was Winston Churchill. The military at Pearl Harbour were kept in the dark. Economic sanctions were used to help provoke an attack, because it was reckoned that without the US entering the war, Britain had little hope of defeating Germany. With Germany and Japan tied by an alliance, war against Japan by the US meant war against Germany as well. The so called “surprise” led to public outrage and immediate support for entering the war.  At the end of the war it was President Truman who ordered the dropping of 2 atomic bombs on Japan and perpetrated the lie that has lasted for over 50 years, that the reason was to save lives and shorten the war. In fact Japan was making peace moves, which the U.S. government chose to ignore in order to create the excuse to demonstrate the full horrors of the bomb, for the purpose basically of demonstrating US power and scaring the Soviet Union. [36]
      No war can be fought unless it is supported by banks and big business. Brief mention has already been made about banks funding both sides, but big business also supported both sides. Allied business supported Hitler – the international ties of big corporations enabled them to pursue their own policies in war – US firms collaborated with their German sister companies through holding companies in neutral countries such as Switzerland, Sweden and Liechtenstein, whilst the British and American governments turned a blind eye, or covertly approved what was happening. How would British and American citizens and service men have reacted had they known that Standard Oil of New Jersey shipped the enemy’s fuel through neutral Switzerland, or that Ford trucks were built for use in France by the occupying German army with authorisation from head office in Michigan, or that the head of ITT flew to Berne Switzerland to help improve German communications systems and the V1 bombs that later devastated London. or that ITT built the Focke Wulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? As Telford Taylor US Chief Counsel At the Nuremburg trials observed:  “if all the accomplices of the of the Nazi war criminals were in the dock today, the entire ruling class of the capitalist world would be found guilty..” [37]
The Holocaust.   Anyone questioning any detail of the commonly accepted view of the Jewish Holocaust is immediately reviled and branded  “holocaust denier”. This is forbidden territory – in modern Germany, Austria, France and Canada “holocaust denial” is actually a criminal offence. Yes the Jews suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis - the fabric of the closely knit traditional Jewish communities that were a feature of pre war eastern and central Europe was dismantled and destroyed never to return - but did as many as 6 million die, did they die in the ways claimed, and was “the final solution” a premeditated mass extermination policy? One thing is absolutely clear – the Nazi leadership despised the Jews and wanted every living Jew out of German controlled territory. How did this come about? What seems to have really happened is this… 
     During the years of the German Weimar republic, the German economy collapsed, and the German currency became largely worthless as a result of printing money to try to pay crippling war reparations imposed on Germany by the victors after World War One. At this time, wealthy Jews from other parts of Europe with access to hard currency were able to buy up large slices of German property and business interests for next to nothing. When added to the fact that Jews generally tended to occupy a disproportionate number of more affluent positions, this fuelled jealousy and popular resentment in some quarters of the impoverished German population, although Germans as a whole were not anti Jewish. Nevertheless this was used by certain political elements within Germany, especially Hitler’s rising National Socialist party, to stir up anti Jewish sentiments. As a result, there were eruptions of violence involving right wing groups directed against Jewish communities as a whole. Leading figures in world Jewry responded to this in March 1933, by declaring a world wide economic boycott of Germany. The Daily Express 24/3/1933 under the headline “Judea Declares War on Germany” reported on mass demonstrations by Jews especially across the USA – “The whole of Israel throughout the world is uniting to declare an economic and financial war on Germany…”  Germany  was “confronted with an international boycott of its trade, its finances its industry – in London, New York, Paris and Warsaw, Jewish businessmen are united to go on an economic crusade...”  Hitler and his newly returned National Socialist Party government responded by declaring a one day ban on all trade with Jews on 1st April 1933. The Jewish boycott of Germany remained in place, and soon the Nazis went on the offensive -  they sought to whip up hatred of the Jews, using vicious, crude propaganda, ultimately deciding on a policy of mass deportation forcing thousands to flee – in fact from 1933 to 1940 there was a carefully planned covert operation between the German government and leading Zionist organisations committed to setting up a Jewish homeland in Palestine, in order to facilitate the passage of thousands of German Jews to Palestine. Ultimately the Zionist elite undermined the boycott. Through highly placed bankers and financiers, they pursued a covert policy of funding Germany to keep Hitler’s government in power in order to exploit his anti-Jewish policies for their own political ends, namely the transfer of as many Jews as possible to Palestine. The Nazis perceived a threat from elite Jewish bankers and financiers who had funded the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, yet their response to this, was to terrorise and confiscate the property of thousands of ordinary decent men and women who wanted no more than to get on with their lives peacefully like anyone else - men and women who had always seen themselves first and foremost as German citizens. What happened beyond any shadow of doubt is what today we refer to as “ethnic cleansing” - and make no mistake, this was ethnic cleansing big time, with thousands of Jews forcibly transferred into camps and ghettos, and severe penalties for anyone caught trying to harbour and protect them.    
      No one should make light of what actually happened - what it was like to be ordered out of your home, rounded up in the town square, marched off to the station, then herded into cattle trucks and transported east to large labour camps – all this against a background of a major war  - where your future was unknown, your property had been confiscated and your whole world and everything you knew and were familiar with, had effectively ceased to exist. When you got there you were stripped of your clothes, put in camp uniform, had your head shaved to prevent lice infestation and a number was tattooed on your arm. It can only have been a truly terrifying experience - one of the most brutal aspects of which was the splitting up of families on arrival – the separation of men and women - many of whom were never re-united . Elie Wiesal a Rumanian Jew who survived,  provides a moving account in his memoirs “All Rivers Run to the Sea.” The sensitivities of those Jews who suffered in this way and who lost family and friends must therefore be respected. However, in the interests of historical accuracy and the Nazis being blamed for what they actually did and not for what they may not have done, it is important that, if there are exaggerations and fictions in relation to the holocaust, then free and open discussion and investigation must be permitted to ascertain what really happened. This is reinforced by the fact that the holocaust has been ruthlessly exploited by elements of American Jewry for financial and political gain, with massive reparation claims against Germany and Swiss banks etc. many of which have been proven to be false. Prof. Norman Finkelstein, himself Jewish and born to parents who survived the holocaust, examines this aspect of the matter in his new book “The Holocaust Industry”. He describes the Jewish organisations responsible as “hucksters, gangsters and crooks” and feels that, unless exposed , these individuals and organisations will do great damage to Jewish people as a whole by exploiting the suffering of Jews in this way [38]. Israeli writer and journalist Israel Shamir takes it one step further in an article entitled “Bankers and Robbers”. He shows how the largest compensation payments made by the German government and latterly by Swiss banks have ended up in the hands of a criminal elite rather than being paid to those who suffered, or the relatives of those who died. [39]
      The 6 million dead in the holocaust has traditionally been based on four million claimed to have died at Auschwitz – which was liberated by the advancing Russian armies, not the western allies. That death toll was put out by the Soviets. However by 1989 even the official death toll at Auschwitz had been reduced to approximately one million, and the plaque at the remains of the camp claiming 4 million deaths has since been removed. Once claimed to be an extermination camp, it is now acknowledged that Bergen Belsen was actually a detention and labour camp [40]. Here and at many other camps in Germany itself, it seems the reason why so many inmates died especially in the final months of the war, was because of terrible overcrowding, as inmates had been moved ahead of the advancing Russian army into fewer camps. Furthermore, with constant allied air attacks on communications, and with the German infrastructure devastated by mass bombing raids, it was becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible to get supplies to the camps. Disease and mass starvation were the results, as revealed by the horrific emaciated bodies that the liberators found on arrival at the camps. All this was confirmed by the International Red Cross which inspected the camps in Germany during the war and reported around 300,000 deaths in total mainly in the last months of the war for the reasons mentioned. They confirmed there were no gas chambers in camps in Germany, although as Douglas Reed, a European correspondent of the Times during the 30’s, points out, reports of gas chambers at Auschwitz (in Poland) could not be verified by western observers to whom the Russians denied access.
      It is assumed nowadays that all the victims were Jews and all the human remains found in the camps were those of Jews. Douglas Reed investigated the subject, interviewing many survivors. He revealed this was not the case – camp inmates included Poles, Czechs, Hungarians etc. and also dissident Germans. Jews were only a small fraction – most had left Germany and the territories it annexed before the war for Palestine or other parts of Europe which never came under German occupation. In the east, Russia and Poland, many Jews were moved to safety east of the Ural mountains. Reed points out that there were never as many as 6 million Jews under German control and that this figure for the number who died was a “grotesque exaggeration” serving to divert attention from thousands of non Jewish inmates who also suffered and died in the camps.  The first victims were the sick and those incapable of work followed by those whom the Nazis regarded as inferior races – Poles especially. Reed goes on to reveal that persecution was widespread amongst the inmates themselves – below the SS who were in overall charge, it was Communists who ended up running day to day life in the camps  – they tortured and killed other inmates and many of the persecutors were Jews. [41]
      Of course there are many Jewish eye witness accounts as to what happened – the survivors of the holocaust, but these are not all reliable by any means as Professor  Finkelstein points out in the Holocaust Industry: “…because enduring the camps became a crown of matyrdom, many Jews who spent the war elsewhere represented themselves as camp survivors… Another motive behind this was material – the post war German government paid compensation to Jews who had been in ghettos and camps. Many Jews fabricated their pasts to meet this eligibility requirement. If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one, who did Hitler kill?”         
      It is often claimed that it was at the Wannsee Conference of leading Germans on 20th January 1942, that a decision was finally made to exterminate European Jewry – the so called  “final solution”. The Wannsee Protocol is the only documentary record of this meeting. It certainly makes for chilling reading, about the removal of Jews from Europe by mass deportation to the east and the sterilisation of  those remaining. Although it refers to a final solution, the fact is that, despite the content of the BBC dramatisation “Conspiracy” screened on 25/1/02, claiming otherwise, the document itself makes no mention of premeditated mass murder by any means, let alone by the use of gas chambers.   The nearest it comes to this is firstly a reference to the fact that the Jews would be worked in the east to build roads until they dropped, and secondly that if a lot died in the deportation process, that wasn’t a problem and, in the meantime, they were to be used as a source of labour for the war effort [42]. Hence the mass movement into detention and labour camps. It may have been more a case of rounding up all remaining Jews in German controlled territory, pending a decision where to send them after the war, rather than to kill them all systematically.
      All in all with conflicting reports, it becomes very difficult to know exactly what occurred in the camps. The writer and journalist Elie Wiesal, who was a boy of 16 at the time, was utterly traumatised by his experience especially the separation from his mother and sisters whom he never saw again, and the subsequent death of his father from sickness and malnutrition in Buchenwald, to which both had been transferred from Auschwitz, just weeks before the end of the war. His descriptions in “All rivers Run to the Sea” are understandably filled with pain and emotion, yet there is hardly a mention of gas chambers and the evidence of killings by Germans that he mentions is what he later heard from others  - his first hand accounts of people led away are rather vague. And some of the emotion clearly arises out of the later claims about 6 million dead and the massive use of crematoria to burn the bodies. However when Wiesal writes: “…do not deny it, I forbid you to deny it ..”, the reader is left under no illusion as just how sensitive an issue this is. The fact is that however uncomfortable and painful it may be to some, to ascertain what really happened, emotion has to be set aside…  Some say logistically it would have been impossible to have gassed the numbers that are supposed to have died in this way, and that gas chambers were simply used for delousing of clothing etc. As an expert in the somewhat macabre area of state executions in the US, Fred Leuchter’s expertise included  the construction and operation of gas chambers. Called as an expert witness in a case in Canada where one Ernst Zundel was facing a trial arising out of his questioning the use of gas chambers by the Nazis for mass extermination, Leuchter subsequently visited the facilities in Poland at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. After extensive tests and observations etc. he produced the Leuchter Report in which he concluded that there were no facilities at these locations that were capable of being used for mass executions [43].
       Furthermore, both Leuchter and Italian historian Carl Mattogno, have questioned whether the crematoria at the camps could possibly have coped with the vast number of dead bodies that are supposed to have been cremated in them. Mattogno concludes, after detailed investigations of the installations used, that they could not - being designed to cremate just one body at a time and that they were installed to cope with an increasing death toll from diseases such as typhus that became rife in the camps. [44]
       The true holocaust was the war itself in which over 50 million lives were lost – 3million non Jewish Poles, 6 million Slavs not to mention the huge toll of Russians and of course Germans. All sides did terrible things – that is the nature of war. The toll of Jews, Douglas Reed reckons does not reach one million [45] and as Professor Finkelstein says in “the Holocaust Industry”: “Much of the literature on Hitler’s final solution is worthless as scholarship – holocaust studies are replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud…”          
       Following the war it was the Germans who were on the receiving end  – British, American and Russian leaders meeting at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945, decided to implement their own piece of ethnic cleansing in what was referred to as “the orderly and humane transfer of populations”. In practice this led to the forced and brutal expulsion of millions of Germans, along with confiscation of their property, from territories that were severed from Germany following its surrender and which were incorporated in Poland and Czechoslovakia.  Mainstream history books also make no mention of the treatment of 5 million Germans described as “disarmed enemy forces” after Germany’s surrender in 1945 and who were imprisoned in the harshest conditions including open air camps, and of whom more than a million are reckoned to have perished. [46]       

Oil and the Gulf..   Turning now to more recent events, George Bush Snr. for years was head of the CIA, an organisation dedicated to lies, propaganda, deception and manipulation, as demonstrated by a major disinformation campaign which, in the public mind, successfully put the blame on Libya and the Soviet Union for terrorism in the 1970’s [47]. As Vice-president and President, Bush Snr. was later involved in the Iran Contra arms scandal and the profits of drug trafficking by the CIA that helped to finance it. Later his administration did so much to precipitate the Gulf War, by implementing a policy whereby America supported and armed Iraq to help neutralise the US’s adversary Iran in the Iran/Iraq war. The US then actively pressed Kuwait to flood the oil market at the expense of Iraq, plunging it into economic crisis, precipitating the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and then ordered “Desert Storm” which included the near total destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure by mass bombing, the burying of Iraqi conscripts in trenches by the use of excavators, and the slaughter of more Iraqi conscripts in retreat under white flags of surrender [48].  As for the chemical and biological weapons that Iraq once had, these or the technology and materials to develop them were supplied by the US and Britain. The purpose of the war was not to remove a totalitarian regime with an atrocious human rights record against dissident minorities, but rather to destroy an independently minded country with the second largest known oil reserves in the world, intent on controlling its oil resources for its own benefit. Since then sanctions have been kept in place with appalling consequences for the ordinary people of Iraq – these were never going to bring down Saddam Hussein, whose regime has successfully insulated itself against the worst effects. Rather they have been used to control the oil flow and to keep Iraq weak and ineffective on the global stage. Furthermore, two utterly false claims were made against the Iraqis to demonise them. First the claim during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, that Iraqi soldiers ripped babies off incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital was totally untrue – the sobbing young girl who made the allegation was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., and the whole thing was stage managed by international public relations firm Hill & Knowlton who were employed by the Kuwaiti government in exile [49]. Secondly, the oil wells of Kuwait were set ablaze not by the retreating Iraqis, but by fast moving teams of U.S. special forces. U.S. companies based in Texas, in which the Bush family has large stakes, made a financial killing from the clean up and reconstruction work. [50]
THE ESOTERIC LINK  - FREEMASONRY AND OTHER SECRET SOCIETIES 
      The last 250 years or so has witnessed the march of Newtonian science, Darwinian evolution and much more. We have amassed  invaluable knowledge of the physical world around us. But this is only a small part of the picture, and in many parts of the world, humanity has become so unaware spiritually that it is now regarded as quite normal and reasonable to see ourselves as just our physical bodies and when those die, it’s oblivion. This mechanistic view of the universe, which is seen as no more than a chemical interaction of atoms and molecules - just some gigantic physical accident - is the one promoted by the scientific establishment. In the west, fewer and fewer people can accept Christianity’s explanation of life - one life on earth - could be long and prosperous, short and filled with poverty and hardship, or even just months or less, then all are judged on the basis of that one life, prior to some eternal afterlife elsewhere. None of this is helped by talk of “God” as “he” which for many, can’t help but conjure up some absurd image of a little old man in the sky. Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, with their knowledge and acceptance of reincarnation, are finding increasing acceptance in the west, along with many new age ideas incorporating the same fundamentals. Interestingly, early Christianity also accepted reincarnation, but abandoned it after the 5th Ecumenical Church Council of 553 A.D., following internal power struggles and manipulation that had a lot more to do with control of the masses than spiritual enlightenment. However these ideas are still on the fringe, as so many struggle to find some meaning to their lives. 
     Enlightened scientists on the cutting edge of quantum physics, with their understanding that everything is pure energy - even that which appears to be solid matter - begin to see that our consciousness is separate from our minds and bodies. It simply moves on to another dimension of existence following the “death” of the physical body – indeed scientific proof of survival of the death of the body now exists [51]. If one can get hold of it, the evidence for re-incarnation is pretty convincing. There have been so many reports from reliable sources of past life experiences. People have brought back strikingly detailed descriptions of places and events, which have been verified as true from the records – so much so, as to rule out any possibility that they are making it up and trying to deceive us. If we all knew and accepted this, it would remove forever the fear of death that so many people have. This would have a profound influence on people in the western world. But the scientific establishment – the men and women in white coats, the priests and priestesses of the modern world – still largely mock such ideas.
      It is suggested in some quarters, that those with high levels of esoteric knowledge have deliberately withheld that knowledge, and have been content to watch the march of conventional science divert us from knowing and understanding our true enduring nature, because in such a state of ignorance, we are so much more likely to become mere robots or cogs in a machine, and so much easier to control. In reality, each one of us is a unique aspect of God with enormous potential. Once we understand this, we will realise there is no need of intermediaries in the form of religions, dogmas and priests. We may begin to understand what true freedom is.          
      However for centuries, dogmatic religions have been used as the means to control the masses and their thinking. Christianity maintained that we were all worthless sinners, living by God’s grace. Our only hope was the promise of eternal life hereafter, provided we surrender to the dictates of the priesthood. In recent times, the message has been moderated somewhat, but millions have turned their back on all this and the church’s influence has been on the wane for years now and is only a shadow of what it was.
      As people in the west have turned their backs on conventional religion, looking for new meaning, a host of loosely knit ideas have come together under the so called  “New Age” movement. It lacks any form of central organisation or authority and has no leading figure or any particular doctrine – indeed no-one knows how many adherents it has or how many are influenced by it. No single book defines it or its objectives – yet there are dozens of books by numerous authors that come under this loose category known as New Age. However there is one underlying central idea – we are living in a period of great transformation  - the new millennium marks the beginning of the age of Aquarius - (this is mirrored in conventional religion by the “Second Coming” or “Final Judgement”). This is presented as a transformation of society that is spiritual, social, ecological and self realising, and above all, that it is unstoppable! Such concepts are worrying to any centralised authority that wishes to maintain control, and they will naturally seek to hijack the belief systems upon which it is based.

     If we look at many new age publications we begin to notice that many are not so free wheeling and self realising as might be thought at first. There are spiritual hierarchies, chosen ones, ascended masters, the Great White Brotherhood, Ashtar Commands, Arcturians, Pleidians, to name but a few. A whole array of cosmic characters to whom individuals could surrender their right to think for themselves. In addition there are a number of rather more earthly characters on the scene, in the form of self styled charismatic gurus with bands of doting followers. The New Age contains many liberating growth enhancing concepts that break the bonds of conventional thought and religion, but there is a real danger of a new form of dogma being imposed in the form of these spiritual hierarchies. The best advice to anyone involved in the New Age is - if the book or guru isn’t telling you that within you lies the power to liberate yourself and think for yourself ,and to realise that you are an aspect of the divine, with no need of intermediaries of any description whatsoever – then be wary and discriminating. Even a book such as “the Only Planet of Choice” which has won almost universal acclaim in the New Age movement and clearly contains a great deal of wisdom, nevertheless contains potentially very misleading concepts about hierarchies, returning gods and secret knowledge that will be revealed in time. Government agencies would want to know if spiritual esoteric communications with discarnate beings were genuine and if so how they could be used for their advantage. In fact as far as the conversations with the so called “Council of Nine” with whom the dialogue which make ups “The Only Planet of Choice” takes place is concerned, one or two of the instigators have been found to have links with the intelligence services [52]. The danger in a book like this lies in the fact that because it contains a lot of good material, people believe it all, including, crucially, the misleading information as well. This is a widespread intelligence service tactic - when you want people to believe something, conceal the lies in something that contains a substantial degree of truth.
      It’s now time to take look behind the spiritual scenes! What we find is a whole array of secret societies with rituals and claiming esoteric knowledge, imparted only to initiates. There are, and have been for many years, if not centuries, those who have believed in the principles of Synarchy. Whereas anarchy in its purest form essentially means complete freedom from state control, Synarchy is the opposite – complete control in three key areas – economics, politics and religion. It represents government by secret societies – initiates who operate from behind the scenes based on orders that are essentially masonic by nature. Synarchy in the early years of the 20th. century believed in a federal European Union…   Its roots lie in the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians, and are influential in the writings of Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey which in turn have influenced the New Age movement [53].  It has spawned, for example, the Order of the Oriental Templars, Argenteum Astrum (Silver Stars) and the Order of Melchizedek, which is said to see itself as in charge of “consciousness reprogramming” [54].  
    
Freemasonry -   The largest secret society of all is freemasonry. More correctly called a society with secrets rather than a secret society, it is quite amazing how it can operate so openly, yet keep its secrets so well hidden, right down to the point of having masonic lodges in almost every town and city across the western world. For the men who congregate at our local masonic halls and organise charity events, it is clearly a convivial all male club, with the potential for making contacts and a bit of favouritism among initiates along the lines of “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”. Belief in a supreme being is essential for initiates. That supreme being is referred to by masons as the “Great Architect of the Universe” and they will tell you that masonry involves a strict moral code of fellowship and good behaviour. The whole thing is based on rituals and ceremonies, which masons clearly love otherwise they wouldn’t get involved it. Add to that the feeling of being rather special because you have been let into some little esoteric secrets of the craft to which the rest of society (or the “profane” as non masons are referred to by initiates) are not party, and maybe it goes to your head a little! Almost none of them are likely to be above the 3 degrees of craft freemasonry known as entered apprentice, fellow craft and master mason. They are unlikely to have any real understanding of what is involved, and many will not even know that above the 3 degrees of craft freemasonry are a further 30 degrees of initiation, and they will certainly have no knowledge of the secrets and the objectives of the higher degrees. Only those at the very top (and this may be at levels beyond the 33rd. degree) know the full picture - implicit in what a friend of this writer, who is a freemason, told the writer: “at each degree they let you into another little secret…”
      In Britain, craft freemasonry is run from the United Grand Lodge of England. It is to be found throughout the establishment, business and the professions, particularly in the civil service, the legal profession, police and the military. Its president is the Duke of Kent, which no doubt many would see as giving an image of respectability to the whole thing. (Royalty have long been associated with the craft, King George VI was an enthusiastic mason, although Charles and Andrew have not been initiated).       Freemasonry defends itself by claiming an honourable moral code binding on initiates – certainly freemasons will go to considerable lengths to protect, defend and help their brother masons. However most men in the lowest three degrees are ordinary decent amiable citizens, but how many have ever stopped to think what they are invoking when they indulge in rituals involving daggers, nooses, coffins etc. and swearing oaths to keep the secrets of the craft, in the case of entered apprentice “under no less a penalty than that of having my throat cut, my tongue torn out by the root......or the more effective punishment of being branded as a wilfully perjured individual void of all moral worth......” Or in the case of fellow craft, a ritual death of “...of having my left breast laid open, my heart torn therefrom, and given to the ravenous birds, or devouring beasts of the field, as prey...” Or in the case of master mason  “...being severed in two, my bowels burnt to ashes, and those ashes scattered over the face of the Earth and wafted by the four winds, that no trace of remembrance of so vile a wretch may be found among men....” (Since 1986, the words are no longer spoken by the initiate himself, but rather by the Worshipful Master - somewhat cosmetic perhaps!) [55]
      Some people may think all this is harmless or just silly, but when we visit places, we can sometimes be struck by good feelings of peace and serenity that surround some places, yet other places can feel distinctly creepy, malevolent or hostile - in either case, it is related to the activities, good or bad as the case may be, that have taken place there. Martin Short in his book “Inside the Brotherhood”, describes the experiences of several people who felt, after visiting masonic temples, that they had encountered something that was extremely unpleasant and evil. Also documented are the experiences of several masons who came to feel the same way and who hurriedly left the craft. This writer and his wife took the opportunity of visiting their local masonic hall in the Welsh border town of Hay on Wye when it held an open day for the public, and both felt the atmosphere in the temple was distinctly unpleasant. This is perhaps not surprising because not by any stretch of the imagination, can the type of oaths and rituals above be said to conjure up feelings of love, compassion and benevolence. They are based on fear and, judging by how well the secrets are maintained, they have been very successful, even if the ritual deaths are not literally carried out. 
      Only those of “right mind” proceed beyond the three degrees of craft freemasonry to the higher “Royal Arch” levels, and only those at the very top levels will know what is behind the entire pyramid structure of freemasonry, those lower down do not. Is it some sort of devil worship for want of a better term... or some kind of invocation of the powers of evil? We all know that there are dedicated people on this earth who work tirelessly and selflessly for the good of humanity, and when we look at some of the terrible things that occur, we realise also that there must be those who do quite the opposite, though precisely who they are, what they do and how they do it, may be carefully concealed. Everyone perhaps can be open to the influences of good or evil, so we need to ask is the pyramid structure of freemasonry, and the unwitting involvement of ordinary men lower down in dubious oaths and rituals, being used by some very unpleasantly motivated people in high places, who understand the power of black magic and satanic rituals, to project malevolent energies throughout the network of our society, to help breed fear, exploitation and greed.
      The origins of modern freemasonry are relatively recent. Its roots go back to the stonemasons of the middle ages who worked on our great cathedrals. They formed themselves into guilds to preserve and protect the skills of their trade - some of the masonic symbols of the apron, the square, the compass etc. are the leftovers of this. The old trade guilds fell apart after the reformation, with no further major building projects, so the guilds were thrown open to  non masons. The rituals used today are largely the product of the freemasons of the late 17th. and 18th. centuries, although many of the actual esoteric secrets go back to ancient Egyptian times or earlier, and have been passed down through the mystery schools of Egypt, Babylon, ancient Greece, and then down through the middle ages by such orders as the Knights Templar, Cathars and Rosicrucians, and from there to modern freemasonry. In the face of mass persecution by the Christian church in the middle ages, these secret sects were vital in helping to preserve esoteric knowledge. Some say that the secrets, among other things, are concerned with the true origins of humanity, which may not be so entirely terrestrial and a product of evolution, as our present science would have us believe. We are moving now into the realms of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos and the possibility of contacts with earth in the past.  Some say one of the secrets of the 33rd. degree is that they are in touch with intelligent life in the Sirius star system, although others dismiss this as absurd. Nevertheless, Sirius is the flaming star which  appears in masonic temples.
       So what knowledge might be being kept from humanity as a whole? The secrets may cover such matters as knowledge of the “life force” or “kundalini” which connects all humans to the earth and to the cosmos, often represented symbolically by the snake which ironically is incorporated in the symbol of the British Medical Association, even though the medical profession and conventional science deny this life force even exists. So too knowledge of the energy grid of the earth, sometimes known as ley lines, and how these connect with the collective consciousness of humanity. There is nothing wrong with the knowledge itself obviously – indeed it has been very important for it to be preserved especially against the background of dogmatic religions and Christianity which once sought to destroy the ancient knowledge and persecuted and killed anyone who attempted to pass it on. The danger here is people who have the knowledge, deny it to others and abuse it. This is what some people believe has happened with freemasonry  - the knowledge borne by the ancient mystery schools has been taken over by those who wanted to use it for their own purposes of power and control. What was originally an honourable craft has been hijacked and perverted for sinister purposes, but only those at the very top of the pyramid of initiation are aware of what is going on and the true agenda. They know that the energy grid of the earth can just as easily be used to project negative and malevolent thoughts as positive and loving ones, and this is where dubious oaths and rituals come in, explaining the “bad vibes” some people have experienced in masonic temples.   
      Whilst ordinary masons of the lowest 3 degrees of craft freemasonry are forbidden to discuss politics in their lodges, at its highest levels freemasonry has strong political overtones. Note the masonic symbol of the pyramid mounted by the all seeing eye, the symbol of the structure of world freemasonry, to be found on the rear of the U.S. one dollar bill. Around it the Latin inscription - “Annuit Coeptis Novus Ordo Seclorum” - announcing the birth of the new ordinance of the ages or, to use contemporary terminology “new world order”, a phrase much associated with domination by a global elite and rather popular with George Bush Snr. Bush is one of a number of U.S. presidents thought to have reached the highest levels of masonic initiation, others include Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton. In his book “In God’s Name”, in which he investigated the murder of Pope John Paul 1, David Yallop illustrated how the top level masonic lodge P2, with members in South America and the Vatican as well as Italy, and powerful influences in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, was effectively running Italy. Despite the public exposures of the early ‘80’s, P2 still exists today. A shadowy politically based masonic organisation in the U.S.A., said to have some bizarre sexually orientated initiation ceremonies, is the Skull and Bones Society, based at Yale University where meetings are held in a windowless mausoleum known as “the Tomb”. Its membership is dominated by well known families of the “eastern establishment”, such as Bush, Rockefeller, Harriman, Whitney, Bundy, Vanderbilt. Bush Snr. is one of the best known present day initiates - he was apparently once accused by Pat Buchanan of running a “Skull and Bones” presidency. And like father like son…. President George W. Bush and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush are both Skull and Bonesmen. 
      In the book “Princess Diana – the Hidden Evidence” the authors show how corporate interests and the intelligence services are also well represented in masonic secret societies. From what appear to be well placed sources they are able to say that old orders such as the Knights of Malta and the Priory of Sion have been effectively taken over by agencies such as MI6, who now guard their ancient secrets. One such secret appears to be the fact that, despite what Christianity would have us believe, Jesus married Mary Magdalen - they had a son and from him there is said to be a royal bloodline from which the Stuart monarchs of Scotland and later England can claim direct descent. This is highly significant when one appreciates that Princess Diana was of Stuart descent and that she too would almost certainly know all this. The present Stuart heir to the British throne is Prince Michael of Albany who resides out of the public eye in Edinburgh, but who is nevertheless the Scottish representative of a little known organisation called the European Council of Princes. The Windsors on the other hand are seen as usurpers, descended from the German house of Hanover, which was put in place in 1714 by powerful vested interests, who caused James II the last reigning Stuart monarch to flee in 1688. This was done for political gain and their non-intervention in British affairs and politics, was said to be the condition underpinning this arrangement – something that continues to this day. (By way of contrast Prince Michael’s views on the role of the monarch is that he/she should act as the guardian and protector of the rights of the people against the excesses of governments and those who control them.)
      King and Beveridge refer to these events as the onset of masonic government, which included the setting up of privately owned central banks in Europe, and developed in corporate form especially from 1945 onwards with the creation of global mega corporations. “It is a plutocracy of the most brutal and insidious kind, in which corporate power decisively eclipses the authority of elected parliaments, and high ranking intelligence chiefs and deep cover intelligence operatives are on the boards of big companies in oil, science, technology, armaments, financial institutions, publishing and media…”  This masonic structure is well illustrated in Britain today where we have an elected parliament which conducts its affairs in public. At the head of it is the government including the Cabinet, whose deliberations are not generally made public. Above that but less visible, are publicised summits such as the G8 the IMF etc. whose deliberations are strictly secret.  Calling the shots are banks, big business and corporate think tanks. Then there are the little or unknown publicity shy private forums such as Bilderberg, the Tri-Lateral Commission and the European Round Table of Industrialists and finally the top levels of the secret society network which are almost completely hidden.  And as if subtly to emphasise the point, we have a monarchy in which the rituals and pageantry of the Coronation and the state opening of parliament are very much masonic in nature.      

THE STORY SO FAR….
      What is touched upon so far could fill volumes. This resume tries to reveal the subtle, intricate webs of behind the scenes manipulation that make a nonsense of so-called democratic elections no matter where they are held. Real power does not lie with our elected representatives - we may elect them, but they then pursue the agenda of others – usually those who fund them. A golden rule of politics is that he that has the gold makes the rules! And the party whips are there to ensure that our elected representatives tow the party line – they have to if they are to get anywhere in politics. The whole “democratic” process is essentially a sham. Most conspiracy theorists tend to think in terms of one particular group as being behind every plot and hidden agenda – it’s the Freemasons, the Bilderbergers, the Communists, the Jews or whatever. Yet real life is never so simple. There are many self interested groups working well out of the public gaze – conspiracies galore and no doubt the agendas of many coincide. Some theorists refer to the Elite, the Olympians, the Brotherhood or the Illuminati as the source of a single conspiracy, yet they are hard pressed specifically to name anyone who is a member of these such groups or even that these groups exist at all in any formal sense. However as researcher Robin Ramsay in his guide entitled “Conspiracy Theories” (see foot note [3] ) points out - conspiracy is normal politics. Nevertheless he goes on to pour scorn on anyone and everyone who puts forward the idea that there is a single underlying mega conspiracy.  So could there be one… ?

ZIONISM, & THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION 
      Towards the end of the 19th. century, a remarkable and disturbing document came to light. Originally in French, but subsequently appearing in Russian, Italian, Arabic, Japanese and ultimately in English around 1920, it can best be described as a blueprint for world domination by a secret brotherhood – the manifestation of Synarchy mentioned in the previous section. Known as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, it claims to be have been written by the highest echelons of world Jewry, and is signed: “the representatives of Zion of the 33rd. degree.”
      Despite widespread claims and beliefs to the contrary, this is not, repeat not, evidence of a plot on the part of the Jewish people as a whole. The title itself and the contents make that absolutely clear. Jews are not synonymous with Zionists - Zionism is a political movement which, although largely made up of Jews, is only actively supported by a minority of Jews and actually opposed by many Jews. It also has powerful and influential non Jewish supporters as well. It emerged publicly in Europe towards the end of the 19th century, at a time when nationalism generally was becoming a potent force throughout Europe. Central to it has been the creation of a racial and national identity for adherents of the Jewish faith, which previously hadn’t existed. Over the years diverse ranges of peoples have adopted the Jewish faith. There are those who are descended from the original Jews who inhabited Palestine or the old kingdom of Judea, as part of Palestine was once known 2000 or more years ago – though many would not admit it, these people of middle eastern stock are basically Arabs through a common ancestry with the Arabs. On the other hand about 90% of modern Jews have no ancestral links with ancient Judea. These are the so called Ashkenazim – European Jews, who are descended from the Khazars, a race of Turkish origin, who converted en masse to Judaism in the 8th  century and subsequently settled in parts of Russia and northern Europe [56]. It is amongst this group of Jews that the core of the Zionist movement is to be found and who, today, form the ruling elite in Israel. Zionism’s appearance coincided with the emergence of the Protocols, suggesting there may be much more to it than merely the establishment and subsequent enlargement of a Jewish state as was the original publicly stated objective.  Many Jews today are very much opposed to the continued expansionist aims of Zionism and it is very likely that today the majority, including many supporters of Zionism, know nothing of the Protocols. Since the first appearance of the Protocols, there have been vigorous claims that the document is “a forgery”. But if so, of what? It is generally claimed to be an attempt emanating from Russia falsely to accuse world Jewry of a plot to rule the world, as a means of promoting and justifying the persecution of Jews. It is quite understandable how this came about, because the Protocols were widely circulated and promoted in the 1920s and 30s in such a way as to create the impression of a massive conspiracy by world Jewry and that is how many people reacted to them. Indeed the covers of     some published editions were emblazoned with the additional words “the Jewish Peril”. The document inevitably came to the attention of Hitler and the Nazis, and it was used by them as added justification for their persecution of the Jews, and was circulated on a massive scale in Germany at that time. Furthermore there was considerable spin off in the form of a number of fanatical, scurrilous and outrageous articles and publications directed against Jews as a whole. Some of these originated in pre revolutionary Russia whilst others appeared elsewhere in Europe. Some plagiarised parts of the Protocols themselves and falsely claimed to be of Jewish origin, as Professor Norman Cohn reveals in his book “Warrant for Genocide – the myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” [57].  However, this extreme reaction has to be seen in the context of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which sent massive shock waves across Europe, with fears that the whole of Europe might succumb to a Communist take-over. As it became known, as we will see later, that Jewish financial interests had largely funded the revolution and that many of the leading participants were Jews, one begins to see why some people reacted to the Protocols in the way that they did. Yet the truth of the matter is - and it is made abundantly clear in the document itself - this is NOT a plot by Jews as a whole as we will see later. However the danger signals are clear - the document may well be the work of a small Jewish elite, but it is the majority that can end up getting the blame and suffering the terrible consequences. It has happened once – it must never happen again. 
Origins of the Protocols?
      The Elders of Zion are thought in some circles to be the successors of the Pharisees who made up Great Sanhedrin – the highest Jewish authority around the time of Jesus, which continued to exist until at least the 15th century, moving from Jerusalem to Galilee following the destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans around 70 AD and thereafter being based in Constantinople for 1000 years or more. Some suggest that they are the so called “Illuminati” said to be at the highest level of initiation in freemasonry. The reasoning behind the Protocols is based on the concept of the Jews being God’s chosen people. This belief is still held by many Jews today. For centuries, it has set the Jews apart, and sadly nothing has done more to cause conflict, suffering and persecution than this piece of misguided religious indoctrination that one group of people is somehow special, superior, chosen or favoured above everyone else. Human behaviour being what it is, when one group sets itself aside in this way, there’s a tendency for the rest to view them with suspicion, to dislike and mistrust them, to snipe at them and in the worst cases ultimately persecute and kill them. In reality, of course, everyone is of equal worth in the eyes of God/creation – call it what you will - but not, it seems as far as traditional Judaism is concerned! 
     The concept of  “the chosen people” has its origins in the old testament of the bible, which also constitutes the Jewish bible or Tanach. This is the foundation of the Jewish “Torah” which is the axis around which the whole of Judaism revolves. “Torah” is also the name sometimes given to the first five books of the old testament which, in traditional Judaism, are considered to be a faithful and exact record of the word of God to the prophet Moses. However, for example, in the fifth book, Deuteronomy, this “god” of the Israelites (otherwise known as Yahweh) is portrayed as wrathful, tyrannical and demanding unquestioning obedience. The Israelites are told that they are a superior chosen race. In return for the “promised land”, they are ordered to destroy without mercy all other tribes living there. This is graphically set out in Deuteronomy chapters 7 and 20. They are told that carrying out these instructions will bring great material rewards, but failure to obey will entail terrible consequences (Chapter 28). Large sections of Deuteronomy are blatantly racist, blood thirsty and a license to plunder and pillage – yet this is still part of a so called holy book central to Judaism and Christianity as well. The promised land is described as stretching from the “western sea” (the Mediterranean) to the Euphrates river (present day Iraq) [58]. Some ultra orthodox Jews today, particularly in Israel, still take this seriously, and it certainly helps to explain why, since 1967, Palestinians in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza have had their land and property expropriated by the Israeli authorities, as  Jewish settlements have continuously encroached and expanded into these areas. Indeed this concept of the promised land was the rationale behind the Zionist declaration in 1906 of intent to re-establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine after 1,900 years, which in turn led to mass Jewish emigration into Palestine and the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
      In the Protocols, the Jewish people other than this elite are referred to as “the lesser brethren”. Everyone else is referred to as “the Goyim”, a thoroughly derogatory term meaning cattle. The Goyim are seen as inferior, ignorant, stupid and totally unfit to govern and look after world affairs. They therefore need to be covertly controlled by intellectual superiors, whilst the lesser brethren are to be used unwittingly as part of the plan for global domination, and are considered expendable in attaining it. Those who insist that the Protocols are a faked document designed falsely to accuse world Jewry of a plot to dominate the world, fail to address the fact that the agenda of this document makes victims out of most Jews as much as anyone else. Those who promoted the Protocols in the 1920s and 30s seem to have been just as blind to this fact as well. What is also not addressed by the same people, is the possibility that the Protocols are the latest updated manifestation of the racist, supremacist themes in Deuteronomy mentioned above - themes which are repeated in many other parts of the old testament, and which can also be found in the Jewish Talmud. In particular Professor Cohn looks at none of these issues in his book “Warrant for Genocide” referred to above. 
      Turning to the Talmud, this means literally “the teaching”. It contains some 4500 pages compiled between the 3rd and 5th centuries with later additions in the 11th century and further commentaries added in the 12th and 13th centuries. It is basically an edited record of discussions and debates of leading rabbis of the time. It contains an extraordinarily detailed mass of laws, regulations, rituals and requirements governing every aspect and detail of Jewish life. It also includes many noble teachings, aspirations and ethical guidelines, which are clearly an important focus for most religious Jews today, and it is very important not to lose sight of this fact. However as Professor Israel Shahak reveals in his devastating critique  “Jewish History, Jewish Religion – the weight of 3000 years” [59], the fact is that parts of the Talmud also develop and reinforce the highly destructive and racist themes found in parts of the old testament. These sections were clearly written by fanatics and are still followed by fanatics today. For example Gentiles (non Jews) are regarded as inferior and are despised and referred to in the most derogatory terms. They have been created to serve Jews and are equated with dogs.  They are regarded as satanic creatures and liars, in which there is no good. Gentile women are equated with prostitutes.  Gentiles are to be exploited and Jews should avoid any situation where Gentiles have authority over them. A remark by one of the rabbis of the extremist Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful) movement in Israel, that “the life of a thousand Gentiles is not worth the toenail of a Jew” summarises the attitude of hatred and scorn directed at non Jews that is to be found in parts of the Talmud [60]. These attitudes are also reflected in parts of the Halakhah, which was the legal system of classical Judaism from the 9th to the 18th centuries, adopted by the tightly knit Jewish communities in Europe at that time, and which survives today in some quarters of ultra orthodox Judaism. Under this legal code for example it is a capital offence to murder a Jew punishable in a court of law, but the murder of a Gentile requires no punishment and is left to God’s judgement [61].. It was because of sentiments like these and also highly derogatory remarks about Christianity and Jesus, that the Talmud was banned and destroyed in parts of Europe during the middle ages. These sentiments also must have fuelled the demonisation and persecution of Jews by many Christians in mediaeval Europe  - the belief that Jews  were devil worshippers, demons in human form, and took part in ritual child sacrifices. The Talmud subsequently reappeared with the offensive sections toned down or removed altogether and it is these much more moderate versions that are in general use and circulation today [62]. Nevertheless the racist supremacist sections have never disappeared altogether – they have reappeared in more recent years generally amongst the ultra orthodox communities of Hassidic Jews (pious ones) in parts of the USA, particularly New York, and especially in Israel itself, where fanatics have felt safe within the security provided by the Jewish state, to publish and circulate these ideas. Often what is really being promoted is concealed by translations and commentaries into English from the original Hebrew, which hide the true nature of the Hebrew texts, so that outsiders with no knowledge of Hebrew do not understand what is actually being said and taught [63]. This is further illustrated by the fact that amongst this Jewish theology can be found references to the redemption of the individual soul and of the Jewish people which will be achieved with the arrival of the “Messiah” once Jews govern the entire world… (my emphasis) [64]. Add this to what appears in the book of Exodus, the second book of the old testament Chapter 23, verse 22 where “god” promises to his chosen people  “If thou shalt indeed do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come…” - then it becomes ever more clear that there may indeed be some fanatical Jewish elite hell bent on some kind of global domination, and the Protocols are the latest in a line of edicts and declarations to that effect.    
The Protocols in Context
      Professor Shahak goes on to reveal that the fanatical religious concepts contained in parts of the Talmud and the old testament have been effectively secularised to a considerable extent within the top echelons of the Zionist movement, many of whose proponents, including many of Israel’s leaders, are not remotely religious. Although Professor Shahak himself makes no mention of the Protocols, it could follow on from what he says that the Protocols are indeed the latest manifestation of these ancient racist supremacist principles, updated, secularised and put into the context of the modern world. Yet they are more than this, for they reveal a profound understanding of the human mind and condition. They show how human weaknesses are to be ruthlessly exploited, how the principle of divide and rule (one group being manipulated and turned against another) will be used by the perpetrators. They show how people in positions of power can be used, often unknowingly, to further the conspirators aims.  What is not addressed by those who claim the Protocols to be a forgery is the extraordinary extent to which the agenda set out in them materialised during the 20th century. Whoever produced them either had a remarkable prophetic vision of what lay ahead, or they had very specific ideas and understanding as to how world events could and would be manipulated. To illustrate the point, here are a few brief extracts: [65]
            “ It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more in number than the good, and therefore the best results in governing them are attained by violence and terrorisation and not by academic discussions. Every man aims at power… and rare indeed are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice the welfare of all for the sake of securing their own welfare.” (Protocol 1.3)
           “The administrators, whom we shall choose from among the public, with strict regard to their capacities for servile obedience, will not be persons trained in the arts of government, and will therefore easily become pawns in our game in the hands of men of learning and genius who will be their advisors, specialists bred and reared to rule the affairs of the whole world…” (Protocol 2.2)
            “…The administrators of the goyim sign papers without reading them, and they serve either for mercenary reasons or from ambition.”  (Protocol 8.1)  (Note for example how European leaders sign the treaties making up the European Union without reading the full texts.)
           “….We shall put responsible posts in the hands of persons whose past and reputation are such that between them and the people lies an abyss, persons who, in the case of disobedience to our instructions, must face criminal charges or disappear – this in order to make them defend our interests to their last gasp.” (Protocol 8.3)  (There are numerous leaders with dubious dealings in their private and business lives that could be “exposed” -  Bill Clinton was an excellent example.)       
           “What is it to the proletariat labourer, bowed double over his heavy toil crushed by his lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get the right to scribble any nonsense side by side with good stuff, once the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from our table in return for their voting in favour of what we dictate, in favour of the men we place in power, the servants of our argentur…”  (Protocol 3.5)
           “At the present we are, as an international force, invincible, because if attacked by some, we are supported by others. It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless towards weakness, unsparing to faults and indulgent to crimes… it is those qualities which are aiding us to independence….”  (Protocol 3.16)
           “Who and what is in a position to overthrow an invisible force? And this is precisely what our force is. Gentile masonry blindly serves as a screen for us and our objects, but the plan of action of our force, even its very abiding place remains for the whole people an unknown mystery.”  (Protocol 4.2)
           “…We shall create and multiply free masonic lodges in all countries of the world, absorb into them all who may become or who are prominent in public activity, for these lodges we shall find our principal intelligence office and means of influence. All these lodges we shall bring under one central administration known to us alone and to all others absolutely unknown, which will be composed of our learned elders…”. (Protocol 15.4)  
           “We shall soon begin to establish huge monopolies, reservoirs of riches, upon which even large fortunes of the goyim will depend to such an extent that they will go to the bottom together with the credit of the states on the day after the political smash.”    (Protocol 6.1)
           “We must intensively patronise trade and industry, but first and foremost speculation…. What we want is that industry should drain off from the land both labour and capital and, by means of speculation, transfer into our hands all the money of the world, and thereby throw all the goyim into the ranks of the proletariat. Then the goyim will bow down before us, if for no other reason but to get the right to exist.” (Protocol 6.6) 
           “The principal factor of success in the political is the secrecy of its undertakings – the word should not agree with the deeds of the diplomat… We must compel the governments of the goyim to take action in the direction of our widely conceived plan… by what we shall represent as “public opinion”, secretly promoted by us through the means of that so called great power, the Press, which, with few exceptions that may be disregarded, is already entirely in our hands.”    (Protocols 7.4 & 7.5)
           “We have fooled, bemused and corrupted the youth of the goyim by rearing them in principles and theories which are known to us to be false, although it is by us they have been inculcated.”  (Protocol 9.10)  (For example today’s neo-classical economics and  the current system of money creation?) 
            “…In order that the masses may not guess what they are about, we further distract them with amusements, games, pastimes, passions, peoples’ palaces. Soon we shall begin through the press to propose competitions in art, in sport of all kinds – these interests will finally distract their minds from questions in which we should find ourselves compelled to oppose them…  In countries known as progressive and enlightened, we have created a senseless filthy abominable literature… in order to provide a telling relief, by contrast to the speeches and party programme which will be distributed from exalted quarters of ours….” (Protocols 13.4 & 14.5)
           “Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who.. come begging with outstretched palm to our bankers… The goy states do not tear them off – they go on persisting in putting more on themselves so that they must inevitably perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting. So long as loans were internal, the goyim only shuffled their money from the pockets of the poor to those of the rich, but when we brought up the necessary person in order to transfer loans into the external sphere, all the wealth of states flowed into our cash boxes and all the goyim began to pay us the tribute of subjects.”  (Protocol 20.29 & 20.32) 
          “…We have the GOLD in our hands, not withstanding that we have had to gather it out of the oceans of blood and tears. But it has paid us, though have sacrificed many of our people. Each victim on our side is worth in the sight of God a thousand goyim.” (Protocol 2.5)  
      To dismiss the Protocols, for example, as a forgery by elements in the Russian Tsarist secret police, as some do, is really not good enough and is to miss the point completely. On the face of it, in “Warrant for Genocide” Professor Cohn appears to make a plausible case that the Protocols are a fake  - various people, particularly Russians, are implicated in the publication of the Protocols and the document may have originated in France. However, the evidence presented appears circumstantial at best, and some of it is really no more than speculation and guesswork. In the end Cohn admits he has no proof as to who the author of the document is. The real point is the agenda set out in the document and the extent to which it has since come to pass. This is perhaps ultimately of greater importance than who actually produced the document in the first place – something which we may never know for certain. 
The Exploitation of “the lesser brethren” 
      With the appalling persecution of European Jewry by the Nazis, it could be argued that the expendability of their own people has never been more ruthlessly demonstrated than in the covert support given to Hitler by international bankers many of whom were Jewish. Subsequently, Zionist icons such as Chaim Weizmann former President of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, made no secret as to how well they considered that Hitler and the holocaust served the setting up of the state of Israel and how the Zionist elite were strengthened as a result of it. After such suffering, who could deny the Jews a homeland of their own, even if in the process, many thousands of the existing Arab inhabitants ended up being forced from their homes and losing their land, as Israel was set up on the back of terrorism and ethnic cleansing, carried out by Zionist terror groups such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and the Zionist militia known as the Haganah ? 
     It is now apparent that there are powerful political reasons for preserving the memory of the holocaust indefinitely. This is a most compelling reason for ensuring that the true facts of the holocaust are established - as Professor Finkelstein says in “The Holocaust Industry”: “The holocaust has proved an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment one of the world’s most formidable military powers (Israel), has cast itself as a victim state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood – in particular immunity from criticism however justified….”  Recent years have seen the setting up of holocaust museums, the inauguration of “Holocaust Memorial Day” in Britain, and now even “education packs” in schools in Britain and the US. Hardly a week goes by nowadays, without a TV programme or leading stories in the newspapers being devoted to the holocaust. Other mass atrocities, such as Stalin’s purges, Pol Pots’ murderous regime in Cambodia in the 1970’s, and even current ones, such as thousands of deaths in Iraq caused by economic sanctions, are largely ignored. Many Jews are increasingly disturbed by this.  Prof. Finkelstein in his book the “Holocaust Industry” is highly critical of the political exploitation of the suffering of Jews. .Alfred Lilienthal too, writing in his book “The Zionist Connection – What Price Peace?” says: “Yad Vashem  (the holocaust museum outside Jerusalem) epitomises the last trump of the professional anti-anti-semite. The holocaust is the weapon that hovers behind the cover up and supplies the principal prop of the cover up. When all else fails the six million Jews killed during the Nazi holocaust remain the ultimate silencer. These six million are quite literally pulled from the ovens, propped up and pushed forward to confront anyone who might raise the slightest question or smallest voice of dissent. Even the mere threat suffices to silence most people…..”   To what extent do these constant reminders of the holocaust serve to make ordinary Jews today feel that somehow the world still hates them? Do they feel even more separated than ever, and does it make it more difficult for them to integrate into the rest of society? Could this not just be another example of divide and rule? Indeed, it seems that the publication and dissemination of the Protocols in such a way as to fan the flames of anti-semitism, and thus to create the conditions for mass persecution of the Jews, is an integral part of the agenda of the Protocols themselves. Note the chilling words in Protocol 9.2 “…Nowadays, if any state raise a protest against us it is only pro forma at our discretion and by our direction, for their anti-semitism is indispensable to us for the management of our lesser brethren..” In spite of the fact that “Warrant for Genocide” runs to 300 pages, Cohn does not afford his readers the opportunity to read the Protocols in full for themselves – one is largely left to rely on his judgement that they are “balderdash”. Only brief extracts are included in the appendix, and he omits those which include references to the exploitation of the “lesser brethren” and the role of anti-semitism in the overall agenda.[66]
Zionist Power…
      What is so effectively being concealed? Moroccan former army officer Ahmed Rami has observed: “If you want to know who is running a country, you have to find out who it is forbidden to criticise. In Morocco, it is quite possible to criticise a minister or to point out social shortcomings, but it is rigorously forbidden to say a word against the king. In the so-called free West, we can pillory capitalism, communism, Christianity and Islam, but even the most timid criticism of Jewry is branded as sacrilege and even penalised in an increasing number of countries..”       Historically Jews have always enjoyed a substantial measure of power and influence. Following the dispersal of the Khazar Jews as a result of the Russian conquest of Khazaria around 1000 AD, throughout many parts of Europe in the middle ages and in eastern Europe as late as the 18th. century, Jews occupied many important positions under Christian monarchs and rulers. They became administrators, tax collectors, diplomats, courtiers and advisors which often made them unpopular with the masses – not so much because they were Jewish as such, but because of the power they wielded on behalf of repressive rulers and noblemen. This accords with the Halakhah which forbids Jews to occupy subservient positions under Gentiles (non Jews), except Gentile kings and noblemen, where to serve would be beneficial to the Jewish community as a whole [67]. In Spain, the Jewish influence came with the arrival of Sephardic Jews from North Africa from the 8th. century onwards. Ultimately from the 13th to the 16th century Jews were banished en masse from a number of western European countries such as England and Spain, but their influence never disappeared completely – in Spain  many converted to Christianity whilst secretly retaining  their Jewish faith. They were known as the Marranos, who as merchants, money lenders and traders, extended their influence into South America with the Spanish conquests on that continent [68]. They also remained very influential where they remained in eastern Europe and Russia.
    It was perhaps inevitable that Jews would become leading bankers and moneylenders in the world. The Halakhah traditionally forbids usury between Jews, although they get round that today with an ingenious dispensation! On the other hand, it obliges Jews to charge as much interest as possible on loans to Gentiles. By the 17th century the pattern was becoming well established.  Jewish merchants and bankers based in Holland helped support and finance Oliver Cromwell who overthrew king Charles I.  When William of Orange came the British throne in 1688, Jewish merchants and bankers from Holland were encouraged to settle in Britain and by 1694 the first privately owned central bank namely the Bank of England had been set up.  A number of Jewish banking families rose to prominence from then on, the most famous- or infamous - being the House of Rothschild. Meyer Armschel Rothschild had five sons, one of whom remained at home to run the bank in Frankfurt, whilst the others went to Vienna, Naples, Paris and London to set up banking houses. In London, Nathan founded N.M. Rothschild & Co. which remains the City’s leading  merchant bank today. In the 19th century the Rothschilds became incredibly wealthy by financing governments to fight each other –  each war resulting in a new balance of power. They were leading figures amongst the first truly international bankers who were close to governments and were concerned with government debts. Another big name is Warburg. They went on to fund the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and of course they funded both sides in World Wars 1 and 2. Jacob Schiff, of New York bankers Kuhn Loeb, was able to boast subsequently of being instrumental in overthrowing the Czarist regime. Russian rulers had traditionally been suspicious and hostile towards Jews in Russia, so it was perhaps somewhat inevitable that Jewish banking houses would support the revolution.
      However the Jewish role in the Bolshevik revolution was more fundamental and far reaching than just financial support. A British Intelligence report in 1913 stated that “there is definite evidence that Bolshevism is an international movement controlled by Jews – communications are passing between the leaders in America, France, Russia and England with a view to concerted action…” . By 1919 a section of the Jewish press in London was openly encouraging Bolshevism in Britain – a statement in the Times of 29th March 1919 said.. “of the 20 or 30 commissaries or leaders who provide the central machinery of the Bolshevik movement, not less than 75% are Jews… and among minor Soviet officials the number is legion”  The latter is borne out by this writer’s own great grandfather’s brother, John Edward Greaves who for many years, before the revolution, lived in Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, where he ran a successful business manufacturing agricultural equipment. He escaped to England in 1918 having lost everything, including most of his family. In a letter to a friend in Germany, in which he described the horrors of Bolshevik atrocities in Berdiansk, he noted “..the Red commissars are practically all young Jews.” Subsequently, the newspaper the American Hebrew reported on 10th Sept. 1920: “the Bolshevik revolution was the work of Jewish brains, of Jewish dissatisfaction, of Jewish planning whose goal is to create a new world order…”.  [69]
      Bringing matters up to date, in the U.S. Jews make up 3% of the population, yet they are said to occupy about 90% of the top administrative positions in central government. In Britain they account for just 0.5% of the population. In the western world as a whole, they are disproportionately represented in media corporations, the major publishing houses particularly, and other substantial key business interests, including banking. There is nothing wrong with this state of affairs in itself – after all, if they have the skills and ability, it is perfectly reasonable that they should hold these posts - but what is crucial is the extent to which such positions are occupied by those who would pursue an elite Zionist agenda.  However it is a fact that the professional Jewish Israeli lobby in America is huge in size and is a powerful even dominant factor in American politics. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is said to be the largest foreign lobby in Washington and fourth most powerful lobby in the country. Other groups also include the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. These groups are essentially Zionist, and through Jewish interests having large stakes in media giants like the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek Magazine, Time-Warner-AOL and their CNN news network, they have a high level of control over the dissemination of news in the United States.
      One could say that all this accords with the plan set out in the Protocols. Protocol 11.8 says: “God has granted to us his chosen people the gift of the dispersion, and this, which appears in all eyes to be our weakness, has come forth all our strength which has now brought us to the threshold of sovereignty over all the world..” Through the network of business interests especially banking, it is clear that Zionism can at least influence if not dictate much of what will happen economically and politically in the world today. The currency raids led by Jewish speculator George Soros in 1997, which led to the collapse of many of the economies of far eastern nations, caused Malaysia’s Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed to make a public outburst that his country’s prosperity had been deliberately wrecked by international Zionist speculators. In the west, Soros is often presented as a great philanthropist – in reality a case of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”?  Soros has since been confronted by angry demonstrators when visiting the far east.  This must indeed be the most powerful and influential ethnic minority group the world has ever known. Yet it is no longer acceptable in the west for such matters to be raised and discussed, and indeed in practice it is almost impossible to do so. Anyone who does is immediately branded as racist and anti-semitic. This was well illustrated only recently, when investigative journalist John Pilger wrote an article that appeared in the New Statesman on 10/1/02. In it, he was highly critical, first of increasing British government support for Ariel Sharon’s Zionist project and the current onslaught against the Palestinian people, secondly a failure on the part of the British media to report on this impartially, and thirdly the appointment by Tony Blair, of Lord Levy, a wealthy Jewish businessman with close family ties to the Israeli establishment, as his “special envoy” to the middle east. The response was immediate with a Jewish group calling itself “Action against Anti-Semitism” occupying the offices of the New Statesman in protest, and a vitriolic attack on Pilger appearing in Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, accusing him of bringing comfort to the enemies of Brtiain, America and Israel. Murdoch, although not Jewish, has always been a fervent supporter of Zionism. The New Statesman editor ended up printing a grovelling apology for publishing the article saying he “got it wrong” and pointing out that New Statesman vigorously opposes racism. All this highlights the problem of how anti Zionism and anti-Semitism are presented as one and the same thing, when this is absolutely not the case, and nothing serves the Zionist cause more effectively than the failure to make this vital distinction, as the Pilger debacle so clearly illustrates. The term “anti-Semitic” was coined in the late 19th century. It is actually an absurdity because it is the Arabs who are a Semitic race – the only Jews today who can claim to be Semitic being the small percentage who share a common ancestry with the Arabs – sometimes referred to as oriental Jews. Nevertheless “anti-Semitic” has become the phrase that is used to frighten Jews and intimidate everyone else. Giving the impression today that somehow there is a revival of the old suspicions and dislike of Jews that became quite widespread across parts of pre war Europe, today serves to provide in many quarters, unwitting and unquestioning Jewish solidarity behind the Zionist elite. 
      In spite of everything that is written in this section, what must be remembered is that the vast majority of Jews whether in Israel or elsewhere, are ordinary folk like anyone else. They just want to get on with their lives in peace, provide for themselves and their families, have financial security and get some enjoyment out of life.  They far outnumber those who would pursue power and control. However the question remains - does a Zionist Jewish elite set the global agenda and manipulate global events accordingly?   Some people believe that Zionism is confined to an aggressive policy intent on maintaining and expanding the state of Israel, in which only Jews enjoy full rights of citizenship and others – Arabs in particular - are treated as inferior.  However, as this cannot be achieved without the active support of the US, this requires that Zionists or Zionist sympathisers occupy as many influential posts in the US government as possible, and ensuring that the media is generally supportive. This is most certainly the case, because there’s little doubt when it comes to US foreign policy especially in the middle east, Israel often seems to be the tail that wags the dog. Influencing or controlling US policy is vital to Zionist power – these people both inside and outside Israel realise that, with Russia and Europe having ceased to be world powers, the US is now the sole superpower -  and can do more or less as it wants. Control the US and you are not far off controlling the world… 
      However, being seen to act alone is not good even for the all powerful US – a staunch ally such as Britain is vital – so, albeit to a lesser extent, the same Zionist influence is hard at work here as well. Israel Shamir in an article entitled “Chosen and Choosing” writes as follows: “..The elevation to be a peer of the realm of that man-eating ogre, the pillar of the Tories, Conrad Black, friend of Pinochet, Sharon and Thatcher, husband of Barbara Amiel, the owner of the Daily Telegraph and numerous other newspapers, is a proof of the influence and infectious nature of the malady. And what of Labour? Another freshly minted lord, Michael Levy, also a friend of Sharon, is the grey eminence behind Prime Minister and US envoy plenipotentiary, Tony Blair. A fervent Zionist, Levy was the man who effectively made Tony Blair Prime Minister. He found youthful Tony, managed his election campaign and brought him to power. Blair made Levy his special envoy to the Middle East, but Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook blocked Levy’s attempts to re-Zionize British policy. He even refused to give the freshly knighted Levy a room with a secretary in the Foreign Office. It was short-sighted of Cook, who had annoyed Israelis on previous occasions as well. After Blair’s re-election in 2001, Cook received the boot, and Sir Michael was elevated to the peerage…” 
       However there is always the danger of over simplification. The fact is that when it comes to the global agenda contained in the Protocols, others have clearly endorsed it and put it into practice – for example those who have controlled the expanding corporate military industrial complex of the 20th. century. Although Jews are involved especially in banking, many of these big players are not Jewish. This is essentially an Anglo-American axis of corporate and political power of which families like Bush and Rockefeller are good examples. These sorts of people dominate gatherings such as Bilderberg and the World Economic Forum. This western axis, according to King and Beveridge writing in “Princess Diana – the Hidden Evidence”, has its roots in the power of the Christian church and can ultimately be traced back via the Roman Catholic church to the Roman Empire. In our complex modern world, the likelihood is that two or more groups vie for power. Corporate interests, banking interests and  Zionist interests all overlap. The state of Israel, in spite of its religious fanatics who are only a minority, actually represents the intrusion of secular western interests, values and lifestyle into the heart of the Arab world. Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, rallied Jews to form “ a wall of defence for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilisation against barbarism”. It has divided and distracted Arab countries, which might otherwise have presented a stronger more united front against western corporate interests. Israel Shamir refers to the two headed monster of globalisation and Zionism. They will unite against a common foe – the perfect example today being the Arabs and the Islamic world. Islam is the one religion that is still very hostile to a money system based on usury, and the Arabs of course are sitting on the world’s largest oil fields. The important feature of the Protocols is the content perhaps, rather than exactly who wrote them.  A truly successful conspiracy must remain hidden if it is to succeed – the Protocols themselves state as much. That is the nature of conspiracy  - it can be very difficult to prove. Authors such as Robin Ramsay understandably want to deal with conspiracy facts – but conspiracies by their very nature are not always very obliging in providing hard evidence. However that is no reason for simply writing off the Protocols as a fake. Even if the Elders of Zion are as elusive as the Illuminati, the Brotherhood, the Olympians, the Committee of 300 etc. one only has to examine the world of today to see the extent to which the Protocols agenda has materialised. In reality they represent the perfect agenda for any cabal seeking to dominate the world.….  
The loss of Judaism’s true message?
      To return to the possible source of all this, the book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the old testament. It was written around 600 BC - 1500 years or more after the events of which it purports to give an account. Could it be that the original message has been misunderstood, lost or perhaps deliberately perverted by the Judaic priesthood of the day – whose successors were the Scribes and Pharisees of whom Jesus was subsequently so critical? Could the freeing of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt and being led by Moses to the “promised land” be a symbolic account of the personal journey that every person can make from a state of ignorance/bondage to enlightenment? In other words “the promised land” was never a physical place, but rather a state of mind or “being”, which Buddhists call enlightenment, which Jesus called heaven, and which Hindus call Nirvana [70]. Anyone can choose to make this journey. Was this the real message of Moses to the Israelites?  Further evidence that this might be the case is to be found in “The Holy Land of Scotland” by Barry Dunford (see note [46]). In Chapter 3 the author is at pains to explain that Hebrews, Israelites and Jews are quite different groups. The Israelites were a philosophical order with adherents from various tribes in the region. Israel originally did not denote a place name with allusions to a religion or race, rather it was a term (Is-Ra-El) based on the spiritual precept of the true nature and function of humanity itself – Is representing the soul, Ra the body and El the infinite spirit. It translates from the ancient Hebrew language as “soldier of God” or spiritual warrior. The true Israelites were those whose philosophy of life revolved around this spiritual precept, quite the opposite of present day Jewish extremists and the current Zionist leaders of the modern state of Israel [71]. When viewed objectively, archaeological evidence does not support the old testament biblical accounts of large scale Israelite immigration into Palestine or of any mass conquest by them [72].
      If Judaism has been perverted by a minority, it is most certainly not alone in this - it is a feature of all religions to a greater or lesser extent.  Repressive Islamic regimes run by religious fanatics exist in Iran and Saudi Arabia – the latter spawning the fanatical Taliban of Afghanistan. The Muslim Brotherhood founded in Egypt in the 1920s, has since spawned Hamas and similar groups who, given a chance, would destroy the state of Israel, drive out the Jews, and impose an Iranian or Saudi Arabian type of fundamentalist regime on the whole of Palestine – all in the name of Allah. Early Christians took the enlightened master/prophet Jesus and declared him to be the founder of their religion, and decided he was the son of God no less. The scriptures were subsequently written and adapted accordingly to back this up. Having done this, its adherents naturally saw it as a religion superior to all others – the only way to God and salvation – something which many evangelical Christians still passionately believe today. Its leaders and priests became enormously wealthy and powerful and for generations its emissaries set out to “convert the heathen” by whatever means they had at their disposal. In the process the killing, persecution and wars that have been carried out in the name of “gentle Jesus meek and mild” absolutely beggar belief, and at times Jews have certainly been on the receiving end. However there is a link between Christian fundamentalism and Jewish extremism. Whilst the Christian supporters of Israel are quite ignorant of the contempt in which parts of the Talmud hold them and their religion, there are fanatics in both camps who would see the rebuilding of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. As the site is presently occupied by the Dome of the Rock and the El Aksa mosque, which make up the third holiest site in Islam, these would have to be demolished first. Together with the return of the “chosen people” to the “promised land”, this is seen by Christian fundamentalists, as a precondition for the return of Christ, although what the Jews may not realise is that there is another condition that all Jews shall convert to Christianity. This type of Christian fundamentalism is widespread throughout the United States. John Pilger, writing in an article entitled “The Great Charade” which appeared in the New Statesman, points out that it is the Christian fundamentalist right wing that now dominates the Washington political elite. This has serious implications, because some Christian fanatics reckon Muslims represent the “anti-Christ”, and must therefore be destroyed in the “Battle of Armageddon”. It may explain why many Christian fundamentalists in the US are as ardent as any Jew, in their support of Zionism, Ariel Sharon and the state of Israel. It may also explain the kind of wild rhetoric about the “axis of evil” etc. that has become the hallmark of speeches by Bush and senior members of his administration.     
      However, in contrast, there are in parts of Europe and America and even in Israel itself, groups of orthodox Jews who describe themselves as “Torah True Jews”. They are the Neturei Karta. Their form of Judaism is very strict in terms of religious rules, ritual and observance, but at the same time it is benevolent and respectful towards others. No one draws a sharper distinction between Judaism and Zionism than the Neturei Karta - they are the Jewish world’s most outspoken critics of Zionism, and as a result they are ostracised by many of their fellow Jews. To them Zionism represents the spiritual death of Judaism – it is heresy and the arch enemy of true Jews. (That is certainly reflected in the Protocols with regard to the status and treatment of the “lesser brethren”). They point out that many Jewish organisations such as the World Jewish Congress are Zionist. They say also that true Jews are forsworn not to rebel against nations, to be loyal citizens and not to do anything against the will of any nation or its honour, or to insult, humiliate or dominate another people (thus illustrating the many positive ethical aspects of the Talmud which their men-folk spend many hours contemplating and studying). Whilst they believe in the traditional idea of the promised land, they believe Jews were expelled because they failed to observe God’s laws and to take it back by forcing out its Arab inhabitants is sacrilege. They believe Jews can live anywhere including Palestine and practice their religion, but that a Jewish state is not necessary [73]..  They ask that the world does not judge Judaism on the basis of the Zionist aberration. They point out that it is Zionist propaganda that claims Arabs hate all Jews when the truth is that it is Zionism that the Arabs hate so much [74]. So let the last word in this controversial section come from Israel Shamir who writes in an article entitled “Galilee Flowers”:  “To my Jewish brothers I say – the opinions of medieval Jews do not bind us. Every Jew can decide whether to pray for the destruction of the Gentiles or whether to share the blessing of the Holy Land with the villagers of Birim and Bethlehem. Within Jewish people, there were always spiritual descendants of the prophets who wished to bring peace and blessing to all the children of Adam. In you the prophecy will be fulfilled – ‘All nations of the earth will bless you.’” 

SEPTEMBER 11th…. 
      No single act of terrorism in peace time matches the horror of what happened in New York and Washington on September 11th last year. In the end, at about 2800, the death toll was much less than had initially been feared. A detailed examination of what exactly happened and who might have really been responsible is beyond the scope of this broad based resume - suffice it to say that the idea that some guy with a beard and a turban, tucked away in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan masterminded and organised the whole thing really isn’t very plausible. (Bin Laden has been described by the Spotlight newspaper “as heavy on rhetoric but light on action”. [75])  Also the fact that 4 aircraft were simultaneously hijacked in American air space together with the all the planning that would have gone into such a complex operation – could foreign terrorists really have pulled off such an extraordinary operation undetected and without assistance from within the US? Yet America’s security and intelligence services with all their contacts and resources to infiltrate, eavesdrop and monitor communications world wide, would have us believe they were completely taken by surprise.  Could novice pilots who trained on light aircraft have had the skills needed to fly a high speed commercial airliner accurately into a target such as the twin towers? Was the impact close to the tops of the buildings enough to cause them to collapse neatly in on themselves an hour or so after impact? The collapse itself seemed just like a carefully controlled piece of demolition work in which explosives are laid at critical points in the structure to ensure that a building falls neatly in on itself to avoid damaging surrounding buildings [76]. The official version of events is full of flaws and inconsistencies and the “clues” such as a hire car found in the car park at Boston airport with a flight manual in Arabic and a copy of the Koran look like a deliberate “plant”.
      When examining a terror attack it’s important to ask “who benefits?” This can be a very accurate indicator as to who was responsible. One thing is certain - the Islamic world has NOT benefited in any way at all – quite the opposite when one looks at what has happened to Afghanistan and what is happening in Palestine.  The Arab world has been very much on the receiving end since Sept. 11th  - even individual Muslims in Britain and the US have suffered hate and abuse.  The event has provided the perfect excuse for an all out “war on terrorism”. However the war on terrorism is essentially a guise for what is, in reality, a fight for unlimited western hegemony and monopoly of the world’s riches and resources – a fight to destroy anyone and any state that might stand in the way of this objective.  Even before September 11th , the Pentagon in Washington DC had published an extra-ordinary document, largely ignored by the media on 30/5/ 2000. It is called JOINT VISION 2020, and it indicates clearly the express intention of the US military to dominate the world. Here’s a relevant extract...
    The ultimate goal of our military force is to accomplish the objectives directed by the National Command Authorities. For the joint force of the future, this goal will be achieved through full spectrum dominance - the ability of US forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations.
    The full range of operations includes maintaining a posture of strategic deterrence. It includes theater engagement and presence activities. It includes conflict involving employment of strategic forces and weapons of mass destruction, major theater wars, regional conflicts, and smaller-scale contingencies. It also includes those ambiguous situations residing between war and peace, such as peace-keeping and peace enforcement operations, as well as non-combat humanitarian relief operations and support to domestic authorities.
    The label full spectrum dominance implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained, and synchronised operations of forces tailored to specific situations and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information. Additionally, given the global nature of our interests and obligations, the United States must maintain its overseas presence forces and the ability to rapidly project power world-wide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance.    
      The war in Afghanistan is very much a part of  “full spectrum dominance”. It was actually planned before Sept. 11th[77]. Having killed at least 5000 civilians to date and forced thousands more to flee their homes amid massive aerial bombardment, it has successfully removed the Taliban from power and installed an interim regime friendly towards US interests, which are basically about securing access to the surrounding region’s large untapped oil and mineral resources [78].  Osama bin Laden was never very likely to be caught, nor was that ever the real objective - no-one is even bothering about him now. Since  Sept. 11th  the Bush administration has expanded US military operations around the world. For the first time the US has what will very likely become permanent military bases in Central Asia. In addition to Afghanistan, so far US troops are deployed in the Philippines and the Republic of Georgia. Vice-president Cheney has announced "operations underway" in Bosnia and off the Horn of Africa and the US involvement in the Colombian civil war. And there is, of course, the "Axis of Evil" with North  Korea, Iraq, and Iran, as well as Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Sudan, all  lined up as potential future targets. 
      More people are realising that the world’s greatest rogue terrorist state is actually the United States.  The role of the United Nations as a means of settling disputes peacefully has been caste into the dustbin of history for the time being. For the US elite, the end of the cold war and the break up of the Soviet Union has ensured there is no longer any significant opposition to its political aims and military might. The CIA funded and trained chief scapegoat for Sept 11th ,Osama bin Laden and others to fight the Russian presence in Afghanistan in the 1980s. 
      The other beneficiary has been the state of Israel. Just 8 days before the Sept. 11th attacks, Israel had been stunned to be branded a racist apartheid state by a large international conference of Non Governmental Organisations held in Durban, South Africa. The life style of Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories was compared to that of the whites under South Africa’s old apartheid regime. The Israeli delegation declared all this to be an incitement to the hatred of Jews and walked out, followed by delegates from the US. Of course since Sept. 11th. public opinion has swung dramatically against Arab countries with calls  for the perpetrators to be hunted down and annihilated, although no one is coming up with any proof of who was actually responsible. At the same time, Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon has effectively been given carte blanche by the “international community” to pursue his own so called war on terrorism with a murderous all out assault on the Palestinian territories, designed to destroy Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and re-occupy the whole area, as part of the long term expansionist Zionist aim of creating “eretz Yisrael” – greater Israel.        
     As far as the forwarding of the agenda of the New World Order generally is concerned, the Sept. 11th attacks have provided a massive impetus for the introduction of repressive measures and a mass of legislation seriously curtailing personal liberties and designed to curb political dissent across the western world. These plans were announced so soon after the attacks, that one must wonder if they were ready laid in advance. They masquerade as being designed to curb terrorism. Surveillance is to be increased. In the US, the Patriot Act, passed by Congress in the name of "homeland defence," expanded the government's freedom to tap phones, detain suspects, monitor internet communications and conduct secret searches, while at the same time reducing judicial oversight of such actions. Additionally, President Bush has passed an executive order to keep all presidential records since 1980 locked away, and Attorney Gen. Ashcroft has urged various federal agencies actively to resist Freedom of Information Act requests. Similar measures are being put into effect in Britain under the Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act rushed through parliament late in 2001. Crucially, definitions of terrorism are being extended to cover activities way beyond anything that most people would regard as constituting terrorism. An EU proposal is that terrorism shall be “any act of intimidation by an individual or group with the intention of seriously altering … political economic or social structures”. This could cover almost any public order situation.  Furthermore, smart cards and identity cards which will be encoded with a mass of personal information on the holder, are now under serious consideration in Britain and elsewhere where traditionally such things are regarded as contrary to established principles of personal freedom and democracy. A climate of fear and uncertainty has been deliberately generated in the aftermath of Sept. 11th. – we are repeatedly told there are states all over the world harbouring thousands of terrorists who could strike us at any time – we have been subjected to anthrax scares, although it was later established that the spores originated in an American laboratory –  we are told that in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is building up more weapons of mass destruction etc etc.  In such an enhanced climate of fear, people become very willing to give up yet more of their basic freedoms for so called “state protection” and the “fight against terrorism”. As H.L. Mencken once said “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep people alarmed and clamouring to be led to safety, by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary..” The stories of the man on the plane with the exploding shoe and the dirty bomber accused of plotting to plant a crude nuclear device, should both be viewed with the greatest suspicion as falling within this category.       
      All this shows that, in reality, US policy makers are major beneficiaries. This being so, the next step is to enquire what role agencies within the US may have played in what happened on Sept. 11th. Contrary to common practice,  no Arab or Islamic terrorists have claimed responsibility for this act of terrorism and Osama bin Laden has always denied it. Some investigators believe that the whole thing was masterminded in the US, whilst others believe that the actions of terrorists were facilitated by elements in the US establishment. For example, Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the centre for Reseach on Globalisation writing under the heading “Political Deception – the Missing Link behind 9-11”  [79] states that Al Qaeda is basically a CIA intelligence asset, developed in the in 80’s in the campaign to get the Russians out of Afghanistan, and that it is supported and financed by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which is in turn funded and backed by the CIA, for whom the ISI operates as a go-between – also that  Al Qaeda has since been used to support covert US operations in the Balkans and the Caucasus.  ISI chief General Mahmoud Ahmad and CIA boss George Tenet have a close working relationship and Tenet in turn has a close relationship with Bush, with daily oral briefings…  .  Others believe that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad played a role along with intelligence agencies within the US. What is known for certain now is that Israel was running a substantial intelligence operation in the US aimed at suspected Arab terrorists and that following Sept 11th some 60 Israeli Jews in the US were taken into custody for questioning. Exactly what these people knew and were doing in the US, remains classified, but it is believed their intelligence gathering operations gave Israel foreknowledge of what was to happen. However Andreas Bulow, who oversaw all branches of German intelligence from 1969 to 1994, apparently believes Mossad itself perpetrated the attacks, which ties in with some people’s belief that Israel’s intelligence operatives in the US may have actually worked with Arab terrorists in planning the attacks [80].  Another theory is that there were no suicide pilots.  It was reported there is a new technology that currently exists called 'Global Hawk'.  This technology was referred to by President Bush immediately following Sept. 11th when he said that in the future, cockpit doors must be strengthened, and further that a new technology must be developed whereby a pilot on the ground can take over the controls of a hijacked aircraft and fly and land the plane.  Bush was referring to this technology being developed sometime in the future but he would have known that this technology has been under development for many years and exists now.  In April 2001, a pilot-less plane flew from the US to Australia and back to the US. Boeing has under development a pilot-less fighter plane, whose final test was set for December 2001. This indicates that the "Global Hawk" pilot-less plane technology that Bush talked about already exists and in theory it could have been used in the Sept. 11th events [81].  There are conflicting elements in these various scenarios, but clearly it was a highly complex operation that was possibly years in the planning – we are still far from knowing what really lay behind those terrible events of September 11th.

FINAL OBSERVATIONS.. and reasons for optimism..
      Since the start of the industrial revolution, we have moved towards what is now a global obsession with economic growth and production as virtually the sole measure of human activity. Economic growth is basically taking more, making more, consuming more, chucking more away, and trashing the planet, its life support systems and almost every other living thing in the process, with a whole host of things, many of which have built in obsolescence or are designed not to last, or we don’t really need at all - and doing this faster and faster every year. 
      The present accelerating process of globalisation is supported and promoted by most people in positions of power - some will believe that it is for the best, that they know best, no doubt in some cases regarding the rest of us too ignorant and stupid to be consulted, so they decide everything for us behind closed doors. Others will be essentially self interested, greedy and dishonest with no scruples, wanting as much as possible for themselves with no concern for anyone else.  Others, immersed in luxurious lifestyles, are so out of touch with the lives and living conditions of the vast majority of people, that they are simply incapable of seeing that the policies that are being pursued can only benefit (assuming one regards a life based on wealth and power as beneficial) a small elite, and only then in the short term. Then finally there will be those who wish to pursue power and control on a global scale - and, for the first time in history, the conditions and technology exist for this to be done. They are perhaps the most dangerous and the most secretive and possibly quite capable of manipulating many of the others. There may be no limits to the depths of depravity that some of them will stoop in pursuit of their goals – as investigative reporter Sherman Sholnick points out: “Bred into them from birth is this mindset for power and enrichment little understood by generally good hearted ordinary people who would never instigate a bloody war for profit…” All this can be very difficult to see, as we are invariably given the impression by the media that all our leaders are generally (if incompetently) seeking to create a better world for us all, and if it doesn’t work out, well that’s just the way things are. But remember - nothing happens by accident in politics… The secretive organisations mentioned here have hierarchies, inner sanctums or steering groups, which suggests that only a select few are privy to the true aims of the organisation - rather like a company or corporation, where only the board of directors are aware of full company policy - below that, everyone is told only what they need to know in order to fulfil their particular function.
      Today, the top banking brains are designing the money of the future. For banks, notes and coins are now regarded as expensive and inconvenient in terms of the facilities that have to be provided to deal with them. Furthermore, they represent a source of money, albeit small nowadays, that is outside their control, which can still cause a “run on the banks” if too many people try to withdraw their deposits at once. A cashless society is therefore a very attractive option. One system is to provide “electronic” money loaded into a microchip embedded in a plastic card (report in “the Times” Jan. ‘95). This has been on trial in some areas in this country with what is known as the Mondex card. It could be promoted as the perfect way to avoid credit card fraud, theft or loss of money, tax evasion, social security fiddles etc. etc. Of course everyone would have to have some form of bank account, but what if you are hard up and have no credit? Could it ever happen that for other reasons, the machines could be programmed not to accept your card? For example, the authorities don’t like your politics, or you are an environmental activist to whom the establishment takes a dislike. You are then left with no means to purchase anything....  Singapore is the first state to declare publicly that it intends to phase out cash, to be replaced by e-money alone – the target date for this is 2008 [82]. Thereafter, in order to avoid theft of cards etc.  the microchip including, obviously, a personal number, could be embedded under the skin of the individual... fantasy? Apparently not - Peter Cochrane, head of Advanced Applications and Technology at British Telecom writing in the Daily Telegraph 28/1/97 under the title “I’ve Got Me Under My Skin..” said how convenient and efficient it would be for us all, not having to carry all that cash, credit cards and passport etc. But here is an intriguing quotation from the Bible (New International Version), the book of Revelation (a prophetic book whose writings date from nearly 2000 years ago), chapter 13 verses 16-18:
       “And he the beast causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no-one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.....”
       Decide for yourself whether you can trust the current process of globalisation and the powers behind it, and whether or not they are the manifestation of the biblical “beast” of the Book of Revelations - but whatever you decide, prophecies should never be seen as having to come true. Regard them instead as worst case scenario projections designed to get people to wake up and change their ways, in order to avoid the prophecy coming true.
      And that is where you and I come into it. This hasn’t been  written to frighten people – fear is the last thing we need. It is fear of not being in control, or being short of something they think they need, that drives a minority to seek to control the world, its resources and everyone in it. 
      This is meant to be a wake up call….  If we want change for the better, we need to understand first what we have to deal with, and secondly that real change will not come from the top down, but rather from the bottom up – we have to change by accepting responsibility and taking control over our own lives, which increasing numbers are starting to do. For too long people have stood back and said “let them sort it out - they should do something....” However, if you sit back and let other people take control, odds on they will run the show for what they perceive to be their benefit… not yours or humanity’s as a whole. The present emerging global centralisation of power made possible by technological advances, is the logical outcome of all those power struggles based on manipulation and greed that have gone on at every level of human society for hundreds of years. We all share responsibility for this – the world and its condition are no more than a reflection of the total combined thoughts, awareness and behaviour of everyone who lives on the planet. The world only changes when enough people decide that they are not satisfied with it and do something. If the world is not changing, then this indicates that most of us are basically satisfied with it – we accept a world in which differences rather than similarities are honoured, and disagreements are settled by violence, conflict and war – indeed as individuals many of us resort to anything from verbal abuse to coming to blows to settle personal differences. We accept a world in which might is right, survival is for the fittest, competition prevails over co-operation and winning is regarded as the ultimate achievement. If the system produces losers that’s tough… so long as you aren’t one of them. It is a model in which people can be killed, imprisoned or tortured if they are judged to be “wrong”, starved and made homeless if they are “losers”, oppressed and exploited if they are not strong. How many of us insist something is “wrong” basically because it’s different from our own world view? Social, cultural, economic and especially religious differences are simply not acceptable. There are those who exploit the least well off and then congratulate themselves on how much better off their victims are than before they were exploited – they don’t really ever consider the issue of how people as a whole ought to be treated. Instead they settle happily for making a horrible situation a little bit better, delighted with the profits that go with it. Most of us ridicule the idea of any other system replacing the present one, reckoning that this is the natural way for humans to behave – anything else would quash the inner spirit that drives people to succeed, although in what, we don’t make clear.  Humans are predatory creatures that compete and kill – it’s what makes civilisations great! So many of us really don’t care that much about the suffering of the masses, the oppression of minorities or the survival needs of anyone but ourselves and our immediate families – or if we do, we don’t yet care quite enough to actually do anything. In London, thousands will gather to demand the “right” to continue fox hunting, but less than 500 will gather to demand the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq. Even now, most of us still don’t see that we are destroying the very planet that gives us life because so many of our actions seek only to enhance what we perceive to be our own quality of life – we are not sufficiently far sighted to appreciate that short term gains can mean serious long term losses.  Finally, because otherwise we would actually find the reality of it all very difficult to live with, we have a status quo that denies that this is what is happening in the first place.   
      It can be very difficult for more caring and enlightened people to understand that most people on planet earth believe in or at least accept this philosophy. Some of us may see ourselves now as decent people doing the best we can for our fellow humans and planet earth, but this has not always been so – especially if we accept we have lived before. We have evolved through experience and learning to where we are now – we may not be part of the current global mindset now, but in previous incarnations we certainly would have been, gladly going along with it and promoting the status quo, and more -  perhaps you and I were control freaks as well. At the very least, we have allowed ourselves to be pushed about like a flock of sheep. And who can say honestly that they have never been greedy or taken part in a bit of selfish manipulation at work or amongst family and friends? What happens in the highest echelons of power is only a reflection of what happens in the lives of people as a whole – the only difference is that the effects of greed, secrecy and manipulation at the highest levels are rather more far reaching.
      Every one of us keeps secrets of one sort or another.  Money is a wonderful example – if we have money, very few of us are totally open about what we’ve got – our bank account is strictly confidential. How open and truthful are we in our dealings and relationships with each other? How often do we say one thing, whilst thinking and eventually doing something quite different? How many people can say, hand on heart, that they have never kept secrets from spouse, partner, family or friends, or at some point indulged in a little behind the scenes scheming in the work place or in a club or society for some sort of personal gain? How then can we blame the Bilderbergers or anyone else for the problems of the world? Essentially what they do is only a reflection of what most of us do in our daily lives – hatch plans in secret for their own benefit. The problem therefore should not be externalised by shifting all the blame on others.  It is no use screaming, shouting and hurling abuse at bankers, corporate bosses and politicians etc. We must understand that it is because of how we think and behave that we make it possible for shadowy elites, secretly to manipulate the world for their own ends. We should start by putting our own house in order – that is what will begin to break the pattern. This is where a major step forward in the evolution of humanity begins. For meaningful changes to take place, there must be a social, economic, ecological, scientific and above all a spiritual revolution on a scale greater than anything that has been seen in human history. It will be new uncharted territory. It cannot be imposed from above by politicians, economists, bankers, priests, P R firms, gurus, scientists or anyone else.  Rather it can only begin in the hearts and minds of individuals, who look around and see what we have all helped to bring into existence - a power structure that says “keep them in debt, keep them busy working their backsides off, keep them distracted with sport, sex and trivial entertainment, feed them misleading one sided half-stories that pass for news, get them to believe that they are no more than their physical bodies with oblivion after death, or leave them with religions with absurd explanations of life and death that fewer and fewer of them will accept, tell them the way to happiness is to go after possessing more and more superfluous junk and to consume, consume, consume…. but above all don’t give them a chance to think, because if they get that chance, they might just see things for what they are and say enough is enough...!” 

      The good news is that in spite of the above, there are many signs that the world is changing - the old edifice is starting to fall apart. Our rulers are getting frightened, and the increase in repressive legislation, surveillance and bugging is their desperate attempt to prop it up. The World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organisation, the G8, EU summits and now even the World Economic Forum – none can have a meeting without a massive reception committee of protesters from many walks of life. Every nation state in the European Union has a growing protest movement – the Danes said no to the Euro in a referendum, not for economic reasons, but because they saw it as further centralised political control. And they did this in the face of a massive government, media and big business campaign to get them to say yes. Although the BBC and ITN still display appalling bias in favour of the EU, seemingly  doing everything possible to conceal the real issues, this is no longer the case with some newspapers, especially local papers. In London in October 2000, 10,000 people gathered from right across the political spectrum to protest at the surrender of the British right of self government to unelected and unaccountable EU institutions. Never before had the editor of the socialist Morning Star newspaper shared a platform with a Tory right winger namely John Redwood – others included the leader of the Green Party and retired ex Labour cabinet minister Lord Peter Shore. Jubilee 2000 has run a magnificent campaign highlighting Third World Debt with a truly amazing depth of support from dozens of campaign groups and charitable organisations. 
      It is said that the horrendous events of September 11th have changed the world. This is true. On the one hand they have given a massive boost to the “New World Order” agenda, and on the face of it, in the short term, things look very bleak indeed.  On the other hand they have been responsible for an unprecedented increase in people’s awareness. It may not even matter that most people do not question the official story that Arab terrorists were solely responsible for the Sept 11th events, because it has made people, including Americans ask WHY is America so hated that people would do such a thing. They call into question the whole way in which the military industrial complex of the western world exploits the rest. A very substantial peace movement grew up within days of America commencing bombing Afghanistan – a London demonstration on 18/11/01, attracted as many as 100,000 people. In the US some of those who lost loved ones on Sept 11th are in the forefront of opposition to the war against Afghanistan. It’s almost like everything that is now taking place is a last final desperate bid by the elite to retain control before the whole thing collapses around them. The dirty war being waged by  Israeli armed forces in the occupied Palestinian territories, in which women and children are killed and the economic and social infrastructure of the Palestinian people is being destroyed, is now receiving widespread condemnation from  world Jewry both inside and outside Israel. Some Israeli men and women are refusing to serve in the Israeli army and groups of Jews are forming in many places demanding justice for Palestinians [83].  At the same time there is a body of Palestinian opinion that utterly rejects the horrors of violence and suicide attacks by their own side as a means of opposing Israel’s occupation.    
      A little while back, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) attempted to negotiate the Multi-lateral Agreement on Investment, designed to eliminate any restrictions that a national government might wish to impose on foreign investment, so that TNC’s can move their capital in and out at will regardless of the consequences for local people. Mass protests and lobbying organised largely by the World Development Movement successfully scuppered the scheme, and plans to attempt to bring in similar provisions via new WTO regulations failed at the WTO summit in Seattle in December 1999.
      Although not yet in the public eye, there is a significant and growing movement for monetary reform – to remove from the banks the power to create our money supply for profit and to transfer it to accountable state institutions. Regular meetings and discussions are taking place in the House of Lords, and several prominent MPs have taken the message on board and an Early Day Motion has been put down for MPs to sign. Books are appearing on the subject, and more campaign groups such as the New Economics Forum are joining the call.
      The campaign against the dangers of genetically modified crops has been extraordinarily successful - the mass circulation Daily Mail newspaper has played no small part in this – now major supermarkets are deciding not to sell food incorporating GMO’s. The crops themselves have been torn up and those responsible have been found not guilty by juries who regarded the action as justified.
      Since 1945 wars between nation states, the hallmark of the previous two thousand years or more, have become rare. Travel and modern communications have helped enormously to develop a much greater understanding between different peoples and races. In many places minorities and their cultures receive much greater tolerance. Indeed most conflicts in the world since 1945 have been about people or minorities trying to enforce their rights in states still retaining repressive totalitarian regimes – those who are creating the EU should take particular note of this.
     The unprecedented scale of horrors of the 20th. century were made possible through the misuse of new technologies  - atom bombs, blitzkrieg, land mines, depleted uranium weapons, chemical weapons etc. Despite this we have in so many ways become more caring and compassionate. Welfare services have been developed that were totally unknown before. There are innumerable charities trying to help out in almost every sphere of human activity. The environmental movement is enormous now, and it is not just a case of campaigning for better treatment of people and the planet, but also better treatment for animals. The demand for organically produced food is at an all time high and continues to grow rapidly.
    There is actually a great deal to feel encouraged about, but certainly no room for complacency. We ignore the secretive elements that operate behind governments at our peril. Those people who believe that the only way to avoid future wars is to have some sort of highly centralised global government or centralised European Union, should be aware as to who will be in charge as things stand. Bankers, trans-national corporations and other dubious forces behind governments - security services, military and others, already mentioned. We need organisations such as the United Nations which must have an effective role to play to help promote peace and settle disputes between nations. We need a world trade organisation, but with a different agenda to promote fair and sustainable trade, by balancing free trade with the need to protect home markets and local economies. A European forum is highly desirable, but a centralised totalitarian European state is not. We need banks to look after depositors’ money and make loans, but not in a way that gives them the power to create the money supply for private profit. We just need a change of agenda all round…. And at the heart of it is a change from self interest to common interest –  where competition begins to be replaced by co-operation.      
TO CONCLUDE… WHAT CAN YOU AND I DO?
      “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful concerned individuals can precipitate change in the world… indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
        And even if you think that you can’t change the world yourself, you can most certainly help spread the message that can.  Join an organisation – environmental organisations such as Greenpeace are well known, but many others operate in different fields and a few are listed below. Frequently these organisations do not yet see the bigger picture, but with your help that can change – the grassroots membership is often very amenable to new ideas even if the leadership isn’t. Be aware that in some cases this might be because the leadership has been infiltrated. Or in other cases that they may feel gagged to a certain extent, because they fear losing a particular source of funding. For example Jubilee 2000 and World Development Movement although recognising 3rd. world debt haven’t yet addressed the debt based money system, but the New Economics Foundation has. If you decide to join a group promoting monetary reform, or opposing the European Union, be ready to work alongside people with a wide variety of religious and political beliefs and different outlooks on life, some undoubtedly very different to your own. Coming together in a common cause and concentrating on what unites us, rather than what we might disagree about, is a very worthwhile exercise in its own right and is a wonderful way of exchanging ideas and passing on information. Consider writing letters to media people, MPs and especially local newspapers – these often have a great deal more editorial freedom than national newspapers. Information is power – media people and MPs are mostly just ordinary folk who have little or no understanding of the powers that pull the strings of governments and politicians.  Many if not most of them no more want to see global tyranny any more than you do, though fear of losing their position if they fail to tow the establishment line may be uppermost in the minds of many. Get on phone ins if possible.
       For anyone who is interested and wants to know more, I have information sheets and articles listed after the footnotes which accompany this article. Feel free to get in touch with me at the address below.….  

Richard Greaves – “The Old Stables”,  Cusop, Herefordshire HR3 5RQ    E-mail rgreaves@supanet.com    
This revision:  August 2002.   First produced December 1996.
                                           SOME ORGANISATIONS TO CONTACT
World Development Movement  - 25 Beehive Place, London SW9 7QR. Active campaigning group against poverty and debt in the 3rd. world. 
Democracy Movement – Freepost Lon 10777, London SW6 1YZ. Active non party campaign group opposed to the European Union.
United Kingdom Independence Party – Triumph House, 189 Regent Street, London, W1R 7WF. Political party committed to British withdrawal from the European Union.  
New Economics Foundation – Cinnamon House, 6-8 Cole Street, London, SE1 4YH.
Jubilee 2000 Coalition – now c/o New Economics Foundation – campaigns for cancellation of 3rd. world debt.
Campaign for Interest Free Money - Global Café, 15 Golden Square, London W1R 3AG – organises regular meetings examining alternatives to the current debt based money system.
ARROW  - (Active Resistance to the Roots Of War)  campaigns against the war in Afghanistan and against sanctions on Iraq. Produces very good information sheets, organises meetings and protest marches. 16b Cherwell Street Oxford OX4 
                         REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING
1	
1	The Spotlight, an American weekly investigative newspaper with a right wing Christian patriotic stance, was nevertheless acknowledged to be the best single source of information on Bilderberg. In fact it had an outstanding record for accurate reporting of facts on many other subjects not covered by the mainstream media. It was closed down in July 2001 but has been succeeded by a new publication “American Free Press” available by subscription from 1433 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Washington D.C. 20003. www.american freepress.net     
2	See On Target 2/12/00 – On Target magazine provides an analysis and perspectives on global happenings not found in the mainstream media. Available by subscription from Intelligence Publications (UK)  26 Meadow Lane Sudbury Suffolk, CO12 2TD.
3	See “Conspiracy Theories” by Robin Ramsay (Pocket Essentials 2001) in which chapter 4 mentions many other publicity shy groups dedicated to promoting and maintaining the Anglo American alliance. Available from 214 Westbourne Avenue, Hull, HU5 3JB.
4	For details of radical new sources of pollution free energy see “The Coming Energy Revolution – the search for free energy” by Jeane Manning Avery Publishing USA 1996 (imported into UK.)  
5	“When Corporations Rule the World”  by David Korten (Earthscan 1995),  and “Captive State- the corporate take-over of Britain” by George Monbiot (Pan Books 2001) both highly recommended for a detailed account of corporate power. Also New Internationalist magazine, monthly by subscription from P.O. Box 79, Hertford, SG14 1AQ.
6	This is only a very basic account on how banks create money  – for more details and the problems it creates, see “Money & Banks – the hidden truth behind global debt” available from Richard Greaves. See document list below. For an a very readable in depth study see “The Grip of Death – a study of  modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics” by Michael Rowbotham. (Jon Carpenter 1998)
7	See “Germany’s War”  in the Truth Campaign 23.  The Truth Campaign is a quarterly magazine produced by Ivan Fraser and available from 49 Trevor Terrace, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE30 2DF.
8	For an in depth study of this and also how American companies such as Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil, Du Pont and others had stakes in German industry see “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”  by Antony Sutton  (Bloomfield Books 1976)
9	This is covered in detail in the book “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy – an investigative report exposing the truth about globalisation corporate cons and high finance fraudsters” by Greg Palast  (Pluto Press 2002)   
10	For details of the full extent to which new Labour has become a part of the corporate agenda see “Captive State” by George Monbiot and “Prawn Cocktail Party” by Robin Ramsay – address note 3 above. 
11	This summary of the powers of the EU institutions was compiled by me from having studied the texts of the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht and the Single European Act.
12	Two good sources of information on what’s going on in the EU corridors of power are Eurofacts, P.O. Box 9984 London W12 8WZ, and Facts Figures & Phantasies, from  Independent Media Digest & Commentary, 20 Ramillies Road, London W14 1JN.
13	The Spotlight 18/9/00 “UN Millennium Summit Promotes Global Army”
14	For more details on the reality behind the break up of Yugoslavia see “Balkans Crisis – National Independence or Global War Policy?”  a booklet produced by the Campaign Against Euro-Federalism, 57 Green Lane, Merseyside L45 8JQ. Also “The Spoils of War in Yugoslavia – Who profits?”  a pamphlet produced by the British Association for Monetary Reform 27 Imberhorne Lane, Felbridge, West Sussex, RH19 1QX. bamr1@globalnet.co.uk  
15	The Spotlight 2/10/00 “Balkans War Booty Goes to Plutocratic Elite”
16	“Echelon – the NSA’s Global Spying  Network”  Nexus magazine Aug/Sept 1999 – Nexus is available by subscription from 55 Queen’s Road, East Grinstead, West Sussex, RH19 1BG.
17	 “Law will allow police to spy on phone and net traffic”.   Guardian 31/5/02
18	See under “Comment”  in Positive News Autumn 2001 – Positive News is a quarterly newspaper which, unlike the mainstream media, concentrates on  the good things that are happening in the world, with contacts for getting involved in a wide range of projects and good causes. Available from 5 Bicton Enterprise Centre, Clun, Shropshire, SY7 8NF.   
19	For in depth studies in this very difficult area see “Notes from the Borderland”  No. 3 by Larry O’Hara, BM Box 4769, London WC1N 3XX. Also “Lobster”  magazine produced by Robin Ramsay, (address see note 3 above) is possibly the most reliable magazine regularly examining the role of the security services.  The circumstances surrounding the Omagh bomb and the role of undercover agents in the IRA is covered in an article “A security service war unmasked”  Morning Star 30/7/02. 
20	See Nexus magazine which regularly runs articles on the drugs trade e.g. “Deep Black – the CIA’s Secret Drug Wars” by David Guyatt.  Nexus Dec97/Jan98.
21	See book “Final Judgement” by Michael Collins Piper  (The Centre for Historical Review  5th. Edition 2001)  – available through American Free Press.
22	See Lobster magazine Winter 1999 – which also challenges the claim in the press that in 1999, Libya finally admitted responsibility for the killing.
23	See “Trial in absentia for Russian defector” - Guardian 29/5/02. 
24	See George Monbiot writing in the Guardian 30/10/01.
25	See “The Pinay Circle – an invisible network”  - Nexus Aug/Sept 1996.
26	The book  “Princess Diana – the Hidden Evidence”  by Jon King and John Beveridge (SPI Books 2002) Chapters 4 to 8 are very good source of information on the security and intelligence services. Not only does the book contain very clear evidence that Diana was murdered and how a road traffic “accident”  is a favoured method of assassination by the intelligence services, but it explores in detail the many motives for her murder.  www.hiddenevidence.co.uk       
27	See “15 Lies from the European Movement”  pamphlet  by Rodney Atkinson – available from 1 Sands Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE16 3DJ.     
28	For more details, refer to articles by specialist investigator into mind control Armen Victorian which appear in both Nexus and Lobster magazines.  e.g. “The military use of electromagnetic, microwave and mind control technology”  Lobster - Winter 1998.     
29	The 1996 mass shooting in a café in Port Arthur, Tasmania was blamed on Martin Bryant, an intellectually impaired young man with no military or shooting experience. Joe Vialls in his book “Deadly Deception at Port Arthur” shows how only a highly trained combat shooter could kill 20 people in less than a minute shooting from the hip.  Refer also www.vialls.homestead.com/bryant1     
30	See also special report “Attention-deficit disorder- inventing the syndrome to sell the solution”  in the magazine “What Doctors Don’t Tell You”  Feb. 2001.  Available from Satellite House, 2 Salisbury Road, London SW19 4EZ.  This is an excellent scientifically based monthly magazine that takes a critical but very level headed look at all aspects of the conventional medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry.
31	See “School Violence – the Psychiatric Drugs Connection” by Jon Rappoport – Nexus Aug/Sept 1999.   
32	See the  English translator’s introduction to the 1939 English edition of Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”  (My Struggle)   
33	See the Barnes Review – Nov/Dec 2001 page 62.  The Barnes Review is an excellent bi-monthly magazine that “seeks to bring history into accordance with the facts.”  Available from 130 Third Street SE, Washington D.C. 20003.  www.barnesreview.org.
34	Barnes Review – Nov/Dec 2001   “History you may have missed” also “World War 2 – an unnecessary war” – Barnes Review May/June 2002 which sets out more of the determined efforts Hitler made to secure peace with Britain., all of which were rejected out of hand by Churchill.   
35	See “Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941-45”  by Jaochim Hoffman  reviewed in the Barnes Review Jan/Feb 2002. Also “Stalin’s Secret War Plans – Why Hitler Invaded the Soviet Union”  and “Operation Barbarossa and the Survival of Europe”  - the Barnes Review - Nov/Dec 2000.
36	See the book by Gar Alperovitz – “The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb”
37	See “Trading with the Enemy – how allied multi-nationals supplied Nazi Germany throughout World War 2”  (1983) by Charles Higham  
38	See “How to lose friends and alienate people” – Prof. Norman Finkelstein interviewed. See www.rense.com  also The Truth Seeker no. 15. The Truth Seeker is a magazine appearing about 5 times a year available from Leading Edge Publications, Box 458, Devizes, Wiltshire, SN10 1UL. Web page at www.timrifat.com
39	The article can be found at www.israelshamir.net along with the other articles of Israel Shamir mentioned and quoted later.
40	“Letters from Belsen” - book based on the dairy and letters of a Dutch girl interned at Belsen 1943-45 – The Guardian -Saturday Review 3/6/00.
41	In “All Rivers Run to the Sea” (Harper Collins 1996) Elie Wiesel confirms brutality among the inmates at Auschwitz, including beatings by Jewish “kapos”.
42	The Wannsee Protocol (English translation) is reproduced in the Truth Campaign 18. Mark Roseman, author of a new book “Wannsee and the Final Solution” contends that the protocol is coded and in particular  that when it refers to “evacuation” of Jews, it actually means killing Jews, on the basis that a broad decision to deal with the Jewish question by mass murder was already being put into effect.      
43	See “The Return of ‘Mr. Death’ ”  - Barnes Review Jan/Feb 2002. 
44	See “Revisionist Investigations of Auschwitz cremations” – Barnes Review Jan/Feb 2002. The Barnes Review Jan/Feb 2001 is entirely devoted to the holocaust and the background to it: e.g “Jewish Power & Prosperity in Germany”, “How Many Really Died at Auschwitz”, and also the economic boycott of Germany.  
45	Douglas Reed wrote extensively on this subject in “Far and Wide” (1951) and “The Controversy of Zion”  (1978). An excellent summary can be found in Chapter 10 of “The Holy Land of Scotland” by Barry Dunford (Sacred Connections 2002).   
46	See “Eduard Benes – the Bohemian Pawn”  Barnes Review Nov/Dec 2001 and “Mass Expulsions: Tragedy on a Prodigious Scale” Barnes Review Sept/Oct 2000. 
47	See the book by David Yallop “To the Ends of the Earth”  
48	See book, “Free to be Human - intellectual self-defence in an age of illusions” by David Edwards (Resurgence Books 1995) – pp24-31 “War crimes in the Gulf” -  includes eye witness accounts of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsay Clark. This book is excellent for exposing the subtle ways in which the mainstream media manipulates the news and our world view. 
49	See Nexus April/May 1997 p14.
50	The Spotlight  2/8/99  - “Ecological Mystery Solved: U.S. Did It”
51	See “Life after Death” – article in the Big Issue Feb 26th. – March 4th. which reported on observations at Southampton hospital on patients experiencing near death experiences during major surgery. The Big Issue is the magazine sold on the streets to help homeless people. 
52	For a detailed investigation which throws some light on this difficult area, see “The Stargate Conspiracy” by  Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince (Warner Books  2000).
53	The Stargate Conspiracy -  Chapter 6  “the Secret Masters”.  
54	ditto –
55	An excellent general account on craft freemasonry and how it permeates society is to be found in Martin Short’s book “Inside the Brotherhood” (Harper Collins 1993).
56	See “The Thirteenth Tribe” by Jewish author Arthur Koestler, and also at www.khazaria.com    
57	Eyre & Spottiswoode 1967,  Pelican Books 1970 and republished Serif 1996.
58	See Deuteronomy, Chapter 11 verses 24 & 25.
59	Pluto Press 1994  –  it is a short clear and concise account which cannot be recommended too strongly. It is also accessible in full at http://abbc.com/islam/english/books/jewhis/jewhis1.htm 
60	See “A Spectre Haunting Jerusalem”  Red Pepper - June 2002. Red Pepper is a monthly socialist magazine.  Not one for seeing the bigger picture, but really excellent for details in particular areas e.g.  the scam of so called new Labour, corporate power, private finance initiatives and more . Also good on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Available from 1b Waterlow Road London N19 5NJ   www.redpepper.org.uk
61	Whilst today no state including Israel makes such a distinction in its criminal law, it undoubtedly explains why in practice extremists in Israel are dealt with so leniently when apprehended for killing Arabs and Palestinians – e.g. 10 weeks in jail for killing a Palestinian in his shoe shop – see article mentioned in note 61 above.  
62	For a look at traditional mainstream Judaism, try www.torah.org a very extensive website set up by a Canadian Rabbi, Boruch Clinton, which includes a lot of easy to follow introductory material.  
63	More on this in Prof. Shahak’s “Jewish History Jewish Religion” 
64	See “ Zionist Ideology, non-Jews and the State of Israel”  - report by Ur Shlonsky based on a talk given at Geneva University 10/6/02.  
65	The full text of the Protocols appears in Truth Campaign Nos. 16 &17 together with an additional well researched article, including good evidence that the Protocols may not be the fraud many writers have contended. The original article is amended slightly in Truth Campaign 23. The full text of the Protocols is also at  www.vegan.swinternet.co.uk/truthcampaign.html 
66	Cohn reproduces short extracts from the Protocols to show the similarity between these and an earlier document published in 1865 in French entitled “Les Dialogues aux Enfers entre Machiavelli et Montesquieu”  by Maurice Joly. He claims this is evidence that they are a fake, but overlooks the fact that Joly was an associate of one Jacob Venedy who in turn produced in 1850, very similar dialogues in a book entitled “Machiavelli Montesquieu et Rousseau”. Venedy was a Jew and a freemason. Details in Truth Campaign 16.    
67	Prof. Shahak’s “Jewish History Jewish Religion” provides interesting insights into the nature and role of Jews and Jewish communities in Europe from the 11th to 18th centuries.   
68	See “Coming Home” by Neri Livneh  in the Israeli left wing newspaper Ha’aretz  19/7/02. 
69	Chapters 8and 9 of  “The Holy Land of Scotland” (see note 46 above) provide an excellent well researched and more detailed summary of the power and influence of Zionism. 
70	See “The Four Agreements –  a practical guide to personal freedom”  a Toltec Wisdom Book by Miguel Ruiz.
71	A very new book “Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy” by Andrew Collins & Chris Olgivy-Herald (Virgin 2002) explores the possibility that Moses was actually a renegade Egyptian priest who challenged the religious order of the day and was expelled along with his followers – the source of this information being papyrus scrolls found in Tutankhamun’s tomb when it was discovered in1922 and the existence of which has since been suppressed.  
72	This is explored in detail in  the book “The Invention of Ancient Israel – the silencing of Palestinian history”  by Prof. Keith Whitlam (Routledge 1996). The book shows how the history of the area has been manipulated to prove the existence of a dominant ancient Jewish state, upon which the modern state of Israel relies heavily to justify its existence and how biblical old testament stories are often not backed up by archaeological evidence.  
73	An advertisement was placed to this effect in the New York Times on 30/9/97 under the heading “The Torah true Jews have no part in the affair against the Swiss”. Reproduced in Truth Campaign 23.
74	For more on the Neturei Karta  see “The Unorthodox Orthodox”  Observer 21/7/02. The Neturai Karta do not recognise the state of Israel and refer to it as Palestine. They and their forbears have lived in Palestine in small numbers, peacefully alongside Arabs for  well over 100 years and in some cases much more - predating mass Jewish immigration and the setting up of the state of Israel. Today they inhabit the district of Jerusalem known as Mea Shearim, where facilities are basic because they refuse to pay city taxes to a government and administration that they do not recognise.  
75	See “Embassy Bombers identified as Israelis”   The Spotlight 7/9/98. This article is concerned with the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 blamed on Osama bin Laden. It discusses the investigations of the intelligence agencies of 8 Arab and Islamic countries which pointed to the operation having been planned by Israel’s intelligence service the Mossad. As in the case of Sept 11th. public outrage against the alleged actions of Arab terrorists benefited the Israeli government policy by destroying growing public sympathy for the Palestinians.    
76	See “Some Survivors Say Bombs Exploded Inside WTC”  American Free Press      www.americanfreepress.net 
77	This is according to a BBC report in late September 2001 – it was reproduced in the war section at www.sheffieldmayday.ukf.net
78	First exposed by Ranjit Devraj in the Asia Times 8/10/01.
79	The article appears in “Global Outlook” No 2 Summer 2002 accessible at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO206A.html 
80	See “Israelis spied on Al Qaida in America”  Independent 6/3/02, and “Massive Spy Ring linked to Sept 11th ”  and “Concerted Effort Under way to Hide Israeli Foreknowledge”  American Free Press.  
81	See “Missing Pieces to the Amazing 911 Mystery Puzzle”  Truth Seeker 15.
82	Reported in the free newspaper  Metro 20/12/00.
83	For example “Tikkun – to mend repair and transform the world”  www.tikkun.org   based in San Francisco – also Jews for Justice for Palestinians,  PO Box 37402, London N3 2XG, and Israel Shamir with many articles at www.israelshamir.net  some of which appear in the Truth Seeker magazine – see details note 39 above.     

In addition to the books magazines mentioned above, the following are recommended: 
“Prosperity – freedom from debt slavery” – monthly magazine examining and explaining all aspects and problems of  the debt based money system, and the alternatives. Available from 268 Bath Street, Glasgow  G2 4JR.  www.prosperityuk.com
Morning Star  - describing itself as the daily paper of the left - totally free from corporate advertising– offering a similar perspective to Red Pepper mentioned in note 53 above. Can be ordered through any good newsagent.
 “What Uncle Sam Really Wants”, “Secrets Lies and Democracy” and “The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many”  - trilogy of short books by Prof. Noam Chomsky – available from Plough Publishing , Darvell Bruderhof, Robertsbridge, East Sussex, TN32 5DR. www.plough.com
 Additional Web sites:    Media Workers Against War  www.mwaw.org     Jeff Rense  www.rense.com 

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