IS A FINANCIAL CONSPIRACY DRIVING WORLD EVENTS?

by Richard C. Cook

"They make a desolation and call it peace." -Tacitus

Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His website is at www.richardccook.com

He asks:
"Was Alan Greenspan really as dumb as he looks in creating the late housing bubble that threatens to bring the entire Western debt-based economy crashing down? Was something as easy to foresee as this really the trigger for a meltdown that could destroy the world's financial system? Or was it done, perhaps, "accidentally on purpose"? And if so, why? Let's turn to the U.S. personage that conspiracy theorists most often mention as being at the epicentre of whatever elite plan is reputed to exist. This would be David Rockefeller, the 92-year-old multibillionaire godfather of the world's financial elite.

The lengthy Wikipedia article on Rockefeller provides the following version of a celebrated statement he allegedly made in an opening speech at the Bilderberg conference in Baden-Baden, Germany, in June 1991:
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during these years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government which will never again know war, but only peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries."

This speech was made 17 years ago. It came at the beginning in the U.S. of the Bill Clinton administration. Rockefeller speaks of an "us." This "us," he says, has been having meetings for almost 40 years. If you add the 17 years since he gave the speech it was 57 years ago, two full generations.

Not only has "us" developed a "plan for the world," but the attempt to "develop" the plan has evidently been successful, at least in Rockefeller's mind. The ultimate goal of "us" is to create "the supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers. " This will lead, he says, toward a "world government which will never again know war." Just as an intellectual exercise, let's assume that David Rockefeller is as important and powerful a person as he seems to think he is. Let's give the man some credit and assume that he and "us" have in fact succeeded to a degree. This would mean that the major decisions and events since Rockefeller gave the speech in 1991 have probably also been part of the plan or that they have at least represented its features and intent.

Therefore by examining these decisions and events we can determine whether in fact Rockefeller is being truthful in his assessment that the Utopia he has in mind is on its way or has at least come closer to being realized. In no particular order, some of these decisions and events are as follows:
The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations has led to the elimination of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs as well as the destruction of U.S. family farming in favour of global agribusiness. Similar free trade agreements, including those under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, have led to export of millions of additional manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere.

Average family income in the U.S. has steadily eroded while the share of the nation's wealth held by the richest income brackets has soared. Some Wall Street hedge fund managers are making $1 billion a year while the number of homeless, including war veterans, pushes a million.
The housing bubble has led to a huge inflation of real estate prices in the U.S. Millions of homes are falling into the hands of the bankers through foreclosure. The cost of land and rentals has further decimated family agriculture as well as small business. Rising property taxes based on inflated land assessments have forced millions of lower-and middle-income people and elderly out of their homes.
The fact that bankers now control national monetary systems in their entirety, under laws where money is introduced only through lending at interest, has resulted in a massive debt pyramid that is teetering on collapse. This "monetarist" system was pioneered by Rockefeller-family funded economists at the University of Chicago. The rub is that when the pyramid comes down and everyone goes bankrupt the banks which have been creating money "out of thin air" will then be able to seize valuable assets for pennies on the dollar, as J.P. Morgan Chase is preparing to do with the businesses owned by Carlyle Capital. Meaningful regulation of the financial industry has been abandoned by government, and any politician that stands in the way, such as *Eliot Spitzer, is destroyed.

The total tax burden on Americans from federal, state, and local governments now exceeds forty percent of income and is rising. Today, with a recession starting, the Democratic-controlled Congress, while supporting the minuscule "stimulus" rebate, is hypocritically raising taxes further, even for middle-income earners. Back taxes, along with student loans, can no longer be eliminated by bankruptcy protection.
Gasoline prices are soaring even as companies like Exxon-Mobil are recording record profits. Other commodity prices are going up steadily, including food prices, with some countries starting to experience near-famine conditions. 40 million people in America are officially classified as "food insecure."
Corporate control of water and mineral resources has removed much of what is available from the public commons, and the deregulation of energy production has led to huge increases in the costs of electricity in many areas.

The destruction of family farming in the U.S. by NAFTA (along with family farming in Mexico and Canada) has been mirrored by policies toward other nations on the part of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Around the world, due to pressure from the "Washington consensus," local food self-sufficiency has been replaced by raising of crops primarily for export. Migration off the land has fed the population of huge slums around the cities of underdeveloped countries.

Since the 1980s the U.S. has been fighting wars throughout the world either directly or by proxy. The former Yugoslavia was dismembered by NATO. Under cover of 9/11 and by utilizing off-the-shelf plans, the U.S. is now engaged in the military conquest and permanent military occupation of the Middle East. A worldwide encirclement of Russia and China by U.S. and NATO forces is underway, and a new push to militarize space has begun. The Western powers are clearly preparing for at least the possibility of another world war.

The expansion of the U.S. military empire abroad is mirrored by the creation of a totalitarian system of surveillance at home, whereby the activities of private citizens are spied upon and tracked by technology and systems which have been put into place under the heading of the "War on Terror." Human microchip implants for tracking purposes are starting to be used. The military-industrial complex has become the nation's largest and most successful industry with tens of thousands of planners engaged in devising new and better ways, both overt and covert, to destroy both foreign and domestic "enemies."

Meanwhile, the U.S. has the largest prison population of any country on earth. Plus everyday life for millions of people is a crushing burden of government, insurance, and financial fees, charges, and paperwork. And the simplest business transactions are burdened by rake-offs for legions of accountants, lawyers, bureaucrats, brokers, speculators, and middlemen.

Finally, the deteriorating conditions of everyday life have given rise to an extraordinary level of stress-related disease, as well as epidemic alcohol and drug addiction. Governments themselves around the world engage in drug trafficking. Instead of working to lower stress levels, public policy is skewed in favour of an enormous prescription drug industry that grows rich off the declining level of health through treatment of symptoms rather than causes. Many of these heavily-advertised medications themselves have devastating side-effects.

This list should at least give us enough to go on in order to ask a hard question. Assuming again that all these things are parts of the elitist plan which Mr. Rockefeller boasts to have been developing, isn't it a little strange that the means which have been selected to achieve "peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity" involve so much violence, deception, oppression, exploitation, graft, and theft?

In fact it looks to me as though "our plan for the world" is one that is based on genocide, world war, police control of populations, and seizure of the world's resources by the financial elite and their puppet politicians and military forces. In particular, could there be a better way to accomplish all this than what appears to be a concentrated plan to remove from people everywhere in the world the ability to raise their own food? After all, genocide by starvation may be slow, but it is very effective. (Stalin starved the peasants in the Ukraine. He knew how effective slow starvation was - and he didn't have to waste a bullet!…ed) Especially when it can be blamed on "market forces."

And can it be that the "us" which is doing all these things, including the great David Rockefeller himself, are just criminals who have somehow taken over the seats of power? If so, they are criminals who have done everything they can to watch their backs and cover their tracks, including a chokehold over the educational system and the monopolistic mainstream media. One thing is certain: The voters of America (or Australia…ed) have never knowingly agreed to any of this."

Comment: We have been following the progress of Mr. Cook for some time. He has certainly been doing his homework!
Further study: DVD "It's Time to Think Big" by Betty Luks is based on Richard Cook's paper on a Basic Income Guarantee from a viewpoint of a social credit National Dividend and Just Price . Price: $14.00 posted

WHY *SPITZER WAS BUSHWACKED

By F William Engdahl:
The spectacular and bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times exposing the tryst of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, the now-infamous client "No 9", with an upmarket call-girl had relatively little to do with the George W Bush administration's pursuit of high moral standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of the most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.

A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask who might want to eliminate that person. In the case of former governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular "leak" of the government's FBI wiretap records showing that Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute US$4,300 for what amounted to about an hour's personal entertainment, was politically motivated.

The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid. Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question. Spitzer became governor of New York following a high-profile record as a relentless state attorney general going after financial crimes such as the Enron fraud, and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002 dotcom bubble era. Spitzer made powerful enemies by all accounts. The former head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his detractors.
He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless against financial corruption. Most recently, from his position as governor of the nation's second largest state, home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high-profile attacks on the complicity of the Bush administration in covertly arranging bailouts of its Wall Street friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, all paid for by taxpayer funds.
Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70% of the vote, has not been charged with any crime. However, the day the scandal broke, New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial were he to refuse to resign. Spitzer could be asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution ring. But so far he hasn't been charged with a crime. Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in process.
The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer "Watergate"…

Why the attack now?
Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the nation's current financial and economic disaster.
He testified in Washington in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers. In a national CNBC TV interview the same day, he laid blame for the crisis and its broader economic fallout on the Bush administration. Spitzer recalled that several years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) went to court and blocked New York State efforts to investigate the mortgage activities of national banks.
Spitzer argued that the OCC did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or uphold higher underwriting standards. "This could have been avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in the interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush administration let the housing bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread, was the subprime scandal," Spitzer said. With that article, Spitzer may well have signed his own political death warrant.

F William Engdahl is author of the book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, about to be released by Global Research Publishing. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

EIGHTH GRADE EXAM FROM 1895

by John Brett:
It was St. Paul of Tarsus who reminded his people two thousand years ago: They were forever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth.
Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. How many today would have passed the 1895 eighth grade exam?
The following is a copy of that final exam for 1895 from Salina, Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal. 8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS, 1895:

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of "lie", "play", and "run."
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 65 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2ft deep, 10 feet long, and 3ft wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942lbs, what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050lbs for tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6720lbs coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Cheque, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U S History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which US History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, and syllabication.
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, sub vocal, diphthong, cognate letters, and lingual.
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi-, dis-, mis-, pre-, semi-, post-, non-, inter-, mono-, and sup-.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centres of the US.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete. Gives the saying "he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning, doesn't it? This also shows you how poor our education system has become. (The spelling in the article has been changed to UK English...ed).

1895 Time Capsule:
This is a brilliant example of where we were sent down the wrong path of history. 1895 was at the threshold of the greatest revelation and revolution in history, where the new sources of power were going to release us from the physical drudgery of work, lifting "the curse of Adam" from our lives.

The external combustion engine had just made horse power redundant, powering the trains and ships, but the internal combustion engine was just around the corner to make possible the motor car and the aeroplane. Electricity was beginning to power industry and telegraphy and the telephone were making their appearance, which was to lead to the possibility of skyscraper office blocks, but the radio and electronic communication was still ten years away in the future.
The men and women who were to use these new tools and take us to the threshold of automatic and robotic production, were the product of an education method that is clearly illustrated in this examination paper from those times. The transition required millions of people to be educated with the essential elements of knowledge to produce what we now enjoy and take for granted.

Now that it requires only a few highly educated technicians to design and build robotic and automated machinery, to produce refrigerators, cars and TV's, mobile phones and the rest. People like the horse before them, are now redundant and enormous numbers of young people have to be "dumbed down" at school, because there is no useful work in the future for them. Closing down our vast local industry and importing from China has made thousands more of our youth "un-wanted". As Bill Gates put it, "they have been fed a feel good politically correct (myths) teaching that has created a generation of kids with no concept of reality" As money will only be distributed to them if they do work for somebody else, work for works sake, as a means of distributing money has led to so much of the worlds pollution and changed us from a coherent society into economic units in a Global economy, controlled by those distributing money.

This is what "Time Capsules" teach us.
They illustrate the effectiveness of "gradualism" and how that erodes all past truth and virtue using the passage of time with its inherent personal and generational "loss of memory". It was in 1884 the Fabian Society was formed in London to change "society" to "democratic socialism" by the process of "gradualism". Whatever their objective, cutting us off from our roots has certainly been achieved through their design and persistence.

How do you "dumb down" a whole civilisation?
First you prevent any education in educational institutions about how money apart from coin and notes, being completely invisible, is brought into existence and who controls that process. You teach those with the best memories one discipline only, such as Law or electronic engineering, or education, but never Banking.

Then the great mass left over, who have lesser or short memories, you teach open ended myths, such as Global Warming, where a gas heavier than air that is absorbed by plants and the ocean, currently miraculously ascends in the sky to upset the climate to cause something that has not yet occurred.
Any teacher or University lecturer who scientifically points out the error of this theory, will lose his funding, or promotion or job, or, as in some cases, all three.

The myths are kept in place and in debate by the all powerful media. The myth before the current one was the "Hole" in the ozone layer, which is still there each winter at each Pole. The myth before that was that we caught AIDS from a green monkey, who still flourishes without yet having contracted AIDS. Thirty years ago it was Global Cooling!

Upton Sinclair 23 years before this examination paper foresaw it all when he told the world - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it".

We are right back where we were 2,000 years ago, when the myths of the Pharisees controlled the uneducated masses, until the man from Galilee came along and whipped the money controllers out of the temple - those who kept the whole bondage edifice in place with their monetary system of debt, and with the over-generous rewards for those who helped them maintain the myths.
It is King Solomon who is credited with the observation: "There is nothing new under the sun." Just as the Man from Galilee promised: "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free."