Le soutien de la Banque mondiale au déplacement forcé de population

Eric TOUSSAINT27 avril 2015

La Banque mondiale semble reconnaître qu’elle a commis des erreurs en matière de déplacement de populations |1|. De son côté, Le Consortium international pour le journalisme d’investigation (International Consortium for Investigative Journalism – ICIJ) a examiné les activités de la Banque mondiale dans 14 pays, et a découvert que presque 3,4 millions de « personnes des plus vulnérables » ont été forcées de fuir leurs maisons au cours de la dernière décennie |2|. Nous reproduisons ici un article consacré au déplacement forcé de population en Indonésie.

En Indonésie, la Banque mondiale a collaboré activement au sinistre projet de transmigration |3| dont certaines facettes constituent des crimes contre l’humanité. Il s’agit du déplacement – dans certains cas, forcé – de millions de personnes des îles de Java et de Sumatra vers d’autres îles de l’archipel et de la dépossession des indigènes de ces îles.
La Banque mondiale est, surtout pendant les quinze années de l’âge d’or du programme (1974–1989), sa principale source de financement extérieur. Les historiens reconnaissent cette responsabilité de la Banque : « Au milieu et à la fin des années 1970, la Banque a soutenu et a prêté son assistance au programme controversé du gouvernement qui consistait au déplacement officiel et subventionné des familles de Java vers d’autres îles |4| ». Cette contribution ne se limite pas seulement à un appui financier et technique. Elle apporte aussi son appui politique à ce projet.
Entre 1950 et 1974, le nombre de personnes déplacées par le gouvernement dans le cadre de la transmigration atteint 664 000. Mais, à partir de 1974, avec le soutien de la Banque mondiale, ce sont 3,5 millions de personnes qui sont déplacées et assistées, et environ 3,5 millions de personnes qui migrent de leur propre chef. La Banque mondiale contribue directement aux déplacements et réinstallations, ses prêts permettant d’une part de couvrir dans leur presque totalité les migrations « officielles » de 2,3 millions de personnes et d’autre part de « catalyser » la réinstallation de quelque 2 millions de transmigrants spontanés.
Bien que la Banque mondiale qualifie la transmigration de « plus grand programme au monde de réinstallation volontaire », très vite il apparaît que le programme sert aussi à débarrasser Java des habitants indésirables. Ainsi, dans les principales villes javanaises, les « non-conformistes », les personnes âgées, les malades (y compris les lépreux), les mendiants et les vagabonds se voient forcés ou bien de disparaître dans la campagne (où ils avaient peu de chances de survivre) ou bien de rejoindre la transmigration. Ils sont alors chargés, la nuit, dans des camions de l’armée et amenés dans des « camps de transit » où ils sont formés en vue de leur réinstallation |5|. Le mariage est un critère obligé de sélection : les autorités organisent des mariages forcés entre les personnes célibataires avant leur départ. Notons que la Banque mondiale participe grandement aux missions de recrutement de sans-abri et de prisonniers politiques en vue de les envoyer dans les sites de transmigration les plus lointains et les moins prisés.
Les projets liés à la transmigration les plus soutenus par cette institution sont ceux dans lesquels interviennent directement des firmes privées nationales ou étrangères susceptibles d’alimenter le commerce extérieur et d’attirer de plus ambitieux investissements transnationaux (projets de plantations industrielles notamment).
L’exploitation étrangère effrénée des ressources des îles extérieures s’effectue au profit du gouvernement central et des firmes exploitantes, mais au grand dam des populations locales dont une grande partie de l’habitat et des moyens de subsistance est détruite à jamais. Les terres des îles périphériques sont considérées comme « vides » car les indigènes qui y vivent depuis des millénaires ne possèdent pas de certificats de propriété. Ces terres sont alors déclarées « au service de l’État » et confisquées de force, la plupart du temps sans compensation. La Banque mondiale soutient par ailleurs le gouvernement dans ses actes d’expropriations des terres appartenant aux indigènes, bien qu’elle ne l’avoue jamais officiellement.
La transmigration hérite des terrains qui ne sont pas réservés aux concessions forestières et dont la caractéristique commune est d’être très peu productifs. Car, pour les agents du gouvernement chargés de repérer les sites à défricher, peu importe que ces sites soient cultivables ou pas. Ils doivent rapporter, sur une carte, les informations relatives à l’accès aux sites, à la quantité d’hectares à défricher et à la quantité de familles pouvant y être installées.
La forêt – ressource vitale des autochtones dans tous ses aspects – disparaît peu à peu sous l’action des entreprises d’exploitation forestière et de plantations commerciales d’une part, et des équipes gouvernementales chargées de défricher des espaces destinés à l’agriculture et à l’installation des migrants de l’autre. Par ailleurs, les entreprises minières (voir le cas de la compagnie minière états-unienne Freeport McMoran |6|) détruisent des pans entiers de montagne et déversent quotidiennement dans les rivières des tonnes de déchets de minerais, les polluant irrémédiablement. Cette eau constituant la seule source des autochtones, cela provoque de grandes catastrophes sanitaires. L’extraction de pétrole le long des côtes porte également un grand préjudice à la faune et la flore marines, autre source d’alimentation des populations indigènes.

Les véritables responsables sont ceux qui ont conçu, fait exécuter et financer le projet. Ce sont d’abord les pouvoirs publics indonésiens et les institutions internationales (dont la Banque mondiale au premier chef). Mais aussi certains gouvernements occidentaux (États-Unis, Grande Bretagne, Allemagne, Israël...) et les entreprises nationales et étrangères qui sont impliqués dans la réalisation concrète du projet. Tant le développement et la prolifération des exploitations intensives de ressources naturelles que l’accroissement accéléré des surfaces destinées aux plantations commerciales découlent des programmes financés par les prêts internationaux. Et ces prêts sont toujours conditionnés par l’ouverture des marchés à tous les niveaux – disparition des barrières douanières, attraction des capitaux étrangers, priorité aux monocultures d’exportation, libéralisation et privatisation des secteurs de distribution de biens et services, etc.
A la fin des années 1980, de nombreuses et virulentes critiques, tant à l’intérieur qu’à l’extérieur de l’archipel, se multiplient, accusant la Banque mondiale de participer à un projet de domination géopolitique multipliant les bavures sociales et écologiques et ne respectant pas les droits de l’homme dans ses procédés |7|. La Banque mondiale a en effet joué un rôle capital dans ce projet dont les conséquences sont néfastes et irréversibles : contrôle sur les populations indigènes des îles extérieures et viol de leur droit de propriété du sol ; coût exorbitant des déplacements (7 000 dollars par famille selon les estimations de la Banque mondiale |8| ) en regard des résultats puisque selon une étude de la Banque mondiale de 1986, 50 % des familles déplacées vivaient en dessous du niveau de pauvreté et 20 % vivaient en dessous du niveau de subsistance ; problèmes de densité subsistants à Java ; déforestation massive des îles extérieures...
La Banque mondiale, pointée du doigt de toutes parts, décide de cesser le financement destiné à l’installation de nouveaux sites de transmigration et à la couverture du voyage des transmigrants. Elle concentre ses prêts, néanmoins, sur le renforcement des villages déjà existants |9| et sur le maintien des plantations commerciales, n’abandonnant donc que très partiellement sa participation au programme.
La Banque mondiale dément bien évidemment toutes les allégations portées par les observateurs critiques. Elle décide de réaliser, en 1994, une étude d’évaluation |10| interne des projets qu’elle a financés, afin de déterminer ses éventuelles responsabilités. Dans ce rapport, la Banque mondiale admet une part minime de responsabilité, à savoir que le projet à Sumatra « a eu des effets négatifs et probablement irréversibles » sur la population Kubu, population nomade dont la survie repose sur la culture en jachère, la chasse et le rassemblement dans la forêt. L’audit met en évidence que « bien que l’existence des Kubu dans les zones du projet soit connue depuis la planification du projet, peu d’efforts furent portés pour éviter des problèmes ».
Les prêts de la Banque mondiale pour le programme Transmigration correspondent en tous points à la constitution d’une dette odieuse : ils ont été contractés par un régime despotique qui a pu les utiliser à des fins de répression ; ils n’ont pas servi au bien-être de la population. En conséquence, cette dette est nulle et non avenue : elle doit être annulée. Mais il serait insuffisant d’en rester là. On l’a vu, le projet transmigration que la Banque mondiale a soutenu impliquait le déplacement forcé de certaines populations. La Banque mondiale ne peut pas simplement affirmer qu’elle ne le savait pas. Elle a également été complice de la violation des droits des peuples indigènes qui habitaient les zones colonisées par le projet transmigration. Ces actes très graves ne doivent pas rester impunis.
Eric Toussaint
Eric Toussaint est maître de conférence à l’université de Liège, préside le CADTM Belgique et est membre du Conseil scientifique d’ATTAC France. Il est auteur des livres Procès d’un homme exemplaire, Editions Al Dante, Marseille, 2013 ; Un coup d’œil dans le rétroviseur. L’idéologie néolibérale des origines jusqu’à aujourd’hui, Le Cerisier, Mons, 2010. Il est coauteur avec Damien Millet du livre AAA, Audit, Annulation, Autre politique, Le Seuil, Paris, 2012 ; La dette ou la vie, Aden/CADTM, Bruxelles, 2011. Ce dernier livre a reçu le Prix du livre politique octroyé par la Foire du livre politique de Liège Dernier livre : Bancocratie ADEN, Brussels, 2014.
18 avril 2015

»» http://cadtm.org/Le-soutien-de-la-Banque-mondiale,11538

Notes
|1| http://affaires.lapresse.ca/economie/macro-economie/201503/04/01-48493...
|2| http://francais.rt.com/lemonde/1771-projets-banque-mondiale-forcent-millions
|3| Cette partie s’inspire largement du mémoire de licence (encore inédit) d’Alice Minette, “ Anthropologie d’un malentendu. Analyse du projet de développement « Transmigration » en Indonésie et de ses conséquences sur les îles périphériques de l’archipel en général, et sur la Papouasie Occidentale en particulier ”. Université de Liège. Voir également Damien Millet, Eric Toussaint. 2005. Les tsunamis de la dette, chap. 3.
|4| Kapur, Devesh, Lewis, John P., Webb, Richard. 1997. The World Bank, Its First Half Century, Volume 1 : History, p. 489 (voir à la note 60 la référence à une décision du Board à ce propos en janvier 1979).
|5| L’un de ces camps est une petite île au large de Java dont il était impossible de s’échapper, et où les dits « indésirables » se voient inculquer les techniques de l’agriculture et l’idéologie de l’Ėtat.
|6| Damien Millet, Eric Toussaint. 2005. Les tsunamis de la dette, pp. 114-115.
|7| Parmi les critiques faites à la Banque au sujet des dommages et du non-respect des droits de l’Homme causés par son soutien aux actions du gouvernement en Papouasie Occidentale, les plus connues sont la lettre adressée en 1984 au président de la Banque A.W. Clausen par le Minority Rights Group (New York) ; la condamnation par le World Council of Indigenous People lors de son meeting régional en 1984 ; une pétition adressée à l’Inter-Governmental Group of Indonesia en 1984-85 par l’Australian Council For Overseas Aid et par de nombreuses associations de défense des droits des indigènes. Ces plaintes ne furent prises en compte ni par le gouvernement indonésien, ni par la Banque, qui maintint son soutien aux abus des droits des indigènes en Papouasie.
|8| Banque mondiale, Indonesia Transmigration Sector Review, cité dans Bruce Rich, Ibid.
|9| Ce renforcement, appelé « Second Stage Development », consiste en l’amélioration des infrastructures et des conditions générales de vie dans les villages de transmigration, ainsi qu’en la réhabilitation des sites ayant connu un large taux de désertion de la part des transmigrants.
|10| “Indonesia Transmigration Program : a review of five Bank-supported projects”, 1994 ; “Impact Evaluation Report : Transmigration I, Transmigration II, Transmigration III”, 1994.

Rosa Luxemburg, les femmes et l’émancipation générale

Michel PEYRET27 avril 2015

« Il y a cent ans, le français Charles Fourier, l’un des premiers grands prophètes des idéaux socialistes, a écrit ces mots mémorables : « dans chaque société, le degré d’émancipation des femmes est la mesure naturelle de l’émancipation générale ». Ceci est parfaitement vrai pour la société actuelle. La lutte de masse en cours pour les droits politiques des femmes est seulement l’une des expressions et une partie de la lutte générale du prolétariat pour sa libération. En cela réside sa force et son avenir. Grâce au prolétariat féminin, le suffrage universel, égal et direct des femmes, ferait avancer considérablement et intensifierait la lutte des classes du prolétariat. C’est la raison pour laquelle la société bourgeoise déteste et craint le suffrage féminin. Et c’est pourquoi nous le défendons et nous l’obtiendrons. En luttant pour le suffrage féminin, nous rapprocherons aussi l’heure où la société actuelle tombera en ruines sous les coups de marteau du prolétariat révolutionnaire... »
Lisons plus avant.
Michel Peyret

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SUFFRAGE FÉMININ ET LUTTE DE CLASSES, PAR ROSA LUXEMBURG
Mai 1912
De Flora Tristan à Angela Davis, en passant par Louise Michel et Emma Goldman, le féminisme occupe une place non négligeable dans la tradition socialiste. Rosa Luxemburg est sans nul doute celle qui a su le mieux allier marxisme et émancipation des femmes. Liant féminisme et lutte de classes – ce qui explique qu’elle n’a jamais de mots assez dures pour « les femmes de la bourgeoisie » – l’allemande se place dans une perspective révolutionnaire et prolétarienne. Dans le texte qui suit, publié en mai 1912, la cofondatrice de la Ligue spartakiste évoque la question du suffrage féminin.

* * *

« Pourquoi n’y a-t-il pas d’organisation pour les femmes travailleuses en Allemagne ? Pourquoi entendons-nous si peu parler du mouvement des femmes travailleuses ? » C’est par ces questions qu’Emma Ihrer, l’une des fondatrices du mouvement des femmes prolétariennes d’Allemagne, introduisait son essai de 1898 : Les femmes travailleuses dans la lutte des classes. A peine quatorze ans se sont écoulés depuis, qui ont vu une grande expansion du mouvement des femmes prolétariennes. Plus de cent cinquante mille femmes sont organisées dans des syndicats et sont parmi les contingents les plus actifs des luttes économiques du prolétariat. Plusieurs milliers de femmes politiquement organisées ont rallié la bannière du prolétariat : le journal des femmes sociales-démocrates [Die Gleichheit (« L’Egalité »), édité par Clara Zetkin], compte plus de cent mille abonné-e-s ; le suffrage féminin est l’un des points vitaux du programme de la social-démocratie.
L’importance du suffrage féminin
De tels faits pourraient précisément nous inciter à sous-estimer l’importance de la lutte pour le suffrage féminin. Nous pourrions penser : même sans l’égalité des droits politiques des femmes, nous avons réalisé d’énormes progrès dans l’éducation et l’organisation des femmes. Ainsi, le suffrage féminin n’est pas une nécessité urgente. Mais si nous pensions cela, nous serions dans l’erreur. Durant ces quinze dernières années, l’éveil politique et syndical des masses du prolétariat féminin a été magnifique. Mais cela n’a été possible, que parce que les femmes travailleuses ont pris un intérêt vivant dans les combats politiques et parlementaires de leur classe, en dépit du fait qu’elles étaient privées de leurs droits. Jusqu’ici, les femmes travailleuses ont été soutenues par le suffrage masculin, auquel elles ont bien sûr pris part, certes indirectement seulement. Les larges masses des hommes et des femmes de la classe ouvrière considèrent déjà les campagnes électorales comme des causes communes. Dans tous les meetings électoraux sociaux-démocrates, les femmes constituent une large fraction des participants, parfois la majorité. Elles sont toujours intéressées et passionnément concernées.
Dans tous les districts où existe une organisation social-démocrate sérieuse, les femmes soutiennent la campagne. Et ce sont les femmes qui font un travail inestimable en distribuant des tracts et en gagnant des abonnements à la presse social-démocrate, cette arme si importante de ces campagnes.

« Dans tous les cas, la classe ouvrière a toujours dû prouver sa maturité pour la liberté politique par un soulèvement révolutionnaire de masse victorieux. »

L’Etat capitaliste n’a pas été en mesure d’empêcher les femmes de porter ces charges et ces efforts de la vie politique. Pas à pas, l’Etat a été en effet forcé de leur allouer et de leur garantir cette possibilité en leur accordant les droits syndicaux et de réunion. Seul le dernier des droits politiques est dénié aux femmes : le droit de voter, de décider directement des représentant-e-s du peuple dans les domaines législatif et exécutif, de devenir un membre élude tels corps. Mais ici, comme dans tous les autres domaines de la vie sociale, le mot d’ordre est : « ne pas laisser les choses progresser ! » Mais les choses ont commencé à avancer. L’Etat actuel a reculé devant les femmes du prolétariat lorsqu’il les a admises dans les réunions publiques, dans les associations politiques. Et l’Etat n’a pas concédé cela volontairement, mais par nécessité, sous la pression irrésistible de la classe ouvrière montante. Ce n’est pas moins la poussée passionnée des femmes prolétaires elles- mêmes, qui a forcé l’Etat policier germano-prussien à (...) ouvrir grandes les portes des organisations politiques aux femmes.
Ceci a réellement mis la machine en mouvement. Les progrès irrésistibles de la lutte des classes prolétarienne ont jeté les droits des femmes travailleuses dans le tourbillon de la vie politique. Utilisant leurs droits syndicaux et de réunion, les femmes prolétariennes ont pris une part très active dans la vie parlementaire et dans les campagnes électorales. C’est seulement la conséquence inévitable, le résultat logique du mouvement, qui fait qu’aujourd’hui, des millions de femmes prolétaires crient avec défiance et pleine d’assurance en elles-mêmes : gagnons le suffrage
Il était une fois, dans l’ère idyllique de l’absolutisme d’avant-1848, une classe ouvrière qui n’était pas réputée « assez mûre » pour exercer les droits politiques. Cela ne peut pas être dit des femmes travailleuses d’aujourd’hui, parce qu’elles ont démontré leur maturité politique.
Tout le monde sait que sans elles, sans l’aide enthousiaste des femmes prolétariennes, le part social-démocrate n’aurait pas remporté la victoire glorieuse du 12 janvier [1912], en obtenant 4,25 millions de voix. Dans tous les cas, la classe ouvrière a toujours dû prouver sa maturité pour la liberté politique par un soulèvement révolutionnaire de masse victorieux. C’est seulement lorsque le Droit Divin sur le trône et les meilleurs et les plus nobles des hommes de la nation ont senti le poing calleux du prolétariat sur leurs faces et son genou sur leurs poitrines, qu’ils ont fait confiance dans la « maturité » politique du peuple, et cela, ils l’ont réalisé à la vitesse de la lumière. Aujourd’hui, c’est au tour des femmes du prolétariat de rendre l’Etat capitaliste conscient de leur maturité. Cela est le fait d’un mouvement de masse constant et puissant, qui doit user de tous les moyens de lutte et de pression du prolétariat.

« Le suffrage féminin, c’est le but. Mais le mouvement de masse qui pourra l’obtenir n’est pas que l’affaire des femmes, mais une préoccupation de classe commune des femmes et des hommes du prolétariat. »

Le suffrage féminin, c’est le but. Mais le mouvement de masse qui pourra l’obtenir n’est pas que l’affaire des femmes, mais une préoccupation de classe commune des femmes et des hommes du prolétariat. Le manque actuel de droits pour les femmes en Allemagne n’est qu’un maillon de la chaîne qui entrave la vie du peuple. Et il est intimement lié à cet autre pilier de la réaction : la monarchie. Dans ce pays avancé, hautement industrialisé, qu’est l’Allemagne du XXème siècle, au temps de l’électricité et de l’aviation, l’absence de droits politiques pour les femmes est autant une séquelle réactionnaire du passé mort, que l’est le règne de Droit Divin sur le trône. Les deux phénomènes : le pouvoir politique dirigeant comme instrument du ciel et les femmes, cloîtrées au foyer, non concernées par les tempêtes de la vie publique, par la politique et la lutte des classes – les deux phénomènes plongent leurs racines dans les circonstances obsolètes du passé, de l’époque du servage à la campagne et des guildes dans les villes. En ces temps- là, ils étaient justifiables et nécessaires. Mais autant la monarchie, que l’absence de droits pour les femmes, ont été déracinées par le développement du capitalisme moderne et sont devenues des caricatures ridicules. Elles se perpétuent dans notre société moderne, non pas parce que les gens ont négligé de les abolir, non pas à cause de la persistance et de l’inertie des circonstances. Non ils existent encore parce que les deux – la monarchie et les femmes sans droits – sont devenues de puissants outils au service d’intérêts hostiles à ceux du peuple. Les pires défenseurs et les plus brutaux de l’exploitation et de l’asservissement du prolétariat sont retranchés derrière le trône et l’autel, comme derrière l’asservissement politique des femmes. La monarchie et le manque de droits des femmes sont devenus les plus importants instruments de la classe capitaliste régnante.
Femmes bourgeoises vs femmes prolétaires

« A part quelques-unes d’entre elles, qui exercent une activité ou une profession, les femmes de la bourgeoisie ne participent pas à la production sociale. Elles ne sont rien d’autre que des consommatrices de la plus-value que leurs hommes extorquent au prolétariat. Elles sont les parasites des parasites du corps social. »

En vérité, notre Etat est intéressé à priver de vote les femmes travailleuses et elles seules. Il craint à juste titre qu’elles n’en viennent à menacer les institutions traditionnelles du pouvoir de classe, par exemple le militarisme (duquel aucune femme travailleuse consciente ne peut s’empêcher d’être une ennemie mortelle), la monarchie, le vol systématique que représentent les droits et taxes sur l’alimentation, etc. Le suffrage féminin est une horreur et une abomination pour l’Etat capitaliste actuel, parce que derrière lui se tiennent des millions de femmes qui renforceraient l’ennemi de l’intérieur, c’est-à-dire la social-démocratie révolutionnaire. S’il n’était question que du vote des femmes bourgeoises, l’Etat capitaliste ne pourrait en attendre rien d’autre qu’un soutien effectif à la réaction. Nombre de ces femmes bourgeoises qui agissent comme des lionnes dans la lutte contre les « prérogatives masculines » marcheraient comme des brebis dociles dans le camp de la réaction conservatrice et cléricale si elles avaient le droit de vote. En fait, elles seraient certainement bien plus réactionnaires que la fraction masculine de leur classe.
A part quelques-unes d’entre elles, qui exercent une activité ou une profession, les femmes de la bourgeoisie ne participent pas à la production sociale. Elles ne sont rien d’autre que des consommatrices de la plus-value que leurs hommes extorquent au prolétariat. Elles sont les parasites des parasites du corps social. Et les consommateurs sont généralement plus frénétiques et cruels pour défendre leurs « droits » à une vie parasitaire, que l’agent direct du pouvoir et de l’exploitation de classe. L’histoire de toutes les grandes luttes révolutionnaire confirme cela de façon effrayante. Prenez la grande Révolution Française. Après la chute des Jacobins, lorsque Robespierre fut conduit enchaîné sur son lieu d’exécution, les putains dénudées d’une bourgeoisie ivre de victoire, dansaient de joie, sans vergogne, autour du héros déchu de la Révolution. Et en 1871, à Paris, lorsque la Commune héroïque des travailleuses a été défaite par les mitrailleuses, les femmes bourgeoises déchaînées ont dépassé en bestialité leurs hommes dans leur revanche sanglante contre le prolétariat vaincu. Les femmes des classes détentrices de la propriété défendront toujours fanatiquement l’exploitation et l’asservissement du peuple travailleur, duquel elles reçoivent indirectement les moyens de leur existence socialement inutile.
Économiquement et socialement, les femmes des classes exploiteuses ne sont pas un segment indépendant de la population. Leur unique fonction sociale, c’est d’être les instruments de la reproduction naturelle des classes dominantes. A l’opposé, les femmes du prolétariat sont économiquement indépendantes. Elles sont productives pour la société, comme les hommes.
Par cela, je n’ai pas en vue leur investissement dans l’éducation des enfants ou leur travail domestique, par lesquels elles aident les hommes à subvenir aux besoins de leur famille avec des salaires insuffisants. Ce type de travail n’est pas productif, au sens de l’économie capitaliste actuelle, quelle que soit l’ampleur des sacrifices et de l’énergie consentis, de même que les milliers de petits efforts cumulés. Ce n’est que l’affaire privée du travailleur, son bonheur et sa bénédiction, qui pour cela n’existe pas aux yeux de la société actuelle. Aussi longtemps que le capitalisme et le salariat dominent, le seul type de travail considéré comme productif est celui qui génère de la plus- value, du profit capitaliste. De ce point de vue, la danseuse de music-hall, dont les jambes suintent le profit dans les poches de son employeur est une travailleuse productive, tandis que toutes les peines des femmes et des mères prolétariennes entre les quatre murs de leurs foyers sont considérées comme improductives.
Cela paraît brutal et absurde, mais reflète exactement la brutalité et l’absurdité de notre économie capitaliste actuelle. Le fait de voir cette cruelle réalité clairement et distinctement voilà la première tâche des femmes du prolétariat.

La marche des femmes sur Versailles en 1789

L’exploitation des femmes prolétaires
En effet, précisément de ce point de vue, la revendication des femmes prolétariennes de droits politiques égaux est ancrée dans une base économique ferme. Aujourd’hui, des millions de femmes travailleuses créent du profit capitaliste, tout comme les hommes – dans les usines les ateliers, les fermes, le bâtiment, les bureaux, les magasins. Elles sont pour cela productives dans la société actuelle, dans le strict sens scientifique du terme. Chaque jour élargit le champ d’exploitation des femmes par le capitalisme. Chaque nouveau progrès de l’industrie ou de la technologie crée de nouvelles places pour les femmes dans le processus du profit capitaliste. Ainsi, chaque jour et chaque pas en avant du progrès industriel ajoutent une nouvelle pierre aux fondations solides des droits politiques égaux pour les femmes. L’éducation des femmes et leur intelligence sont devenues nécessaires à la machine économique elle-même. La femme étroitement recluse dans le « cercle familial » patriarcal répond aussi peu aux attentes du commerce et de l’industrie, qu’à ceux de la politique. C’est vrai, l’Etat capitaliste a négligé son devoir, même dans ce domaine. Jusqu’ici, ce sont les syndicats et les organisations sociales-démocrates qui ont fait le plus pour éveiller l’esprit et le sens moral des femmes.

« Nous ne dépendons pas de la justice de la classe dominante, mais seulement de la force révolutionnaire de la classe ouvrière et du cours du développement social qui prépare les bases de son pouvoir. »

Cela fait des décennies déjà, que les sociaux-démocrates sont réputés être les travailleurs les plus capables et intelligents d’Allemagne. De la même façon, les syndicats et la social-démocratie ont arraché les femmes à leur existence étroite et bornée, ainsi qu’à l’abrutissement misérable et étriqué de la tenue du ménage. La lutte de classe prolétarienne a élargi leurs horizons, rendu leur esprit plus flexible, développé leur pensée ; elle leur a montré de grandes perspectives, dignes de leurs efforts. Le socialisme a suscité la renaissance mentale de la masse des femmes prolétariennes – en faisant d’elles aussi, sans aucun doute, des travailleuses productives et compétentes pour le capital.
Au vu de tout cela, le fait que les femmes prolétariennes sont privées de droits politiques est une vil injustice, ceci d’autant plus qu’il s’agit maintenant d’un demi mensonge. Après tout, une masse de femmes prennent activement part à la vie politique. Pour autant, la social-démocratie ne recourt pas à l’argument de l’« injustice ». C’est la différence essentielle entre nous et le socialisme antérieur, sentimental et utopique.

« Dans chaque société, le degré d’émancipation des femmes est la mesure naturelle de l’émancipation générale. » Charles Fourier

Nous ne dépendons pas de la justice de la classe dominante, mais seulement de la force révolutionnaire de la classe ouvrière et du cours du développement social qui prépare les bases de son pouvoir. Ainsi, l’injustice en elle-même n’est certainement pas un argument de nature à renverser les institutions réactionnaires.
En revanche, si un sentiment d’injustice se développe dans de larges secteurs de la société – relève Friedrich Engels, le co-fondateur du socialisme scientifique – voilà un indice sûr que les bases économiques de la société ont changé considérablement, que les conditions actuelles entrent en conflit avec la marche du développement. Le formidable mouvement actuel de millions de femmes prolétariennes, qui considèrent leur privation de droits politiques comme une injustice criante, est un tel signe infaillible, un signe que les bases sociales du système dominant sont pourries et que ses jours sont comptés.

Charles Fourier, socialiste utopique et féministe avant l’heure

Il y a cent ans, le français Charles Fourier, l’un des premiers grands prophètes des idéaux socialistes, a écrit ces mots mémorables : « dans chaque société, le degré d’émancipation des femmes est la mesure naturelle de l’émancipation générale ». Ceci est parfaitement vrai pour la société actuelle. La lutte de masse en cours pour les droits politiques des femmes est seulement l’une des expressions et une partie de la lutte générale du prolétariat pour sa libération. En cela réside sa force et son avenir. Grâce au prolétariat féminin, le suffrage universel, égal et direct des femmes, ferait avancer considérablement et intensifierait la lutte des classes du prolétariat. C’est la raison pour laquelle la société bourgeoise déteste et craint le suffrage féminin. Et c’est pourquoi nous le défendons et nous l’obtiendrons. En luttant pour le suffrage féminin, nous rapprocherons aussi l’heure où la société actuelle tombera en ruines sous les coups de marteau du prolétariat révolutionnaire.
SOURCE : https://www.marxists.org/francais/luxembur/works/1912/05/suffrage.htm

»» http://michelpeyret.canalblog.com/archives/2015/04/22/31931645.html

Challenging American Exceptionalism

By Marjorie Cohn

Global Research, April 28, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/challenging-american-exceptionalism/5445753

President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages – including one American – during a drone strike in Pakistan.  Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” In his 2015 state of the union address, Obama described America as “exceptional.” When he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he said, “Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional.”

American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. This view reared its head after the 2013 leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern in this country about drone strikes that killed people in other countries. But when it was revealed that U.S. citizens could be targeted, Americans were outraged. This motivated Senator Rand Paul to launch his 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

It is this double standard that moved Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times, in which he asked, “Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours?” (When I saw that letter, I immediately invited Archbishop Tutu to write the foreword to my book, “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.” He graciously agreed and he elaborates on that sentiment in the foreword).

Obama insists that the CIA and the U.S. military are very careful to avoid civilian casualties. In May 2013, he declared in a speech at the National Defense University, “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”

Nevertheless, of the nearly 3,852 people killed by drone strikes, 476 have reportedly been civilians. The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which examined nine drone strikes in Yemen, concluded that civilians were killed in every one. Amrit Singh, a senior legal officer at OSJI and primary author of the report, said “We’ve found evidence that President Obama’s standard is not being met on the ground.”

In 2013, the administration released a fact sheet with an additional requirement that “capture is not feasible” before a targeted killing can be carried out. Yet the OSJI also questioned whether this rule is being followed. Suspected terrorist Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, a U.S. citizen, was on the Pentagon’s “kill list” but he was ultimately arrested by Pakistani security forces and will be tried in a U.S. federal court. “This is an example that capturing can be done,” according to Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The fact sheet also specifies that in order to use lethal force, the target must pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” But the leaked Justice Department White Paper says that a U.S. citizen can be killed even when there is no “clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” This renders the imminency requirement a nullity. Moreover, if there is such a low bar for targeting a citizen, query whether there is any bar at all for killing foreigners.

There must also be “near certainty” that the terrorist target is present. Yet the CIA did not even know who it was slaying when the two hostages were killed. This was a “signature strike,” that targets “suspicious compounds” in areas controlled by “militants.” Zenko says, “most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the [U.S.] government does not know their names.” So how can one determine with any certainty that a target is present when the CIA is not even targeting individuals?

Contrary to popular opinion, the use of drones does not result in fewer civilian casualties than manned bombers. A study based on classified military data, conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses and the Center for Civilians in Conflict, concluded that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than manned fighter aircraft.

Moreover, a panel with experienced specialists from both the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations issued a 77-page report for the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, which found there was no indication that drone strikes had advanced “long-term U.S. security interests.”

Nevertheless, the Obama administration maintains a double standard for apologies to the families of drone victims. “The White House is setting a dangerous precedent – that if you are western and hit by accident we’ll say we are sorry,” said Reprieve attorney Alka Pradhan, “but we’ll put up a stone wall of silence if you are a Yemeni or Pakistani civilian who lost an innocent loved one. Inconsistencies like this are seen around the world as hypocritical, and do the United States’ image real harm.”

It is not just the U.S. image that is suffering. Drone strikes create more enemies of the United States. While Faisal Shahzad was pleading guilty to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, he told the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”

Americans are justifiably outraged when we hear about ISIS beheading western journalists. Former CIA lawyer Vicki Divoll, who now teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer in 2009, “People are a lot more comfortable with a Predator [drone] strike that kills many people than with a throat-slitting that kills one.” But Americans don’t see the images of the drone victims or hear the stories of their survivors. If we did, we might be more sympathetic to the damage our drone bombs are wreaking in our name.

Drone strikes are illegal when conducted off the battlefield. They should be outlawed. Obama, like Bush before him, opportunistically defines the whole world as a battlefield.

The guarantee of due process in the U.S. Constitution as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must be honored, not just in its breach. That means arrest and fair trial, not summary execution. What we really need is a complete reassessment of Obama’s continuation of Bush’s “war on terror.” Until we overhaul our foreign policy and stop invading other countries, changing their regimes, occupying, torturing and indefinitely detaining their people, and uncritically supporting other countries that illegally occupy other peoples’ lands, we will never be safe from terrorism.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.”

Copyright © 2015 Global Research

Agribusiness and the The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse. The Globalized System of War, Poverty and Food Insecurity

By Colin Todhunter

Global Research, April 28, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/agribusiness-and-the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse-the-globalized-system-of-war-poverty-and-food-insecurity/5446008

US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of global energy. On average, one person in the US consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians.

The US is able to consume at such a level because the dollar serves as the world reserve currency. This means high demand for it is guaranteed as most international trade (especially oil) is carried out using the dollar. US dominance and wealth accumulation depends on maintaining the currency’s leading role.

The international monetary system that emerged near the end of the Second World War was based on the US being the dominant economic power and the main creditor nation, with institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund eventually being created to serve its interests. Since coming off the gold standard in the early seventies, Washington has been able to run up a huge balance of payments deficit by using the (oil-backed) paper dollar as security in itself (rather than outright ownership of gold) and engaging in petro-dollar recycling and treasury-bond super-imperialism.

Like all empires, Washington has developed a system to hitch a free ride courtesy of the rest of the world funding its generally high standard of living, militarism, financial bubbles, speculations and corporate takeovers.

With its control and manipulation of the World Bank, IMF and WTO, the US has been able to lever the trade and the financial system to its advantage by various means (for example, see this analysis of how Saudi Arabia’s oil profits enabled Wall Street to entrap African nations into debt). Based on the US neocons’ holy scriptures for 21^st century war and imperialism – the Project for a New American Century and the Wolfowitz doctrine - Washington will not allow its global hegemony and the role of the dollar to be challenged. Given Russia’s reemergence on the global stage and China’s rise, we are witnessing a sense of urgency to destabilise and undermine both countries, especially as they are now increasingly bypassing the dollar when doing business.

US Strategic Objectives and the Role of Agribusiness

The only real alternative to avoid ecological meltdown due to the massive consumption of the planet’s finite resources and ultimately what appears to be a possible nuclear conflict with Russia (or China) is to move away from militarism and resource-gabbing conflicts by reorganising economies so that nations live within their environmental means. Key to this involves a major shift away from the petro-chemical industrial model of agriculture and food production, not only because it leads to bad food, poor health and environmental degradation and is ultimately unsustainable (and creates food insecurity – see link further on) but also because this model has underpinned a US resource-grabbing foreign policy agenda for many decades.

Such a shift would however run counter to the aims of Monsanto and the agribusiness cartel it belongs to. US agribusiness benefits financially from the prevailing order, continues to colonise global agriculture and is in effect part of the US Establishment (for example see this and this). Agriculture and agribusiness remain integral to US strategic objectives.

For example, the ‘green revolution’ was exported courtesy of the oil-rich Rockefeller family, and poorer nations adopted agribusiness’s petrochemical-dependent agriculture that required loans for inputs and infrastructure development. This was underpinned by the propaganda that these countries would earn dollars to prosper (and repay the loans) by adopting mono-crop, export-oriented policies. It entailed uprooting traditional agriculture and trapping nations into a globalised system of debt bondage, rigged trade relations and the hollowing out and destruction of national and local economies.

GMOs, the control of seeds and further corporate-controlled inputs represent the second coming of the green revolution.

Around the world from Mexico to India, we can see how traditional food production and retail sectors are being hijacked by mainly US corporate interests and can witness the subsequent impacts on health, food security, environments and livelihoods. NAFTA set the framework for plunder in Mexico, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture is playing a similar role in India and various bilateral trade agreements will do it elsewhere.

Thanks to the interests and demands of global agribusiness, farmers are leaving agriculture in India because it has been deliberately made financially non viable to continue. Regardless of the impact of GM cotton, this is the main reason why 300,000 have committed suicide in the last two decades. In attempting to dismiss or play down the link between Bt cotton and farmer suicides, prominent neoliberal apologists should consider the role of the elite interests they represent in causing hardship, hunger, poverty and devastation, instead of setting out to smear the likes of Vandana Shiva or spending their time trying to sideline the issue by trying to debunk any GM-suicide link.

Although the globalized hijack of food and agriculture by powerful corporations results in poverty, dependency and food insecurity, we are constantly and deceitfully informed that we must have more of the same if we are to feed an increasing global population and eradicate poverty. We are told that the solutions for feeding a projected world population of nine billion are more technical fixes: more petrochemical-dependent agriculture, more GMOs and more unnecessary shifting of food across the planet. Such a ‘solution’ is bogus: we already produce enough food to feed the world’s population and did so even at the peak of the world food crisis in 2008, and GM crops that are on the market today are not designed to address hunger. Four GM crops account for almost 100 percent of worldwide GM crop acreage, and all four have been developed for large-scale industrial farming systems and are used as cash crops for export, to produce fuel or for processed food and animal feed. Of course, throw in a heavy dose of ‘family planning’ (depopulation) for the ‘third world’ and we will be just fine.

There is no better example of this ideology than the current propaganda over GM golden rice. The idea is to parachute corporate-controlled GM rice into regions thereby disrupting delicately balanced local economies designed for specific markets and potentially destroying livelihoods – especially when fortified beta-carotene GM rice eventually contaminates local varieties and is manipulated to become the preeminent variety. This corporate grab is legitimised by public relations figures mouthing platitudes about feeding the hungry and giving sight to children whose vitamin A deficient diet causes blindness. The solution for blindness involves policies that would encourage a more diverse agriculture and in the short term vitamin supplements.

Statements about curing blindness, saving lives or feeding the world with GMOs are meant to tug at the heartstrings. And attacking critics with emotive outbursts are intended to do the same. Even if there were an element of logic in what these figures say, abuse and emotion are no substitute for intellectual rigor and reasoned debate. Yet what we have are public relations people like Patrick Moore going on ‘world tours’ claiming that those who oppose golden rice are effectively stealing children’s sight or are killing them. Such accusations are designed to divert attention from the underlying nature of poor nutrition/blindness and the real intention underlying the golden rice agenda - a wholesale corporate grab of global rice production.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

There is a prevailing notion that we can just continue as we are, with an endless supply of oil, endless supplies of meat and the endless assault on soil, human and environmental well-being that intensive petrochemical agriculture entails. Given the figures quoted at the start of this article, this is unsustainable and unrealistic and is a recipe for continued resource-driven conflicts and devastation.

The genuine answer is to adopt more organic and ecological farming systems that are locally based and less reliant on petrochemicals. This would also mean a shift away from an emphasis on producing meat that places a massive burden on the environment and is highly land, water and energy-input intensive.

The current economic system and model of globalisation and development suits the interests of Western oil and financial oligarchs (including land and commodity  speculators), global agribusiness and the major arms companies. These interlocking, self-serving interests constitute the four horsemen of the modern-day apocalypse and through their actions have managed to institute a globalized system of war, poverty and food insecurity and have acted to devastate economies.

People want solutions for hunger, poverty and conflict but are too often told there is no alternative to what exists. The solution ultimately lies in taking manipulated markets and rigged trade rules out of farming and investing in and supporting indigenous knowledge, agroecology, education and infrastructure, instead of inappropriately diverting funds to underperforming sectors. This involves rejecting big agritech’s current agenda and resisting the US strategy of using agriculture as a geopolitical tool. It involves challenging the corporate takeover of agriculture, supporting food sovereignty movements and embracing sustainable agriculture that is locally owned and rooted in the needs of communities.

Copyright © 2015 Global Research

Deadly Disinformation: War, the Mainstream Media and the Tragic Death of African Refugees

By Julie Lévesque

Global Research, April 28, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/deadly-disinformation-war-the-mainstream-media-and-the-tragic-death-of-libyan-refugees/5445993

The tragic death of hundreds of refugees last week in the Mediterranean Sea has once again brought to light the deadly hypocrisy of Western leaders and their mainstream press. Omissions and distortions are disconnecting the catastrophic event from its roots, preventing the real culprits from being publicly exposed. Were the victims Libyan “migrants seeking a better life in Europe,” or rather refugees fleeing a war zone created and fueled by Western powers?

The way the story is told and the wording are deceptive. Swedish scholar Jan Oberg explains:

In various media reports and political statements the word ”refugee” is increasingly being replaced by ”migrant”… A migrant, according to the UN, is a person who is engaged in (seeking) a remunerative activity in a state of which he or she is not a national. A refugee is an entirely different person who is outside his or her home country because of having suffered (or feared) persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion; because he or she is a member of a persecuted social category of persons; or because they are fleeing a war… Using ”migrants” instead of ”refugees” takes away our attention from why they flee, from our own complicity in all this and it reduces our responsibility to protect refugees….

Because most of these refugees come from zones where Western military interventions and arms exports have failed miserably their officially stated purposes and caused only more problems.

Like with so many other problems these years, there is a psycho-political denial of the fact that Western militarism is the single most important cause of the problems we are facing. (Jan Oberg, Behind Every Refugee Stands an Arms Trader, TFF Associates & Themes Blog, April 28, 2015)

Johannes Stern and Bill Van Auken add:

The American press, led by the New York Times, writes of refugees fleeing poverty and violence in the Middle East and North Africa without so much as mentioning the actions of the United States and its European allies that have caused the humanitarian catastrophe. What is unfolding in the Mediterranean is not a tragedy; it is an imperialist war crime. (Johannes Stern and Bill Van Auken Blood on their Hands: Libya’s Boat Refugees and “Humanitarian” Imperialism, World Socialist Web Site, April 21, 2015)

Robert Parry blames the media itself for its key role in selling the war:

The mainstream U.S. news media is lambasting the Europeans for failing to stop the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea as desperate Libyans flee their war-torn country in overloaded boats that are sinking as hundreds drown. But the MSM forgets how this Libyan crisis began, including its own key role along with that of “liberal interventionists” such as Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power. (Robert Parry, The US Hand in Libya’s Tragedy, Consortium News April 21, 2015)

Since the 2011 French-led NATO intervention destroyed Libya, the most prosperous African state, the number of people literally dying to reach Europe has exploded:

Although there was outmigration from Africa and the Middle East prior to 2011, the crisis has recently surpassed anything seen in modern history. Just since the beginning of 2015, it is estimated that over 1,800 people have died in the Mediterranean in route to southern Europe. (Abayomi Azikiwe, African, Asian Migrants Dying in Mass in the Mediterranean, Global Research, April 28, 2015)

According to the IOM [International Organization for Migration], the number of people dying in the attempt to reach the shores of Europe rose by more than 500 percent between 2011 and 2014.

Of course, 2011 was the year that the US and its NATO allies, principally France and Britain, launched their war for regime change in Libya, under the fabricated pretext that they were intervening to prevent a massacre by the government of Muammar Gaddafi in the eastern city of Benghazi. (Stern, Van Auken, op. cit.)

This military intervention in support of Al-Qaeda militias is intrinsically linked to the misfortune of these people and the mainstream media failure to connect the dots can only be voluntary. In fact, their of the situation in Libya ended with the “victory of the Libyan people” and the end of a “brutal dictatorship.” The reality on the ground is far from the manufactured success story we were fed. What happened, however, after the fall of Gaddafi, once NATO left the country in the hands of terrorists, was not considered newsworthy:

This “humanitarian” mission initiated a six-month US-NATO bombing campaign that killed at least 10 times the number who died in the scattered fighting between government troops and armed rebels that had preceded it…

Nearly two million Libyan refugees—more than a quarter of the population—have been forced to flee to Tunisia to escape an unending civil war between rival Islamist militias and two competing governments… According to the web site Libya Body Count, some 3,500 people have been killed just since the beginning of 2014—three years after the US-NATO intervention.

The escalating barbarism in Libya has included mass executions… There were no such mass sectarian murders in Libya before the US-NATO war for regime change, nor for that matter did Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias exist as any more than a marginal force. These elements were promoted, armed and backed by massive airpower after the major imperialist powers decided to topple and murder Gaddafi and carry out a new rape of Libya.

The disastrous consequences of this predatory neocolonial intervention are now undeniable. It is only one in a growing number of imperialist wars and interventions in the oil-rich Middle East and North Africa that have destroyed entire societies and turned millions into refugees…

According to Amnesty International, the escalating conflicts in Africa and the Middle East have “led to the largest refugee disaster since the Second World War.” (Ibid)

Sadly, an atrocious fate awaits thousands of others. The Western “humanitarian intervention” in Libya has created the monster we now call ISIS and which is used as a pretext for more military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa. ISIS terrorists are being used to wreck havoc and bring down regimes the same way they did when they were NATO terrorists in Libya, but were branded as pro-democracy rebels and used to overthrow Gaddafi.

“Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized;

Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit.

Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. (Ahmad Barqawi, Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight, Counter Punch, March 12, 2015)

As incredible as it seems, Western leaders can use the same terrorists for treachery over and over and over again, just by changing their name. The media will repeat the state propaganda and people will invariably be fooled into wars. Gaddafi was laughed at when he claimed he was fighting terrorists. But the ones laughing were the real fools. Abdelhakim Belhadj, the Al Qaeda commander in Libya and NATO’s ally, is now leading ISIS in Libya:

According to recent reports, Abdelhakim Belhadj (picture, holding frame with McCain) has now firmly ensconced himself as the organizational commander of the ISIS presence inside Libya.

The information comes from an unnamed US intelligence official who has confirmed that Belhadj is supporting and coordinating the efforts of the ISIS training centers in eastern Libya around the city of Derna, an area long known as a hotbed of jihadi militancy.

While it may not seem to be a major story – Al Qaeda terrorist turns ISIS commander – the reality is that since 2011 the US and its NATO allies have held up Belhadj as a “freedom fighter.” They portrayed him as a man who courageously led his fellow freedom-lovers against the “tyrannical despot” Gaddafi whose security forces at one time captured and imprisoned many members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), including Belhadj. (Eric Draitser, Washington’s Al Qaeda Ally Now Leading ISIS in Libya, New Eastern Outlook, March 10, 2015)

The mainstream media can no longer be trusted. They have proven time and time again to be nothing but propaganda outlets for the military-industrial complex. The only way we can stop this flow of deadly disinformation is with the truth. Please share this article.

For more information on Libya visit our In-depth report.

For more on the theme of ISIS and the US-NATO War Agenda, click here.

For a list of articles on Media Disinformation click here.

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SELECTED ARTICLES

Jan Oberg, Behind Every Refugee Stands an Arms Trader

Johannes Stern and Bill Van Auken Blood on their Hands: Libya’s Boat Refugees and “Humanitarian” Imperialism

Robert Parry, The US Hand in Libya’s Tragedy

Abayomi Azikiwe, African, Asian Migrants Dying in Mass in the Mediterranean

Ahmad Barqawi, Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight

Eric Draitser, Washington’s Al Qaeda Ally Now Leading ISIS in Libya

Copyright © 2015 Global Research

New World Order: The Founding Fathers

By Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor

Global Research, April 26, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-world-order-the-founding-fathers/5445255

This article was first published in July 2013

Rich and powerful elites have long dreamed of world control. The ambitious Romans, Attila the Hun, great Muslim leaders of Medieval Spain, the Mughals of India all exercised immense influence over different parts of the globe in set periods of recognised ascendancy.

Sometimes tribal, sometimes national, sometimes religious, often dynastic, their success defined epochs, but was never effectively global until the twentieth century. At that point, with the future of the British Empire under threat from other aspiring nations, in particular Germany , a momentous decision was taken by a group of powerful and determined men, that direct action had to be taken to assert their control, and that of the British race, over the entire civilised world. It has grown from that tiny select cabal into a monster that may already be beyond control.

“One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance for the British Empire and to the world as a whole.”

So begins Professor Carroll Quigley’s book The Anglo American Establishment.  It may read like a John Le Carre thriller, but this was no spy fiction. The three staunch British Imperialists who met in London that day, Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Lord Esher, were soon joined by Lords Rothschild, Salisbury, Rosebery and Milner, men whose financial, political, and administrative powers set them apart. Some of these names may not be familiar to you, but that is a mark of the absolute success of this group. From the outset they insisted on secrecy, operated in secret and ensured that their influence was airbrushed from history. They believed that white men of Anglo-Saxon descent rightly sat at the top of the racial hierarchy and they fully understood the impending threat from a burgeoning Germany whose modern, expanding economy had begun to challenge British hegemony on the world stage.

The above named elites drew up a plan for a secret society that aimed to renew the bond between Great Britain and the United States [1] and bring all habitable portions of the world under their influence and control. The U.S. had grown rapidly in self-esteem, wealth and opportunity since the declaration of independence in 1776, but Anglo-American connections remained strong and would embroil her in the long-term plan for one world government. The meeting in 1891 was, in effect, the birth of the New World Order cabal.

Great financiers frequently used their fortunes to influence questions of peace and war and control politics for profit. Cecil Rhodes was different. He was determined to use his vast fortune not simply to generate ever-increasing profit, but to realise his dream, a dream he shared with his co-conspirators. Rhodes turned the profit objective on its head and sought to amass great wealth into his secret society in order to achieve political ends, to buy governments and politicians, buy public opinion and the means to influence it. [2] He intended that his wealth should be used to grasp control of the world, secretly. Secrecy was the cornerstone. No one outside the favoured few knew of the group’s existence. They have since been referred to obliquely in speeches and books as “The Money Power”, “The Hidden Power” or “the men behind the curtain”. All of these labels are pertinent, but we have called them, collectively, the Secret Elite.

Carroll Quigley revealed that Secret Elite influence on education was chiefly visible at the exclusive English private schools, Eton and Harrow, and at Oxford University , especially All Souls and Balliol Colleges . [3] This immensely rich and powerful group was given intellectual approval and inspiration by the philosophy of John Ruskin, professor of fine arts at Oxford.  He spoke to the Oxford undergraduates as members of the privileged ruling class, telling them that they possessed a magnificent tradition of education, rule of law and freedom. He championed all that was finest in the public service ethic, duty and self-discipline, and believed that English ruling class tradition should be spread to the masses across the empire. [4]

But behind such well-serving words lay a philosophy strongly opposed to the emancipation of woman, had no time for democracy and supported the “just” war.[5] Ruskin advocated that control of the state should be placed in the hands of a small ruling class. Social order was to be built upon the authority of superiors, imposing upon their inferiors an absolute, unquestioning obedience. He was repelled by the notion of levelling between the classes and by the disintegration of the “rightful” authority of the ruling class. [6]Ruskin’s philosophy was music to the ears of the elitists. It gave their lust for global power the blessing of academic approval. What they did, they would claim, was not for them, but for mankind. They would rise to power on the spurious justification that the world would consequently be a better place for humanity.

Inspired by Ruskin, Cecil Rhodes and his accomplices created the secret society with an inner core of trusted associates called “The Society of the Elect”, who unquestionably knew that they were members of an exclusive cabal devoted to taking and holding power on a world-wide basis. [7] A second outer ring, larger and quite fluid in its membership, was named “The Association of Helpers”. At this level members might not have known that they were an integral part of, or inadvertently being used by, a secret society. Many on the outer edges of the group, idealists and honest individuals, may never have been aware that the real decisions were made by a ruthless clique about whom they had no knowledge. [8]

The man who exposed the secret society, Carroll Quigley (1910 – 1977), was the highly esteemed professor of history at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University , and a lecturer at Princeton and Harvard.  He revealed that the organisation was able to “conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its most influential members… are unknown even to close students of British History”. [9] Quigley’s greatest contribution to our understanding of modern history came with his books, The Anglo-American Establishment and Tragedy and Hope, A History of the World in Our Time. The former was written in 1949 but only released after his death. His disclosures placed him in such potential danger from an Establishment backlash that it was never published in his lifetime. In a 1974 radio broadcast, Quigley warned the interviewer, Rudy Maxa of the Washington Post, “You better be discreet. You have to protect my future as well as your own.” [10]

 Quigley had received assistance of a “personal nature” from individuals close to what he called the “Group”, but “for obvious reasons” he could not reveal their names. [11] He made it clear that evidence about them was not hard to find “if you know where to look,”[12] and it has to be asked why generations of historians have failed to pursue his trail. Though sworn to secrecy, Professor Quigley revealed in the radio interview that Sir Alfred Zimmern, the British historian and political scientist, had confirmed the names of the main protagonists within the secret society. Without a shadow of doubt, Zimmern himself was a close associate of those at the centre of real power in Britain. He knew most of the key figures personally and was himself a member of the inner core of the secret society for twelve years between 1910 and 1922. [13]

The enigma of Professor Quigley’s work lies in his statement that while the secret cabal had brought many of the things he held dear close to disaster, he generally agreed with its goals and aims. [14] Were these merely words of self-preservation? Be mindful of his warning to Rudy Maxa as late as 1974. Quigley clearly felt that these revelations placed him in danger. Unknown persons removed his major work, Tragedy and Hope, from the bookstore shelves in America , and it was withdrawn from sale without any justification soon after its release. The book’s original plates were unaccountably destroyed by Quigley’s publisher, the Macmillan Company, who, for the next six years “lied, lied, lied” to him and deliberately misled him into believing that it would be reprinted. [15] Why? What pressures obliged a major publishing house to take such extreme action? Quigley stated categorically that powerful people had suppressed the book because it exposed matters that they did not want known. The reader has to understand that we are discussing individuals whose power, influence and control were unrivalled.

From the very start, each of the initial conspirators brought valuable qualities and connections to the society. Cecil Rhodes was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and master and commander of a vast area of Southern Africa which some were already beginning to call Rhodesia . His wealth had been underwritten by brutal native suppression [16] and the global mining interests of the House of Rothschild, [17] to whom he was answerable. William Stead was the most prominent journalist of his day and a voice to which ordinary people listened. Lord Esher represented the interests of the monarchy from Queen Victoria ’s final years, through the exuberant excesses of King Edward VII, to the more sedate but pliable King George V. His influence was immense because he operated between monarchs, the aristocracy and leading political figures. He chaired important secret committees, was responsible for appointments to the Cabinet, the senior ranks of the diplomatic corps and voiced strong personal opinion on top army posts. [18] Esher exerted a power behind the throne far in excess of his constitutional position. His role of powerbroker on behalf of the Secret Elite was without equal. Indeed Professor Quigley dubbed him, “the greatest wire puller of the period.” [19]

Another name that pervaded all that was powerful and influential during this period was that of the Rothschild dynasty, and Quigley placed Lord Nathaniel (Natty) Rothschild within the very core of the secret organization. [20] Rothschild was all-powerful in British and world banking and virtually untouchable.

“The House of Rothschild was immensely more powerful than any financial empire that had ever preceded it.  It commanded vast wealth. It was international. It was independent.  Royal governments were nervous of it because they could not control it.  Popular movements hated it because it was not answerable to the people.  Constitutionalists resented it because its influence was exercised behind the scenes – secretly.” [21]

Taken together, the principal players, Rhodes, Stead, Esher, Rothschild and Milner represented a new force that was emerging inside British politics, but powerful old traditional aristocratic families that had long dominated Westminster , often in cahoots with the reigning monarch, were also deeply involved, and none more so than the Cecil family. Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the patriarchal 3rd Marquis of Salisbury, ruled the Conservative Party at the latter end of the nineteenth century. He served as prime minister three times for a total of fourteen years, between 1885 and 1902 (longer than anyone else in recent history). When he retired as prime minister in July 1902, he handed over the reins of government to his sister’s son, Arthur Balfour. Lord Salisbury had four siblings, five sons and three daughters who were all linked and interlinked by marriage to individuals in the upper echelons of the English ruling class. Important government positions were given to relations, friends and wealthy supporters who proved their gratitude by ensuring that his views became policy in government, civil service and diplomatic circles. This extended ‘Cecil-Bloc’ was intricately linked to “The Society of the Elect” and Secret Elite ambitions throughout the first half of the twentieth century. [22]

Another member of the inner core, Lord Alfred Milner, offers cause for greater scrutiny because he has been virtually airbrushed from the history of the period. Alfred Milner was a self-made man and remarkably successful civil servant who became a key figure within the Secret Elite and absolutely powerful within the ranks of these privileged individuals. He and Rhodes had been contemporaries at Oxford University , and were inextricably connected through events in South Africa . Rhodes recognised in him the kind of steel that was required to pursue the dream of world domination, “I support Milner absolutely without reserve. If he says peace, I say peace; if he says war, I say war. Whatever happens, I say ditto to Milner.” [23] Milner grew in time to be the most able of them all, to enjoy the privilege of patronage and power, a man to whom others turned for leadership and direction.

When governor general and high commissioner of South Africa , Milner deliberately caused the Boer War in order to grab the Transvaal’s gold and use the economic resources of South Africa to extend and perpetuate Secret Elite control. He had the grace to confess in a letter to Lord Roberts, Commander in Chief in South Africa, that

“I precipitated the crisis, which was inevitable, before it was too late.  It is not very agreeable, and in many eyes, not very creditable piece of business to have been largely instrumental in bringing about a big war.” [24]

This was no immodest boast. Alfred Milner’s matter-of-fact explanation displayed the cold objectivity that drove the Secret Elite cause. War was unfortunate, but necessary. It had to be. They were not afraid of war.

The Secret Elite’s war against the Dutch settlers began in October 1899 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The Boer Republics were annexed to the British Empire . The Transvaal ’s gold was finally in the hands of the Secret Elite at a cost of some 70,000 dead on the battlefields, plus 32,000 dead in British concentration camps, including more than 20,000 children of Dutch descent. Some thirty thousand Boer farms were burned to the ground, livestock slaughtered, and the women and children put in British concentration camps. In the camps, the families of men fighting for the Boer army were punished by being put on half the already meagre rations with no meat whatsoever. [25] W. T. Stead, former member of the inner core of the Secret Elite who had resigned in disgust over the Boer War, was overcome by the evidence presented to him. He wrote,

“Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed, stark and unashamedly as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of men whom we were not able to defeat on the field.” [26]

20,000 children dying in British concentration camps were of little consequence to Milner. He was so driven that he ignored the weight of opposition ranged against him. He warned his friend, Richard Haldane: “If we are to build up anything in South Africa , we must disregard, and absolutely disregard, the screamers.” [27] It takes a very strong man to disregard the screamers, to ignore moral indignation, to put the cause before humanitarian concerns. Some frontline politicians find it all but impossible to stand against a torrent of public outrage, but those behind the curtain in the secret corridors of power can easily ignore ‘sentimentality’.

Milner’s period of stewardship in South Africa had a very important consequence. He administered the defeated Transvaal and Orange Free State as occupied territories, and recruited into the upper layers of his civil service a band of young men from well-to-do, upper-class, frequently titled families who became known as “Milner’s Kindergarten.” [28] They replaced the government and administration of the Boer republics, and worked prodigiously to rebuild the broken country. [29] The Kindergarten comprised new blood; young educated men – mostly Oxford graduates, with a deep sense of duty, loyalty to the Empire and capable of populating the next generation of the secret society. [30] In the period 1909-1913 the Kindergarten set up semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the United States and the chief British dependencies.

Take Canada as an example. Numerous Canadian Round Table groups were established from 1909.  Lionel Curtis and Philip Kerr of the Secret Elite’s inner core [31] went on a four-month trip to Canada in the company of William Marris from the “Association of Helpers.” The object of the trip was to lay the foundations for Round Table groups, to reinforce the values of the British Empire and prepare them for a war against Germany. They carried a letter from Alfred Milner to his old friend Arthur J. Glazebrook asking him to help establish the groups. Glazebrook became one of the most devoted and loyal friends of the Secret Elite’s mission, and so successfully completed the task that for twenty years he was head of the groups throughout Canada . Vincent Massey, a Balliol College , Oxford graduate and lecturer in modern history at Toronto University, was another important operative for the Secret Elite in Canada . He would go on to hold senior cabinet and diplomatic posts and became governor of the prestigious private school, Upper Canada College , and the University of Toronto . [32] Sir Edward Peacock, housemaster at Upper Canada College , and Edward Rogers Wood, a prominent financier and businessman, were likewise very close to the Canadian branch of the Milner group. [33] Other members of the Secret Elite connected to Canada were, Sir George Parkin, Percy Corbett, Sir Joseph Flavelle and George P. de T. Glazebrook. [34] The latter was the son of Milner’s old friend Arthur Glazebrook.  He too had studied at Balliol College , Oxford and went on to teach history at the University of Toronto.

The Round Table Groups in Canada , as elsewhere, were merely different names for “The Association of Helpers” and only part of the secret society, since the real power still lay with “The Society of the Elect”. This all-powerful inner-core would bring in new members from the outer ring as was deemed necessary. [35] The alliance of powerful investment bankers, politicians, diplomats and press barons shared the same unwritten purpose, the destruction of German imperial power and the confirmation of Anglo-Saxon domination of the world.

Money was never a problem for the Secret Elite. As we have seen, Natty Rothschild, the richest man in the world, was directly involved from the beginning, but the ‘Money-Power’ extended well beyond that single source. The Rand multi-millionaires, Sir Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit were members of the inner core [36] and always willing to finance Secret Elite proposals, fund their propaganda groups, and back Milner.  Sir Ernest Cassel, an investment banker and one of the wealthiest men in pre-war Europe , was likewise involved.  Cassel , a close friend of King Edward VII, acted as go-between for the British government and provided personal funds for Lord Esher. [37]

Other great financiers and bankers, centred in the City, the financial and banking district of London, shared the vision of a single world power based on English ruling class values. The world had entered an era of financial capitalism where these wealthy international investment bankers were able to dominate both industry and government if they had the concerted will to do so. [38] This “Money Power” seeped into the British Establishment and joined the aristocratic landowning families who had ruled Britain for centuries.  Together, they lay at the heart of the Secret Elite.

In his “Confession of Faith”, Cecil Rhodes had written of bringing the whole uncivilized world under British rule, and the “recovery” of the United States to make the “Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire,” [39] by which he meant a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America working in tandem with like minds in England. Clearly the United States could not be “recovered” by force of arms, so Rhodes dream was expanded to include the wealthy elites in the U.S. who shared a similar mind-set.

Rhodes suffered from heart and lung problems and was aware that his projected life span was limited. He wrote several wills to ensure that his fortune would be used to pursue his dream. Part of his strategy was to gift scholarship places at his alma mater, Oxford University , in the belief that exposure to British culture, philosophy and education would strengthen the best young minds from the colonies and, most importantly, the United States . Rhodes scholarships favoured American students, with two allocated for each of the fifty States and Territories, but only sixty places for the entire British Empire .  The “best talents” from the “best families” in the US were to be nurtured at Oxford , spiritual home of the Secret Elite, and imbued with an appreciation of “Englishness” and “retention of the unity of the Empire.” [40] Professor Quigley revealed that “the scholarships were merely a façade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his [ Rhodes ] purpose.”  [41]

The Secret Elite appreciated America ’s vast potential, and adjusted the concept of British Race supremacy to Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Rhodes ’s dream had only to be slightly modified. The world was to be united through the English-speaking nations in a federal structure based around Britain . [42] Alfred Milner became the undisputed leader of the secret society when Cecil Rhodes died in 1902. Like Rhodes , he believed that the goal should be pursued by a secret political and economic elite influencing “journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies” behind the scenes. [43]

The flow of money into the United States during the nineteenth century advanced industrial development to the immense benefit of the millionaires it created, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt and their associates. The Rothschilds represented British interests, either directly through front companies or indirectly, through agencies they controlled. Railroads, steel, shipbuilding, construction, oil and finance blossomed in an oft-cut throat environment, though that was more apparent than real. These small groups of massively rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic knew each other well, and the Secret Elite in London initiated a very select and secretive dining club, The Pilgrims, that brought them together on a regular basis.

On 11 July 1902, an inaugural meeting was held at the Carlton Hotel [44] of what became known as the London Chapter of The Pilgrims Society, with a select membership limited by individual scrutiny to 500. Ostensibly, the society was created to “promote goodwill, good friendship and everlasting peace” [45] between Britain and the United States , but its highly secretive and exclusive membership leaves little doubt as to its real purpose. This was the pool of wealth and talent that the Secret Elite drew together to promote its agenda in the years preceding the First World War. Behind an image of the Pilgrim Fathers, the persecuted pioneers of Christian values, this elite cabal advocated the idea that “Englishmen and Americans would promote international friendship through their pilgrimages to and fro across the Atlantic ”. [46] It presented itself as a spontaneous movement to promote democracy across the world [47] and doubtless many of the members believed that, but The Pilgrims included a select collective of the wealthiest figures in both Britain and the United States who were deeply involved with the Secret Elite.  They shared Rhodes ’ dream and wanted to be party to it.

The New York branch of The Pilgrims was launched at the Waldorf-Astoria on 13 January 1903, [48] and comprised the most important bankers, politicians and lawyers on the Eastern Seaboard. They established a tradition of close interaction with British and American ambassadors. [49] The ambassadorial connections with The Pilgrims would prove absolutely crucial in linking the Foreign Secretary in London and the Secretary of State in Washington to the Secret Elite and its agenda for war. A number of the American Pilgrims also had close links with the New York branch of the Secret Elite’s Round Table.

In Britain , at least eighteen members of the Secret Elite, including Lords Rothschild, Curzon, Northcliffe, Esher and Balfour attended Pilgrims dinners, though the regularity of their attendance is difficult to establish. Such is the perennial problem with secretive groups. We know something about the guests invited to dinner, but not what was discussed between courses. [50] In New York , members included both the Rockefeller and Morgan dynasties and many men in senior government posts. Initially, membership was likewise limited to 500. [51] The power-elite in America was New York centred, carried great influence in domestic and international politics, and was heavily indulgent of Yale, Harvard and Princeton Universities . They conducted an American version of what Carroll Quigley termed the Secret Elite’s triple-front-penetration of politics, the press and education. [52] The Pilgrims Society brought together American money and British aristocracy, royalty, government ministers and top diplomats. It was indeed a special relationship.

Of all the American banking establishments, none was more Anglo-centric than the J. P. Morgan bank, itself deeply involved with The Pilgrims. An American, George Peabody, established the bank in London in 1835. In 1854 he took on a partner, Junius Morgan, (father of J. P. Morgan) and the bank was renamed Peabody , Morgan & Co. When Peabody ’s retired in 1864 it became the J. S. Morgan bank.

The Rothschilds had developed a close relationship with Peabody and Morgan, and following a crash in 1857 saved the bank by organizing a huge bailout by the Bank of England. Although American by birth, the Morgan family wore their affinity to England like a badge of honour. Despite stinging criticism from Thomas Jefferson that Junius’s father-in-law, the Rev John Pierpont, was “under the influence of the whore of England ,” [53] Junius sent his son to the English High School in Boston . J. P. Morgan spent much of his younger years absorbing English traditions, and was an ardent anglophile and admirer of the British Empire.

In 1899 J. P. Morgan travelled to England to attend an international Bankers Convention and returned to America as the representative of Rothschild interests in the United States . [54] It was the perfect front. Morgan, who posed as an upright Protestant guardian of capitalism, who could trace his family roots to pre-Revolutionary times, acted for the Rothschilds and shielded their American profits from the poison of anti-Semitism. In 1895 the Rothschilds had secretly replenished the US gold reserves through J.P. Morgan, and raised him to the premier league of international banking. [55] In turn, his gratitude was extended to another Rothschild favourite and leading figure in the Secret Elite, Alfred Milner. In 1901, Morgan offered Milner a then massive income of $100,000 per annum to become a partner in the London branch [56] but Milner was not to be distracted from the vital business of the Boer War. J. P. Morgan was an Empire loyalist at the heart of the American Establishment.

A second powerful bank on Wall Street, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., also served as a Rothschild front. Jacob Schiff, a German who ran the bank, came from a family close to the Rothschilds.[57] He had been born in the house his parents shared with the Rothschilds in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt . [58] Schiff was an experienced European banker whose career straddled both continents, with contacts in New York , London , Hamburg and Frankfurt . His long-standing friend, Edward Cassel of the Secret Elite, was appointed Kuhn, Loeb’s agent in London . Schiff even dined with King Edward on the strength of Cassel ’s close friendship with the King. [59] Jacob Schiff had married Solomon Loeb’s daughter and, backed by Rothschild gold, quickly gained overall control of the Kuhn, Loeb Bank. [60] Schiff in turn brought a young German banker, Paul Warburg, over to New York to help him run the bank. Paul and his brother Max had served part of their banking apprenticeships with Natty Rothschild in London .  Like the Peabody-Morgan bank in London , the Warburg family bank in Hamburg had been saved by a very large injection of Rothschild money, and undoubtedly acted as a Rothschild front thereafter.

On the surface there were periods of blistering competition between the investment banking houses and international oil goliaths J. D. Rockefeller and the Rothschilds, but by the turn of the century they adopted a more subtle relationship that avoided real competition. A decade earlier, Baron Alphonse de Rothschild had accepted Rockefeller’s invitation to meet in New York behind the closed doors of Standard Oil’s headquarters on Broadway. Standard’s chief spokesman, John D Archbold [61] reported that they had quickly reached a tentative agreement, and thought it desirable on both sides that the matter was kept confidential. Clearly both understood the advantage of monopolistic collusion. It was a trend they eventually developed to their own advantage. By the early years of the twentieth century much of the assumed rivalry between major stakeholders in banking, industry and commerce was a convenient façade, though they would have the world believe otherwise.

Consider please this convenient façade. Official Rothschild biographers maintain that the dynasty’s interests in America were limited, and that the American Civil War led to “a permanent decline in the Rothschild’s transatlantic influence”. [62] All our evidence points in the opposite direction. Their associates, agents and front companies permeated American finance and industry. Their influence was literally everywhere. J. P. Morgan, the acknowledged chieftain of the Anglo-American financial establishment was the main conduit for British capital [63]and a personal friend of the Rothschilds. Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb, another close friend of the Rothschild family, worked hand-in-glove with Rockefeller in oil, railroad and banking enterprises. Jacob Schiff the Pilgrim was both a Rothschild agent and a trusted associate of J. D. Rockefeller the Pilgrim. Morgan, Schiff and Rockefeller, the three leading players on Wall Street, had settled into a cosy cartel behind which the House of Rothschild remained hidden, but retained immense influence and power.  Control of capital and credit was increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer men until the rival banking groups ceased to operate in genuine competition. [64]

This trans-Atlantic financial collusion underpinned the Anglo-American bond on which the Secret Elite built their dream of world domination. Political control moved hand in glove with the Money-Power. One of the problems the Secret Elite had to contend with was democracy, even the very limited choice that British and American democracy had to offer. Professor Quigley observed that Alfred Milner, and apparently most members of the Secret Elite, believed that “democracy was not an unmixed good, or even a good, and far inferior to the rule of the best…” [65] They, of course, believed themselves  “the best” and their morality did not exclude the use of warfare to carry out what they deemed to be their civilising mission; a new world order based on ruling class values in which they would be first amongst men.

In Britain , faced with an electorate that frequently changed allegiance from the Conservative party to the Liberal party and back again, the Secret Elite selected reliable and trusted men to hold high office in both parties. Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, a member of the inner circle of the Secret Elite, [66] and Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne began the transformation of British Foreign policy towards war with Germany in the sure knowledge that senior Liberals would continue that policy if and when the people voted for change. Herbert Henry Asquith, Richard Haldane and Sir Edward Grey were Milner’s chosen senior men in the Liberal Party and “objects of his special attention”. [67] Their remit was to ensure that an incoming Liberal government maintained a seamless foreign policy that served the grand plan. Their Secret Elite connections were impeccable. Together, with their good friend Arthur Balfour, they were intimately involved with the inner circles of the cabal. Their duty was to the King, the Empire, to Milner’s dream, to Rhode’s legacy. They confronted the same problems, analysed the same alternatives and agreed the same solution. Germany had to go.

The senior Liberals, Asquith, Grey and Haldane, conspired to undermine the anti-war Liberal Party leader Campbell-Bannerman from within and were supported by both the Conservative party leaders and King Edward VII, himself a key figure inside the Secret Elite. Every major step taken by the British Foreign Office from 1902 onwards was dictated by the overall objective to destroy Germany . Treaties with Japan , the Entente Cordiale with France and all of its secret clauses, the secret conventions agreed between King Edward and the Russian Czar had that single purpose. Simply put, the large field armies of France and Russia were needed to crush Germany .

In the United States , and indeed in France , political power was guaranteed by financial incentives and the appointment of suitable candidates, in other words through bribery and corruption. Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island was chosen by the Secret Elite to be the voice of “sound economics” in the Senate. A wealthy businessman and father-in-law of J.D.Rockefeller Jr., Aldrich was known as “Morgan’s floor broker in the Senate.” [68] Shameless in his excesses, he used public office to feather his own very large nest. Public service was to him little more than a cash cow through which he built a ninety-nine roomed chateau and sailed a two hundred foot yacht. [69] Over a two-year period the Money-Power worked steadily on their chosen Senator to turn him into an “expert” on banking systems.  Congress appointed a National Monetary Commission in 1908 with Aldrich as Chairman to review U.S. banking. Its members toured Europe , supposedly collecting data on various banking systems. Aldrich’s final report, however, was not the product of any European study tour, but of a collective conspiracy.

In November 1910, five bankers representing Morgan, Rockefeller and Kuhn Loeb interests, met in total secrecy with Senator Aldrich and the Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Treasury on Jekyll Island , an exclusive playground of the mega-rich off the coast of Georgia . Of the seven conspirators, five, Senator Aldrich, Henry Davison, Benjamin Strong, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg, were members of The Pilgrims. [70] Their objective was to formulate a Central Banking Bill that would be presented to Congress as if it was the brainchild of Aldrich’s Monetary Commission.

The proposed “Federal Reserve System” was to be owned entirely by private banks, though its name implied that it was a government institution. Individuals from the American banking dynasties, including Morgan, Warburg, Schiff and Rockefeller, would hold the shares. It was to be a central bank of issue that would have a monopoly of all the money and credit of the people of the United States . It would control the interest rate and the volume of money in circulation. The Federal Reserve System constructed on Jekyll Island had powers that King Midas could never have contemplated. The objective was to establish a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending, get the taxpayer to pick up any losses, and convince Congress that the aim was to protect the public. [71]

The Aldrich proposals never went to a vote. President Taft refused to support the Bill on the grounds that it would not impose sufficient government control over the banks. The Money Power decided that Taft had to go. Their support in the 1912 Presidential election swung behind the little known Woodrow Wilson. The speed with which Wilson was bounced from his post at Princeton University in 1910, to Governor of New Jersey in 1911, then Democratic Party nominee for the Presidency in 1912 made him the Solomon Grundy of U S politics.

Not only did the Secret Elite put their man in the White House, they also gave him a minder, Edward Mandell House. Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States but this shadowy figure stood by his side, controlling his every move. House, an Anglophile who had been part educated in England , was credited with swinging the 1912 Democratic Convention in Baltimore behind Wilson . [72] He became Woodrow Wilson’s constant companion from that point onwards, with his own suite of rooms in the White House. He was also in direct, sometimes daily contact with J. P. Morgan Jr, Jacob Schiff, Paul Warburg, and Democrat Senators who sponsored the Federal Reserve Bill. [73] Mandell House guided the President in every aspect of foreign and domestic policy, chose his Cabinet and formulated the first policies of his new Administration. [74] He was the prime intermediary between the President and his Wall Street backers. [75] The Anglo-centric Money Power had complete control of the White House and finally established its central bank in time for the Secret Elite’s war.

Ponder the significance of this coincidence. Provided with huge sums of Secret Elite money rerouted via St Petersburg , French politicians, newspapers and journalists were effectively corrupted to elect the Revanchistwarmonger candidate Raymond Poincare to the Presidency of France. By February 1913, two major powers, The United States and France, had new Presidents who were elected to office through the machinations of the Secret Elite. They had positioned key players in the governments of Britain , France , and the United States and exerted immense influence over the foreign ministry in Russia .  Politics, money and power were the pillars on which the Anglo-Saxon elite would destroy Germany and take control of the world.

All that was left to concoct was a reason for war. The Kaiser’s refusal to be drawn into direct confrontation with France and Britain over crises in Morocco in 1905 and 1911 demanded a rethink. Public hysteria in Britain about spies was developed into a cottage industry, with barely literate novels and wild articles in Northcliffe’s papers portraying Germany as a dangerous warmongering nation of Huns preparing to pounce on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared Britain . Similarly in France , through blatant bribery and corruption, both the press and the Revanchistesin French politics fomented anti-German sentiment. But Germany remained stubbornly unwilling to become involved a European war.

From 1912 onwards the Secret Elite looked to the Balkans to provide the excuse for war. Alexander Isvolsky, their top Russian agent, had been strategically moved to Paris , from which vantage point he directed the Balkan agitation. The mix of ethnic diversity, religious animosities, political intrigue and raw nationalism was deliberately provoked into two brutal Balkan wars which in themselves could have brought about a pan-European war, but the Kaiser refused to take the bait.

Something more dramatic, more sensational, was needed. The notion propagated by many historians that world war was ‘inevitable’ or that the world ‘slid’ into war is crass. Chance was not involved. It required a complex set of manipulated events engineered by determined men to set the fuse. What remained was a spark to ignite that fuse.  It came with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the Austrian Empire, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Millions of words have been written to describe the events in Sarajevo that day, but none have ever revealed the trail of complicity that led from the gunmen back to the Secret Elite in London . Be certain of one thing. It was not the man who fired the bullet that caused a world war.

Thus war engulfed the known world to a degree that had no precedent. Histories have been written to explain away the reasons why, histories that favoured the victors and twisted the truth to blame Germany . How history has been manipulated, how evidence has been removed, burned, shredded or otherwise denied to genuine researchers remains a crime against truth, against humanity.  The received history of the First World War is a deliberately concocted lie.  Not the sacrifice, the heroism, the horrendous waste of life or the misery that followed.  No, these were very real, but the truth of how it all began and how it was unnecessarily and deliberately prolonged beyond 1915 has been successfully covered up for a century.

Professor Quigley stated,

“No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner group accomplished – that is, that a small number of men would be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.” [76]

Never were truer words uttered in dire warning. These Founding Fathers, the Secret Elite, began with Rhodes’ secret society and expanded across the Atlantic , always away from the public eye. They were deniers of democracy, men who always pursued their own malevolent agenda, who used this very process to advance their power. What they achieved in causing the First World War was but the first step in their long term drive to a new world order.

Gerry Docherty is a former head teacher.  Jim Macgregor was a family doctor. They took early retirement and worked full time together for the past five years researching and writing Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War - described at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as a “fascinating and incendiary book”. It reveals how historical accounts of the war’s origins have been falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of rich and powerful men (described in this article) and explains their manipulations and deceptions. Perhaps it will suffer the same fate as Carroll Quigley’s work, for there are many with cause to wish it suppressed. If you have an open mind and seek answers that have not been forthcoming, if you are prepared to dig further into a hugely important aspect of history, we invite you to read it.

For details visit the authors’ blogsite at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com.

Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor is available at leading bookshops and can also be purchased on the internet at Amazon, Alibris, etc.

Notes:

[1] W.T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, p. 62.

[2] Stead, The Last Will and Testament, p. 55.

[3] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 6.

[4] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy &Hope, pp.130-31.

[5] Joan Veon, The United Nations Global Straightjacket, p. 68.

[6] J. A. Hobson, John Ruskin, Social Reformer, p. 187.

[7] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 3.

[8] Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island , p. 272.

[9] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 4-5.

[10] Interview can be heard at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk

[11] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. x

[12] Ibid.

[13] www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk

[14] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. xi

[15] www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk

[16] Neil Parsons, A New History of Southern Africa , pp. 179–181.

[17] Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, The World’s Banker, p. 363.

[18] James Lees-Milne, The Enigmatic Edwardian, pp. 162-8.

[19] Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, p. 216.

[20] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 311.

[21] Derek Wilson, Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty, pp. 98-99.

[22] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 16-17.

[23] Stead, Last Will and Testament, p.108.

[24] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p.115.

[25] Emily Hobhouse, The Brunt of War and Where it Fell, p. 174.

[26] W.T. Stead, cited in Hennie Barnard, The Concentration Camps 1899–

1902 at www.boer.co.za/boerwar/hellkamp.htm

[27] Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 483

[28] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 7.

[29] Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 138.

[30] William Nimocks, Milner’s Young Men p. 21

[31] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p.312.

[32] Ibid., p. 7

[33] Ibid., pp. 86-7.

[34] Ibid., p.314.

[35] Ibid., p. 4.

[36] Ibid., p. 312.

[37] Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, p. 216.

[38] Ibid., pp. 60-61.

[39] Stead, Last Will and Testament, p. 59.

 www.publicintelligence.net/the-last-will-and-testament-of-cecil-john-rhodes-1902/

[40] Ibid. p. 34.

[41] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 33.

[42] Ibid., p.49

[43] Ibid.

[44] Anne Pimlot Baker, The Pilgrims of Great Britain , p. 12.

[45] New York Times, 3 March 1903.

[46] Baker, Pilgrims of Great Britain, p.13.

[47] E.C. Knuth, The Empire of The City, p.64

[48] Baker, The Pilgrims of the United States , p.3.

[49] Baker, Pilgrims of Great Britain, p.16.

[50] While it is possible to list all of those in whose honour these dinners were      organised, the individual members who attended remains a secret.

[51] Baker, Pilgrims of the United States , p .9.

[52] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 15.

[53] Webster G Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush; the Unauthorized    Biography, p.136.

[54] W.G.Carr, Pawns in the Game, p. 60.

[55] G. Edward Griffin, interview

        www.://educate-yourself.org/cn/gedwardgriffininterview02apr04.shtml

[56] Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 951.

[57] Ron Chernow, The Warburgs, pp. 46-8.

[58] Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 175.

[59] Chernow, The Warburgs, p. 51.

[60] Carr, Pawns in the Game, p. 61.

[61] Initially an outspoken critic of Standard Oil, Archbold was recruited by Rockefeller to a directorship of the company, where he later served as vice president and then president until its ‘demise ’ in 1911.

[62] Ferguson , House of Rothschild, p. 117.

[63] Chernow, Titan, The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr., p. 390.

[64] Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island , p. 436.

[65] Quigley, Anglo American Establishment, p. 134.

[66] Ibid., p. 312.

[67] Terence H. O’Brien, Milner, p. 187.

[68] Gary Allen, None Dare Call it Conspiracy, Chapter 3, p8.

[69] Chernow, Titan, p. 352.

[70] Organisation for the Study of Globalisation and Covert Politics,

https://wikispooks.com/ISGP/organisations/Pilgrims_Society02.htm

[71] Griffin , Creature from Jekyll Island , p. 23.

[72] Ibid., p. 240.

[73] Ibid., p. 458.

[74] George Sylvester Viereck, The Strangest Friendship in History: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 4.

[75] Ibid., pp. 35-7.

[76] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 197.

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