Kevin Brooker - May 11, 2009

Congratulations, it’s your lucky day. Merely plow on-ward for a few paragraphs and you will have the rare privilege of saying you once read about the Bilderberg Group in a daily news article.

Oh, sure, there are over a million feverish Internet pages on the phenomenon, and you can buy plenty of self-published books about it from obscure mail-order houses in Texas, but the mainstream media usually don’t have much to say about it–largely because there simply isn’t much to talk about that doesn’t quickly get embarrassing if you want to believe that the western world is a democratically run operation.

That’s because the Group, which consists of up to 150 self-selected world leaders in royalty, politics, business and media, meets annually at a secret location and releases neither an agenda, nor a list of attendees, nor any record of what was discussed at the conference.

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by Michael Barker

(Swans - May 4, 2009)   In March 2008, Sustainable Population Australia celebrated their 20th anniversary by organizing a two-day conference titled “Population, Peak Oil, Climate Change: their impact on the Millennium Development Goals.” For most concerned citizens it is commonsensical that all three of the issues examined at this conference — population, peak oil, and climate change — are intimately linked: however, as I demonstrated within a recent Monthly Review Zine article, the longstanding focus on the population question by leading environmentalists is severely problematic.

To summarize my argument: simply put the modern-day birth of the environmental movement in the United States (and elsewhere) evolved in large part from the success of an increasingly powerful population control movement. With massive financial and technical support from ostensibly progressive liberal philanthropists, like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, by the late 1950s the population issue was adopted by the military-industrial complex, creating what has been referred to as the population-national security theory, a dubious theory that Professor Eric Ross notes, causally linked “overpopulation, resource exhaustion, hunger, political instability, communist insurrection, and danger to vital American interests.” Here it is noteworthy that these same liberal philanthropists also played a key role in promoting the population control movements’ predecessor; that is, eugenics.

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Australian geologist Ian Plimer says that the planet has warmed and cooled many times before. And humans aren’t to blame.

Michael Cook | Friday, 8 May 2009

The group which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, the International Panel on Climate Change, says that it is “very likely”, ie, 90 percent sure, that global warming is due to increased greenhouse gas emissions generated by man. But “very likely” still leaves room for some uncertainly, doesn’t it?

So when I looked at the cover story of last week’s Nature, I thought that I might see coverage of that 10 percent of unexplained observations and alternative hypotheses. To my surprise, there was none. Instead, there was a windy editorial, “Time to act”, which says that the challenge of winding back global warming seems all but insurmountable. This was accompanied by articles headlined, “A burden beyond bearing”, “Too much of a bad thing”, “Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne”, and “The worst-case scenario”.

It was more like a goosepimpling special feature on asteroid collisions in the London Sun or the New York Post than the world’s leading science journal. But respectable tabloids always tuck in a brief comment from a sceptic. Nature had none. Did its editors have no misgivings at all about the righteousness of their cause?

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by Justin Raimondo, May 11, 2009

The idea that we should be governed by “experts” goes back a long way, all the way to Plato, advocate of rule by philosopher-kings, who, in their wisdom, would reign over the common herd of humanity – for our own good, of course. More recently, the idea was picked up by various would-be saviors of mankind on the Right as well as the Left. During the Great Depression, a time when all sorts of half-baked “experts” arose armed with panaceas, the idea reached its apotheosis in the form of Technocracy, a movement founded by Howard Scott, which championed a dictatorship of scientists and engineers. They would know how to fix the broken gears of a shattered economy and set things right!

Such ideas were in the air, a byproduct of a society that had lost its economic and social bearings and was veering out of control. The whole concept of expertise, of a class of professional know-it-alls whose collective wisdom could be mined and used to rebuild the socio-economic structure, was taken up by the Roosevelt administration. FDR and his advisers happily went along with the media’s characterization of the president’s “Brain Trust,” whose braininess would save the nation. Ever since that time we have been infested with a plague of “experts,” all of them self-appointed, who are trotted out whenever the Powers That Be want to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people.

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In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell’s torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book

Robert McCrum - 10 May 2009

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Sixty years after the publication of Orwell’s masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that crystal first line sounds as natural and compelling as ever. But when you see the original manuscript, you find something else: not so much the ringing clarity, more the obsessive rewriting, in different inks, that betrays the extraordinary turmoil behind its composition.

Probably the definitive novel of the 20th century, a story that remains eternally fresh and contemporary, and whose terms such as “Big Brother”, “doublethink” and “newspeak” have become part of everyday currency, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 65 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, giving George Orwell a unique place in world literature.

“Orwellian” is now a universal shorthand for anything repressive or totalitarian, and the story of Winston Smith, an everyman for his times, continues to resonate for readers whose fears for the future are very different from those of an English writer in the mid-1940s.

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DAN BILEFSKY - May 10, 2009

PRAGUE — They say the Golem, a Jewish giant with glowing eyes and supernatural powers, is lurking once again in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue here.

The Golem, according to Czech legend, was fashioned from clay and brought to life by a rabbi to protect Prague’s 16th-century ghetto from persecution, and is said to be called forth in times of crisis. True to form, he is once again experiencing a revival and, in this commercial age, has spawned a one-monster industry.

There are Golem hotels; Golem door-making companies; Golem clay figurines (made in China); a recent musical starring a dancing Golem; and a Czech strongman called the Golem who bends iron bars with his teeth. The Golem has also infiltrated Czech cuisine: the menu at the non-kosher restaurant called the Golem features a “rabbi’s pocket of beef tenderloin” and a $7 “crisis special” of roast pork and potatoes that would surely have rattled the venerable Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Golem’s supposed maker.

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Caleb Williams - April 30, 2009

The Nazi euthanasia programs, which used starvation, gas chambers and Phenobarbital overdoses to kill its victims, grew out of the pseudoscience of eugenics that did not come from Germany, but largely the United States.

Dr. Susan Benedict, from the University of Botswana, spoke Tuesday about the “steps to the final solution” in the Third Reich, and specifically about the sterilization and euthanasia programs that led to the death or concentration camps usually associated with the Holocaust.

“The handicapped were not only devalued but stigmatized greatly,” Benedict said. “So, more than 350,000 people were sterilized in Germany.”

In addition to sterilization models that were actually narrower in Germany than in the United States, Benedict described Commander of the Nazi Party Adolph Hitler’s plans to begin euthanasia in the event of war.

“He planned for it to coincide with war because people would be distracted by the war effort,” Benedict said, “and people would see the need to divert money away from institutionalized patients to soldiers in the war effort.”

Benedict said in his book “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote of eugenics: “People who are physically and mentally unhealthy or unworthy must not perpetuate the suffering on their children.”

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Adam Lebor - 09th May 2009

The paper is aged and fragile, the typewritten letters slowly fading. But US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128 is as chilling now as the day it was written in November 1944.

The document, also known as the Red House Report, is a detailed account of a secret meeting at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. There, Nazi officials ordered an elite group of German industrialists to plan for Germany’s post-war recovery, prepare for the Nazis’ return to power and work for a ’strong German empire’. In other words: the Fourth Reich.

The three-page, closely typed report, marked ‘Secret’, copied to British officials and sent by air pouch to Cordell Hull, the US Secretary of State, detailed how the industrialists were to work with the Nazi Party to rebuild Germany’s economy by sending money through Switzerland.

They would set up a network of secret front companies abroad. They would wait until conditions were right. And then they would take over Germany again.

The industrialists included representatives of Volkswagen, Krupp and Messerschmitt. Officials from the Navy and Ministry of Armaments were also at the meeting and, with incredible foresight, they decided together that the Fourth German Reich, unlike its predecessor, would be an economic rather than a military empire - but not just German.

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Steven Ertelt - May 8, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Billionaire broadcast magnate Ted Turner is causing guffaws from observers with his latest comment on family planning in China. He lauded the Asian nation for its population control program and said it was a good example even though it is rife with forced abortions and sterilizations.

During an interview with the Diane Rehm Show gave China as a model for how to handle growing populations.

“We do have the example of China, and they’ve done it without, uh, draconian, as far as I can see, draconian steps,” he said.

Observers of the quote are surprised that Rehm let it go unchallenged and without any mention of the human rights abuses that accompany the Chinese family planning program.

The policy has resulted in epidemics of forced abortions and sterilizations and human rights abuses ranging from job loss and imprisonment to house arrest and threatening family members.

In fact, new reports show the forced abortions have resulted in high infertility rates forced abortions. A new report indicates that has sparked infertility and given rise to an underground network of surrogate mothers.

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By Lisa Pease
April 29, 2009

Given that Arlen Specter has decided to leave the Republican Party, I think it’s worth examining Specter’s history to see if he will be an asset or a burden for the Democratic Party.

While Specter is perhaps most famous for coming up with the “single bullet theory” which purports that one bullet entered and exited two people (President Kennedy and Governor Connally) seven times, only to emerge nearly intact, his legislative efforts of late also give cause for concern.

I had a personal experience with Specter, in a way. When the Internet was first opened to the public, I found, by pure chance, a newsgroup discussing the Kennedy assassination. I jumped in with no data whatsoever to voice my completely uninformed opinions, and was roundly criticized.

Properly chastised, I decided I should actually learn some facts before I could contribute in any meaningful way. I went to a local library and found a full set of the Warren Commission volumes.

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May 7, 2009
by Carole Bass

Yale seems reluctant to dig into the controversy over whether Skull and Bones has Geronimo’s skull and bones. But the university’s most prominent Native American alumnus wants his alma mater to take a stand.

A federal lawsuit by Geronimo’s great-grandson is on hold for now against the university and the secret society. Nonetheless, “I would like to see Yale say to Skull and Bones, ‘Give them back whatever you have or you’re finished at Yale,’” says Sam Deloria ‘64, recipient of the university’s first Native Alumni Achievement Award in 2005.

Deloria, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and director of the American Indian Graduate Center in New Mexico, recognizes that “that’s not going to happen,” thanks to what he calls “institutional cowardice” and the “powerful, powerful people” — including both Bush presidents — who belong to Skull and Bones.

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“L’Osservatore Romano” praises him. Two prominent scholars of the pontifical academy of social sciences rail against him. The complete text of the accusation, signed by Michel Schooyans in conjunction with the archbishop of Dijon, Roland Minnerath

by Sandro Magister

ROME, May 8, 2009 – At the end of April, “L’Osservatore Romano” surprised everyone a little with the admiration it expressed for Barack Obama after his first hundred days as president of the United States. It was wide-ranging admiration: not only for his strategy in international politics, but also on ethical questions “that are very pressing for the Catholic bishops.”

The amazement arose from the contrast between the Olympic calm of the Vatican newspaper – according to which Obama’s first hundred days not only “did not shake the world,” but even gave encouraging signs “in support of motherhood” – and the outspoken criticism of Obama on the part of a growing number of American faithful and bishops, led by Cardinal Francis E. George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States episcopal conference.

The criticisms concern the measures that have been taken or announced by the new president in regard to unborn life, as well as the decision of the Catholic university of Notre Dame to give Obama a degree “honoris causa”on May 17: many view this honor as unjustifiable, given the new president’s pro-abortion positions.

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by Dan Yardeni

Three and a half centuries ago, a young, charismatic rabbi, Shabbetai Zvi, declared himself to be the Messiah and promised that the Jewish people would soon be redeemed and would return to Palestine, the ancestral Jewish homeland. Masses of Jews believed in him, and the events of that epoch, which are among the most turbulent in Jewish history, culminated in tragedy: In 1668, forced by the Ottoman sultan to choose between death and conversion to Islam, Shabbetai Zvi opted for the latter. Although most of his disciples abandoned him after his conversion, several thousand emulated their leader by outwardly accepting, though they continued to see themselves as Jews.

The historical and theological aspects of this episode in Jewish history have been extensively discussed by Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, including Gershom Scholem. However, little is known about the present-day descendants of the Sabbateans.

During my last visit to Istanbul, I met Rifat Bali, the author of “A Scapegoat for All Seasons,” through a mutual friend. A distinguished scholar who has written articles and books about Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire, Bali leans more toward documentation than analysis in his historical studies. In the book’s 400 pages, he cites hundreds of historical documents depicting the past and present vicissitudes of the Sabbateans’ descendants, who in Turkey are called the Doenmeh.

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Stephen Dafoe - May 6th, 2009

In the 30 years between the start of the 20th Century and the commencement of the Great Depression, American Freemasons spared no expense in turning their dreams and goals into tangible edifices that survive to this day, testament to the high regard with which Freemasons of that era held the Masonic craft.

With a name that is nearly as long as the building is tall, The George Washington Masonic National Memorial at Alexandria, Virginia, is one such fine example of the Masonic pride that the Fraternity permanently carved upon the American landscape during those early decades of the 20th Century.

Designs Upon A Trestle Board

On February 22nd, 1910 a number of Masons from several American jurisdictions met at Alexandria, Virginia to discuss the possibility and feasibility of erecting a memorial to George Washington the Freemason. Neither the location nor the date of this meeting was by chance; for the date was the occasion of the 178th anniversary of Washington’s birth and the lodge, which sponsored the gathering, was Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22; the very Lodge of which Washington himself was the Charter Master.

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