He may have inspired leaders from Hitler to Bush

Tristram Hunt - September 17, 2009

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else,” wrote John Maynard Keynes (a man who should know) in 1936. “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

One such scribbler currently ruling the world is the Edwardian geographer Sir Halford Mackinder. Oxford professor, MP and imperialist, Sir Halford was the intellectual architect of modern geopolitics and the thinker who put the idea of “the Heartland” at the centre of global diplomacy.

Today, he is more relevant than ever. As Russia and Georgia continue their hot and cold war over South Ossetia, as the Kremlin attacks the European Union for its “eastern partnership” policy towards Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, and as America and Russia tussle over influence in Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, Mackinder’s realpolitik vision is at its most active for half a century. Few recall his name, but our foreign policy is now played out in his shadow.

Mackinder’s fame comes from a rather dry lecture delivered to the Royal Geographical Society in 1904, entitled The Geographical Pivot of History. In it he made two dynamite propositions. First, that the globalised world — crisscrossed by steam, telegram and train — had become a closed system. Since there was nowhere left to colonise, the world had become a unitary space with every strategic advance by one nation necessitating a rival power to retreat. In this closed geographical context, diplomacy was a zero-sum game and geopolitics meant successfully squaring political power with geographical setting.

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Google: Brzezinski + Mackinder

By Professor Paul Eidelberg
September 26, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Back in 1985, I wrote an article on Brzezinski for The Intercollegiate Review. Before citing some of the more relevant passages of that article, it should be borne in mind that Brzezinski, a political scientist, served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. One does not have to read Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid to know that Carter is an anti-Semite. Brzezinski has earned the same reputation.

Not only has Brzezinski publicly defended the anti-Semitic canard that the relationship between America and Israel is the result of Jewish pressure, but he also signed a letter demanding dialogue with Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction. It behooves us to understand the mentality of Obama’s Middle East adviser.

Long before he became Mr. Carter’s national security adviser, Brzezinski rejected what he and most political scientists term the “black-and-white” image of the American and Soviet political systems. “This image,” he says, “is held by traditional anti-Communists.” Brzezinski thus affirmed he is not quite an anti-Communist. In fact, he deplores anti-Communism as “a relic of the Cold War, of the age of ideology.”

Not only did Brzezinski reject the “black-and-white” image of the American and Soviet forms of government, he rejects the very notion of good and bad regimes! Brzezinski is simply a moral or cultural (or historical) relativist, and relativism has certainly modulated Barack Obama’s mentality.

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By Joan Veon
September 28, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

In 1994 when I covered my first global meeting, there was a press briefing by the Commission on Global Governance on their forthcoming report, Our Global Neighborhood. The man giving the briefing was one of the co-chairs, Sir Shridath Ramphal who was not only president of Guyana but also president of the (British) Commonwealth Association. As I read the glossy brochure, I thought he meant “global government” to which he replied “No, no, no we mean global governance.” When I asked about a global currency, he laughed and said, “No, not for a long time.”

The meeting recently held in Pittsburgh comprised the third meeting of the heads of state and finance ministers from the Group of Twenty nations: the developed countries led by the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and Germany and the top developing countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey, as well as the European Union. Together, they represent 85% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product-GDP and 80% of world trade.

The Group of Eight-G8 began meeting in 1973 when Richard Nixon called together the leaders of four countries to determine how the world would be run economically now that he had put the world currencies on a floating basis when he removed the last ties the dollar had to gold in 1971. A formal meeting was held in 1975 in France with five countries and soon it was seven countries known as the Group of Seven until 1998 when Russia was officially admitted. Since 1975, whatever decision these seven or eight countries came to was law and if the rest of the countries of the world knew what was good for them, they would follow suit. In short, the Group of Eight acted as a “Global Board of Directors” for the world. Over the years, they expanded their purview to include every facet of government: labor, education, transportation, trade, housing, finance and the environment.

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Paul and Phillip D. Collins visit Full Throttle Radio to discuss “Silencing the Saber-Rattling: How the American Empire Threatens the Potential Iranian Counter-Revolution.”

Listen at:
http://blessedresistanceradio.podomatic.com/entry/2009-09-27T18_37_12-07_00

Eamon Javers - September 28, 2009

The reporter walked into his office expecting a normal day at work: cup of coffee, call some sources, the usual routine.

But this wasn’t going to be an ordinary day at all.

His editor had other ideas. Darker ideas.

The editor wanted an article on the new Dan Brown novel called “The Lost Symbol”, about a conspiracy by Freemasons in Washington.

The long-awaited book features Robert Langdon, the hero of Brown’s previous smash hits “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons,” on a dramatic quest in and around Washington’s most famous landmarks to find a secret hidden long ago by the Masons.

But the editor was intrigued by a real-world question: How many present-day members of Congress are Freemasons? And is any member of Congress also a Knight Templar — a famous subgroup of Masons that traces its lineage to the medieval crusaders?

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Dr. Ted Baehr and Dr. Tom Snyder - September 26th, 2009

If only he would use his talent for goodness instead of evil!

That is a paraphrased comic statement that Secret Agent Maxwell Smart often used to describe some of the super-villains he faced on the TV spy show GET SMART in the 1960s. The same statement may be applied to Michael Moore, the filmmaking darling of the Left who has made another polemical documentary, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, this time calling for the replacement of America’s capitalist system with a socialist system, including, of course, pro-communist proposals to share all wealth or profits equally.

A talented filmmaker, Moore begins his latest movie by discussing the post-war economic boom in the United States in the 1950s and early 60s. After showing the consumerism that captivated many Americans during those times, and the riches that came to the leaders of industry and the wealthy bankers and brokers on Wall Street, he cuts to a shot of President Jimmy Carter during the late 1970s sadly complaining about the “greed” and “materialism” of America. Then, in a mocking tone, Moore says Ronald Reagan came riding into the White House, but that Reagan and his Treasury Secretary, Donald Reagan, formerly of Merrill Lynch, designed policies that hurt blue collar workers and encouraged Americans to borrow too much money so they could buy homes and modern luxuries, while the “fatcats” on Wall Street got richer and richer.

Interspersed within this somewhat biased history lesson, Moore describes the economic “meltdown” that occurred last year. While putting all the blame on bankers, mortgage lenders and financial institutions who, he says, corrupt the politicians in Washington, Moore visits several families and workers harmed by the economic collapse. Included among these scenes are people whose mortgages have been foreclosed, a family that is defiantly still living in its foreclosed home, and workers in Chicago who took action when their company suddenly went bankrupt and refused to pay the workers what it apparently still owed them.

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Mark Lerner - 25 September 2009

The Big Question - should government control the people or should the people control government?

Orwell’s prediction of a future big brother government came true. Whether acknowledged or not, Americans now live in a surveillance society.

Most of that American public falls into one of the categories the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) calls “potential threats;” environmentalists, animal lovers, anti-war protestors, pro-lifers, evangelical Christians, observant Jews, Constitutionalists, returning veterans, and third party candidate supporters are all “potential domestic terrorists.”

Just how far is the American public willing to let the government go in order to assure public safety? Do the people want the police on every block, all emails read by the government, phone calls overheard, or every financial transaction monitored? Do the people want sensors placed in cities that detect how much an individual perspires, in order to assess and monitor supposed guilt?

How about computer software programs that decide whether or not the way people walk or dress presents a threat to the government? In Britain citizens are captured on surveillance cameras an average of 300 times a day; does the American public want to be subjected to this level of scrutiny?

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James P. Tucker, Jr. - American Free Press (Issue # 40, October 5, 2009)

But nationalists and populists around the world ready to fight to retain financial sovereignty

Bilderberg has had front-men call anew for creating a global currency and establishing major European Union-style regions for the administrative convenience of a planned world government. Both steps were taken in September, one by the new Bilderberg-crowned prime minister of Japan and one separately by the UN.

The Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a global currency in a report made public on September 7. UN countries should agree on a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, UNCTAD said. The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, it said.

Heiner Flassbeck, a former German deputy finance minister, is co-author of the report calling for a global currency. He worked with then U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in 1997-98 to contain the Asian financial crisis. Summers is a longtime Bilderberg luminary and has been photographed by AFP at annual secret Bilderberg confabs.

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Jurriaan Maessen - September 24, 2009

The battle for freedom is raging on all levels. Consider Glenn Beck. Here’s some rotten fruit that fell out of the apple-basket to appease conservatives. Keith Olbermann, on his side of the playing field, covers the liberal part of the paradigm. Notice how careful they are to remain inside their respective boundaries, ignoring true arguments that care nothing for ‘isms’ but a great deal for freedom. As these respective characters speak directly to the big chunk of the mesmerized people, glued to the television screen, there is also a more subtle- but no less crucial- battle going on in the halls of academia.

As history exhaustively shows, any idea can be theoretically legitimized with the help of equations, calculations and otherwise cleverly devised systems of thought. But, as a famous writer once stated, ‘cleverness is for the dwarfs’. It is wisdom that is lacking from most academics and their writings, not to mention modesty and an open mind. In the beginning of the 20th century for example, eugenicists would work to legitimize their arguments with all kinds of semi-scientific serpentines. As a matter of practise it was not uncommon that a person’s skull would be measured with a ruler at birth to ‘determine’ if he or she would be prone to criminal activities in later life. Although widely rejected as devious quackery, eugenics has since found new ways to sell depopulation to the masses, the most prominent of which, of course, is environmentalism as a pretext to do away with 80 percent of the world population- or so the elite state on a regular basis.

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A deft analysis of Obama’s speech at the UN.

Matthew D. Jarvie - September 24, 2009

Russia Today has gained huge popularity over the past year among followers of the “alternative” media. While RT does feature news pieces about topics not regularly discussed in the American mainstream media, for a while I have wondered why the Russian media would have an interest in things pertaining to the New World Order, such as the manufactured banking crisis and the reality behind 9/11. After all, hasn’t Russia several times called for a New World Order and a one world currency?

Russia Today is sponsored by the state-owned Russian news agency, RIA-Novosti. Novosti was, and still is, essentially an arm of the KGB. Many believe the KGB ceased to exist with the fall of the Iron Curtain, but those who know better understand that this just isn’t the case. The Soviet system was never abolished, rather moved underground. The KGB simply changed its name and is now called the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation).

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“Debunking Dan Brown,” by the arrogant, fundamentalist-mocking pseudo-historian, the editor of Freemasonry Today, Michael Baigent; and “The Lost Symbol and the Browning of American Religion,” by Ben Witherington who offers a discerning look at Dan Brown’s own pseudo-history, and his twisting of the Bible.

Cliff Kincaid - September 23, 2009

Federal funding of ACORN is not just a Democratic Party or Obama Administration problem. As a chart (PDF) produced by House Republican Leader John Boehner shows, most of the federal money going to the organization was provided under President George W. Bush. This is not something that most Republicans want to talk about, especially now that they can use ACORN funding as a weapon against Obama and the Democrats. To Boehner’s credit, however, he had sent a letter to Bush asking him to block all federal funding of ACORN. The Bush Administration did not comply.

While Obama has strong ties to ACORN, they were originally established through the U.S. Catholic Church, which has also funded ACORN and similar organizations to the tune of millions of dollars. This is another taboo topic for most of the media. Even conservative news organizations are afraid of raising the issue, apparently fearing being tagged with the “anti-Catholic” label.

But the truth has been seeping out in mysterious ways. In a Politico.com story about Barack Obama’s friendly meeting with the Pope, reporter Josh Gerstein featured information that made it clear that the President’s Catholic connection goes back to his days as a community organizer and that Obama’s associates understand and appreciate this fact.

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Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

The Cold War is making a cameo on the international stage in November when major political figures of the time join in a reunion to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. Whispers hears that former Kremlin chief Mikhail Gorbachev, former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and former President George H. W. Bush plan to huddle in Berlin to talk about the tumultuous—but surprisingly peaceful—times that led to the end of the Cold War and breakup of the Soviet Union.

WeAreChange Ohio traveled to Newport, Kentucky to investigate the military checkpoints that appeared around the downtown area on September 6, 2009. Officially, this was done for traffic control purposes during the annual Riverfest celebration that is held on both sides of the Ohio River.

Military Police from the U.S. Army National Guard performed a series of tasks throughout the day, which included aiding the local police to close bridges across the river, and to reverse traffic along Monmouth Street in Newport.

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