Over the past two months the news has been dominated by two bizarre but related events:
1) the alleged nerve agent poisoning of the exchanged Russian dual-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England; and
2) the supposed gas poisoning of Syrian civilians by the Assad government, leading to the “retaliatory” April 13-14 missile attack against the Syrian nation by the U.S. and Great Britain as ordered by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May.
This attack was an act of war against a sovereign nation carried out without approval of the U.N. Security Council or the U.S. Congress or British Parliament and were cheered on by French president Emmanuel Macron.
Mounting evidence shows that both the Skripal and Syrian incidents were actually false-flag provocations, likely carried out by or with the connivance of Western intelligence services. The target of both provocations was, without question, the Russian state and its president Vladimir Putin. Of course Syria has also long been on the “hit list” of Middle Eastern nations targeted for “regime change” by the U.S. neocons after 9/11, with Israel a key beneficiary.
Numerous news sources are documenting the false-flag nature of these incidents that will not be repeated here. Note, however, that it has been the British that have been whining the loudest in both cases, though, if Theresa May and her cronies, along with France’s Macron, do succeed in starting a war with Russia, it will be the U.S. military that does the heavy lifting: the same as the U.S. did in World Wars I and II in Britain’s epic geopolitical campaign to take down its greatest continental rival, Germany.
Few commentators have noted strongly enough that a key nation driving the current war agenda against Russia is in fact Britain, not just the U.S.
Regarding Israel, that nation owes its origin to its status as a British proxy, supported as an Asian beachhead to control Middle Eastern oil. Modern Israel is a British project as much, if not more so, than it is of the U.S.
Zionism actually originated in Britain in the early 19th century. Its leading financial supporters were the British Rothschilds. The 1917 Balfour Declaration stated Britain’s support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The declaration was contained in a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, then a private citizen but heir to the fortune left to him by his father Nathan Rothschild.
And where does Theresa May get her orders? Again, few, if any, commentators have noted that she gets them through the U.K. Privy Council, to which she has belonged since 2002.
Members of the Privy Council take an oath that was released publicly in 1998 by the Tony Blair government and appears in Wikipedia:
“You do swear by Almighty God to be a true and faithful Servant unto the Queen’s Majesty, as one of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. You will not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal, but you will let and withstand the same to the uttermost of your Power, and either cause it to be revealed to Her Majesty Herself, or to such of Her Privy Council as shall advertise Her Majesty of the same….You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance unto the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty, and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates. And generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true Servant ought to do to Her Majesty. So help you God.”
Also from Wikipedia, new Privy Council appointees undergo an initiation ceremony that “is held in private and typically requires kneeling on a stool before the sovereign and then kissing hands. According to The Royal Encyclopaedia:
‘The new privy counsellor or minister will extend his or her right hand, palm upwards, and, taking the Queen’s hand lightly, will kiss it with no more than a touch of the lips.’”
The Privy Council consists of the leaders of the major British institutions that rule the U.K. and the British Commonwealth, including the extended royal family (part of a Europe-wide matrix of old nobility), the British political parties, both houses of Parliament, multiple governmental departments, political leaders from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere in the Commonwealth, and the top bishops of the Church of England.
The Privy Council is in fact the managing directorate of the British oligarchy.
So much for where Theresa May gets her direction and whose hand she kisses. The key to understanding all this is that the British Empire is very much alive in 2018, though it doesn’t use that name any more and largely takes cover behind the American military fist.
The empire today is heavily financial, organized around the banking and other financial institutions housed in the City of London and replicated in financial centers worldwide, particularly New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. One reason Britain’s role in world affairs is not as well publicized as that of the U.S. is the deep secrecy surrounding the workings of the Privy Council, where utterance of the truth may be high treason.
I have pointed out elsewhere how Cecil Rhodes and his Round Table, toward the end of the 19th century, vowed to recapture the U.S. for the Empire. Nathan Rothschild was a key member of the Round Table, after having financed Rhodes’ gold and diamond operations in South Africa. All this was documented by American scholar Carroll Quigley in several books, including Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.
The British succeeded in regaining control of the U.S. They did so by instigating the creation of the Federal Reserve System on the model of the Bank of England, taking charge of leading American newspapers to put forth pro-British propaganda, dragging the U.S. into World War I to defeat Kaiser Wilhelm, and setting up the Council on Foreign Relations on the model of the British Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The U.S. fought World War II on Britain’s behalf to defeat Hitler. After the war, President Harry Truman chartered the National Security Agency and CIA on British models. According to a confidential source, the NSA in particular is an asset of British intelligence.
The U.S. national security advisor, in charge of advising the president of the United States on all security issues, actually reports to internationalists headquartered in London and New York. The leading such figure in the U.S. is Dr. Henry Kissinger.
The cat was let out of the bag in a speech by Major General James Jones at the February 8, 2009, Munich Conference on Security Policy, where he said,
“As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.”
Britain is now dragging the U.S. toward World War III against Russia, which is the continental European power that succeeded Germany through the unexpected and shocking victory won by the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front in 1944-45. It was shocking because the British and Americans were hoping Hitler and Stalin would finish each other off. But that didn’t happen.
It was also likely the British that took part in actions to arm the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons to balance American power after World War II. Experts agreed there was no way the Soviets could have acquired atomic weapons so quickly without help. If the British really were involved, were they playing off the two main victors of that war against each other through instigating the Cold War?
Screengrab from Smithsonian
It may still be the British plan to induce the U.S. and Russia to reduce each other to rubble, or at least so to distract each other so that British financial hegemony can proceed unhindered. We are seeing Cold War II unfold as we speak, even though no sane person in the U.S., Russia, or Russia’s ally China, really wants it.
But Britain obviously does, along with its imperial brethren imbedded within the U.S. “Deep State.” These brethren are currently engaged in their own war against the Donald Trump administration to undermine any predilection Trump may have to seek a cooperative relationship with Russia instead of pushing toward the conflict they desire.
The people and government of the U.S. are too blind and ill-educated to see any of this. They are laughingly easy to manipulate through the mass media, as the British figured out via the research conducted at the Tavistock Institute decades ago. British author George Orwell warned of this in his book 1984. It’s all being played out today according to script.
Another prophet of our time was 19th century Scottish author Robert Lewis Stevenson. In his short story “When the Devil Was Well,” he wrote of the evils of the Machiavellian politics of the Italian Renaissance. In today’s London, New York, and Washington, “The Devil is Well.” Lies are Truth. War is Peace. Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron certainly agree. And their American Deep State allies are waging a daily campaign to get Trump to go along.
Theresa May in particular must be gloating. Her husband, Philip May, is an executive for Capital Group, the largest shareholder in arms manufacturer BAE and the second largest in Lockheed Martin. Stock values for both companies reportedly have soared since the latest attacks on Syria.
Along these lines, I would like to address a question to the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Mr. Justin Welby, also a member of the Privy Council, as well as to all Anglican church ministers, and to the religious leaders of the U.S.
I won’t include France, because the French seem to be mostly hedonistic atheists, so why should any of this matter to them?
Archbishop Welby is author of a book entitled Reimagining Britain: Foundations for Hope. He writes on the official Archbishop of Canterbury website:
“In writing Reimagining Britain, I’ve tried to make a personal contribution to the challenge I believe lies before us: reimagining our future at this critical time in the life of our country. It’s my belief that the values we find in our Christian heritage – compassion, generosity and solidarity, to name a few – offer a source of hope and wisdom for Britain in the 21st century, even as we rightly embrace who we are becoming as a multi-faith and multi-cultural society.”
My question is, wasn’t there a time in British history when the Archbishop of Canterbury stood up to the king and uttered words of truth to power? Didn’t T.S. Eliot write a play about it entitled Murder in the Cathedral?
The archbishop was Thomas à Becket, who was killed by knights loyal to King Henry II in 1170 for opposing the will of the crown through actions that violated Christian ethics. Yes, Thomas à Becket paid the ultimate price, but he didn’t back down, because that was the Christian thing to do.
What modern clergyman would do this? Today the clergy in England and America seem to be either really nice people who wouldn’t hurt a fly, or raging lunatics who foam at the mouth as their imagined Armageddon approaches through escalation of war in the Middle East, leading, they hope, to… “Rapture”?
When is His Grace Mr. Welby going to tell Theresa May that she’s lying about the Skripal and Syria affairs and to cut it out? Or maybe his oath to the queen, along with his kneeling and kissing the queen’s hand via his membership on the Privy Council, wouldn’t allow it. Would Thomas à Becket have signed that oath?
Karl Barth had these people figured out. Barth was a Swiss German-speaking theologian who rewrote the principles of the Protestant Reformation during the first half of the 20th century. Barth also stood up to Hitler by telling us that it was Jesus Christ who conveyed the Word of God for our redemption and salvation, not the almighty Nazi state.
The teachings of Christ, Barth made clear, begins with the “baptism of repentance.” It starts with realization of our sinful nature and teaches us how to resist it and discover instead our Living God as a presence within ourselves. When this happens, our behavior toward other people changes.
We can then begin to love our neighbor as ourselves and act according to Christian precepts in all our affairs. This likely does not include bombing other people under false pretenses in order to boost stock prices.
Barth traveled to England in the 1930s and said to them something really interesting. He told them, “You are all Pelagians.” (Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1994, p. 204)
According to Wikipedia,
“Pelagianism is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special divine aid. This theological theory is named after the British monk Pelagius (354–420 or 440)…Pelagius taught that the human will, as created with its abilities by God, was sufficient to live a sinless life, although he believed that God’s grace assisted every good work. Pelagianism has come to be identified with the view (whether taught by Pelagius or not) that human beings can earn salvation by their own efforts.”
The tendency toward Pelagianism has been recognized by all branches of the Christian religion as one of the fundamental heresies, as it denies the need for the baptism of repentance brought to mankind by Jesus.
Pelagianism asserts as fundamental that, “I’m ok.” This leads to the idea, “I’m okay just as I am. Nothing about me needs to change. If it does, I’ll easily take care of it.”
Psychology teaches us, however, that the human individual lacks discernment as to where within himself his impulses are coming from. It thus becomes likely, if not inevitable, that he turns to self-interest, as such impulses are fed to his consciousness by his animal self.
Pelagianism devolves into the dual philosophy of egotism combined with the pleasure principle—I, me, my, and mine; and, if it feels good, do it. Politically, Pelagianism ends with imperialism and oppression of the weak. Economically, it turns into unbridled capitalism and the pursuit of profit at all costs. Throw in Machiavelli, and we’ve arrived at where we are in the world today.
It is instructive in light of Barth’s views on the British predilection toward Pelagianism to compare the Protestant Reformation as it played out in Europe vs. what took place in England. In Europe, Luther and Calvin began with the idea taught by Jesus that every human being born on earth needs redemption and can find it through the Divine Word, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the sacraments.
In England, by contrast, the Reformation was brought about by King Henry VIII, who wanted to shake off the influence of the Church so that he could be free to murder any of his wives who crossed him and seize monastic property. Henry VIII appears to have been an exemplar of British Pelagianism.
Since then, the Church of England has been largely the tool of secular power, even though its liturgy and sacraments, as they appear in the Book of Common Prayer, still contain much of original Christian teaching. In its Thirty-Nine Article of Religion, Anglicanism also specifically renounces Pelagianism.
Nevertheless, the Anglican clergy are beholden to the British state for their salaries. Perhaps that’s one reason they are always so nice to those in charge.
The British are indeed “nice” people. They enjoy life. They are “comfortable” in the world. They adore their “royals.” They understand that real democracy is rather unclean—not really for them. That’s why they still have a queen.
The British are subjects, not citizens. So are the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, and many others in Commonwealth countries where the queen is the head of state.
British Pelagianism leads to what German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” “where no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Touchstone Edition 1995, p. 43) Essentially you consider yourself justified simply by being polite. If you want, you can spend £45 having High Tea at Highclere Castle, ancestral home of a genuine British earl. That’s as polite as it gets.
Meanwhile, in Britain, you have a government of manipulators and assassins working in the dark behind the scenes with a population absorbed by BBC comedies, murder mysteries, historical dramas—and by “Brexit.”
British Pelagianism and its psycho-spiritual equivalents open the door to abuses of every kind. They open the door to the decadent lifestyles of the rich and famous among the British upper crust, the American “one-percent,” and oligarchs everywhere.
They also open the door to conquest of other countries. They open the door to U.S. fantasies about being the “exceptional nation.” They open the door to the destruction of the environment with pesticides, herbicides, and greenhouse gases so the petroleum and chemical industries, and the capital funds that own them, can reap endless profits from all that too. The same with her husband’s armaments industries that are doing so well thanks to Theresa May’s stellar decision-making.
Finally, they open the door to endless war propelled by a stream of false-flag incidents so transparent that even intelligent high school students are now seeing through them.
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Richard C. Cook is a retired federal government analyst. He is author of “Challenger Revealed: How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age,” “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform,” and numerous print and internet articles on public policy issues. Mr. Cook may be reached at [email protected].
Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation.
