Chapter One: A Century of War by F William Engdahl: How the World Really Works by Alan B Jones

 

 

 

 

 

from the book
A Century of War
by F William Engdahl
1993

p6
Following the War [World War I] Britain and France carved up the Middle East... Britain obtaining protectorate status over Palestine (Israel) and the important oil-producing areas, especially Iraq. Their protectorate over Palestine set the stage for their planned later creation in that area of a Jewish homeland, which intent was proclaimed to British Zionists in a letter from Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Lord Rothschild, representing the English Federation of Zionists. The letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, which was not implemented until after World War 2. The British intent was to project their control into the oil-laden Middle East by creating a Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to Britain for survival, and surrounded by a pack of squabbling, balkanized Arab states.

During the Versailles Treaty talks after the war [WWI], Round Table members Lionel Curtis, Balfour, Milner, and others, formed an above-ground group called the Royal Institute of International Affairs for the purpose of coordinating Anglo-American cooperative efforts. They decided also to form an American branch, but gave it a different name in order to obscure its antecedents. Thus was born the Council on Foreign Relations, originally staffed by J.P. Morgan men and financed by Morgan money. The CFR, of course, is still very much with us.

p15
After 1971, a White House policy was initiated, under the effective control of Henry Kissinger, to control the economies of the nations and to reduce their populations, rather than to facilitate technology transfer and industrial growth. The strategy was to force the price of the cartelized world oil up by about a factor of four, recover the Arab oil receipts back into the British and American central banks, and lend them to the Third World to acquire control over those countries. To this end, the Bilderberg group, containing the world's top financial and political insiders, met privately in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden in May 1973 to discuss how the coming flood of oil dollars was to be handled. Mr. Engdahl lists many of the participants, including Kissinger, George Ball, David Rockefeller, and others. Then in October of that same year, the "Yom Kippur" war broke out, with Syria and Egypt invading Israel, with the U.S. supporting Israel, and the British staying demurely neutral. Kissinger performed his "shuttle diplomacy" among the participants, to assure the war followed the script previously worked out in Sweden. The Arab OPEC countries declared an embargo on all oil shipments to the U.S. and mainland Europe (but not Britain), and started cranking up the price, which rose by the scheduled factor of four by the end of the year. Nixon, drowning in the Watergate affair, tried to get the Treasury to find a way to get the Arabs to reduce their prices, but was rebuffed, and advised to support the "recycling" of the oil dollars at the current prices. Nixon agreed, and the deed was done. The great bulk of the petro-dollars were repatriated in purchasing U.S. government debt and in deposit accounts in Chase Manhattan, Citibank, et al. From there they were loaned to the Third World, which could not otherwise buy the fuel they needed to survive, whence many of those countries became enslaved to the bankers, and forced to follow their edicts on how to run their countries.

p17
American officials in the mid 70s openly claimed in news conferences that they were "neo-Malthusians." Malthus, says Engdahl, was an English clergyman who, in 1798, wrote an essay claiming that human populations expanded geometrically, while their means of subsistence expanded only linearly. Hence, populations must be limited, and, if necessary, governments should enhance the operations of nature to produce the needed mortality. Consistent with such pseudo-science, Henry Kissinger produced, in April 1974, the classified National Security Council Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), directed to Washington high officialdom, defining a program aimed at population reduction in Third World countries possessing needed raw materials, since growing populations with aspirations for a better standard of living give rise to high prices for such materials. Kissinger named 13 target countries for population control, including Brazil, India, Egypt, Mexico, Ethiopia, Columbia, and others.

p17
[In the 1970s] most of the Third World, including the bulk of South America, Africa, and the Asian underbelly, unable to afford the oil they needed, found not only their industrial development stopped, but even food purchases curtailed, and starvation threatening. Far from living standards continuing the growth begun during the 50's and 60's, many of these countries were being pushed back to a condition of bare subsistence.

p20
In the Third World, not only did the purchase of nuclear power plants become out of the question, but bare survival was in doubt. Those countries had been suckered into floating interest rate contracts on their Eurodollar loans, and those interest rates had now gone out of sight. Oil costs were up 140% after the Iran Oil Shock, and the U.S. dollar itself, mandatorily required for making oil purchases, was now becoming more expensive against other currencies. The great bulk of the Third World was essentially instantaneously bankrupted.

... The International Monetary Fund became the collection agency for the big banks.

... By 1987, the amount then owed [by third world countries] in principal and interest amounted in total to some $1.3 trillion dollars, a sum virtually impossible ever to repay, even under healthy economic conditions.