Hidden History: How British Bankers Shaped America’s 20th Century

Clash of the Two Americas Volume 2 ...

Clash of the Two Americas Volume 2: Open vs Closed Systems Collide

By Matthew Ehret (2021)a

Purchase link: https://canadianpatriot.org/untold-history-of-canada-books/

Book Review

In Volume 2,  Ehret’s narrative about the political clash between America’s Anglophile pro-colonization elite and pro-international cooperation forces who opposed them continues into the 20th century.

The second volume begins with a brief discussion of Gilpin’s Landbridge, proposed by Lincoln advisor William Gilpin (who Lincoln appointed as Colorado’s first governor in 1861). In 1890 Gilipin published Cosmopolitan Railway: Compacting and Fusing Together All the World’s Continents, calling for a Tunnel to be built between Alaska and Siberia connecting Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railroad [1] with a North American transcontinental rail network. This proposal arose in part out of a strategy first put forward by Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward, General (and later president) Ulysses Grant and Senator Charles Sumner. The surprise purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867 was the first step in this venture. 

According to Ehret, most of British foreign policy in the early 20th century was aimed at disrupting the strong US-Russia-German alliance supported by Lincoln, Seward, Grant, Gilpin and Sumner.

For example

  • The 1902 Anglo-Japanese treaty which resulted in the disastrous Japan-Russian war (in which Anglophile US banker Jacob Schiff financed the Japanese), which substantially weakened Russia’s pro-US Romanov rulers.
  • According to Ehert, Britain’ primary purpose in instigating World War I was to break up the continuing US-German-Russian-Ottoman alliance committed to international rail development (a major threat to Britain’s monopoly on maritime trade).
  • The substantial support the British/Wall Street banking establishment provided Russia’s two revolutions in 1905 and 1917. According to Schiff’s grandson, Schiff funded the Bolsheviki revolution to the tune of $20 million. Prominent member of Lloyd George’s war cabinet Lord Alfred Milner also contributed 21 million rubles to the Bolshevik cause.
  •  The collaboration of British banks and Wall Street banks and corporates to finance the rise of Hitler.[2] Prescott Bush (grandfather of George W) bailed out the German Nazi party when it went bankrupt and collapsed in 1932.[3] J P Morgan and Henry Luce, founder and owner of Time Magazine, also helped fund both Hitler and Mussolini, while the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations funded the Nazis eugenics program, including the experiments Dr Mengele conducted on concentration camp victims.

The book includes some fascinating details about Franklin D Roosevelt’s presidency that are rarely covered in high school history classes. Immediately on taking office, anti-colonist FDR immediately declared war on Wall Street, with his Pecora Commission sending dozens of bankers to prison. He only agreed to support Europe during World War II on condition the European powers surrender their colonies at war’s end. However he ran into major resistance from Churchill 1) when he and Eisenhower tried to open a second front in Western France after Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941 and when 2) FDR (seeking to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race)  tried to bring the Soviets into the secret US-British project to develop an atomic bomb.

Ehert also devotes a chapter to President John F Kennedy, an anti-colonist like Franklin, Lincoln and Roosevelt, and to the role of Anglophile CIA elements (and even British intelligence agents in Montreal) in his assassination.

My favorite part of the book concerns extensive evidence Ehert has compiled revealing the alleged 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre was actually a color revolution funded by George Soros and the CIA-sponsored National Endowment for Democracy.[4] Both Soros and color revolution guru Gene Sharp were in Beijing on June 4, 1989. See George Soros, Gene Sharp and the 1989 Failed Color Revolution in Tiananmen Square and The CIA and Nonviolence

I feel some chapters towards the end of Volume 2 are somewhat one-sided in terms of Ehert’s unconditional embrace of new technological development. At times new technologies can be extremely hazardous to human health, eg our 70-year-old toxic chemical technology which has left us with a global epidemic of chronic diseases.

I’m also skeptical of his high praise of China’s embrace of unrestrained fossil fuel use and nuclear energy. Serious problems with particulate pollution pose (from coal burning a vehicle exhaust) are responsible for serious health problems (in some cases life threatening) for residents of all China’s major cities. Likewise, I don’t believe there is sufficient evidence to conclude China has “solved” the nuclear waste problem by vitrifying it.[5] While transforming nuclear waste to a solid makes it easier to store, the waste still remains radioactive for thousands of years. You also have to wonder whether the massive temperatures (1000° C) required for vitrification lowers the Energy Returned for Energy Invested below the break even point to justify the major investment required.

Finally I’m confused when he writes in one section about global warming being a myth and about the Polar Silk Road made possible by Arctic ice melting.


[1] Which was built with generous US engineering support.

[2] According to Ehret increasing calls by residents of British Columbia for the province to be annexed to the United States (to facilitate the construction of the transcontinental railroad between Oregon and Alaska) put the UK under pressure to unite Canada’s provinces as a dominion under the British king on July 1st 1867.

[3] First documented by journalist George Seldes in Facts and Fascism in 1943.

[4] It’s also significant that Bush was an insider of the US/British banking conspiracy that created the $5.7 billion Wall Street bubble (via an astronomical level of broker loans) and then deliberately crashed the economy by suddenly calling them due. Bush, like others involved the conspiracy, made his fortune by selling his holdings prior to the crash. In 1942, he was found guilt of under the Trading with the Enemy Act and the federal government all the capital assets of his bank, Union Banking.

[5] In vitrification of nuclear waste, the fission products are made solid by being incorporated into molten glass.

[6] See USA: Exportng Democracy Since 1948

J P Morgan: Emperor of Wall Street

https://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/images/shop/morgan-dvd_2.jpg

J P Morgan: Emperor of Wall Street

A&E (2005)

Film Review

This insipidly uncritical biography of the 19th century bankster, J P Morgan, relies mainly on reminiscences of his family and business associates.

Born in Connecticut in 1837, Morgan moved to Britain at 18, where his father worked in the merchant banking firm Peabody, Morgan & Co. A year later he returned to New York to join the US branch of Peabody, Morgan & Co.

The film conveniently neglects to mention he made his fortune during the Civil War, purchasing 5,000 rifles from an army arsenal at $3.50 apiece and reselling them to a field general for $22 each. Morgan evaded the Civil War draft by paying a substitute $300 to take his place (also not mentioned in the film).

In addition to his banking interests, between 1869 and 1883, Morgan systematically gained control of one-third of all US railroads. After his father’s death in 1890, he used his father’s fortune to acquire more corporations.

Following the 1893 depression, the US experienced a massive drain on its gold reserves and Morgan used an old Civil War statute to allow his and the Rothschilds’ banks to sell gold to the US government (at a tidy profit).

In 1901, he purchased Carnegie Steel to form US Steel Corporation (the world’s first billion dollar corporation). Following the purchase, he controlled roughly 70% of the country’s steel production.

After notorious “trust-buster” Teddy Roosevelt assumed the presidency in the same year, his attorney general prosecuted Morgan’s Northern Security Corporation (which ran his railroads) for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Morgan appealed, but the Supreme Court upheld the government order to break up the company.

During the 1907 panic, many US banks were again on the verge of collapse, when Roosevelt appropriated $35 million from the US Treasury to invest in New York banks to keep them afloat.

It would be the last time the federal government allowed a single banker (the filmmakers refer to Morgan as a “one-man central bank”) to singlehandedly control the US monetary system. In 1913 banking and political leaders secretly conspired with President Woodrow Wilson to create the Federal Reserve.*


*Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve is not owned and controlled by the government but by a consortium of private banks.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/j-pierpont-morgan-emperor-wall-street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/j-pierpont-morgan-emperor-wall-street

Should We Pay Corporations to Destroy the Planet?

Pricing the Planet Episode 1

Al Jazeera (2018)

Film Review

This documentary is about an endangered species trading scheme in which banks like J P Morgan and Goldman Sacks invest in projects that protect endangered species (eg bees, coral reefs, orangutans) or ecosystem services (eg (rain forests, clean water, wetlands clean air, topsoil). They then sell credits in these projects to corporations who wish to engage in mining and development that kill these species or destroy rain forests and wetlands.

In 1988, Bush Senior was the first to promote this model of environmental protection with his No Net Wetlands Loss policy. It enabled corporations that were destroying wetlands to purchase credits in wetlands that being set aside for preservation. This model was later employed in carbon trading schemes in which industries are allowed to emit CO2 pollution if they purchase credits in reforestation projects that capture CO2. After nearly 20 years of operations, this scheme has made speculators in carbon credits fantastically rich while allowing CO2 emissions increase exponentially.

Bankers and corporate executives argue that endangered species trading is the only way to save the planet because government regulation hasn’t worked (largely because banks and corporations have blocked effective environmental regulation). Most grassroots environmentalists oppose species trading. They argue that bees, reefs, orangutans and rain forests can only be saved with a total ban on activities that endanger them.

Globally Malua BioBank runs the largest “mitigation” project. They recently purchased the Malua Forest in Borneo for $64 million. They sell credits in the Malua Forest to palm oil companies to enable them to destroy other Indonesian rain forests, as well as companies that use palm oil products.

The Nature Conservancy (whose current CEO is a former Goldman Sachs banker) and other large environmental NGOs support “species banking” because they rely on large corporate donations to cover their staff salaries.

The video can be viewed free at the Al Jazeera website: Pricing the Planet