NEW WORLD ORDER
PART FIVE
IMF - WORLD BANK - ANTI-CHRIST
Well, the Enron scandal gets deeper by the day, doesn’t it? See, but our focus is still being kept on the corporation, on the accountants, and even the administration. Very few comments are being directed at the upper levels of the picture. The Anderson accounting, Ken Lay, and Enron, yes, and even baby Bush, as Michael Moore likes to call him, are pawns in this game of world dictatorship. The knights, the bishops, and even the rooks are still operating freely under the direction of the kings. Our attention is being diverted to the expendable pieces of this game. Enron is expendable. Bush is expendable. We need to look at the two levels above. The engines and the engineers of the global takeover. What allowed Enron to climb to its position? And who will gain ultimately?
And if time permits I’d also like to offer a possible candidate for the Antichrist, just by way of rounding out this New World Order movement. You see, it’s the Antichrist who will rise to power over the structure that’s being built now by the kings of the game.
There are many engines pulling the global train – the U.N., the World Trade Organization, the World Court, which is kind of just getting off the ground now, the IMF and the World Bank – that’s just to name a few of the more visible ones; there’s a lot of other engines behind it. Not the kings, just the engines.
And I asked earlier, who made Enron’s rise possible? And who’s got the hold of that throttle of the engine? You’ll have to do the research for the specific “whos” but that isn’t going to be too hard, though. But here’s the what. The IMF and the World Bank made Enron possible, with a little bit of help here and there from other factions too.
What I’ve got here is a transcript which came to me via email a couple of months ago, a transcript of a radio show by Alex Jones. Alex Jones is an investigative reporter-type who has a radio show, and this show aired on March 4, 2002. And the guest was Greg Palast. I’ll try to make sure that you know who’s talking and when. But forgive me if I slip on that.
Alex starts out, and he says, “This is earth shattering. Can you break it down for us and tell us what the economists have done?”
Greg says, “Well, I'll tell you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and with the Guardian [that’s a newspaper], basically spent some time debriefing him. It was like one of the scenes out of Mission Impossible, you know where the guy comes over from the other side and you spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was happening at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief me, but I got some other sources. He would not give me inside documents, but other people handed me a giant stash of secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
And that’s what this is going to be all about, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But Enron’s going to get into it. But what I’m trying to do here is show who’s in charge over the top of Enron. It doesn’t stop with Enron. The buck doesn’t stop there. It stops up above Enron, and there, with the elite, as we’ve done many shows on this subject, the elite, that’s where the buck stops. Who is controlling Enron? Not Kenneth Lay. He controlled it from his level. But who’s above him?
So Alex says, so he insulated himself by not giving him the documents, but somebody else did.
Greg: “No, I'm telling you. He wouldn't touch it, but I really did get from completely independent sources a big stack of documents.”
Alex: “Just like you got W1991, from the same folks we got it from.”
See, this Alex Jones, he does these kinds of shows, exposé and investigative reporting and so forth.
Greg goes on to say: “And so one of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank, Jim Wolfensen, and he said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off.”
Alex: “So now they are threatening total boycott.”
Greg: “Yeah, right. So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved, and if they didn't agree to these steps – there was an average for each nation that signed 111 items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those steps they would be cut off from all international borrowing. If you can't borrow any money in the international marketplace, you don’t do business.. No one can survive without borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries – you can’t survive without borrowing money and having credit.”
Let me digress here and remind you that not too long ago Bush made this very altruistic speech about helping all the countries. But he always put the qualifier on it – if they do the right thing, you know, for their economic system, if they hold proper economic policies. These policies here, these secret 111 items that they have to sign on to is what’s involved here.
Greg goes on: “... see, one of the things that happened is that – we’ve got examples from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television. And cite some on the web. I actually have copies.”
Alex: “That’s at Greg Palast dot com?”
Greg says: “Yeah, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yeah, those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is s completely destroyed.:
Alex: “Isn't it six now?”
Greg: “Yeah, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell off all their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like selling off their water system. ... So what's happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way, it's not just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called – right – Enron.” Buenos Aires sold their water system to Enron. “A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a company called Enron.”
Alex says: “And then the globalists blow out the Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just roll the theft items off.”
Greg: “You've got it. And by the way, you know why they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody named George W. Bush in 1988.” That’s why they moved it.
Alex: “Unbelievable. ... We are talking to Greg Palast. He is an award-winning journalist, an American who has worked for the BBC, London Guardian, you name it, who has dropped just a massive bomb-shell on the Globalists and their criminal activity. There is no other word for it. You link through at infowars.com, you can link to his web site – gregpalast.com, or any of the other great reports he has been putting out. He now has the secret documents. We have seen the activity of the IMF/World Bank for years. They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations – they then hand it over to them for nothing. The Globalists pay them off individually, billions apiece in Swiss bank accounts. And the plan is total slavery for the entire population. Of course, Enron, as we told you, was a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, you name it, from the other reporters we have had on. It's just incredibly massive and hard to believe. But it is actually happening. Greg Palast has now broken the story world-wide. He has actually interviewed the former top World Bank economist. Continuing, Sir ,with all these points. I mean for the average person out there, in a nutshell, what is the system you are exposing?”
Greg: “We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed. And the problem is, this is the chief economist, this is not some minor guy. By the way, a couple of months ago, after he was fired, he was given the Nobel Prize in Economics. So he is no fool. He told me, he went into countries where they were talking about privatizing and selling off these assets. And basically, they knew, they literally knew and turned the other way when it was understood that leaders of these countries and the chief ministers would salt away hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Alex says: “But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.”
Greg: “They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks.”
Got that? Citibank was able to get a hold of half the Argentine banks.
Greg goes on: “You've got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. I mean, it is not just a question of the theft. You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense.”
Alex says: “And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes.” Wow, that’s something. “They have the sole control over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune.”
Greg says: “Well, the problem that we have is – look, the IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes, what are we getting for the money that we put into there? And it looks like we are getting mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is in flames. He was telling me, the Chief Economist, Stiglitz, was telling me that he started questioning what was happening. You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And he was saying that he questioned this and he got fired for it. But he was saying that they even kind of plan in the riots.” Did you hear that? They even kind of plan in the riots. “They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you are going to get riots in the streets. And they say, well, that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you have riot, you lose.” What’s this? They get you in a Catch 22, the IMF and the World Bank. “All the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions.”
So they add all these conditions on, things go down the drain enough to where the citizens revolt and riots start, and then whatever is left of the country flees away, and they have to borrow more and they have to do more conditions. And they know this is going to happen; they plan for it.
Alex interjects: “And that makes them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. ...”
Greg says: “I've just been talking to, out in California just yesterday, from here in Paris, the chief investigators of Enron for the State of California.” See, this guy has access to a lot of high people, they get the right information; this isn’t just some Joe Dokes on the street. He met with the investigators in California. “They are telling me some of the games these guys are playing. No one is watching that. It's not just the stockholders that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular.”
Alex says: “Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation – from the experts I've had on and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks.”
Greg: “Well yeah, this stuff has really gone just like a three-card Monty game. I mean, remember that there is money at the bottom. You did pay California's electric bills according to the investigations, they are telling me that they were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12 billion dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get it back from now.”
Alex says: “Well they actually caught the Governor buying it [electricity] for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron” – selling it back to them. What is this? – “selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt ...”
Wow. See, during the energy crisis a few months ago I didn’t come upon this evidence. Enron sells California a megawatt for $137 and then California sells it back to Enron for a dollar? And then what does Enron do? Probably sells it back to California again.
“And they’re doing it over and over and over again,” Alex says.
Greg: “Yeah, the system has gotten completely out of control and these guys knew exactly what was happening. Well, you have to understand that some of the guys who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after.” See, so they’re insiders and they know how the thing works and they can take advantage of every little loophole they can.
Greg goes on: “In fact, here I'm in London right now and we have, the British has some responsibility here. The guy who was on the audit committee of Enron, Lord Wakeham. And this guy is a real piece of work. There isn't a conflict of interest that he hasn't been involved in.”
Alex says: “And he is the head of NM Rothschild.” Right.
Greg: “There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something like fifty boards. And one of the problems, he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. And in fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants here in Britain. And they owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what this guy approved and then they gave him a job on the board. And on top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. So you know, this guy was supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts.”
Alex: “Well, he is also the head of the board to regulate the media.”
Greg: “Yes, he is, because I have run into real problems, because he regulates me.”
Alex: “They are also trying to pass laws in England where you've got an 800-year old well, or in some cases a 2000-year old well that the Romans built that's on your property and they say we are putting a meter on it. You can't have your own water.”
Greg: “Yeah, and that's Lord Wakeham. I mean, this is the guy from Enron. He is a real piece of work. He can't be touched here because, like I say, he actually regulates the media. So if you complain, he's got his hand on your pen.”
Alex: “Burrow into NM Rothschild, you'll find it all there. Go through these four points. I mean, you've got the documents. The IMF/World Bank implosion, four points, how they bring down a country and destroy the resources of the people.”
Greg: “Right. First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks.” I think this is number two. “Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills – we can't even imagine selling off water companies in the United States of America. But imagine if a private company like Enron owned your water. So then the prices go through the roof.” Third, “Then open up your borders to trade – complete free marketeering. And Stiglitz who was the chief economist, remember he was running this system, he was their numbers man, and he was saying it was like the opium wars. He said this isn't free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through this.”
Alex says: “Well look, China has a 40% tariff on us, we have a 2% on them. That's not free and fair trade. It's to force all industry to a country that the globalists fully control.”
Greg says: “Well, you know Walmart – I did a story, in fact, if you read my book. Let me just mention that I've got a book out, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, about how, unfortunately, America has been put up for sale. ... But I have a story in there about how Walmart has 700 plants in China.” Did you know this, people? Walmart has 700 plants in China?
He goes on: “There is almost nothing in a Walmart store that comes from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall. ... What's even worse is they will hire a factory, and right next to it will be the sister factory, which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Walmart. ... I know, it's grim.” Listen to this part: “In fact, I talked to a guy, Harry Wu, is his name and, in fact, he broke into – he's been in Chinese prison for 19 years. No one believed his horrible stories. He actually broke back into prison, took a camera with him and took pictures of the conditions and said, this is the conditions of factories where Walmart is getting its stuff made ...”
Alex says: “I was threatened to be thrown off TV here in Austin when I aired video of little girls four years old chained down, skinnier than Jews in concentration camps, to die. And I was threatened, if you ever air that again, you will be arrested.”
Greg: “Well you know, it is horrifying stuff that, unfortunately, I have been handed and Stiglitz, was very courageous for him to come out and make these statements. Like I said, he didn't provide me the documents. The documents really sealed it because it said this is what really happened. They really do say ‘sign on the dotted line agreeing to 111 conditions for each nation.’ And the public has no say; they don't know what the hell is happening to them. ...”
Alex: “Go back into privatization. Go through these four points. That's the key. It sends billions to politicians to hand everything over.”
Greg: “Yeah, he called it briberization,” – I guess that was Stiglitz he meant there – “which is, you sell off the water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's say that that's worth about 5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500 million, you can figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator from Argentina two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that after he got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying, give the gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron, that's our current president. He said that what he found was really creepy was that Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world's price for their gas and he said, how can you make such an offer? And he was told, not by George W., but by a partner in the deal, well, if we only pay one-fifth, that leaves quite a little bit for you to go in your Swiss bank account. And that's how it's done. ...
“I've got the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush family very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina. And he said, yeah, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George W. Bush? He said, yeah, November 1988, the guy called him up and said, give a pipeline to Enron. Now this is the same George W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken Lay until 1994.” Six years later.
Greg goes on: “Well, you know [in Houston], I was [at Enron] in May, telling people in Britain you've never heard of Enron, but ... And these are the guys who have figured out how to [garbled, bleeped out, I guess] this government.” Screw this government, I guess. “In fact, we saw some interesting documents, a month before Bush took office. Bill Clinton, I think to get even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn't charge more than 100 times the normal price for electricity.” When I first read this I said, oh, well, Clinton did something good, but it turns out with the cap they couldn’t charge more than 100 times the normal price? What kind of a cap is that?
Greg goes on: “That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying, get rid of Clinton's cap on prices.” You remember how this rush to judgment happened, don’t you, when they first took office? “Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy department reversed the clamps on Enron. OK, how much is that worth for those guys? You know, that has got to be worth,” – you know what that’s got to be worth – “that paid off in a week all the donations.”
I mean, look, if they were selling it for $137 a megawatt and buying it back for one dollar, there’s how many millions of megawatts are involved in the whole state? And if they give the Bush campaign three or four million dollars, not just hundreds of thousands, but three or four million, they’d make that back in a week.
Alex interjects: “Listen at the bombs you are dropping. You are interviewing these ministers, former head of IMF/World Bank economist – all of this, you've got the documents, paying people's Swiss Bank accounts, all this happening. Then you've got Part 2, what do they do after they start imploding?” (That was just Part 1.)
Greg says: “Well, then they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets, I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession that was created by these guys, you are really going to absolutely demolish this nation. After we were attacked on September 11, Bush ran out and said, we’ve got to spend $50 to $100 billion dollars to save our economy. We don't start cutting the budget, you start trying to save this economy. But they tell these countries you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according to the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign banks – the foreign banks” – get this part here – “the foreign banks are collecting from 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking. In fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina” – this is just way too much evidence here, it’s really overload. They make them sign all these asset sales and all that stuff, and then when they borrow the money back, they do it at such exorbitant prices that then they said – “In fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws against loan-sharking. Because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine law.” So they go in and they changed the laws!!
Alex: “But Greg, you said it yourself, and the documents show it. They first implode the economy to create that atmosphere. They institute the entire climate that does this.”
Greg: “Yeah, and then they say, well gee, we can't lend you any money except at these loan-shark rates. We don't allow people to charge 75% interest in the United States. That's loan-sharking.”
Alex: “Part 3 and Part 4. What do they do after they do that?”
Greg: “Like I said, you open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars. And once you have destroyed an economy that can't produce anything, one of the terrible things is that they are forcing nations to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs – legal drugs. And by the way, that's how you end up with an illegal drug trade, what's there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack ...”
Alex: “This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?”
Greg: “Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela.”
See, this guy’s got access to a lot of the right people.
Alex: “And they install their own corporate government.”
Greg: “What they said was, here you've got an elected president of the government and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics – they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying is we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is, I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government – and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military, and I'm telling you, watch this space: the President of Venezuela” – of course, this is three months later; this happened in the beginning of March, and I haven’t looked to see who’s the president of Venezuela lately – but he says, “the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies.”
Alex: “Greg Palast, here is the problem. You said it when you first came out of the gates. They are getting hungry, they are doing it to the United States now. Enron, from all the evidence that I've seen was a front, another shill. They would steal assets and then transfer it to other older global companies, then they blew that out and stole the pension funds. Now they are telling us that terrorism is coming any day. It's going to happen if you don't give your rights up. Bush did not involve Congress and the others who are supposed to be in the accession if there is a nuclear attack in the secret government, [the] Washington Post [said] – ‘Congress Not Advised of Shadow Government.’” – remember that headline a few weeks ago? – “We have the Speaker of the House not being told. This looks like coup d'etat here. I'm going to come right out with it. We had better spread the word on this now or these greedy creatures are going to go all the way.”
Greg finishes by saying: “I'm very sad about one thing. I report this story in the mainstream press of Britain. I'm on the BBC, despite Lord Wakeham. I know he doesn't like me there. I'm in the BBC, I'm in the main daily paper, which is the equivalent of the New York Times or whatever, and we do get the information out. And I'm just very sorry that we have to have an alternative press, an alternative radio network and everything else to get out the information that makes any sense. I mean, this information should be available to every American. I mean, after all, it's our government.”
Now, it should be fairly simple to follow the IMF and World Bank money to find out who gains the most from the decimation of governments and the enslavement of whole nations. The corporations that we hear so much about are not the top rung of the ladder. And 2,000 years ago and more, the writers of the Bible wrote down the general conditions that we are experiencing today. How did they know that?
And the Bible also predicts one special person who will head up globalism. He’s called the Antichrist. And this name is more correctly translated “substitute Christ.” Surely he goes against Christ, but who he is, what he does, when he comes on the scene, is more characterized by the term “substitute Christ.” He’s a leader who will take over by bringing peace to the world in general, starting with the Middle East. A look of lasting – at least it looks like – a lasting peace. But who could ever do that? Who could bring about the three main ingredients in such a peace? We have to have enough influence to provide for, number one, a Palestinian state – no mean task there. Number two, the sharing of the Temple Mount by Islam and Judaism. And lastly, the sharing of Jerusalem by the Arabs and the Jews.
I’ll tell you what. Let’s test our reactions to some names. Just let these names go in one ear and let whatever pops into your head, yes or no, come out, okay? Saddam Hussein. Yes or no? Can he do all those three things? Can he bring about a Palestinian state, sharing the Temple Mount, sharing Jerusalem? How about Ariel Sharon? How about Gaddafi? Maybe Arafat. Mubarak? Let’s get out of the Middle East for a second. How about Prince Charles? How about the leader of the European Community? What about Saudi Prince Abdullah? And while we’re at it, let’s throw in Putin of Russia. Yes or no? Can Putin bring about a Palestinian state, sharing of the mount, and sharing of Jerusalem? How about Bush? Do you think he can do that? Maybe the Pope. Oh, the Pope. How about King Abdullah of Jordan? I bet you said no to every one of those, in your head. None of those people, it looks like, none of those people can bring about a Palestinian state, the sharing of the Temple Mount, and Judaism with Islam?
Here’s a little Hashemite history. Until the end of World War II, Ottoman Turks ruled the area from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, as well as the entire Saudi Peninsula. Allied with Germany, the Ottomans struggled to hold on to an empire that had been a retreat for centuries. The British badly wanted to defeat the Ottomans, having built the Suez Canal, which gave them rapid access to India and China, they had to protect it. They needed to secure the sea lanes of the eastern Mediterranean and drive the Turks away from the canal and its approaches. The British conducted a series of campaigns to break the Turks, including the disastrous Gallipoli landings and the more successful invasion of the province of Syria by General Allenby, who was supported by a Bedouin army recruited from the Arabian Peninsula. That’s important. Controlled by British intelligence and the special operations teams, including that of the famous Lawrence of Arabia, they first loosened Turkish control over Arabia and then supported Allenby’s attack on Jerusalem and Damascus. King Hussein’s tribe, the Hashemite, was the engine behind the operation.
The British were allied with the French, which meant that they had to share the spoils of war. The British kept Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula for themselves. They did agree to divide the Ottoman province of Syria, which contained today’s Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The division, codified in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, was extraordinarily arbitrary. A line was drawn through the province. Everything to the north would be French. Everything to the south would be British. They would just divide up these people’s countries, right?
The British were busy double-crossing everyone. They had made many promises to the people. They had promised various competing Bedouin tribes that they would be given responsibility for Mecca, just as they promised in the Balfour Declaration that they would give the Jews a homeland, while they also promised the Arabs that they would control their own destiny. They were particularly close to King Hussein’s tribe, the Hashemites, who had governed Mecca since the 13th century. That’s a long time; 700 years that they were in charge. Having spearheaded the British campaign against the Ottomans, you might have thought that the Hashemites were in good shape. Unfortunately, a rapidly rising Bedouin tribe, the Saud, who were Wahhabi Muslims, had become more powerful in the Hashemite, and the British double-crossed the Hashemites, turning their Arabian Peninsula and the guardianship of Mecca over to them.
The British had to figure out what to do with the Hashemites. The royal family could be given thrones, but the tribe itself had to get out of Arabia, since they would be torn apart by the Sauds or, at the very least, destabilize the whole region. The British decided to settle them in the middle of nowhere. There was not a whole lot east of the Jordan River, so the British decided to put them there. The region had no name, since it was primarily a wasteland of little interest to anyone. So they named it for where it was, on the other side of the Jordan, or, to be fancy, Trans-Jordan. And you remember that name from a long time ago; they used to call Jordan Trans-Jordan.
After independence in 1948, the word “Trans” was dropped out, and the modern state of Jordan or, to be more precise, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, was born as the homeland of the displaced band of Bedouins with nowhere else to go. The rest of the “mandate” was left with the same name it had when it was the country within the Ottoman province of Syria, Filistina, after the Biblical people that produced Goliath, you know, the Philistines. The British kept that name and it became bastardized into English as Palestine. And so the modern map of the region was born. It kills me the way these people work!
Palestine consisted of small villages surviving on agriculture and small merchants. Divided among Moslem, Christian, Druse and Jewish communities, much of the land was owned by absentee landlords. The people of Palestine had as much in common with the Bedouins across the river as a New Yorker has with a Montana cowboy -- enough not to like each other a lot and not to understand each other at all. They were now neighbors.
So, the French invented Lebanon, the British invented Jordan, a county became Palestine, and Syria claimed everything. Then the Jews showed up. If things weren't wild enough before, Jewish intellectuals from Poland, who argued the finer points of German philosophy, decided to come and farm in the middle of this insanity. The fact that they couldn't speak Arabic merely added to their charm, since they also knew nothing about farming. Jews living in London purchased the land from Arabs living in Paris and Cairo, thereby throwing people who had farmed the land for generations off their land. Out of this, the State of Israel was born.
See, it’s not like they came in and took over, right? Maybe you’ve heard that as an aside someplace here and there, but it isn’t dwelled on. The Jews bought that land. They bought it. If you want to talk about who stole land, talk about the guys who sold it to them.
After the War of Independence in 1948, the West Bank remained under Arab rule. Since at that time no one had yet thought of an independent Palestine (the main thinking was that Palestine belonged to Syria), governance of the West Bank fell to the only Arab country physically connected to it, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
This was big trouble for the Jordanians, since the Hashemites didn't like the Palestinians and the Palestinians didn't like the Hashemites. Hussein's grandfather held secret talks with the Israelis on a peace settlement designed to keep the Palestinians under control. Unfortunately for him, the peace talks didn't stay secret and he was assassinated. From 1948 until 1967, Hussein, who succeeded his grandfather, was in constant danger from the Palestinians. In many ways he welcomed the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, since it made the Palestinians their problem rather than his. Unfortunately for him, there were masses of Palestinian refugees living in Jordan after 1967, who decided that it was time to get rid of the Hashemites and create their own state. They tried to do just that in September 1970. Unfortunately for them, the Bedouin Army that had been trained by the British not only defeated the Palestinians but conducted a brutal massacre, securing the Hashemite throne from its only real threat, the Palestinians.
The "Black September" massacre had two effects. It directly spawned a wave of Palestinian terrorism and it turned King Hussein into a wise statesman. Having taken care of his Palestinian problem, he could now take the long view. Hussein's brilliance was to appear to be an urbane man and wise ruler utterly dedicated to peace while doing everything possible to prevent the emergence of an independent Palestinian state and shifting the blame to Israel. We suspect that he was much relieved, if not very surprised, when the Oslo Accords fell apart. The last thing he wanted to see was an independent Palestinian state threatening his throne in the year 2000 as it had in 1970. So he acted the peace maker at the Wye Plantation meeting, content with the knowledge that nothing could possibly come of any of it. See that?
The Hashemites’ eyes were always on Mecca and the usurper Saudis. Israel, Palestine and all the rest were detours in Hashemite history. Patience and long memories are part of the region's geopolitics.
The point to all of this is that there are no permanent solutions to the region's problems. And I have to agree with him on that. Even though it looks like we’re going to get a permanent solution, we’re not. Bible prophecy says yeah, there will be peace, and then three and a half years later there will be war again. It will look like a permanent peace, but it won’t be.
How can Israel make a lasting peace with Jordan, whose real interest is to dream of a return to Mecca and 700 years of greatness?
Hussein managed to die while still king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. That in itself was his great achievement. Hussein's secret mission was to survive and to never forget his lost inheritance. That is everyone's secret mission in the region. That means tension, conspiracy and war. The best that can be hoped for is temporary periods of relatively little mayhem. Peace is out of the question. I disagree there. Many conquerors have come into this region from the outside, dreaming of permanent empire. They all have gone away, many broken by the experience. American dreams of permanent, stable arrangements would be funny, if they weren't so dangerous.
Well, now how about those big three conditions? King Abdullah, with the help of the United States and its allies, can be reinstalled as ruler over the old Hashemite kingdom, which includes Iraq, leaving him plenty of room to give the Palestinians part or all of Jordan for a homeland. It’s a crummy piece of land anyway. Iraq’s got a lot of oil. Secondly, as a direct descendant of Muhammad, and the symbolic head of Islam, he can effect cooperation in the use of the Temple Mount by Muslims and Jews, and he would also, because of number one and two, and more help from a very grateful world, be able to settle the Jerusalem issue.
Somebody is going to rise to the position of peacemaker in the Middle East. The Bible predicted it as much as 2,500 years ago, when Daniel was inspired by God to write his book. And St. John just supplied some more of the details 500 years later with his Revelation account.
The IMF and the World Bank are just a couple of the many tools being used to bring about the world conditions which will be necessary for the earth’s population to welcome the great peacemaker!
This is the kind of practical Christianity that we study at Straight Talk About God.
How can I be so sure that the Bible is true, about the coming New World Order and their Leader the Antichrist? Well, it took me years of study, but by finding all those times and places in history that fulfilled Biblical prophecy, I’ve come to understand, and I’m able to live my life as though God is real. And He does all the stuff He says.
This is Jack.
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