Category Archives: History

Book Review: Tragedy and Hope 101

Tragedy and Hope 101: The Illusion of Justice, Freedom, and Democracy by Joseph Plummer, Introduction by G. Edward Griffin (Apr 24, 2014)

T and Hope 101 front-RCLEARNFO Rating: 5 / 5 Stars
203 Pages (Paperback)
Available at Amazon and other book re-sellers
Also available at no charge from Mr. Plumber’s web site HERE

Don’t have time to read 1,300 pages?  Joseph Plummer’s ‘Tragedy & Hope 101’ is for you.

There is no question in my mind that one of the seminal books that authoritatively exposes the predominant power structure’s manipulation of world events is Carrol Quiqley’s ‘Tragedy & Hope’; but it is over 1,300 pages of incredible detail, which most of us don’t have time to read.  This is why ‘Tragedy & Hope 101’ is such an important book.

Without an understanding of statecraft, it’s nearly impossible to make sense of the chaos in our world. Carroll Quiqley’s books are the on-ramp to this understanding.

To give you a taste of what you can expect from Plummer’s new book, here is a short excerpt from the Introduction to ‘Tragedy & Hope 101’ by G. Edward Griffin . . .

“Knowledge of who Carroll Quigley was and the deceptions that he revealed is essential for understanding the real world of today. His close relationship with the Network and his approval of its aims made it possible to provide an insider’s analysis of the minds and methods of the global elite. Without this knowledge, the actions of those who dominate the U.S. government and the Western world do not make sense. With it, everything falls into place.

Be forewarned. The journey you are about to begin is not for the faint hearted. If you are comfortable with the illusions that currently pass for political reality, this book is not for you because, once you discover how the deceivers perform their magic, the comfort of ignorance is no longer possible. Once the bell is rung, it cannot be unrung.

The bell starts ringing on the next page.”

ClearNFO gives ‘Tragedy & Hope 101’ 5 out of 5 stars for a well researched, written and organized book that does more than summarize Quigley’s ‘Tragedy and Hope’; it makes this important knowledge accessible to the average person.  ClearNFO recommends this book as a primer for Quigley’s T&H and perhaps more importantly as a companion for Quigley’s ‘Ango-American Establishment’.

As a Bonus Mr. Plummer is offering a 90 percent reduced “excerpts” version of ‘The Anglo-American Establishment’ and ‘Tragedy and Hope’, where you can find a few hundred pages from the two books here: Tragedy & Hope 101 – Bonus Material

Additional Information on this topic:
The Quigley Formula – G. Edward Griffin lecture

From The Naked Capitalist, Skousen’s review of Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope:

“Power from any source tends to create an appetite for additional power… It was almost inevitable that the super-rich would one day aspire to control not only their own wealth, but the wealth of the whole world.” “As I see it, the great contribution which Dr. Carroll Quigley unintentionally made[…]was to help the ordinary American people realize the utter contempt which the network leaders have for ordinary people. Human beings are treated en masse as helpless puppets on an international chess board where giants of economic and political power subject them to wars, revolution, civil strife, confiscation, subversion, indoctrination, manipulation and outright deception as it suits their fancy and their concocted schemes for world domination.”

MORE NFO: Excellent commentary and summary of Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy & Hope can be found at the link below. T&H is perhaps the most important book of the 20th Century. Don”t neglect Quigley’s ‘Anglo-American Establishment’. Excellent reading list below in the show notes including critical books by Antony C Sutton. An understanding of the contents of these books will make current national and geopolitics crystal clear. All these books are sourced and based on documented fact that today’s educational systems have been rigged to obfuscate.

Peace Revolution episode 018: (Podcast)

A History of the World in Our Time / Origins of Tragedy and Hope  (Duration: 1:09:40)

A little background: Who are the Russians?

Russia

Russia

Who are the Russians?

by Gaither Stewart at the Greanville Post

Important article from Gaither Stewart on Russian history.  Anyone who has read Russian histroy can attest to the complexity and the almost impossible necessity to memorize an endless list of difficult names to put all the pieces together.  Here, Mr. Stewart has done much of the heavy lifting for us.  Even though this is a relatively lengthy article, it represents a very short, but understandable history that I believe will help ClearNFO readers understand some vital background to help put today’s geopolitics in some sort of context that is very much missing in our media and sadly in the CIA and US State Department.   Enjoy!

CFR: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

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CFR Headquarters located in the former Harold Pratt House in New York City

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

Excellent article from the CFR below with great detail and timeline. However, a few ugly facts were glossed over or omitted. Obama is currently planning another overt attack on Syria. Obviously, Obama and team didn’t learn the first time Putin pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. US/NATO used tried and true operation Gladio techniques to destabilize Ukraine’s democratically elected government. The US gave Russia assurances –which it broke– that they would not move NATO one more inch to the east after the fall of the USSR. There is NO spreading of democracy by the USA or NATO. This is a geopolitical move to isolate and marginalize Russia according to the Brzezinski Doctrine not to spread democracy. The IMF will use the debt to asset strip Ukraine and the threat of withholding additional funds to completely control Ukraine. Also, I read from certain whistle-blowers that it was the US/NATO who provided the snipers who shot both the Ukraine authorities and the protestors killing many to foment the civil war. Kiev is currently indiscriminately bombing innocent civilian populations of mostly Russian speaking people in East Ukraine.

CFR: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

Additional NFO:

Asset-Stripping Ukraine

Crisis in Ukraine

Can Ukraine Escape IMF trap?

 

What are NSK and Laibach?

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Aug 26, 2014

‘Never speak the passions of your breast unless you know the remedy.’
—The Wanderer (Old 10th Century Anglo-Saxon Viking Warrior Poem)

LAIBACH_Press_Photo_2011If you’ve never been in a major war or had your country and cities invaded and subjugated by ruthless, powerful forces, you may have a difficult time understanding the fear, anger, helplessness and hopelessness of enduring such insults to customs, icons and loved ones with no way to fight back.  Add to this the cheat of being sold on a new better government to correct the injuries of the past only to find out that the new and improved government is much, much worse; and for some in Eastern Europe, the cycle continues; yet what remains today is a distant memory of family, friends, traditions and of nationalism … and it is those memory fragments along with a deep archetype of the meaning of freedom that can be accessed through story, art and music.

Those of us familiar with the rise of totalitarian regimes will also be familiar with their use of symbolism and art to create, focus, amplify and manipulate the body politic into slavery, death and destruction. So how to fight back against the overwhelming force of the state? The state uses art for propaganda so why not use art against the state?  Laibach attempts to turn this abuse of art on its head by using the totalitarian regimes’ own art, symbolism and artifacts in avant-garde / kitsch mixtures of high production value music and art to expose the tyranny all governments hold over the people they seek to control. Maybe they hope that through art, they can warn people; or that they can rekindle the latent memories of tyranny, death and destruction people so easily forget? Maybe they seek to use the emotive forces of their art and music to bypass the critical thinking mind for more direct access to the longer lasting and powerful emotional memories stored deeply in the sinews and crevasses of the collective subconscious. Whatever the case, I think you will find their art interesting, enjoyable and perhaps disturbing.

NSK_LogoFrom Wikipedia: “Neue Slowenische Kunst (a German phrase meaning “New Slovenian Art”), a.k.a. NSK, is a controversial political art collective that announced itself in Slovenia in 1984, when Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia. NSK’s name, being German, is compatible with a theme in NSK works: the complicated relationship Slovenes have had with Germans. The name of NSK’s music wing, Laibach, is also the German name of the Slovene capital Ljubljana, creating controversy through evoking memories of the Nazi occupation of Slovenia during the Second World War and Slovenia’s previous seven centuries as part of the Austrian Empire.”

Laibach – The Whistleblowers

Laibach – Eurovision

 Laibach – Across the Universe (Official video)

Documentary on Laibach…
Laibach — Predictions of Fire [Prerokbe Ognja] [English Subtitles]

from the Q&A of Laibach…

Q: Why God does not exist ? (Frédéric)
L: Because God is God and he does not need to exist!

Q: Reason or Faith? (Rhythm, Bulgaria, 2004)
L: Reason is doubt. Faith without the doubt is a dead faith.

Additional links:

Laibach – PAST:PERFECT (WAT Documentary)

Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones

SecretSutton

From the Reading list

America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones by Antony C. Sutton

Publisher’s Foreword:

Antony Sutton was a giant among men. His integrity cost him dearly: his vocation, his income, his family … maybe even his life.

After coming across this book in 1988, I searched out and read all that I could find of Professor Sutton’s works. One reason: his books helped me to understand what my father had told me in 1969, ten years after he had quit a high-level job at the CIA — because he wouldn’t go along with their corrupt practices. Dad had mentioned “secret societies,” drug trafficking, and that the fight-to-the-death struggle between Communism and Capitalism was a “managed” conflict. Almost twenty, I was newly married with a baby, and had no idea what my father was talking about. America’s Secret Establishment contributed greatly to my garnering a different thesis of how the world actually works, versus what was presented to me by the media and schooling.

Kris Millegan
March 3, 2009

ANTONY SUTTON was a research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, from 1968 to 1973. He is a former economics professor at California State University Los Angeles. He was born in London in 1925 and educated at the universities of London, Gottingen and California with a D.Sc. degree from University of Southampton, England.

Authors Preface:
America’s Secret Establishment

After 16 books and 25 years in basic research I thought I’d heard it all … the world was a confused mess, probably beyond understanding and certainly beyond salvation – and there was little ’1 could do about it.

Back in 1968 my Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development was published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In three substantial volumes I detailed how the West had built the Soviet Union. However, the work generated a seemingly insoluble puzzle – why have we done this? Why did we build the Soviet Union, while we also transferred technology to Hitler’s Germany? Why does Washington want to conceal these facts? Why have we boosted Soviet military power? And simultaneously boosted our own?

In subsequent books, the Wall Street series, I added more questions – but no answers. I had more or less arrived at the conclusion that there was no rational answer that could be proven.

Then a year or so ago I received an eight-inch batch of documents – nothing less than the membership lists of an American secret society. Glancing through the sheets it was more than obvious – this was no ordinary group. The names spelled Power, with a capital P. As I probed each individual a pattern emerged … and a formerly fuzzy world became crystal clear.

The book you will read here is a combined version of a series reporting on this research. Each volume builds on the previous volume in a logical step-by-step process.

These volumes will explain why the West built the Soviets and Hitler; why we go to war, to lose; why Wall Street loves Marxists and Nazis; why the kids can’t read; why the Churches have become propaganda founts; why historical facts are suppressed, why politicians lie and a hundred other whys.

This series is infinitely more important than the original Western Technology series on technological transfers. If I have a magnum opus, this is it.

ANTONY C. SUTTON
Phoenix, Arizona
July 30, 1983

I recommend purchasing the book, but here is a full text copy that is searchable.

Those were the days!

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Southwest Airlines Air Hostess, 1968

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | August 22, 2014

Those were the days! I remember when stewardesses were stewardesses and flying was fun … and I could just walk onto a plane with no metal detector, naked x-ray shot or pat-down and your family could meet you at the gate. Now we have the TSA looking for Al-Qaeda in our underwear while our borders remain wide open.  Progress?  I think not.

What Capitalism is not

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by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | August 22, 2014

Just a reminder … capitalism is NOT crony capitalism or corporatism. Crony capitalism and corporatism are in fact a form of fascism not capitalism.  For capitalism to operate effectively, there must be free markets. When corporations cozy up to the government to get special favors or pass laws to limit their competition, you have a merger of corporations and the state which is fascism. Even though central banks are corporations and privately held, they have achieved the ultimate merger with the state. They have inserted a straw directly into the blood of their host and can drink freely engorging themselves while the body suffers.

Asset-Stripping Ukraine

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by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | August 20, 2014

Let the ass-raping begin … anyone who has studied the history of the IMF fully realizes and can easily recognize the IMF’s tried and true method of operation when they see it. BTW, the IMF is a tool of the ‘Predominant Power Structure’ which controls the US State Department, Geopolitics and media. Our friendly bankers at the IMF come bearing false gifts of good tidings & money to help needy countries; only to load them up with massive debts that they can never, ever repay. Once they can’t pay back the first traunch, the fun begins. To get more money to help them out of an even more desperate situation, the host country –in this case Ukraine– must then turn over the control of their country to their new money masters at the IMF. History shows that a large portion of the funds go to the private Swiss bank accounts of the heads of state of the host country and rarely to the stated purpose: people or infrastructure. Bottom line is that the bankers create money out of nothing and then use this money as a tool to take control and then asset-strip third-world countries across the globe. This my friends is how the sausage of US Foreign policy is really made. If you don’t have a clue, get a clue. If you can’t afford a clue rent one from me. Do your homework and quit falling for every 10 second headline spewing from the mouths of the gatekeeper press.

Additional Information  …

Who the International Aid Agencies Serve
BFP Exclusive- “The EU and IMF Rape of Ukraine Agriculture”
William Engdahl | August 20, 2014 Ukraine’s rogue regime lifts the ban on sale of farm land and to open its rich agriculture to Monsanto, DuPont & the GMO agribusiness cartel.
Ukraine Crisis Continues — Paul Craig Roberts | August 20, 2014
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Book) — December 27, 2005 by John Perkins


John Perkins “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”Extended Interview 2008

 

THE SCIENCE OF KISSING

lips-308060_150THE SCIENCE OF KISSING By Brann the Iconoclast

published in 1899 in Waco, Texas

I note that a Britisher named Prof. Bridger has been infringing my copyright by proclaiming, as an original discovery, that kissing is an excellent tonic and will cure dyspepsia. When the o’er busy bacteriologist first announced that osculation was a dangerous pastime, that divers and sundry varieties of bacteria hoped blithely back and forth engendering disease and death, I undertook a series of experiments solely in the interest of science. Being a Baptist Preacher and making camp-meetings my specialty, I had unusual opportunity for investigation, for those of our faith are strict constructionist of the Biblical law to “greet one another with a kiss.” I succeeded in demonstrating before the end of the tenting season that osculation, when practiced with reasonable discretion and unfaltering industry, is an infallible antidote for at least half the ills that human flesh is heir to. The reason the doctors arrived at different conclusions is that they kissed indiscriminately and reasoned inductively. They found on casting up the account that bad breath and face powder, the sour milk-bottle of youth and the chilling frost of age, comprised six-sevenths of the sum total. Under such conditions there was nothing to do but establish a quarantine. I pointed out, as Prof. Bridger has since done, that a health microbe as well as a disease bacillus nidificates on the osculatory apparatus, and added that failure to absorb a sufficient quantity of these hygiologic germs into the system causes old maids to look jaundiced and bachelors to die sooner than benedicts. Kisses, when selected with due care and taken on the installment plan, will not only restore a misplaced appetite, but are especially beneficial in cases of hay fever, as they banish that tired feeling, tone up the liver, invigorate the heart, and make the blood to sing thro’ the system like a giant jewsharp. I found by patient experiment that the health microbe becomes active at 15, reaches maturity at 20, begins to lose its vigor at 40, and is quite useless as a tonic when, as some one has tersely expressed it, a woman’s kisses begin to “taste of her teeth.” Thin bluish lips produce very few health germs, and those scarce worth the harvesting; but a full red mouth with Cupid curves at the corners, will yield enormously if the crop be properly cultivated. I did not discover whether the blonde or brunette variety is entitled to precedence in medical science, but incline to the opinion that a judicious admixture is most advisable from a therapeutical standpoint. Great care should be taken when collecting the germs not to crush them by violent collision or blow them away with a loud explosion that sounds like hitting an empty sugar hogshead with a green hide. The practice still prevailing in many parts of this country of chasing a young woman over the furniture and around the barn like an amateur cowboy trying to rope a maverick, rounding her up in the presence of a dozen people , unscrewing her neck and planting almost any place a kiss that sounds like a muley cow pulling her hind foot out of a black-waxy mud-hole, and which jars the putty off the window panes, possesses no more curative powers than hitting a flitch of bacon with the back of your hand. I prithee, avoid it; when a girl runs from a kiss you may take it for granted either that the germ crop is not ripe or you are poaching on somebody else’s preserves. The best results can be obtained about the midnight hour, when the dew is on the rose, the jasmine bud drunken with its own perfume, and the mockbird trilling a last good-night to his drowsy mate…and on and on it goes.

Note: I thought this was an interesting insight into the real history of the day. Hope you enjoyed this! -db