Numerous cultures have had holidays dedicated to the celebration of pulling the wool over the eyes of others, from the ancient Romans, to early Muslims, to medieval Christians, to Americans and Europeans today. As April begins, we once again turn a mischievous eye to the concept of the fool and, as always, each person seeks to be the prankster and never the victim.

Unfortunately, even the most vigilant of Americans can sometimes be led astray by a clever ruse, and I believe this is taking place today in the Liberty Movement’s perception of the rising “tensions” between Russia and the West.

In my article Ukraine Crisis: Just Another Globalist-Engineered Powder Keg, I outlined the history of false paradigms and engineered conflicts between numerous nations, including how these conflicts are exploited by global money interests to consolidate and centralize social and political power. The birth of communist Russia, in particular, was directly funded by Western banks and supported with arms and military aid from the U.S. government itself. These sorts of startling facts are not taught in schools and universities exactly because the continued dominance of the money elite relies on continued misrepresentations of legitimate history.

Many in the Liberty Movement have studied and are well aware of the central banking cabal and its stranglehold on the U.S. and Europe. But strangely, some people refuse to acknowledge the substantial possibility that global bankers are also in control of Russia and are playing both sides of the burgeoning economic war.

As the Ukrainian crisis festers and other dangers in the Pacific and the Mideast grow, an odd consensus among alternative analysts is taking hold — namely the belief that President Vladimir Putin and Russia represent some kind of opposition to globalization and the rule of corporate financiers. Perhaps moments in Putin’s rhetoric and the existence of media outlets like RT have seduced elements of the Liberty Movement into assuming that Russia is a “victim” in the grand schemes of Western oligarchy and that Russia is truly the "white knight", the underdog willing to stand up against the New World Order. I’m sorry to say that nothing could be further from the truth.

Russia is just as much a tool of the global elite today as it was after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Vladimir Putin is just as much a socialist puppet as Barack Obama. Let’s start from the beginning of the rebirth of Russia as a regional federation in the 1990s after the fall of the Warsaw Pact.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader largely credited with the ultimate dismantling of the Soviet Union and the rise of the “new” Russia, has long been a proponent of the “New World Order” (his words) and centralized global government. In an address entitled “Perspectives On Global Change” to the students of Lafayette College in Easton, Penn., Gorbachev argued that such a solution was necessary to safeguard “freedom.”

“The opportunities that existed after the end of the Cold War… were not used properly. At that same time, we saw that the entire world situation did not develop positively. We saw deterioration where there should have been positive movement toward a new world order.”

He continued:

“But we still are facing the problem of building such a world order. We have crises: we are facing problems of the environment, of backwardness and poverty, of food shortages. All of these problems are because we do not have a system of global governance.”

When asked in 1995 by San Francisco Weekly what Gorbachev meant by the phrase “New World Order,” Jim Garrison, the executive director of the Gorbachev Foundation stated, bluntly that Gorbachev wanted nothing less than global government.

"Over the next 20 to 30 years, we are going to end up with world government. … It’s inevitable. It will happen and become just as normal to have a relationship with the rest of the world as we now have, say, if you are a Californian and you go to Vermont."

Take note that it has now been almost 20 years since Garrison's assertion and the motions towards a global currency are picking up great speed. Gorbachev saw global government being achieved through international organizations like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But, is this vision of the New World Order limited only to Gorbachev and his inner circle? At the Gorbachev-led State of the World Forum in 1995, Council On Foreign Relations member Zbigniew Brzezinski had this to say:

“We do not have a New World Order. … We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. … In brief, the precondition for eventual globalization — genuine globalization — is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units.”

In Zbigniew K. Brzezinski’s book Between Two Ages: America’s Role In The Technetronic Era, he elaborates on the ideology behind what brand of government the New World Order would be:

"The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty… More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken."

"National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept… Marxism represents a further vital and creative state in the maturing of man’s universal vision. Marxism is simultaneously a victory of the external, active man over the inner, passive man and a victory of reason over belief…"

Brzezinski seems to be in total agreement with Gorbachev, but why should anyone care what Brzezinski thinks about the future of American sovereignty? Perhaps it’s because he is a close and influential foreign policy adviser to Obama.

So we have now established that political interests on both sides since the 1990s have called for a New World Order and global government taking a decidedly socialist or Marxist form. Some people might applaud this kind of future, or they might despise it; but the fact remains that this plan is indeed being openly promoted and implemented by government officials and elitists in the East and the West. It is undeniable.

From its very inception, the new Russia was designed to become a catalyst for global governance, but global governance by whom? As they say, always follow the money.

Russia is more beholden to international bankers than perhaps any nation on the planet. After the collapse of the Russian economy and the dissolution of the old Soviet Union, the country was in dire straits. From 1992 to 1996, the IMF intervened in the Russian economy, offering more than $22 billion in aid (officially). This first loan package was presented as a failure when Russia defaulted on its debts, and loans from the IMF restarted through the late ’90s until this very day.

Many people are aware of the IMF involvement in Russia, but few know about the scandal surrounding where those IMF funds specifically went. In 1999, information was made public on the diversion of IMF cash into the coffers of Russian corporate elites, politicians, and even mobsters. This money was supposed to go toward the rebuilding of Russian infrastructure and economy. Instead, the aristocracy and criminal underworld were receiving a large cut of the funds.

The money was diverted and laundered through the Bank of New York, an institution founded in 1784 by none other than internationalist agent and central bank promoter Alexander Hamilton. The bank changed ownership through merger in 2007 and is now called The Bank Of New York Mellon.

The IMF’s first response to the scandal was to divert blame, stating that it had no control over the cash once it was in the hands of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). After continued revelations on funds being misused or disappearing altogether, the IMF commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers to audit the CBR. The results of that audit have never been made public. However, in 1999 the Russian government admitted that it had hidden more than $50 billion offshore in a subsidiary bank in the Channel Islands. Part of this money came from IMF bailouts. The former chairman of the CBR, Sergey Dubinin, insisted that the IMF was fully aware of who the funds were going to.

Numerous officials from the chief state auditor to the minister of internal security to the prosecutor general of Russia had come forward with information that corroborated evidence that IMF money was being distributed to the wrong people. The chairman of the Duma Committee on Security stated that some of the IMF loans never made it to Russia. Rather, the money was pumped into the secret foreign accounts of Russia’s highest officials.

Despite all of the admissions and evidence, IMF auditors refused to cite any corruption or malfeasance during their investigations. One would think that they would do everything in their power to find out where their funds went and why. The reason for the cover-up is obvious: The IMF knew exactly who the money was going to. The first bailouts of Russia were designed to buy the cooperation of the Russian political and corporate elite and ensure that the future direction of the nation would follow the globalist plan.

Fast-forward to the present. Putin continues the subversive relationship between Russia and the IMF. In 2009, Putin called for the creation of a “super reserve currency” under the control of the IMF and using the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket as a foundation.

Why would Putin, a supposedly anti-globalist nationalist leader, want the IMF, a supposedly U.S.-controlled institution, to be the global purveyor and overlord of the world economy? It’s because the IMF is not a U.S.-controlled institution; it is a banker-controlled institution. And Putin is a globalist, not a nationalist.

The recent break of Crimea from Ukraine and secession to Russia was partly instigated by the vast concessions required by the IMF if loans to Ukraine were to move forward. One of these concessions included the handing over of Ukrainian gas pipelines to America’s Chevron. Crimean leaders accused Kiev politicians of selling out Ukraine to the global bankers.

However, it was actually Russia’s finance minister and Putin who first pushed for the IMF bailout of Ukraine. It was, in fact, Putin who wanted Ukraine to “sell out” to Western financiers.

Russia’s central bank is also a member of the Bank of International Settlements, the good-old-boys club of the international banking world. The BIS was founded in 1930 and served as the focal point of globalization until after World War II, when evidence arose that the organization had helped the Nazis by funding the German war machine, laundering money for Gestapo officials and hiding funds looted from Europe by the Third Reich.

Due to the scandal, the BIS took a back seat to the IMF and World Bank; but it still exists today. Carroll Quigley, Council on Foreign Relations member, elitist insider and mentor to Bill Clinton, had this to say about the BIS in his book Tragedy And Hope:

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank, in the hands of men like Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Charles Rist of the Bank of France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

Putin has been elevated to heroic status in much of the mainstream media over the years. TIME magazine, a long-running globalist publication, recently published a front-page article with this tagline: “America’s weak and waffling. Russia’s rich and resurgent — and its leader doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him.”

This cover was used by TIME in every country in which it is distributed, except the United States.

The Times of Britain named Putin “Man Of The Year” in 2013. In Liberty Movement circles, Putin worship has been growing to disturbing levels. I would say at least half of our movement truly believes Putin and Russia to be a guiding light in the fight against globalization and the New World Order. Unfortunately, many people look for heroes to save them when they should be looking to themselves. Putin’s nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize for his “intervention” in the Syrian crisis is celebrated by many freedom fighters here in America, when, in reality, the Obama Administration’s failure to achieve a war footing in the region had nothing to do with the actions of Russia.

Remember, Russia and the U.S. are nothing but false champions dueling in a fake gladiator match paid for by the IMF. The war against Syria was thwarted because the elites were unable to garner enough public support from the American people to make the action viable. Every engineered war needs a gullible percentage of the population to give it momentum. Why didn’t they get their following from the public? It was because of the tireless efforts of the alternative media.

It was the Liberty Movement that exposed the lies behind the Syrian insurgency; the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya; the CIA’s involvement with al-Qaida in Damascus, etc. It is the Liberty Movement that deserves the credit for disrupting the globalist plan to use Syria as a trigger event for a false confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. Yet many are cheering the elitist puppet Putin while he takes credit for our accomplishments.

The most frightening aspect of the false paradigm between East and West is the potential it creates for the co-option of liberty proponents here in America. If we allow ourselves to be suckered into cheerleading for Russia, or any controlled government for that matter, then we have lost. We will be swallowed up in the tides of war, while supporting false prophets and artificial protagonists. Our mission, the mission for a truly free and sovereign America, will be lost in the confusion and chaos of the global chess game. It is time to accept that the fate of this country and perhaps the future of human freedom rest solely on the shoulders of the resistance here at home. There is no nation out there in the ether of central banking that is going to help us. The sooner we come to terms with the reality that we are on our own, the stronger we will be when the fight begins.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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