Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown   (politician)
Born	20 February 1951
Member of	21st Century Council, Fabian Society, Franco-British Colloque, Königswinter/Speakers, Labour Friends of Israel, Project Syndicate, The Other Club, US/Department/State/International Visitor Leadership Program, WEF/Global Leaders for Tomorrow/1993
UK Prime Minister In office 27 June 2007 - 11 May 2010  Leader of the Labour Party In office 27 June 2007 - 11 May 2010 Succeeded by Harriet Harman  Chancellor of the Exchequer  In office 2 May 1997 - 27 June 2007 Preceded by Kenneth Clarke Succeeded by Alistair Darling

James Gordon Brown is a British Labour politician and former UK Prime Minister.

Brown's Nuclear Stance

Private Eye reported in February 2006 that Gordon Brown has family connections to the nuclear industry. His younger brother Andrew Brown works for EDF Energy, the UK subsidiary of EDF, which operates nuclear power stations in France. Andrew Brown was appointed as EDF Energy's Head of Press on 13 September 2004. Previously, he worked for the lobbying company Weber Shandwick.

One of Brown's key advisors is Ed Balls, whose father-in-law Tony Cooper is a long-standing nuclear lobbyist.

For further information on Brown's nuclear position, see the relevant Sourcewatch page on Gordon Brown

Wielding great influence on British Jewry

In 2008, The Jewish Chronicle declared 'the top spots' on their second annual list of those who 'wield the greatest influence on British Jewry'. Brown is listed at number 29. The criteria for being listed is described as 'those with a vision for Jewish life in this country and who did their utmost to bring it about using either money; persuasion; religion; culture; political or social leadership; or simply inspiring through word and deed'. In order for someone to be listed in the top 20, it was generally necessary to demonstrate influence in more than one of the spheres.

The article describes how...

'The Prime Minister may not have Tony Blair’s natural affinity with the Jewish community, but he has built on the good relations established by his predecessor. The government has extended its financial backing of sixth-formers’ visits to Auschwitz and Mr Brown has accepted an invitation to become a JNF patron. To rapturous applause, he told a Board of Deputies dinner last year: “Israel will always have our support. We will be a friend in good times and bad and we will never compromise our friendship for political expediency.” He is an admirer of the Chief Rabbi, whom he says he consults regularly'.

Others included in the list were Lord Levy (number 9), Ron Prosor (number 10), Daniel Finkelstein (number 11), John Mann (number 17), Jonathan Freedland (number 18), Julia Neuberger (number 19), Lord Janner (number 20), Trevor Chinn (number 14) & Poju Zabludowicz (number 30).

Gertrude Himmelfarb

According to Paul Richards, Brown is a longstanding admirer of Gertrude Himmelfarb:

Brown's admiration of Himmelfarb was fostered in the 1970s, when he was an earnest undergraduate, and remained with him as a politics lecturer at Glasgow College of Technology. In 2008 he wrote: “I have long admired Gertrude Himmelfarb's historical work, in particular her love of the history of ideas, and her work has stayed with me ever since I was a history student at Edinburgh University.”

Battle for Hearts and Minds

File:BrownBush.jpg

Gordon Brown and George Bush in July 2007. Brown emphasised the 'battle for hearts and minds', according to Matthew D'Ancona

In a September 2006 article in The Sun written while he was still Chancellor, Brown evoked the spirit of the Cultural Cold War as a precedent for the War on Terror.

When Britain and America set out to win the Cold War, we realised victory lay both in our military power and in persuading people under Soviet control to demand their economic freedom and human rights.

It was a battle fought though books and ideas, even music and the arts, and it helped bring Communism down from within.

So, as well as supporting our police, security services and armed forces in the front line of the war on terror at home and abroad, we also need to mobilise the power of argument and ideas to expose and defeat the ideology of hate.

He reiterated the theme in a speech to Chatham House a month later:

We should remember from 1945 the united front against Soviet communism involved not only deterrence through large arsenals of weapons, but a cultural effort on an extraordinary scale.

Newspapers, journals, culture, the arts and literature sought to expose the difference between moderation and extremism.

Foundations, trusts, civil society and civic organisations - links and exchanges between schools, universities, museums, institutes, journals, books, churches, trades unions, sports clubs, societies - all formed a front line in this cultural effort.

And it was by power of argument, by debate and by dialogue that over time we changed attitudes and then changed systems.

And so today the isolation of the extremists - and ultimately the end to terror - depends not just upon armies and treaties alone.

Brown returned to the same theme during his meeting with George W. Bush at Camp David on 29-30 July 2007. Bush described their conversation at a press conference during the visit:

In the long run, the way to defeat these people is through a competing ideology, see. And what's interesting about this struggle -- and this is what I was paying very careful attention to when Gordon was speaking -- is, does he understand it's an ideological struggle? And he does.

As he said to me, it's akin to the Cold War, and it is, except the difference this time is we have an enemy using asymmetrical warfare to try to affect our vision, to try to shake our will. They'll kill innocent women and children so it gets on the TV screens, so that we say it's not worth it -- let's just back off. The death they cause makes it -- maybe we just ought to let them have their way. And that's the great danger facing the world in which we live, and he gets it.

Matthew D'Ancona, one of the journalists accompanying Brown on the trip, also reported that the new Prime Minister emphasised the 'battle for hearts and minds' during the meeting.

Bush was most nervous about what Brown would say on Iraq. But the PM kept drawing the president back to the need to engage in a cultural, intellectual and counter-insurgency programme of the kind that was fought against Soviet communism.

D'Ancona suggested that the attempted terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport had led Brown to the analysis that "twisted ideas, rather than poverty, were the true basis of the problem."

In the PM's eyes, it follows that the next phase of the struggle must be more subtle, much of it completely concealed.

In this he has recently been inspired by a 1999 book on the CIA and the cultural cold war, Who Paid the Piper? by the British journalist Frances Stonor Saunders. He was particularly intrigued by the CIA's management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra as "the juggernaut of American culture". Brown cites the success of the anti-communist Congress for Cultural Freedom in harnessing the intellectual firepower of a generation of authors and artists, and funding journals such as Encounter, Transition and Partisan Review.

D'Ancona added that Brown had been impressed by the work of David Kilcullen, and that his approach would owe something to that of Cold War strategist George Kennan.

Does this mean that MI5 will now be spending millions on anti-Islamist magazines and that the London Symphony Orchestra is going to be dispatched to the Middle East with bugs in their cellos? Not quite. But it does mean finding resources for moderate Muslims and cutting off funding to anyone else: Brown believes that the old left's version of "multiculturalism" led us to the insanity of financing groups precisely because they were extreme. Expect big changes.

Brown's resort to Cold War percedents was criticised by David Clark in the Guardian:

It is said that Brown has been strongly influenced by the example of the cultural and intellectual campaigns fought by the west during the cold war, and in particular the account of them given by Frances Stonor Saunders in her book Who Paid the Piper?; hopefully Brown's approach will prove to be more nuanced than that because the book is actually a warning about the perils of trying to advance democratic ideals through state-sponsored programmes, especially ones that deploy covert means.

Stonor Saunders herself took a similar view according to Private Eye.

Stonor Saunders told the Eye she was "dumbfounded" at Gordon Brown's apparent use of her book. She added, "If it is a sign he believes that some kind of dialogue is better than strafing and bombing, then good - but to look to my book for that is a complete contradiction. It tries to deliver a polemic about how ideas can be mismanaged and abused."

Affiliations

• Labour Friends of Israel

 

A Document by Gordon Brown

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Uniting Behind A People’s Vaccine Against COVID-19	open letter	14 May 2020	"COVID-19/Vaccine"	A number of deep state operatives, including 14 Bilderbergers, calling for the creation of infrastructure to rapidly jab everyone in the world.

 

Appointments by Gordon Brown

Appointee	Job	Appointed	End
Ara Darzi	Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health	29 June 2007	21 July 2009
Helen Goodman	Deputy Leader of the House of Commons	28 June 2007	9 June 2009
Helen Goodman	Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions	9 June 2009	11 May 2010
Jim Murphy	Minister/State for Europe	28 June 2007	3 October 2008
Jim Murphy	Secretary of State for Scotland	3 October 2008	11 May 2010
Shaun Woodward	Secretary of State for Northern Ireland	28 June 2007	11 May 2010

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1991	6 June 1991	9 June 1991	Germany Baden-Baden Steigenberger Hotel Badischer Hof	The 39th Bilderberg, 114 guests
Brussels Forum/2011	25 March 2011	27 March 2011	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2004	21 January 2004	25 January 2004	World Economic Forum Switzerland	2068 billionaires, CEOs and their politicians and "civil society" leaders met under the slogan Partnering for Prosperity and Security. "We have the people who matter," said World Economic Forum Co-Chief Executive Officer José María Figueres.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2006	25 January 2006	29 January 2006	Switzerland	Both former US president Bill Clinton and Bill Gates pushed for public-private partnerships. Only a few of the over 2000 participants are known.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2007	24 January 2007	28 January 2007	Switzerland	Only the 449 public figures listed of ~2200 participants
WEF/Annual Meeting/2008	23 January 2008	27 January 2008	World Economic Forum Switzerland	At the 2008 summit, Klaus Schwab called for a coordinated approach, where different 'stakeholders' collaborate across geographical, industrial, political and cultural boundaries."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2009	23 January 2009	27 January 2009	World Economic Forum Switzerland	Chairman Klaus Schwab outlined five objectives driving the Forum’s efforts to shape the global agenda, including letting the banks that caused the 2008 economic crisis keep writing the rules, the climate change agenda, over-national government structures, taking control over businesses with the stakeholder agenda, and a "new charter for the global economic order".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2013	23 January 2013	27 January 2013	World Economic Forum Switzerland	2500 mostly unelected leaders met to discuss "leading through adversity"
WEF/Annual Meeting/2014	22 January 2014	25 January 2014	World Economic Forum Switzerland	2604 guests in Davos considered "Reshaping The World"
WEF/Annual Meeting/2016	20 January 2016	23 January 2016	World Economic Forum Switzerland	Attended by over 2500 people, both leaders and followers, who were explained how the Fourth Industrial Revolution would changed everything, including being a "revolution of values".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2017	17 January 2017	20 January 2017	World Economic Forum Switzerland	2950 known participants, including prominently Bill Gates. "Offers a platform for the most effective and engaged leaders to achieve common goals for greater societal leadership."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2020	21 January 2020	24 January 2020	World Economic Forum Switzerland	This mega-summit of the world's ruling class and their political and media appendages happens every year, but 2020 was special, as the continuous corporate media coverage of COVID-19 started more or less from one day to the next on 20/21 January 2020, coinciding with the start of the meeting.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Peak Kinnock	Article	19 September 2016	Craig Murray	"11,000 people saving £2 a month might not save a dying little baby, but would exactly pay the £264,000 per year salary of Neil Kinnock’s daughter-in-law Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Chief Executive of Save the Children and wife of MP Stephen Kinnock. Misery for some is a goldmine for others."

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