The strange career of Samantha Cohen

As I have written before, the last few years of reading and researching have left me in no doubt concerning the reach and nature of the dark enslaving empire.

On a couple of occasions recently, I have thought to myself that I have pretty much come to the end of the road in terms of exposing the global entity, as opposed to countering it.

I think I have supplied sufficient evidence to show what it amounts to – and those who, for whatever reason, still don’t wish to accept this reality will in all probability not change their minds on account of a few more facts and connections.

But then, each time, I come across something that really needs to be shared and yet another article is born.

Those who have read my piece on Chatham House may recall how the career histories of particular individuals was very revealing of the overall – officially non-existent! – Leviathan to which they owe their allegiance.

These faithful servants of the empire flit effortlessly back and forth between posts in government, finance, industry and global institutions, weaving a web of full-spectrum corruption and control which is lent apparent respectability by “Royal” patronage.

I recently came across another particularly intriguing career which surely presents some important questions for those who continue to accept the superficial version of how our society functions.

Samantha Cohen is a 55-year-old woman who was brought up in Brisbane, Australia – she is not to be confused with an American namesake, the daughter of Donald Trump’s former lawyer.

Having studied for a journalism degree at The University of Queensland (1986-88), she “worked as a reporter for the Sunshine Coast Daily before becoming a speechwriter for the Queensland state government, and then an adviser to the federal government”.

That’s quite a leap – from young newspaper reporter to government speechwriter and adviser!

Let’s note, in passing, that the advice she was giving to the Australian government – in what is described as a “public relations” role – was on the subject of “indigenous Affairs and Mining and Resources”.

The relevance of that will become clear later.

The story of Cohen’s career, as related by The Daily Telegraph, then gets even stranger.

“After moving to London and working briefly for Severn Trent Water, she answered a job advertisement for a Buckingham Palace press officer, and was hired on a two-year contract but ended up staying for 17 years.

“During that time, she rose to the position of communications secretary to the Queen, before making the rare leap from the press office to the Sovereign’s private office as assistant private secretary”.

Just 32 years old when she started at the Palace, Cohen was evidently able to move very quicky into the heart of the British Establishment.

When she eventually resigned, it was apparently related to the resignation of Lord Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, “to whom Cohen is very loyal“.

Geidt, for his part, is “understood to have been hugely supportive of Cohen”.

This mainstay of the British imperial system had a background in the army before joining the Royal Household.

An “ethics” advisor to Boris Johnson, when he was Prime Minister, Geidt had “an advisory role in the arms, security and aerospace company BAE Systems until April 2021, and serves as chair of a board in the asset management company Schroders”.

Cohen attracted media attention for the first time over claims that Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle had bullied her staff and forced two PAs out of Kensington Palace.

She was Markle’s private secretary, her top aide, at the time the complaint was first made, in 2018.

Cohen (centre) with Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth II.

In 0ctober 2019, Cohen suddenly popped up as a new trustee of Cool Earth, “an international NGO that funds Indigenous communities to protect endangered rainforests in order to combat the climate crisis and protect ecosystems”.

Adds Wikipedia: “The charity is associated with long term partnerships with Indigenous villages, unconditional cash transfers and advocating for basic income as an effective conservation strategy”.

And then, remarkably, in early 2020 Cohen was appointed chief executive of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, “the Commonwealth’s accredited business network”, whose website says its role is “to use the convening power and trusted network of the Commonwealth, which is led by His Majesty The King, to drive trade and investment”.

Two years later, her New Year message was notably upbeat regarding the economic effects of the Covid event on those whose interests her organisation represented.

“This year is going to be an important and exciting one for CWEIC and the Commonwealth,” she enthused.

“Commonwealth businesses and national economies are more agile and prepared for the next phase of the pandemic.

“There is a great momentum to invest, innovate and utilise opportunities that have been created through this time of significant change”.

Let’s not forget here that it was Charles, now “His Majesty the King” and head of the Commonwealth, who officially launched the WEF’s Great Reset in 2020…

In her message Cohen made a point of offering CWEIC’s Strategic Partners “a very warm welcome to 2022” – which obviously made me want to know who they were!

I found a lot of bodies on the relevant page that I had never heard of, particularly in Africa, which is a big target for exploitation by the Corporate Commonwealth.

I wasn’t exactly surprised to see that one of Cohen’s Strategic Partners was the City of London Corporation, although I was amused to see it described using quite so many system-speak terms: “The City of London Corporation is the governing body of the Square Mile dedicated to a vibrant and thriving City, supporting a diverse and sustainable London within a globally-successful UK”.

There was also British International Investment – “the UK’s development finance institution and the world’s oldest impact investor”.

The profile states: “BII are at the heart of the UK Government’s international financing offer to emerging economies.

“Over the next five years, at least 30 per cent of their total new commitments will be in climate finance, making them one of the world’s largest such investors in Africa”.

Don’t worry folks – this isn’t corporate imperialism or anything unpleasant like that.

Instead, “BII invests to create more productive, sustainable and inclusive economies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, enabling people in those countries to build better lives for themselves and their communities”.

“Better lives for themselves and their communities”. There’s a good reason why I entitled my 2022 analysis of the Commonwealth “Empire of hypocrisy“!

Crown Agents Bank – “a leading wholesale bank for emerging markets” – and Crown Agents Limited – “innovating since 1833” – undoubtedly deserve a separate article devoted to their activities.

Two of the big corporate Strategic Partners particularly caught my eye.

Oil giant BP is here laughably described as delivering “heat, light and mobility products and services to people all around the world in ways that will help to drive the transition to a lower carbon future”.

And then there is Rio Tinto, on whose activities we will linger for a while, for reasons which will become obvious.

Here’s how it is depicted on the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council website:

“Rio Tinto is a UK headquartered, multinational mining and metals company. Founded in 1873, with 55,000 employees, they operate in 35 countries where they produce iron ore, copper, aluminium, critical minerals, and other materials needed for the global energy transition and for people, communities, and nations to thrive.

“They have been mining for 150 years and operate with knowledge built up across generations and continents. Their purpose is finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs – striving for innovation and continuous improvement to produce materials with low emissions and to the right environmental, social and governance standards”.

All sounds very worthy, doesn’t it?

And yet even the UK government noted in June 2023: “Rio Tinto, has and is subject to UK government investigations… Investigations by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) into its business behaviours and practices include:

“In July 2017, the SFO launched an inquiry into alleged fraud and corruption practices by the company in the Republic of Guinea. This inquiry has not yet concluded.

“In 2017, Rio Tinto were fined £27m by the FCA for breaching disclosure rules. More recently, in July 2021, it was announced that the FCA were investigating the company again in relation to similar breaches of disclosure rules”.

The government document added: “In 2014 it was reported that Rio Tinto had lobbied the UK Foreign Office to support the company in ongoing human rights abuse lawsuits at the US Supreme Court”.

It is fair to say that Rio Tinto has a pretty awful reputation.

Corporate Watch states: “British-Australian mining multinational Rio Tinto has made huge profits for its investors while damaging the environment, displacing people from their homes and exploiting workers around the world”.

It adds: “Despite its corporate spin, Rio Tinto’s mining activities leave a trail of pollution, exploitation and repression behind them”.

In a filmed conference held by London Mining Network, entitled “Rio Tinto: Against People, Climate and Nature”, the extremely damaging effects of Rio Tinto’s activities across the world are explored in depth.

Says one speaker: “If you are a corporation like that, you are like a new empire – you can go anywhere, any time, and do anything that you want to in that territory”.

The campaign group has produced a detailed overview of the company’s activities around the world with issues such as:

• The Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mine in Mongolia that threatens Indigenous communities and continues to raise serious concerns about water usage in the arid desert region.

• An ilmenite mine in Madagascar that contaminated the lakes and rivers where local people fish and collect drinking water, with levels of uranium and lead approximately 50 times and 40 times higher, respectively, than World Health Organisation guidelines for safe drinking water.

• Rio Tinto recently destroyed a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in Australia in order to expand an iron ore mine.

• In Bougainville and West Papua, the company was accused of sidestepping responsibility for the destructive impacts and persisting dangers caused by the Panguna and Grasberg mines, as detailed in London Mining Network’s 2020 report, ‘Cut and Run’.

• Along with fellow mining giant BHP, Rio Tinto has been seeking to develop a massive copper mine near Superior, Arizona for the past 26 years. The proposed mine would destroy religious and sacred indigenous land known as Oak Flat and potentially destroy up to 6,000 hectares of public land.

As I explained in Enemies of the People, Rio Tinto is a longstanding and important part of the Rothschilds’ worldwide industrial-financial complex.

After the First World War, the Rothschilds’ influence as the principal shareholders in Rio Tinto became even greater as the firm expanded its interests to embrace sulphur-recovery, cinder-treatment and silica gel and gained a presence everywhere from Spain and Belgium to Africa and the Americas.

Historian Niall Ferguson writes in his book about the Rothschilds that by 1928 Rio Tinto “was operating in twenty-two different countries with a host of different interests in metallurgy and chemicals”.*

Corporate Watch reports that today some of its biggest shareholders are the giant investment funds Blackrock, Vanguard and Capital, with 11%, 8% and 7% respectively.

But the biggest single investor, holding 14% of Rio Tinto shares, is Chinalco, a huge aluminium-producing company owned by the Chinese state.

This is helpful confirmation that the dark enslaving empire is currently switching its focus to China and BRICS – the so-called “multi-polar” world order will be same world order flying a different false flag.

The big financial opportunities are of course today to be found in the “renewable energy” sector and while one wing of the empire promotes the scam, the other wing profits from it.

In the face of spirited local opposition, Rio Tinto is currently trying to push through a huge scheme in Serbia to extract the lithium which is needed, notably, for the 30 million electric cars the European Commission wants to place on Europe’s roads by 2030.

Corporate Watch warn: “A global shift towards hybrid and electric cars is dependent on lithium batteries and has resulted in a ‘lithium rush’, with several companies, supported by governments, scrambling to exploit lithium deposits around the world.

“This is ‘green capitalism‘ at its finest. Thriving on the crises of climate change and pressures to phase out fossil fuels, whole new markets are created where corporations can continue to wreck the earth to create ‘ethical’ consumer goods whose exploitative and polluting impacts are hidden thanks to the global nature of the economy”.

Turning away from Samantha Cohen’s “strategic partners” and back to her surprising personal career, her spell as chief executive of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council came to an end in 2022.

But still more greatness was beckoning!

In that year she was “a surprise choice” to be Boris Johnson’s Director of the Office of the Prime Minister – a “gatekeeper” role which was said to have made her “the most powerful woman in Downing Street”.

Tragically for her and Johnson, this arrangement only lasted a few months, though in his resignation honours list, the departing PM did hand her an OBE to go with the Royal Victorian Order she had picked up in 2016.

So what is Cohen up to now?

Well, she remains a director of The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, of which she was a co-founder, with Geidt, in 2016.

Prominent in the list of its “principal funders & supporters” is R&Co Generations, a non-concealed component of the Rothschild empire.

Cohen commented in May 2024: “I am honoured that HM The King has agreed to become our new Patron. Queen Elizabeth was passionate about supporting the next generation of Commonwealth Young Leaders and it’s wonderful to see King Charles continuing Her Majesty’s life’s work”.

Young Leaders, eh? Who’d have ever imagined?

She also uses the title of “Commonwealth Envoy Australia-Pacific region”, although this is a commercial, CWEIC, role, rather than a government one, as official documents make clear.

The punchline to this article is that Cohen is also now chief of staff at Rio Tinto!

Since January 2023 she has been working directly under its global CEO Jakob Stausholm, whose previous employers include another big Rothschildian industrial entity, Royal Dutch Shell.

Aware that her transfer from 10 Downing Street to Rio Tinto might raise an eyebrow or two, UK civil servants produced a letter of advice on whether or not it was acceptable.

Referring to Rio Tinto’s ongoing investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, they said there were “risks” involved in a former senior official at No.10 working for the company.

But they basically concluded that as long as Cohen did not personally lobby the UK government for Rio Tinto, or disclose any state secrets, everything would be fine.

And they cited the Cabinet Office as pointing out that “the company is well placed to support the government to secure the minerals required for net zero; and that Rio Tinto increasingly operates in the net zero industry – a strategic priority of the government”.

So they’re all chums, really, working for the same public-private agenda.

Looking back at Samantha Cohen’s early career, when she was advising the Australian government on “indigenous Affairs and Mining and Resources”, what sort of “advice” was she giving?

Could there possibly have been any connection to the desire of a certain British-Australian industrial giant to destroy a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in Australia in order to expand an iron ore mine?

And how could someone who was a trustee for an NGO supposedly defending endangered forests and protecting ecosystems possibly find themselves working as chief of staff for one of the most notorious destroyers of nature the world has ever seen?

One could be forgiven for wondering whether Cohen’s career has been a purely individual affair or whether she has, all along, been working on behalf of a certain entity with the muscle to place her in such key and varied posts.

What sort of world would that mean we are living in?

[Audio version]

* Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Greatest Banker 1849-1999 (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 524.