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  • The Money Masters: Behind the Global Debt Crisis

    The Money Masters: Behind the Global Debt Crisis

    In the US, we see untold millions suffering from the impact of mass foreclosures and unemployment; in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy, stringent austerity measures are imposed upon the whole population; all coupled with major banking collapses in Iceland, the UK and the US, and indecent bail-outs of “too-big-to-fail” bankers (Newspeak for too powerful to fail).

    No doubt, the bulk of the responsibility for these debacles falls squarely on the shoulders of caretaker governments in these countries that are subordinated to Money Power interests and objectives. In country after country, that comes together with embedded corruption, particularly evident today in the UK, Italy and the US.

    As we assess some of the key components of today’s Global Financial, Currency and Banking Model in this article, readers will hopefully get a better understanding as to why we are all in such a crisis, and that it will tend to get much worse in the months and years to come.

    Foundations of a Failed and False Model

    Hiding behind the mask of false “laws” allegedly governing “globalised markets and economies,” this Financial Model has allowed a small group of people to amass and wield huge and overwhelming power over markets, corporations, industries, governments and the global media. The irresponsible and criminal consequences of their actions are now clear for all to see.

    The “Model” we will briefly describe, falls within the framework of a much vaster Global Power System that is grossly unjust and was conceived and designed from the lofty heights of private geopolitical and geo-economic1 planning centres that function to promote the Global Power Elite’s agenda as they prepare their “New World Order” – again, Newspeak for a Coming World Government.2

    Specifically, we are talking about key think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and other similar entities such as the Cato Institute (Monetary Issues), American Enterprise Institute and the Project for a New American Century that conform an intricate, solid, tight and very powerful network, engineering and managing New World Order interests, goals and objectives.

    Writing from the stance of an Argentine citizen, I admit we have some “advantages” over the citizens of industrialised countries as the US, UK, European Union, Japan or Australia, in that over the last few decades we have had direct experience of successive catastrophic national crises emanating from inflation, hyper-inflation, systemic banking collapse, currency revamps, sovereign debt bond mega-swaps, military coups and lost wars…

    Finance vs the Economy

    The Financial system (i.e., a basically unreal Virtual, symbolic and parasitic world), increasingly functions in a direction that is contrary to the interest of the Real Economy (i.e., the Real and concrete world of work, production, manufacturing, creativity, toil, effort and sacrifice done by real people). Over the past decades, Finance and the Economy have gone their totally separate and antagonistic ways, and no longer function in a healthy and balanced relationship that prioritises the Common Good of We the People. This huge conflict between the two can be seen, amongst other places, in today’s Financial and Economic System, whose main support lies in the Debt Paradigm, i.e., that nothing can be done unless you first have credit, financing and loans to do it. Thus, the Real Economy becomes dependent on and distorted by the objectives, interests and fluctuations of Virtual Finance.3

    Debt-Based System

    The Real Economy should be financed with genuine funds; however with time, the Global Banking Elite succeeded in getting one Sovereign Nation-State after another to give up its inalienable function of supplying the correct quantity of National Currency as the primary financial instrument to finance the Real Economy. That requires decided action through Policies centred on promoting the Common Good of We The People in each country, and securing the National Interest against the perils posed by internal and external adversaries.

    Thus, we can better understand why the financial “law” that requires central banks to always be totally “independent” of Government and the State has become a veritable dogma. This is just another way of ensuring that central banking should always be fully subordinated to the interests of the private banking over-world – both locally in each country, as well as globally.

    We find this to prevail in all countries: Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, the European Union and in just about every other country that adopts so-called “Western” financial practice. Perhaps the best (or rather, the worst) example of this is the United States where the Federal Reserve System is a privately controlled institution outright, with around 97% of its shares being owned by the member banks themselves (admittedly, it does have a very special stock scheme), even though the bankers running “Fed” do everything they can to make it appear as if it is a “public” entity operated by Government, something that it is definitely not.

    One of the Global Banking Over-world’s permanent goals is – and has been – to maintain full control over all central banks in just about every country, in order to be able to control their public currencies.4 This, in turn, allows them to impose a fundamental (for them) condition whereby there is never the right quantity of public currency to satisfy the true demand and needs of the Real Economy. That is when those very same private banks that control central banking come on scene to “satisfy the demand for money” of the Real Economy by artificially generating private bank money out of nothing. They call it “credits and loans” and offer to supply it to the Real Economy, but with an “added value” (for them): (a) they will charge interest for them (often at usury levels) and, (b) they will create most of that private bank money out of thin air through the fractional lending system.

    At a Geo-economic level, this has also served to generate huge and unnecessary public sovereign debts in country after country all over the world. Argentina is a good example, whose Caretaker Governments are systematically ignorant and unwilling to use one of the sovereign state’s key powers: the issuance of high power non-interest generating Public Money (see below for a more detailed definition). Instead, Argentina has allowed IMF (International Monetary Fund) so-called “recipes” that reflect the global banking cartel’s own interests to be imposed upon it in fundamental matters like what are the proper functions of its Central Bank, sovereign debt, fiscal policy, and other monetary, banking and financial mechanisms, that are thus systematically used against the Common Good of the Argentine People and against the National Interest of the country.

    This system and its dreadful results, now and in the past, are so similar in so many other countries – Brazil, Mexico, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, UK, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Indonesia, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine… that it can only reflect a well thought-out and engineered plan, emanating from the highest planning echelons of the Global Power Elite.

    Fractional Bank Lending

    This banking concept is in use throughout the world’s financial markets, and allows private banks to generate “virtual” Money out of thin air (i.e., scriptural annotations and electronic entries into current and savings accounts, and a vast array of lines of credit), in a ratio that is 8, 10, 30, 50 times or more larger than the actual amount of cash (i.e., public money) held by the bank in its vaults. In exchange for lending this private “money” created out of nothing, bankers collect interest, demand collateral with intrinsic value and if the debtor defaults they can then foreclose on their property or other assets.

    The ratio that exists between the amount of Dollars or Pesos in its vaults and the amount of credit private banks generate is determined by the central banking authority which fixes the fractional lending leverage level (which is why controlling the central bank is so vital strategically for private banker cartels). This leverage level is a statistical reserve based on actuarial calculations of the portion of account holders who in normal time go to their banks or ATM machines to withdraw their money in cash (i.e., in public money notes). The key factor here is that this works fine in “normal” times, however “normal” is basically a collective psychology concept intimately linked to what those account holders, and the population at large, perceive regarding the financial system in general and each bank in particular.

    So, when for whatever reason, “abnormal” times hit – i.e., every time there are (subtly predictable) periodic crises, bank runs, collapses and panics, which seem to suddenly explode as happened in Argentina in 2001 and as is now happening in the US, UK, Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and a growing number of countries – we see all bank account holders running to their banks to try to get their money out in cash. That’s when they discover that there is not enough cash in their banks to pay, save for a small fraction of account holders (usually insiders “in the know” or “friends of the bankers”).

    For the rest of us mortals “there is no more money left,” which means that they must resort to whatever public insurance scheme may or may not be in place (e.g., in the US, the state-owned Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that “insures” up to US$250,000 per account holder with taxpayer money). In countries like Argentina, however, there is no other option but to go out on the streets banging pots and pans against those ominous, solid and firmly closed bronze bank gates and doors. All thanks to the fraudulent fractional bank lending system.

    Investment Banking

    In the US, so called “Commercial Banks” are those that have large portfolios of checking, savings and fixed deposit accounts for people and companies (e.g., such main street names as CitiBank, Bank of America, JPMorganChase, etc.; in Argentina, we have Standard Bank, BBVA, Galicia, HSBC and others). Commercial Banks operate with fractional lending leverage levels that allow them to lend out “virtual” dollars or pesos for amounts equal to 6, 8 or 10 times the cash actually held in their vaults; these banks are usually more closely supervised by the local monetary authorities of the country.

    A different story, however, we had in the US (and still have elsewhere) with so-called global “Investment Banks” (those that make the mega-loans to corporations, major clients and sovereign states), over which there is much less control, so that their leveraging fractional lending ratios are far, far higher. This greater flexibility is what allowed investment banks in the US to “make loans” by, for example, creating out of thin air 26 “virtual” Dollars for every real Dollar in cash they held in their vaults (i.e., Goldman Sachs), or 30 virtual Dollars (Morgan Stanley), or more than 60 virtual Dollars (Merrill Lynch until just before it folded on 15 Sept 2008), or more than 100 virtual Dollars in the cases of collapsed banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.5

    Private Money vs Public Money

    At this point in our review, it is essential to very clearly distinguish between two types of Money or Currency:

    Private Money – This is “Virtual” Money created out of thin air by the private banking system. It generates interests on loans, which increases the amount of Private money in (electronic) circulation, and spreads and expands throughout the entire economy. We then perceive this as “inflation.” In actual fact, the main cause of inflation in the economy is structural to the interest-bearing fractional lending banking system, even among industrialised countries. The cause of inflation nowadays is not so much the excessive issuance of Public Money by Government as all so-called banking experts would have us believe but, rather, the combined effect of fractional lending and interest on private banking money.

    Public Money – This is the only Real Money there is. It is the actual notes issued by the national currency entity holding a monopoly (i.e., the central bank or some such government agency) and, as Public Money, it does not generate interest, and should not be created by anyone other than the State. Anybody else doing this is a counterfeiter and should end up in jail because counterfeiting Public Money is equivalent to robbing the Real Economy (i.e., “we, the working people”) of their work, toil and production capabilities without contributing anything in return in terms of socially productive work. The same should apply to private bankers under the present fractional lending system: counterfeiting money (i.e., creating it out of thin air as a ledger entry or electronic blip on a computer screen) is equivalent to robbing the Real Economy of its work and production capacity without contributing any counter-value in terms of work.

    Why We Have Financial Crises

    A fundamental concept that lies at the very heart of the present Financial Model can be found in the way huge parasitic profits on the one hand, and catastrophic systemic losses on the other, are effectively transferred to specific sectors of the economy, throughout the entire system, beyond borders and public control.

    As with all models, the one we suffer today has its own internal logic which, once properly understood, makes that model predictable. The people who designed it know full well that it is governed by grand cycles having specific expansion and contraction stages, and specific timelines. Thus, they can ensure that in bull market times of growth and gigantic profits (i.e., whilst the system, grows and grows, is relatively stable and generates tons of money out of nothing), all profits are privatised making them flow towards specific institutions, economic sectors, shareholders, speculators, CEO and top management & trader bonuses, “investors”, etc who operate the gears and maintain the whole system properly tuned and working.

    However, they also know that – like all roller coaster rides – when you reach the very top, the system turns into a bear market that destabilises, spins out of control, contracts and irremediably collapses, as happened to Argentina in 2001 and to the better part of the world since 2008, then all losses are socialised by making Governments absorb them through the most varied transference mechanisms that dump these huge losses onto the population at large (whether in the form of generalised inflation, catastrophic hyperinflation, banking collapses, bail-outs, tax hikes, debt defaults, forced nationalisations, extreme austerity measures, etc).

    The Four-sided Global “Ponzi” Pyramid Scheme

    As we know, all good pyramids have four sides, and since the Global Financial System is based on a “Ponzi” Pyramid Scheme, there’s no reason why this particular pyramid should not have four sides as well.

    Below is a summary of the Four-side Global “Ponzi” Pyramid Scheme that lies at the core of today’s Financial Model, indicating how these four “sides” function in a coordinated, consistent, and sequential manner.

    Side One – Create Public Money Insufficiency. This is achieved, as we explained above, by controlling the National Public entity that issues public money. Its goal is to demonetise the Real Economy so that the latter is forced to seek “alternative funding” for its needs (i.e., so that it has no choice but to resort to private bank loans).

    Side Two – Impose Private Banking Fractional Lending Loans. This, as we said, is virtual private money created out of thin air on which bankers charge interest – often at usury levels – thus generating enormous profit for “investors,” creditors and all sorts of entities and individuals who operate as parasites living off other people’s work. This would never have been the case if each local central bank were to flexibly generate the correct quantity of Public Money necessary to satisfy the needs of the Real Economy in each country and region.

    Side Three – Promote a Debt-Based Economic System. In fact, the whole Pyramid Model is based on being able to promote this generalised paradigm that falsely states that what really “moves” the private and public economy is not so much work, creativity, toil and effort of workers, but rather “private investors,” “bank loans” and “credit” – i.e., indebtedness. With time, this paradigm has replaced the infinitely wiser, sounder, more balanced and solid concept of corporate profit being reinvested and genuine personal savings being the foundation for future prosperity and security. Pretty much the way Henry Ford, Sr. originally grew his most successful company.

    Today, however, Debt reigns supreme and this paradigm has become entrenched and embedded into people’s minds thanks to the mainstream media and specialised journals and publications, combined with Ivy League universities’ Economics Departments that have all succeeded in imposing such “politically correct” thinking with respect to financial matters, especially those relating to the proper nature and function of Public Money.

    The facts are that this Model generates unnecessary loans so that banking creditors can receive huge profits, which includes promoting uncontrolled, unwarranted and often pathological consumerism, which goes hand in hand with the increasing abandonment of the traditional value of “saving for a rainy day.”

    Such debts having political and strategic goals rather than merely financial ones, are usually given a thin layer of “legality” so that they may be imposed by the creditor on the debtor (i.e., in the case of The Merchant of Venice, the bond entered into between Antonio and Shylock giving the latter the legal right to a pound of the former’s flesh; in the case of chronically indebted countries like Argentina, such “legality” is achieved through a complex public debt laundering6 mechanism carried out by successive formally “democratic” Caretaker Governments to this very day).

    Side Four – Privatisation of Profits/Socialisation of Losses. Lastly, and knowing full well that, in the long run, the numbers of the entire Cycle of this Model never add up, and that the whole system will inevitably come crashing down, the Model imposes a highly complex and often subtle financial, legal and media engineering that allows privatising profits and socialising losses. In Argentina, this cycle has become increasingly visible for those who want to see it, because in our country the local “Ponzi” Pyramid Cycle lasts on average 15 to 17 years, i.e., we’ve had successive collapses involving brutal devaluation (1975), hyperinflation (1989) and systemic banking collapse (2001), however in the industrialised world, that cycle was made to last almost 80 years (i.e., three generations spanning from 1929 to 2008).

    Conclusions

    The fundamental cause of today’s on-going global financial collapse that exerts massive distortions over the Real Economy – and the ensuing social hardship, suffering and violence – is clear: Virtual Finance has usurped a pedestal of supremacy over the Real Economy, which does not legitimately belong to it. Finance must always be subordinated to, and in the service of, the Real Economy just as the Economy must heed the law and social needs of the Political Model executed by a Sovereign Nation-State (as we back-engineer this entire system, we thus understand why it is necessary for the Global Power Elite to first erode the sovereign Nation-State and to eventually do away with it altogether, in order to achieve its monetary, financial and political ends).

    In fact, if we look at matters in their proper perspective, we will see that most national economies are pretty much intact, in spite of having been badly bruised by the financial collapse. It is Finance that is in the midst of a massive global collapse, as this Model of “Ponzi” Finance has grown into a sort of malignant “cancerous tumour” that has now “metastasised,” threatening to kill the whole economy and social body politic, in just about every country in the world, and certainly in the industrialised countries.

    The above comparison of today’s financial system with a malignant tumour is more than a mere metaphor. If we look at the figures, we will immediately be able to see signs of this financial “metastasis.” For example, The New York Times in their 22 September 2008 edition explains that the main trigger of the financial collapse that had exploded just one week earlier on 15 September was, as we all know, mismanagement and lack of supervision over the “Derivatives” market. The Times then went on to explain that twenty years earlier, in 1988, there was no derivatives market; by 2002 however, Derivatives had grown into a global 102 trillion Dollar market (that’s 50% more than the Gross Domestic Product of all the countries in the world, the US, EU, Japan and BRICS nations included), and by September 2008, Derivatives had ballooned into a global 531 trillion Dollar market. That’s eight times the GDP of the entire planet! “Financial Metastasis” at its very worst. Since then, some have estimated this Derivatives global market figure to be in the region of One-Quadrillion Dollars…

    Naturally, when that collapse began, the caretaker governments in the US, European Union and elsewhere, immediately sprang into action and implemented “Operation Bail-out” of all the mega-banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges and speculation markets, and their respective operators, controllers and “friends.” Thus, trillions upon trillions of Dollars, Euros and Pounds were given to Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, Morgan Stanley, AIG, HSBC and other “too big to fail” financial institutions… which is newspeak for “too powerful to fail”, because they hold politicians, political parties and governments in their steel grip.

    All of this was paid with taxpayer dollars or, even worse, with uncontrolled and irresponsible issuance of Public Money bank notes and treasury bonds, especially by the Federal Reserve Bank which has, in practice, technically hyper-inflated the US Dollar: “Quantitative Easing” they call it, which is Newspeak for hyperinflation.

    So far, however, like the proverbial Naked Emperor, nobody dares to state this openly. At least not until some “uncontrolled” event triggers or unmasks what should by now be obvious to all: Emperor Dollar is totally and completely naked.7 When that happens, we will then see bloody social and civil wars throughout the world and not just in Greece and Argentina.

    By then, however, and as always happens, the powerful bankster clique and their well-paid financial and media operators, will be watching the whole hellish spectacle perched in the safety and comfort of their plush boardrooms atop the skyscrapers of New York, London, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo…
    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 128.[/alert]

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    Footnotes

    1. The concept of “Geoeconomics” was coined by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, through a studies group honouring Maurice Greenberg, the financier who was for decades CEO of American International Group (AIG) which collapsed in 2008 and had strong conflict-of-interest ties with major insurance and reinsurance broker Marsh Group whose CEO was his son Jeffrey. Both father and son were indicted for fraud by then New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. Spitzer would later pay a very heavy price for this after becoming Governor of New York State when someone “discovered” his sex escapades which were quickly blown up into a major scandal by The New York Times…

    2. We have described the basic Global Power Elite structure, model and objectives in our e-Book The Coming World Government: Tragedy & Hope?, available through www.asalbuchi.com.ar.

    3. For more information, see the Third Pillar of the Second Republic Project “Reject the Debt-Based Economy” on www.secondrepublicproject.com.

    4. Some notable exceptions: Today: Libya, Iran, Syria, China; In the past: Peron’s Argentina, Germany and Italy in the 30’s and 40’s….  Are we seeing a pattern here?

    5. See The New York Times, 22 September 2008

    6. See White Paper comparing Debt Laundering mechanisms to Money Laundering mechanisms, lodged under Pillar No 3 “Reject the Debt-Based Economy” of Second Republic Project in www.secondrepublicproject.com.

    7. This is more fully described in the author’s book The Coming World Government: Tragedy & Hope?, in the chapter “Death & Resurrection of the US Dollar”. Details on www.asalbuchi.com.ar. Also available upon request by E-mail: salbuchi@fibertel.com.ar.

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • Understanding the Ruling Elite

    Understanding the Ruling Elite

    From New Dawn 127 (Jul-Aug 2011)

    Intense speculation on the ‘ruling elite’ many believe is running the world from behind the scenes can lead to the presumption that it is all-powerful and infallible. But is it? Identifying the human foibles and underlying desires of those who may be planning centralised domination could lead to a greater chance to offset their agendas.

    In my book The Truth Agenda, I explore a widely-held hypothesis in certain quarters: that the world might be controlled by a powerful ruling elite, which puts its own narrow interests and convictions above ours through manipulation and engineered global crises to help bring about an Orwellian-style ‘One World Government’.

    However, if all that the most extreme speculation achieves is to help prevent such a grim picture from reaching full fruition, then it will have served a useful purpose. It is also crucial that a note of optimism is struck.

    An often valid criticism of conspiracy theorists, or ‘truthseekers’, is that their fevered investigations into humankind’s worst nightmares can leave some listeners feeling more fearful, and risks driving them into a state of disempowered paralysis, putting up the shutters when what is needed is engagement. Yet the unavoidable truth is that looking a potentially tough situation in the eye does mean facing up to disturbing realities that may have been swept under the carpet, for they might require urgent action.

    Lifting the blindfold even just a little means that we might not run into the approaching wall at such a great velocity. If the idea of a secretive but all-pervading cabal running the world leaves some feeling shocked, the act of simply contemplating such an idea may in itself spark a new awakening of consciousness.

    What psychologically motivates this elite, however? What kind of minds are we really dealing with? How can we attempt to understand them, so that solutions and strategies for dealing with their actions may become clearer?

    The Elite and its Motivations

    Something too often missed in all the conspiracy speculation is the realisation that if we are being governed by a powerful cabal trying to twist the world to its own ends, then we are still essentially dealing with fellow human beings (putting ET/reptilian bloodline theories aside for a moment).

    Like every other person on the planet, they must have physical, social and emotional needs, even if the latter faculty may be too easily set aside in the kind of mind that would plan 9/11-type scenarios (an event widely suspected to have been deliberately staged by Western sources as part of a march towards the ‘New World Order’). The personalities involved must have loved ones of their own, and experience thoughts, feelings and cares in at least some directions. They also, like most of us in our lives, probably think they are doing the right thing, however much we may see their schemes as misguided.

    This is an important point. We all have reasons for doing what we do, and can often justify actions to ourselves in the face of serious challenges from the outside. Hard though it may be to comprehend, the motivation of those who might think that wiping out their own people would be a positive move, or who believe that planning wars and economic breakdowns to effect the creation of a unifying world government is an acceptable strategy, the fact is that many seemingly well-intentioned visionaries throughout history have voiced the need for such approaches. This does not make them right, of course, but there is plainly a significant, if small, seam of humanity that believes a bigger picture should be put before the needs of the masses. Those who have expressed support for eugenics and depopulation strategies, for instance, often have deep-seated environmental concerns or feel strongly that we have lost our balance with nature and must put the planet’s future ahead of the requirements of the common people.

    One of the most prominent promoters of the term ‘New World Order’ was the famous and much revered writer H G Wells, who believed passionately that the only answer to global strife would be the creation of the eponymous hierarchy, actively proposing it in his 1940 book The New World Order. This is clearly not a modern concept, and has roots going back even further than Wells’ idealistic vision of it. Some believe both World Wars were deliberately coordinated, or at least used, to help bring about a mandate for world government. As early as 1913, writing in his book The New Freedom, President Woodrow Wilson made clear that some formidable force already underpinned the commercial, and probably political, infrastructure of the USA:

    Some of the biggest men in the US, in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

    What is striking in H G Wells’ writings, however, is his sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the idea of a dominating collective that would put all to rights and avert “the disastrous extinction of Mankind.” There is no sense of negative intention nor a Malthusian dislike for humanity. Yet at the same time Wells was an advocate of eugenics. Many find this concept entirely repugnant, but here is the paradox – the very kinds of people truth-seekers tend to single out as the enemies of humanity very likely see themselves as its saviours. It is all a matter of perspective and of where one chooses to draw the moral line.

    The philosopher Bertrand Russell openly accepted the inevitability of a controlling One World Government, founded on the basis of hard scientific values, and was disturbingly frank about the culture that would result. Writing in his 1953 book The Impact of Science on Society, he states:

    Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible…

    …Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.

    On the surface, Russell’s thoughts appear to encourage such a world, rather than condemn it, and such thinking seems outrageous, even if it does come close to identifying the very philosophy that may now be actively shaping our society. However, although it seems difficult, almost distasteful, for some to contemplate, there is a thought to be considered here: What if such thinking were definitively shown to be right? What if humankind’s very survival did rest on the notion of more control, not less? What if the choice were demonstrated to be between total destruction through over-population, pollution and over-stretched resources, or a selectively-bred, closely-monitored world that regulated itself and continued on? What if an anarchy-ridden post-2012 apocalypse society could be shown to stand no real chance of survival, whereas a tightly-controlled disciplinarian civilisation would?

    Uncomfortably, in the light of the world’s current challenging issues, it can be seen, at least to a small extent, how arguments could be made in these directions when looked at from a certain viewpoint. The problem comes, as ever, with the massive issue of who gets to decide. Those in comfortable circumstances looking down from on high must inevitably see things rather differently to those scraping an existence lower down the rungs, at their mercy.

    We already hold the power of genetic manipulation in our hands, and it will not be too long before required characteristics of children will be able to be routinely selected and engineered. Also, with life spans ever increasing, and our understanding of tissue and brain cell regeneration growing by the year, how long will it be before life can be sustained indefinitely? When that occurs, the population problem will clearly explode if unlimited access to such power is allowed (that is, if the majority of humankind is permitted to survive in the first place – depopulation conspiracy theories are rife). A world of immortals would risk stagnation, but also domination from those who attained the status of immortality first. They would effectively decide who would be offered the gift from thereon. In the end, the gene pool would almost certainly be controlled by such authorities, the new eugenics having arrived through the back door.

    These issues are already reality, not dystopian fiction. The power of genetic engineering, which is currently changing our food, both animal and vegetable – and thus our entire ecosystem, as spliced and altered genes make their way into nature through pollination and cross-breeding – means that humankind has already taken the entire planet’s evolutionary destiny into its own hands, and there is no going back. Do those calling the shots have the moral compass to carry such a huge responsibility? Can they serve as the gods they are setting themselves up to be?

    In a society of angels, perhaps a charter of rigid regulation, surveillance and genetic population control could be applied with compassion and the wide agreement of a common consensus – but we are nowhere near such a state of being. With the motivation of those governing our world today clearly in question, it seems impossible that the kinds of agendas many feel the ruling elite is implementing could work in any way other than being a simple attack on the larger percentage of humankind. Without common consensus, whatever the supposedly good intentions that might exist somewhere behind the plans, any attempt to regulate the world by coercion and draconian measures remains an immoral one.

    Inherent Deception

    The problem with global cover-ups is that they arrive and build up – as deception does so often for all of us – through a lack of honesty largely sparked by the fear of what people might think or do if they were to perceive the true vulnerability within. The elite appears to fear us and our reactions as much as we may fear it – otherwise it would not need to manipulate and control. Many disingenuous actions are borne of inner psychosis; a lack of trust that other people will understand. Our leaders appear to have got so used to playing deceptive games that they cannot now operate any other strategy. Everything from the banking system to Parliamentary administration appears to be based on subterfuge. Right now we are clearly not trusted by those affecting our lives so strongly and as a result we do not trust them.

    Not that some of the elite would be remotely bothered about what any of us thinks of their actions. For those who may feel that caveats to explain such motivation is too generous to people who maim, kill and deceive to get their way, for whatever reason, it should be noted that there do also appear to be those pulling the strings who simply seek power for power’s sake. The lessons of history tell us that selfishness, greed and excited bloodlust cannot be ruled out as prime movers in some cases, at least. And, to acknowledge the not-insubstantial suspicion of a ‘reptilian agenda’, if it were to turn out that this highly exclusive club was indeed the result of a dominating extra-terrestrial gene seeded aeons ago (as some believe, based on ancient myths) and being exploited and/or activated by celestial visitors today, then it admittedly might explain why concern for the needs of humanity appears to be as low down the list of its priorities as our general concern for the welfare of livestock is today.

    As for what kind of people may comprise the global elite, the well-intentioned and the not-so well-intentioned, most likely we are largely dealing with high-ranking politicians, academics, intellectuals (as with Wells and Russell), monarchies, and very rich and influential families – with a mixture of political, religious and occult undercurrents. In other words, all the obvious candidates. Numerous books and websites go into the detail, so there is little need to explore it here. How much of the grand plan all of them know, however, and whether there are pyramids-within-pyramids amongst even the power structures near the top, is another matter.

    Factions Within Factions

    The presumption is often made that the very existence of a ruling elite means that those involved must be all-powerful and of one mind, accurately manipulating domino events that hit the required spot every time, all to a predetermined agenda. But this may apportion them an unwarranted infallibility.

    There is evidence to show that there are factions and disputes within the echelons of those with great influence over our lives. After all, the world is a big and complex place. Even with a general agreement on how it should move forward, the pressures of regional needs and personal biases are almost certain to blur the clarity of purpose from time to time. Going on the word that does sneak out from Bilderberg meetings and the suchlike, it seems that as many disagreements, compromises and negotiations arise there as within any supposedly democratic Parliament. If this weren’t the case, the meetings would not presumably need to take place, so pre-orchestrated would the scheming be.

    As with Masonic and other secret society structures, there is also a pecking order to consider. It is doubtful that all those ‘in’ on a global conspiracy seeking centralised control would be party to every machination, and certain players may themselves be manipulated from within without realising it. From the outside, for example, it appears that British ex-prime minister Gordon Brown, for all his many references to creating a ‘New World Order,’ seemed destined to be a fall-guy from the start, set up to come to power just as the world economy took a tumble. The question is, did Brown know the full plan? Was he someone faithfully playing a game with a known outcome of outward failure, while secretly ensuring success in an agenda of weakening the UK on the world stage to quicken a move towards One World Government? Or did he cling on in the genuine belief that all would come right and that he would one day be hailed as a political hero?

    Likewise, when Bill Clinton found himself under threat of impeachment following the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, was this all part of a contrived drama, or a sign of factions within factions very genuinely trying to remove him after an unplanned gaffe? And did Richard Nixon go rogue or was he just playing a pre-auditioned role? On a smaller level, when a man in the crowd died after being pushed to the ground by a policeman during the 2009 G20 protests in London, it took all the seemingly contrived focus away from images of a few people smashing a bank window, and suddenly all the headlines became howls about police brutality. Was this an ongoing twist to deliberately stir civil unrest or was it (as many suspect) something going unexpectedly wrong and changing the script? Does every war and false-flag terror attack really go to plan, or is there as much ‘cock-up’ involved as conspiracy?

    How organised, then, is this global elite, and is it really as united as some truth seekers give credit for? The evidence suggests that there are chinks in the armour and disagreements within, and weaknesses and unpredictable elements always arise in any grand plan. This offers hope. The foibles of human nature and the sheer universality of chaos theory may ensure that unexpected events and peculiar side tracks undermine the apparent solidity of the control agenda just when they are least expected. We could therefore be dealing with something far less coordinated than feared – indeed, the wide truth seeker presumption of the elite’s potency may make it seem more of a problem than it really is. But can we take the chance of becoming complacent?

    It is clear that certain events and trends do seem to be part of an unfolding pattern that suggests an attempt to engineer a mandate for centralised power. Whilst we must not become petrified into inaction by this, nor, however, should we take the opposite risk of assuming there is no real threat, even if the conspirators are found to be less competent than some believe. Either way, it is important at the very least to call attention to the appalling deeds committed by those at least trying to be an all-powerful force.

    Consent by Apathy

    If plans for world domination are being laid on any level, a simple fact needs to be recognised – that it only goes on because we collectively allow it. Even with obvious governmental deceptions such as the weapons of mass destruction debacle in Iraq, such things only continue to occur as widely as they do because too few people stand solidly against them or fully call their leaders to account. We have allowed apathy and the distractions of (apparent) comfort, trivia and entertainment to hold us in our armchairs in the hope that anything dark ‘out there’ will remedy itself in due course, without our input, energetically or even electorally (voter turnouts for Western elections, whatever they are worth, are generally perilously low).

    By having become so disconnected with what goes on around us in our names, we have not stood up in our collective power – and are therefore as responsible as any global elite for having created the world we live in today. With the consent granted by our passivity, we have watched obvious lies and manipulations take away our strength, resolve and liberty, and have done little or nothing about it. As such, we have given away our personal responsibility. The energy spent complaining loudly but emptily in the pub or bus queue about the shortcomings of today’s society, if applied in more proactive and positive directions, could be used to offset the very things being complained about. The problem is that we have been trained to think that we cannot make a difference – when, in truth, we can, especially when we match the tangible power of the collective mind with the practical rewards of direct action, as I explore more in The Truth Agenda.

    Speaking out

    Much of the awakening process that HAS begun has come from the kind of people drawn to be part of the truth seeking community. Unfortunately, their often unseen efforts are generally rewarded by undeserved ridicule and sidelining by a culture that has shut its eyes and ears to anything but the skewed vision it is fed by those who prefer to keep us dumb. People who question the status quo are easily neutered in the mainstream by being branded with false ‘wacko’ stereotypes created by a media that is all too often either itself controlled, fearful or just lazily stupid. Truth seeker enthusiasm does allow things to spill over into fanaticism and lack of discernment sometimes, no doubt, but the fact is that there are also absolutely vital questions and observations being raised by very reasonable, normal people, which could make a real and positive difference to people’s lives – if ever given a chance.

    It doesn’t take long for the average person to see through manipulation once obvious anomalies are pointed out. Assuming the masses will always be dumb may be an arrogant and huge mistake on the part of our masters. When discussed in an accessible and objective way, the concept of a ruling global elite, which believes that some kind of catastrophic cosmological or climatic change may be imminent and has thus been implementing a regime of draconian restrictions by nefarious means to ensure it retains control during and after the chaos, is nowhere near as far-fetched as it may at first seem. It can all be made to sound credible when expressed in balanced tones, and when sensible evidence is presented.

    Tones are important. Extreme conspiracy dogma, passionately but indiscriminately shouted, can repel potential support and plays into the hands of the mainstream’s characterisation of all alternative thinkers as uneducated fanatics. Those with the power of insight who can rise above this have a responsibility to convey a user-friendly overview of the control agenda. Successful outreach requires initial moderation – and compassion. Newcomers can be confused by all the many complex sources of information out there, and may shrink from the at-first disturbing idea of a manipulative ruling elite if not properly approached. The uncertain era we live in now, with glimpses of the truth shining in through the cracks, provides a unique opportunity for those with the insights to offer another view of the world – while they can.

    There may be more than one reason why a world of centralised control would be desired by a ruling elite, and we cannot fully presume to understand from the outside. But no strategy that imposes an undeclared agenda without transparency or choice can be right, and any regime of underhand manipulation must be resisted. To resist successfully, however, those with awareness must hold on to optimism and strike an appropriate tone if they are to be listened to and people awakened so that a self-elected and questionable minority’s vision for the world is not allowed to ride roughshod over the needs of everyday people.

    No elite, of any kind, can be infallible, and this offers true hope for the future – if enough people can rise above their fears and speak out, loudly and clearly.

    Adapted from The Truth Agenda by Andy Thomas (Vital Signs Publishing 2009, revised 2011)
    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 127.[/alert]

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  • The Enlightened Ones: The Illuminati and the New World Order

    The Enlightened Ones: The Illuminati and the New World Order

    From New Dawn Special Issue 11 (Autumn 2010)

    The world is governed by far different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
    – Benjamin Disraeli, nineteenth century British prime minister, in a speech to Parliament

    On 1 May 1776, the year of the beginning of the American revolution against British colonial rule, a young university professor, Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830), from Bavaria, founded the Order of Perfectibilists, later to become world famous as the Illuminati or ‘Enlightened Ones’.

    Weishaupt’s family had Jewish ancestry, but he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and educated by the Jesuits. His father died when he was seven and he was fostered by his godfather, a German aristocrat called Baron Ickstett. Although schooled by priests from the Society of Jesus, the young boy spent hours in his godfather’s extensive library reading learned works on philosophy and science. As an undergraduate at university, Weishaupt studied the ancient Greek Eleusian Mysteries and the mystical doctrines of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. Even at this young age he was thinking about forming a secret society based on the pagan mystery schools. He later wrote:

    At a time, however, when there was no end of making game of and abusing secret societies, I planned to make use of this human foible for a real and worthy goal, for the benefit of people. I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices.

    Adam Weishaupt became a lay professor in canon law at the Jesuit-run University of Ingoldstat near Munich while still a young man. His sudden rise to prominence in the university and his radical views caused consternation among the Jesuit priests. This led him to become involved in many bitter disputes with them about matters pertaining to religion.

    In 1774 in either Hanover or Munich Weishaupt became interested in Freemasonry. However, he was disappointed in what he found, believing the Freemasons did not understand Masonry’s occult significance, and refused to accept its roots in the ancient pagan religions. In 1777, he finally joined the Masonic Lodge of the Strict Observance Rite in Munich, which practised a form of neo-Templar-Masonry.

    At this time the Order of Perfectibilists also became known as the Order of Illuminists or the Order of the Illuminati, sometimes known to its members as the Society of the Hidden Hand. Illuminati was the plural of the Latin Illuminatus, from illumino meaning lighten or enlighten, or ‘enlightened one’, a term used to describe the initiates of the pagan Mysteries. At first the Order had only five members who were radical freethinkers, but they soon attracted the attention of Bavarian society and within ten years of its foundation there were over 2,000 members.

    Illuminism spread from Ingoldstat all over Bavaria and then to other German regions such as Saxony, Westphalia and Franconia that were at the time ruled by feudal princes. It was also exported abroad to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, France and Italy. The Illuminati’s membership was largely drawn from the middle and upper classes and in this respect it is ironic that revolutionary movements are seldom started by the working-class. Instead, they are usually led by intellectuals and disenchanted members of the ruling power elite. Members of the Illuminati allegedly included doctors, teachers, lawyer, judges, university professors, priests, police and military officers, and aristocrats such as Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, Duke Ernst of Gotha, Duke Karl of Saxe-Weiner, Prince Augustus of Saxe-Gotha, Prince Carl of Hesse, and Baron Dalberg.

    The inclusion of these aristocratic and royal rulers in its membership roll seems strange considering the aims of the Illuminati. Adam Weishaupt’s personal vision was a utopian pacifist society without monarchy, private property, social inequality, national identity and religious affiliation. In this new state people would live together in harmony in a universal brotherhood based on peace, free love, spiritual wisdom, intellectual and scientific knowledge, and equality. According to Weishaupt’s doctrine in his own words:

    Salvation does not lie where strong theories are defended by swords, where the smoke of censers ascends to heaven, or where thousands of strong men pace the rich fields of harvest. The revolution which is about to break [the French Revolution] will be sterile. It is not complete.

    The Illuminati’s main targets for criticism were the rule of the European royal families, the power of the Roman Catholic Church and the rich landowners who kept the peasants in a feudal state of servitude and poverty. According to its enemies, this doctrine was represented in the oath of allegiance taken by new members when they joined the Order. They allegedly promised to hate and resist, “The altar [the Church] and the throne [monarchy] and to crush the God of the Christians and utterly extirpate the kings of Earth.”

    Initiation into the Illuminati

    The anti-royalist and anti-clerical nature of the Illuminati was also reflected in its initiation ceremony. The candidate was led into a small room where, in front of an empty throne, a table stood with the traditional symbols of kingship – a sceptre, sword and crown – on it. The candidate was invited to pick up these objects, but if he did then he would be refused entry into the Order. Having passed this test, he was led into a second room with a table draped in black cloth. On this table were a plain wooden cross and a red Phrygian cap as worn by initiates of the ancient Mithraic Mysteries. The cap was given to the initiate and he was told to wear it proudly as it was worth far more than the crown of any king.

    New members were called Minervals, from the pagan goddess of wisdom Minerva, and the Order’s primary symbol was a wreath of oak leaves surrounding an owl sitting on an open book. This represented the essential combination of wisdom and knowledge, and the owl was also the sacred bird of Minerva. This symbol was made into a pendant that the Illuminati could wear secretly under their ordinary everyday clothes. It is tempting to see a connection between this emblem and the giant statue of an owl that features in the modern rituals at Bohemian Grove in California. At this private estate an annual gathering of male politicians, businessmen and media executives takes place, and it is claimed by some conspiracy theorists to be an Illuminati front.

    Adam Weishaupt believed in the eventual redemption of humanity and the restoration of human beings to the state of perfection that is supposed to have existed before the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. He also believed this redemption was only obtainable by following the esoteric teachings preserved by the pagan mystery schools who were the guardians of the Ancient Wisdom. Both men and women could become members of the Illuminati and they were taught religious freedom, and the choice to follow any or no religious belief. To live without the moral straitjacket of the sexually puritanical and corrupt Church was their birthright as human beings.

    How the Illuminati Recruited and Expanded Across Europe

    The new member was expected to recruit others into the Order like a modern form of pyramid selling. Because of Weishaupt’s involvement with Freemasonry, it was decided to use the movement to spread the Illuminati message and members were encouraged to join Masonic lodges. In 1780 Baron Adolf Franz Freidrich Knigge (1752–1796), a German diplomat, was initiated as an Illuminist. He was already a Freemason and under his direction Illuminism spread throughout the Masonic lodges of Europe. He also introduced several degrees or grades of initiation into the Order. These grades were Novice, Minerval, Illuminatus Minor, Illuminatus Major, Knight, Priest, and Magus. A Priest for instance was a person who taught the other members the occult sciences, philosophy, history, politics and the arts and crafts.

    Weishaupt established a network of Illuminist agents throughout Europe with access to prominent politicians, priests and cardinals, nobility and royalty. They reported back to the Grand Master of the Illuminati supplying him with intelligence and gossip collected and used for his own personal purpose. It is possible the aim was to blackmail people in powerful positions and thereby control them. By this time his enemies were claiming Weishaupt had decided his utopian anarcho-libertarian society could not be achieved peacefully. Allegedly he began plotting to overthrow the monarchies and governments of Europe using force if necessary.

    In 1784 Baron Knigge and Adam Weishaupt quarrelled about the direction of the Order and this coincided with the exposure by police spies of an alleged Illuminist plot to overthrow the ruling Habsburg dynasty of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the same year a royal edict was issued by Duke Karl Theodor, the ruling elector of Bavaria and a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, banning membership of all secret societies not officially recognised by the state. This edict specifically mentioned the Order of Perfectibilists, which was described as a renegade branch of Freemasonry.

    Soldiers, police officers, judges, university professors, schoolteachers and anyone working for the civil service were forced to admit to their membership of secret societies and had to either leave or be dismissed from their posts. In 1785 Adam Weishaupt was removed from his own position at the University of Ingoldstat and banished from the city of Munich to live in the countryside on a state pension. He moved to Regensburg where he was protected by Duke Ernst of Saxe-Gotha, an ancestor of the present British royal family who are of German descent. In World War I they changed their family name from Saxe-Gotha-Coburg to the House of Windsor after anti-German protests.

    In October 1786 the Bavarian authorities seized a cache of Illuminati secret documents from the home of a member of the diplomatic corp, Xavier Zwack, in Landstut and the castle of Sondersdorf belonging to Baron Bassus, both prominent members of the Illuminati. These were published in Munich in 1787 under the title Einige Originalschiften des Illuminaton Ordens. They revealed the full extent of the Illuminati’s alleged plans to destroy Christianity, topple the monarchy, overthrow the civil governments of Europe and eventually extend their influence worldwide. Even though it was claimed these documents were blatant forgeries, as a result of their publication the Order was legally prohibited and membership of it could result in the death penalty.

    Many critics of the Illuminati saw its ‘hidden hand’ behind both the French and American Revolutions in the eighteenth century and believed it survived underground after its prohibition. The fact that Adam Weishaupt lived for another forty-three years in apparent obscurity led to speculation the Illuminati also survived. One of the founders of the French Revolution, the Comte de Mirabeau, was rumoured to have been a secret Illuminist. Some claim the plan for the original uprising to storm the Bastille prison in Paris that sparked the Revolution was discussed and agreed at a closed session of the Grand Masonic Convention in 1782. Count Mirabeau is supposed to have addressed the delegates and said his aim was to destroy the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church in France. In its place he said a “religion of love” would be established to replace it. In fact, during the French Revolution religious observance was temporally replaced with the secular worship of the Goddess of Liberty.

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    Groups Claiming to Inherit the Mantle of the Illuminati

    Following the prohibition of the Order of Perfectibilists, several occult secret societies claimed to have inherited its mantle and to be carrying on its work. These included the Society of Illuminists founded in Avignon in the late 1780s by the unlikely partnership of an excommunicated Catholic priest and a Polish count. It later changed its name to the Academy of True Free Masons when it moved its headquarters from Avignon to Montpelier. Although it is rumoured the group still existed in 1812, it actually stopped functioning during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that followed it.

    The Concordists were a Russian secret society founded around 1790 as the alleged successor of the Bavarian Illuminati. They were suppressed in turn in the early 1800s by the Russian government who outlawed them as a subversive political organisation. In the early 1900s a journalist and spy for the Prussian secret police called Albert Karl Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) used a charter of authority supplied by the English Freemason John Yarker to establish a new Academy of Masonry. The Academy was later amalgamated into the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Order of the Eastern Temple or Order of Oriental Templars founded by high-ranking German Freemason Karl Kellner.

    The OTO was connected with John Yarker’s Masonic Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Mizraim and was supposed to possess the key to all the Masonic-Hermetic mysteries. Kellner claimed to have been taught these ‘secrets’ by three Eastern adepts. Theodor Reuss is mostly remembered today for initiating the notorious twentieth century occultist and magician Aleister Crowley into the OTO in 1912. The Great Beast 666, as he called himself, and known to the sensational newspapers as ‘The Wickedest Man in the World’ (surely not compared with his contemporaries Stalin and Hitler?) became the head of the Order in Britain and Europe. He claimed that the OTO was a Rosicrucian-Illuminatist group descended from the Bavarian Illuminati. Crowley was also a long-term secret agent working for MI6 or the British Secret Intelligence Service.

    In the twentieth century the alleged surviving Illuminati in its various clandestine forms was seen as the eminence gris behind World Wars I & II, the Bolshevik Revolution and fall of the Romanovs in Russia in 1917, and the rise of both communism and fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. It was widely believed by conspiracy theorists that the organisation would back any political group or doctrine or social movement and indulge in left and right-wing politics to achieve its age-old aims. Because Adam Weishaupt was of Jewish descent, the Illuminati became connected with Zionism, the international banking system, and even the entertainment industry and Hollywood where Jews are prominent.

    In the modern world the Illuminati have been seen as a major factor and influence in international power politics, allegedly fomenting wars, civil disorder and revolutions in their attempt to establish a one-world government. They have variously been seen behind the contrasting ideologies of globalism and neo-conservatism, multiculturism, environmentalism and ‘green’ politics, the 1960s ‘permissive society’, and the New Age spiritual movement. The Illuminati have also been held responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union (which paradoxically they are supposed to have created) and the military policing actions by the United Nations, the Anglo-American alliance and NATO since the end of World War II.

    It is claimed the draconian anti-terrorism laws introduced by Western governments in the wake of 9/11 and the emergence in recent years of a ‘Big Brother’ electronic surveillance society, where human rights and freedoms are restricted or infringed, is the work of the Illuminati from behind the scenes. Organisations such as the European Union (EU), the proposed North American Union (NAU) of the USA, Canada and Mexico, the UN, and the World Bank, are seen as Illuminati projects.

    Secret ‘Shadow Government’ Groups

    So-called ‘shadow government’ groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission set up after World War II, are also said to be fronts for the modern manifestation of the Illuminati. The CFR was founded in 1921 by Colonel Edward House, a political advisor to President Woodrow Wilson and financed by wealthy international bankers. Colonel House was denounced by his political enemies as a Marxist seeking to establish a socialist government in the USA leading to a one-world government. Paradoxically before World War II the CFR was accused of supporting and financing the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany. After the war it was labelled a populariser of international socialism through the UN. The CFR’s apparently contradictory political aims were explained by conspiracy buffs as typical of the Illuminati fronts that use both left and right politics. That is why the organisation recruited its US members from both the Democrat and Republican parties.

    Allegedly, another sinister arm of the modern ‘shadow government’ and the Illuminati is said to be the Bilderberg Group. Founded in May 1954, it held its first meeting at the Bilderberg Hotel in Osterbeck near Arnhem in the Netherlands. The Bilderberg Group was organised with the support of the CIA by Dr. Joseph Retinger, a mysterious figure involved in international Freemasonry and secret intelligence work, and Prince Bernard of the Dutch royal family. In 1946 Retinger told a meeting of the CFR in London that his personal political vision was a united Europe as a bulwark against anti-Americanism and communism. His plans took a step forward eight years later when the Bilderberg Group began its annual meetings attended by representatives of the business world, international banking, the media, the military-industrial complex and politics.

    Few people attending Bilderberg meetings have ever talked publicly about what happened or what was discussed. However, Denis Healey, a larger-than-life character who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government of the 1970s, once let the proverbial cat out of the bag in a television interview. Asked what the Bilderberg Group was, Healey admitted its ultimate political aim was “a single community throughout the world” or a one-world government.

    The 2009 Bilderberg Conference was held from 14-17 April at a hotel in a town near Athens, Greece. Among the participants were the queen of the Netherlands, former prime ministers and prominent government ministers from the host country Greece, the USA, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, representatives of NATO, the UN, the American National Security Agency (NSA), directors of international banks, and the World Trade organisation, and the editors of national and international financial newspapers and magazines.

    According to conspiracy theorists and professional Bilderberg watchers, those who attended this meeting apparently agreed to produce a false picture for the public of imminent economic recovery from the global recession and banking crisis. The attendees were to encourage banks and private investors to put their money back into the stock markets. The plan is apparently to create a new financial crisis in 2010 that will plunge the world into a deeper and more serious recession than we have so far experienced. This would cause high levels of unemployment and civil disorder and pave the way for more draconian laws to control the population. Eventually the situation would get so bad that martial law would have to be declared and there would be calls for a one-world government to be set up to restore global order. The meeting also allegedly backed the Lisbon treaty, which will eventually create a European federal super-state or United States of Europe with a single currency, the Euro.

    In his State of the Union address in January 1991, President George H. Bush told US Congress the impending Gulf War to liberate the oil-state of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation was part of a new “big idea” he called the New World Order. He described it as bringing together diverse nations in a common cause to achieve “the universal aspirations of humankind, peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.” Many of those who heard or read the address interpreted President Bush’s remarks as a coded reference to the Illuminati’s aim of a global government.

    With the election of the first black president in American history, Barack Obama, in November 2008, it seemed as if the neo-con forces with their New World Order agenda had been defeated. It was widely predicted by media commentators and political experts that America was entering a new stage in its development, a time of hope and change when the discredited right-wing policies of the neo-cons would be consigned to the garbage can of history. This was illustrated by postcards on sale in the UK showing the new president as a shining knight on a white horse. The picture was simply captioned ‘Hope’.

    It has been pointed out that for the first time in a generation there appeared to be no known links between President Obama and ‘shadow government’ groups such as the Bilderbergers. However, rumours of a secret tryst between Senator Hilary Clinton and Senator Obama in Virginia during the Bilderberg Group meeting of 2008 held in that state raised suspicions. It was suggested both politicians may have secretly attended the meeting. Also several prominent members of the Obama administration have been identified as Bilderberg attendees and members of the CFR and Trilateral Commission, which as its name suggests brings together leading past and present politicians from Europe, the United States and Japan. This is not surprising considering that, Illuminati front or not, the so-called ‘shadow government’ acts as a training and recruiting agency for the Western world’s aspiring politicians.

    This ongoing story of the Illuminati, and the secret societies claiming to succeed it, is one of a conflict between opposing forces seeking ultimate power for different reasons. It exposes a sinister agenda on those who have hijacked democracy and the idealistic concept of a utopian form of government guaranteeing real freedom to all its citizens. It is a noble concept corrupted for selfish political purposes using xenophobia, religious intolerance and fear as its weapons of choice.

    The modern heirs of the Illuminati, if that is what they really are, are hardly ‘enlightened ones’ as they are only interested in the acquisition of personal power, the suppression of knowledge, and the control of the masses who they want to keep in a state of ignorance. However, there is still hope that genuine initiates of the Ancient Wisdom are working secretly behind the scenes of international politics to improve our modern world and lead it to a brighter future.

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  • Who Really Runs the World? Conspiracies, Hidden Agendas & the Plan for World Government

    Who Really Runs the World? Conspiracies, Hidden Agendas & the Plan for World Government

    From New Dawn 118 (Jan-Feb 2010)

    So, who runs the world? It’s a question that people have struggled with since people began to struggle. It’s certainly a question with many interpretations, and incites answers of many varied perspectives.

    Often, it is relegated to the realm of “conspiracy theory,” in that, those who discuss this question or propose answers to it, are purveyors of a conspiratorial view of the world. However, it is my intention to discard the labels, which seek to disprove a position without actually proving anything to the contrary. One of these labels – “conspiracy theorist” – does just that: it’s very application to a particular perspective or viewpoint has the intention of “disproving without proof;” all that is needed is to simply apply the label.

    What I intend to do is analyse the social structure of the transnational ruling class, the international elite, who together run the world. This is not a conspiratorial opinion piece, but is an examination of the socially constructed elite class of people; what is the nature of power, how does it get used, and who holds it?

    A Historical Understanding of Power

    In answering the question “Who Runs the World?” we must understand what positions within society hold the most power, and thus, the answer becomes clear. If we simply understand this as heads of state, the answer will be flawed and inaccurate. We must examine the globe as a whole, and the power structures of the global political economy.

    The greatest position of power within the global capitalist system lies in the authority of money-creation: the central banking system. The central banking system, originating in 1694 in England, consists of an international network of central banks that are privately owned by wealthy shareholders and are granted governmental authority to print and issue a nation’s currency, and set interest rates, collecting revenue and making profit through the interest charged. Central banks give loans to both governments and industries, controlling both simultaneously. The ultimate centre of power in the central banking system is at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in Basle, Switzerland; which is the central bank to the world’s central banks, and is also a private bank owned by the world’s central banks.

    As Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley wrote:

    [T]he 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 Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.1

    The central banks, and thus the central banking system as a whole, is a privately owned system in which the major shareholders are powerful international banking houses. These international banking houses emerged in tandem with the evolution of the central banking system. The central banking system first emerged in London, and expanded across Europe with time. With that expansion, the European banking houses also rose and expanded across the continent.

    The French Revolution resulted with Napoleon coming to power, who granted the French bankers a central bank of France, which they privately controlled.2 It was also out of the French Revolution that one of the major banking houses of the world emerged, the Rothschilds. Emerging out of a European Jewish ghetto, the Rothschilds quickly rose to the forefront in banking, and established banking houses in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna and Naples, allowing them to profit off of all sides in the Napoleonic wars.3

    As Carroll Quigley wrote in his monumental Tragedy and Hope, “The merchant bankers of London had already at hand in 1810-1850 the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, and the London money market,” and that:

    In time they brought into their financial network the provincial banking centres, organised as commercial banks and savings banks, as well as insurance companies, to form all of these into a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other.4

    At the same time, in the United States, we saw the emergence of a powerful group of bankers and industrialists, such as the Morgans, Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies, and they created massive industrial monopolies and oligopolies throughout the 19th century.5 These banking interests were very close to and allied with the powerful European banking houses.

    The European, and particularly the British elites of the time, were beginning to organise their power in an effort to properly exert their influence internationally. At this time, European empires were engaging in the Scramble for Africa, in which nearly the entire continent of Africa, save Ethiopia, was colonised and carved up by European nations. One notable imperialist was Cecil Rhodes who made his fortune from diamond and gold mining in Africa with financial support from the Rothschilds,6 and “at that time [had] the biggest concentration of financial capital in the world.”7

    Cecil Rhodes was also known for his radical views regarding America, particularly in that he would “talk with total seriousness of ‘the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire’.”8 Rhodes saw himself not simply as a moneymaker, but primarily as an “empire builder.”

    As Carroll Quigley explained, in 1891 three British elites met with the intent to create a secret society. The three men were Cecil Rhodes, William T. Stead, a prominent journalist of the day, and Reginald Baliol Brett, a “friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V.” Within this secret society, “real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a ‘Junta of Three.’ The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner.”9

    The purpose of this secret society, which was later headed by Alfred Milner, was: “The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise… [with] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire.” [Emphasis added]10 Essentially, it outlined a British-led cosmopolitical world order, one global system of governance under British hegemony. Among key players within this group were the Rothschilds and other banking interests.11

    After the 1907 banking panic in the US, instigated by JP Morgan, pressure was placed upon the American political establishment to create a “stable” banking system. In 1910, a secret meeting of financiers was held on Jekyll Island, where they planned for the “creation of a National Reserve Association with fifteen major regions, controlled by a board of commercial bankers but empowered by the federal government to act like a central bank – creating money and lending reserves to private banks.”12

    It was largely Paul M. Warburg, a Wall Street investment banker, who “had come up with a design for a single central bank [in 1910]. He called it the United Reserve Bank. From this and his later service on the first Federal Reserve Board, Warburg has, with some justice, been called the father of the System.”13 President Woodrow Wilson followed the plan almost exactly as outlined by the Wall Street financiers, and added to it the creation of a Federal Reserve Board in Washington, which the President would appoint.14

    Thus, true power in the world order was held by international banking houses, which privately owned the global central banking system, allowing them to control the credit of nations, and finance and control governments and industry.

    However, though the economic system was firmly in their control, allowing them to establish influence over finance, they needed to shape elite ideology accordingly. In effect, what was required was to socially construct a ruling class, internationally, which would serve their interests. To do this, these bankers set out to undertake a project of establishing think tanks to organise elites from politics, economics, academia, media, and the military into a generally cohesive and controllable ideology.

    Constructing a Ruling Class: Rise of the Think Tanks

    During World War I, a group of American scholars were tasked with briefing “Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world once the Kaiser and imperial Germany fell to defeat.” This group was called, “The Inquiry.” The group advised Wilson mostly through his trusted aide, Col. Edward M. House, who was Wilson’s “unofficial envoy to Europe during the period between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the intervention by the United States in 1917,” and was the prime driving force in the Wilson administration behind the establishment of the Federal Reserve System.15

    “The Inquiry” laid the foundations for the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most powerful think tank in the US and, “The scholars of the Inquiry helped draw the borders of post World War I central Europe.” On May 30, 1919, a group of scholars and diplomats from Britain and the US met at the Hotel Majestic, where they “proposed a permanent Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs, with one branch in London, the other in New York.” When the scholars returned from Paris, they were met with open arms by New York lawyers and financiers, and together they formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921. The “British diplomats returning from Paris had made great headway in founding their Royal Institute of International Affairs.” The Anglo-American Institute envisioned in Paris, with two branches and combined membership was not feasible, so both the British and American branches retained national membership, however, they would cooperate closely with one another.16 They were referred to, and still are, as “Sister Institutes.”17

    The Milner Group, the secret society formed by Cecil Rhodes, “dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.”18

    There were other groups founded in many countries representing the same interests of the secret Milner Group, and they came to be known as the Round Table Groups, preeminent among them were the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, and parallel groups were set up in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.19

    These were, in effect, the first international think tanks, which remain today, and are in their respective nations, among the top, if not the most prominent think tanks.

    In 2008, a major study was done by the University of Philadelphia’s International Relations Program – the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program – which sought to analyse and examine the most powerful and influential think tanks in the world. While it is a useful resource to understanding the influence of think tanks, there is a flaw in its analysis. It failed to take into account the international origins of the Round Table Group think tanks, particularly the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States; Chatham House or the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London; the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, now renamed the Canadian International Council; and their respective sister organisations in India, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Further nations have since added to this group of related think tanks, including Germany, and a recently established European Council on Foreign Relations. The report, while putting focus on the international nature of think tanks, analysed these ones as separate institutions without being related or affiliated. This has, in effect, skewed the results of the study. However, it is still useful to examine.

    The top think tanks in the United States include the Council on Foreign Relations, (which was put at number 2, however, should be placed at the number 1 spot), the Brookings Institution, (which was inaccurately given the position of number one), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, RAND Corporation, Heritage Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the American Enterprise Institute, among others.

    The top think tanks in the world, outside of the United States, are Chatham House (sitting at number one), the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the UK, the German Council on Foreign Relations, the French Institute of International Relations, the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, the Fraser Institute in Canada, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the International Crisis Group in Belgium, and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs.20

    In 1954, the Bilderberg Group was founded in the Netherlands. Every year since then the group holds a secretive meeting, drawing roughly 130 of the political-financial-military-academic-media elites from North America and Western Europe as “an informal network of influential people who could consult each other privately and confidentially.”21

    Regular participants include the CEOs or Chairmen of some of the largest corporations in the world, oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, and Total SA, as well as various European monarchs, international bankers such as David Rockefeller, major politicians, presidents, prime ministers, and central bankers of the world.22 The Bilderberg Group acts as a “secretive global think-tank,” with an original intent “to link governments and economies in Europe and North America amid the Cold War.”23

    In 1970, David Rockefeller became Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, while also being Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan. In 1970, an academic who joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 1965 wrote a book called Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era. The author, Zbigniew Brzezinski, called for the formation of “A Community of the Developed Nations,” consisting of Western Europe, the United States and Japan. Brzezinski wrote about how “the traditional sovereignty of nation states is becoming increasingly unglued as transnational forces such as multinational corporations, banks, and international organisations play a larger and larger role in shaping global politics.”

    So, in 1972, David Rockefeller and Brzezinski “presented the idea of a trilateral grouping at the annual Bilderberg meeting.” In July of 1972, seventeen powerful people met at David Rockefeller’s estate in New York to plan for the creation of another grouping. Also at the meeting was Brzezinski, McGeorge Bundy, the President of the Ford Foundation, (brother of William Bundy, editor of Foreign Affairs) and Bayless Manning, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.24 In 1973, these people formed the Trilateral Commission, which acted as a sister organisation to Bilderberg, linking the elites of Western Europe, North America, and Japan into a transnational ruling class.

    These think tanks have effectively socially constructed an ideologically cohesive ruling class in each nation and fostered the expansion of international ideological alignment among national elites, allowing for the development of a transnational ruling class sharing a dominant ideology.

    These same interests, controlled by the international banking houses, had to socially construct society itself. To do this, they created a massive network of tax-exempt foundations and non-profit organisations, which shaped civil society according to their designs. Among the most prominent of these are the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

    The “Foundations” of Civil Society

    These foundations shaped civil society by financing research projects and initiatives into major social projects, creating both a dominant world-view for the elite classes, as well as managing the other classes.

    These foundations, since their establishment, played a large part in the funding and organising of the eugenics movement, which helped facilitate this racist, elitist ideology to having enormous growth and influence, ultimately culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. From then, the word “eugenics” had to be dropped from the ideology and philanthropy of elites, and was replaced with new forms of eugenics policies and concepts. Among them, genetics, population control and environmentalism.

    These foundations also funded seemingly progressive and alternative media sources in an effort to control the opposition, and manage the resistance to their world order, essentially making it ineffective and misguided.

    The Rockefeller Foundation was established in 1912, and immediately began giving money to eugenics research organisations.25 Eugenics was a pseudo-scientific and social science movement that emerged in the late 19th century, and gained significant traction in the first half of the 20th century. One of the founding ideologues of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, an anthropologist and cousin to Charles Darwin, wrote that eugenics “is the study of all agencies under social control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations.”26 Ultimately, it was about the “sound” breeding of people and maintaining “purity” and “superiority” of the blood. It was an inherently racist ideology, which saw all non-white racial categories of people as inherently and naturally inferior, and sought to ground these racist theories in “science.”

    The vast wealth and fortunes of the major industrialists and bankers in the United States flowed heavily into the eugenics organisations, promoting and expanding this racist and elitist ideology. Money from the Harriman railroad fortune, with millions given by the Rockefeller and Carnegie family fortunes were subsequently “devoted to sterilisation of several hundred thousands of American ‘defectives’ annually, as a matter of eugenics.”27

    In the United States, 27 states passed eugenics based sterilisation laws of the “unfit,” which ultimately led to the sterilisation of over 60,000 people. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the Carnegie and especially the Rockefeller Foundation, funded eugenics research in Germany, directly financing the Nazi scientists who perpetrated some of the greatest crimes of the Holocaust.28

    Following the Holocaust, the word “eugenics” was highly discredited. Thus, these elites who wanted to continue with the implementation of their racist and elitist ideology desperately needed a new name for it. In 1939, the Eugenics Records Office became known as the Genetics Record Office.29 However, tens of thousands of Americans continued to be sterilised throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, the majority of which were women.30

    Edwin Black analysed how the pseudoscience of eugenics transformed into what we know as the science of genetics. In a 1943 edition of Eugenical News, an article titled “Eugenics After the War,” cited Charles Davenport, a major founder of eugenics, in his vision of “a new mankind of biological castes with master races in control and slave races serving them.”31

    A 1946 article in Eugenical News stated that, “Population, genetics, [and] psychology, are the three sciences to which the eugenicist must look for the factual material on which to build an acceptable philosophy of eugenics and to develop and defend practical eugenics proposals.” As Black explained, “the incremental effort to transform eugenics into human genetics forged an entire worldwide infrastructure,” with the founding of the Institute for Human Genetics in Copenhagen in 1938, led by Tage Kemp, a Rockefeller Foundation eugenicist, and was financed with money from the Rockefeller Foundation.32

    Today, much of civil society and major social projects are a product of these foundations, and align with various new forms of eugenics. The areas of population control and environmentalism are closely aligned and span a broad range of intellectual avenues. The major population control organisations emerged with funding from these various foundations, particularly the Rockefeller foundations and philanthropies.

    These organisations, such as the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, funded major civil society movements, such as the Civil Rights movement, in an effort to “create a wedge between social movement activists and their unpaid grassroots constituents, thereby facilitating professionalisation and institutionalisation within the movement,” ultimately facilitating a “narrowing and taming of the potential for broad dissent,” with an aim of limiting goals to “ameliorative rather than radical change.”33

    Two major organisations in the development of the environmental movement were the Conservation Foundation and Resources for the Future, which were founded and funded with money from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and helped “launch an explicitly pro-corporate approach to resource conservation.”34 Even the World Wildlife Fund was founded in the early 1960s by the former president of the British Eugenics Society, and its first President was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a founding member of the Bilderberg Group.

    While the environmental movement positions people as the major problem for the earth, relating humanity to a cancer, population control becomes a significant factor in proposing environmental solutions.

    In May of 2009, a secret meeting of billionaire philanthropists took place in which they sought to coordinate how to “address” the world’s environmental, social, and industrial threats. Each billionaire at the meeting was given 15 minutes to discuss their “preferred” cause, and then they deliberated to create an “umbrella” cause to harness all their interests. The end result was that the umbrella cause for which the billionaires would aim to “give to” was population control, which “would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.” Among those present at the meeting were David Rockefeller, Jr., George Soros, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, and even Oprah Winfrey.35

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    Conclusion

    At the top of the list of those who run the world, we have the major international banking houses, which control the global central banking system. From there, these dynastic banking families created an international network of think tanks, which socialised the ruling elites of each nation and the international community as a whole, into a cohesive transnational elite class. The foundations they established helped shape civil society both nationally and internationally, playing a major part in the funding – and thus coordinating and co-opting – of major social-political movements.

    An excellent example of one member of the top of the hierarchy of the global elite is David Rockefeller, patriarch of the Rockefeller family. Long serving as Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan bank, he revolutionised the notion of building a truly global bank. He was also Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, heavily involved in the family philanthropies, and sits atop a vast number of boards and foundations. Even Alan Greenspan, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, said that David Rockefeller and the CFR have, “in many respects, formulated the foreign policy of this country.”36

    In another speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, then World Bank President James Wolfesohn, said in 2005, in honour of David Rockefeller’s 90th birthday, that, “the person who had perhaps the greatest influence on my life professionally in this country, and I’m very happy to say personally there afterwards, is David Rockefeller.” He then said, “In fact, it’s fair to say that there has been no other single family influence greater than the Rockefeller’s in the whole issue of globalisation and in the whole issue of addressing the questions which, in some ways, are still before us today. And for that David, we’re deeply grateful to you and for your own contribution in carrying these forward in the way that you did.”37

    David Rockefeller, himself, wrote, “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicised incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”38

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    Footnotes

    1. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, New York: Macmillan Company, 1966, 324
    2. Carroll Quigley, op.cit., 515; Robert Elgie and Helen Thompson, ed., The Politics of Central Banks, New York: Routledge, 1998, 97-98
    3. Sylvia Nasar, ‘Masters of the Universe’, The New York Times: January 23, 2000; ‘The Family That Bankrolled Europe’, BBC News: July 9, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/389053.stm
    4. Carroll Quigley, op.cit., 51
    5. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial: New York, 2003, 323
    6. Carroll Quigley, op.cit., 130
    7. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York: Basic Books, 2004, 186
    8. Ibid, 190
    9. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, GSG & Associates, 1981, 3
    10. Ibid, 33
    11. Ibid, 34
    12. William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, 276
    13. John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1975, 121-122
    14. William Greider, op.cit., 277
    15. H.W. Brands, ‘He Is My Independent Self’, The Washington Post: June 11, 2006: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801104.html
    16. CFR, ‘Continuing the Inquiry. History of CFR’: www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/inquiry.html
    17. Chatham House, ‘CHATHAM HOUSE (The Royal Institute of International Affairs): Background’, Chatham House History: www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/history/
    18. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, op.cit., 5
    19. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, op.cit., 132-133
    20. James G. McGann, Ph.D., The Global “Go-To Think Tanks”: The Leading Public Policy Research Organizations In The World, The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program: University of Pennsylvania, International Relations Program, 2008, 26-28
    21. CBC, ‘Informal forum or global conspiracy?’, CBC News Online: June 13, 2006: www.cbc.ca/news/background/bilderberg-group/
    22. Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, South End Press: 1980, 161-171
    23. Glen McGregor, ‘Secretive power brokers meeting coming to Ottawa?’, Ottawa Citizen: May 24, 2006
    24. Holly Sklar, ed., op.cit., 76-78
    25. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, New York: Thunders’s Mouth Press, 2004, 93
    26. Ibid, 18
    27. Ibid, 101-102
    28. Edwin Black, ‘Eugenics and the Nazis – the California connection’, The San Francisco Chronicle: November 9, 2003
    29. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak, op.cit., 396
    30. Ibid, 398
    31. Ibid, 416
    32. Ibid, 418
    33. Michael Barker, The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection, Capitalism Nature Socialism: 19, (2), June 2008, 18
    34. Ibid, 19-20
    35. John Harlow, ‘Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation’, Times Online: May 24, 2009
    36. CFR, Remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations Annual Corporate Conference, Transcripts: March 10, 2005: www.cfr.org/publication/7908/remarks_at_the_council_on_foreign_relations_annual_corporate_conference.html
    37. CFR, Council on Foreign Relations Special Symposium in honor of David Rockefeller’s 90th Birthday, Transcript: May 23, 2005: www.cfr.org/publication/8133/council_on_foreign_relations_special_symposium_in_honor_of_david_rockefellers_90th_birthday.html
    38. David Rockefeller, Memoirs, New York: Random House: 2002, 405

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  • Brothers of the Shadows: A Perspective on Conspiracies

    Brothers of the Shadows: A Perspective on Conspiracies

    From New Dawn 86 (Sept-Oct 2004)

    In his book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace Gore Vidal suggests that the American public has been conditioned to respond to the word ‘conspiracy’ with a smirk and a chuckle. Conspiracy, in other words, is for the nuts and the loners, and is not to be taken seriously. In this way, he argues, through the media’s association of the concept of conspiracy with fringe or extreme elements, the real conspirators go unnoticed.

    It is a vital point, and Vidal courageously chases and exposes genuine conspiracies by politicians, the FBI, lobbyists for the tobacco companies, and so on. But the flip-side of the conspiracy coin is the proliferation of fanciful and fantastic theories that now crisscross the globe in seconds with the help of electronic media.

    The spread of the internet has democratised conspiracy theory. Millions of people now have the means to publish their own unique analysis of what is going on. A necessary consequence of this massive growth in personal digital publishing is that it is getting to be much more difficult to find the pearls among the rubbish. Someone even observed that, in the age of the internet, if you want to keep something secret you make it public…

    Amidst the more fantastic theories of UFOs and intergalactic lizards, certain core themes do persistently reoccur in the mass of ‘conspiracy theory’ material now available. Principal among them is the idea that a shadowy elite is seeking to enslave humanity under the auspices of a single, centralised world government. The name of the mysterious ‘Illuminati’ is most often associated with such a group, although what is meant by it is frequently ill defined. The Illuminati are, supposedly, a cabal of top bankers, politicians and businessmen seeking to create the aforesaid all-powerful government.

    What is the truth of all this? I do not propose to give a full answer here, but would like to introduce a perspective on the theme – one that has generally not been given serious consideration – taken from the research of Rudolf Steiner. In the second part of the article I will try and relate Steiner’s ideas to other more familiar conspiracy research.

    So why Steiner? Because, if for no other reason, his pronouncements and indications on practical areas of life have borne such remarkable fruit, testimony to which are thousands of Waldorf schools offering a new kind of education, farms successfully practicing bio-dynamics, clinics dispensing anthroposophic medicines, and so on.

    As a profound clairvoyant, Steiner claimed to investigate other dimensions of reality for insight into the human condition. His legacy is hundreds of volumes of published talks and written works on a cornucopia of themes. However, as mentioned above, his work – in contrast to that of many other spiritual teachers and gurus – has shown itself to have practical applications in all areas of life. This in itself does not provide ultimate evidence for the truth of his work, but it does correspond to the biblical dictum: “[B]y their fruits ye shall know them.”

    In 1916 and 1917, in the midst of the catastrophic First World War, Steiner gave a series of 25 lectures to a group of his followers who gathered together at their centre in Dornach in neutral Switzerland. These lectures, since translated and published in English,1 offer a unique reading of contemporary events.

    Behind the outer façade of world affairs, suggested Steiner, the machinations of occult groups or ‘brotherhoods’ were at work. Certain of these brotherhoods had wanted the Great War to take place, and had manipulated events to bring it about. In doing this, they sought to protect the dominant economic position of the English-speaking world, and in turn to crush the ‘mediating’ role of Central European powers such as Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and so on.

    These occult brotherhoods – small groups of men who met together in ‘lodges’ and practiced ceremonial magic as a means of achieving certain goals – originated from the English-speaking (Anglo-Saxon) world and were allied, in particular, with Anglo-American interests. Their aim was to extend Anglo-American influence across the globe, and to ensure the predomination of Anglo-American culture. Furthermore, they sought to extend its superiority into the distant future; essentially to ensure that the present state of affairs continues evermore.

    According to Steiner’s research, human evolution goes through ‘great periods’ of development. During each of these periods, a particular people is given the task of leading humanity in a spiritual sense. Over the millennia, it has been the destiny of different peoples to bring specific qualities, in a benevolent way, to the whole of humanity. Particular periods of history are thus led by particular nations. This does not imply a form of political control or empire – and is certainly not a theory of national or racial superiority – but is referring to a spiritual form of authority.

    Steiner suggested that the Western world, and in particular the English-speaking peoples, have been given the task of getting to grips with the material world – of becoming comfortable on Earth and developing in harmony with it. In this specific sense, the West was to introduce a certain kind of (beneficial) materialism into human development. But this materialism was only meant to be developed up to a certain point. It was necessary in order for humans to become fully part of the earthly world, and to help introduce an individualised consciousness (the ‘I’). But beyond that it had the potential to be destructive. Materialism as a philosophy, which shuts out the possibility of soul and spirit, is retrogressive, asserted Steiner, and works as an evil in human evolution.

    The Anglo-American brotherhoods that seek dominion over mankind know this, and hence today are deliberately sponsoring various kind of materialism in the hope of halting and trapping humanity at the present stage of its development. They don’t want humans to progress beyond the present stage of immersion in the material world. In other words, they don’t want us to reconnect in a free way with our spiritual ‘I’, because they know that their grip over humanity would then be lost. Human progress is dependent on spiritual knowledge, and thus the occult brotherhoods work against it.

    Steiner explained further the brotherhoods were aware that the Slavic peoples were to be given the task of leadership on behalf of humanity during the next ‘great period’ of history. For this reason, the Anglo-American brotherhoods not only sought to dominate the present great period of human development, but – knowing that the Slavs had an important mission in the future – sought to gain control over the Slavic peoples (Russia in particular) in the present, in order to interfere with or even put a halt to their coming task. In this way, the Anglo-American brotherhoods could extend their control over human development into the distant future.

    Steiner later claimed that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which led to the creation of the USSR and the 72-year cultural, intellectual, economic and political repression of the populations of its various peoples, was masterminded and sponsored by these same brotherhoods as a means of controlling the region and its peoples.2

    What is the evidence for Steiner’s analysis? Apart from anything else, it is interesting to note the present state of world affairs, and how – since Steiner spoke about this topic in 1916-17 – Anglo-American culture has come to dominate the globe in tandem with American economic and political influence (with the enthusiastic support of British politicians). The assertion of unilateral military action by the United States and Britain in the 2003 invasion of Iraq – in the face of almost total global opposition – was a good example of this formidable power at work. However, admittedly these observations do not provide ‘proof’ in a strict sense.

    Another source of evidence is the remarkable research of Prof. Carroll Quigley (1910-77) who wrote two substantial volumes, The Anglo-American Establishment (1949) and Tragedy and Hope (1966),3 on the secret network which emerged from the enterprise of Cecil Rhodes. Quigley characterised the power of this group through its influence in politics, culture and social life as “terrifying”.

    It is important to note that Quigley was no crazed and paranoid conspiracy nut, but a respected Georgetown professor, and even the teacher of Bill Clinton. (How such networks might be related to the brotherhoods Steiner is talking about will be considered later.) Other authors have followed Quigley’s lead and complemented his studies with contemporary observations. A few have even related Steiner’s ideas to Quigley’s research.4 In this context, however, I would like to mention only two external ‘symptoms’, which, at the very least, offer circumstantial evidence for Steiner’s diagnosis.

    In 1893, an Englishman called C.G. Harrison delivered six lectures to the Berean Society, a mysterious group of ‘Christian esotericists’. A record of these lectures is to be found in Harrison’s remarkable book The Transcendental Universe. Little is known about the Berean Society or Harrison, although he wrote two further books in his lifetime. What is clear is that Harrison, who speaks in defense of the “high” Church, had access to a phenomenal store of esoteric thought, and was furthermore privy to a certain amount of inside knowledge. In his second lecture, he spoke not only of “the next great European war”, but also of the “national character” of the Slavic peoples and its ability to “enable them to carry out experiments in Socialism, political and economical, which would present innumerable difficulties in Western Europe”.5 Remember that these lectures were given in 1893, 21 years before the First World War and 24 years before the Bolshevik Revolution!

    While Harrison claimed to be a “theoretical occultist” as opposed to a “practical” one – i.e. he did not practice magic or ritual, with the implication that he was not a member of a “lodge” himself – from his work it is evident he represents an esoteric strain of thought which clearly defends the English establishment. How could he know about the forthcoming War as well as the “experiments in Socialism”, which would take a grip on Russia and its surrounding states for most of the twentieth century? If he was not, as he claimed, a “practical occultist” himself, it is reasonable to assume he had contact with people who were, and who had access to the malign plans of such secret groups referred to above.

    The second significant piece of evidence which offers some backing for Steiner’s claims of occult interference in world politics is to be found in a special edition of the satirical weekly The Truth, published at Christmas 1890. Under the heading ‘The Kaiser’s Dream’, the magazine featured a cartoon map of Europe together with a humorous commentary. Many observations can be made of the map, but the most pertinent point to note in relation to the above is that all the countries of Europe are shown as republics with the exception of Russia and its neighbouring states, over which are written the words “Russian Desert”. In addition, Germany is identified with the words “German Republics”! This map signifies not only a foreknowledge – similar to Harrison – of the fate of Russia to become a cultural as well as an economic ‘desert’, but also of the future splitting of Germany into ‘republics’. The magazine’s editor, Henry Labouchère, was a Freemason. Was his remarkable foresight pure luck, or once again did he have some inside knowledge of future plans to shape the world?

    It is of course possible that the above examples are merely coincidences and happy flukes, but surely it is unlikely. Do these examples offer evidence for the existence of occult brotherhoods with pernicious plans for political manipulation? We may never know for sure, but it is evident that Steiner’s perspective offers much serious food for thought, and opens up important new vistas for understanding current world events.

    Steiner and Modern Conspiracy Research

    Having sketched out Steiner’s picture of secret brotherhoods, I would like now to try and show how his perspective might relate to the more general conspiracy research referred to earlier. To many readers of this magazine the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission will be more than familiar. In addition, the Yale University secret society Skull and Bones is often identified by investigators in the conspiracy field. The latter has been thrown into the limelight recently due to the remarkable admission by both Republican and Democratic candidates of the 2004 American presidential election that they are members of the exclusive club.

    As Skull and Bones is a tiny society that invites only 15 undergraduates per year to join its ranks – and at any one time has only 800 or so living members – the fact that the two candidates for the post of the most powerful position in the world are members of it (from a population totaling some 293 million people) is quite incredible!

    It has long been known that George W. Bush is an initiate of Skull and Bones (as was his father George Bush Snr. and grandfather Prescott Sheldon Bush).6 According to the key researcher of Skull and Bones, Antony C. Sutton, the society was first founded in 1833. Members, who meet secretly in its ‘tomb’ on the grounds of Yale, are sworn to secrecy about the group’s rites and activities. In terms of its operations and philosophy, Sutton refers to the ‘dialectical’ process, based on the philosopher Hegel, as being at the heart of Skull and Bones thinking. In particular, he tries to prove that the group has been instrumental in funding and encouraging the development of both far-left and far-right political groupings – principally the Communists and Nazis – in the twentieth century. From the point of view of Skull and Bones’ broad vision of human development, left and right are viewed as two parts of the Hegelian dialectical process; one political wing represents ‘thesis’ while the other represents ‘antithesis’. These two aspects clash and fight each other, but eventually merge to form a ‘synthesis’. It is this synthesis, according to Sutton, that Skull and Bones is aiming to create. By controlling and manipulating the conflict, it controls the outcome (or synthesis).

    It is interesting to note that Sutton first published his interpretation of Skull and Bones in the mid-1980s. At that time, he quoted the group as working for a ‘New World Order’ (NWO). This NWO was to be the product of the synthesis of political left and right. Shortly after the collapse of the Eastern-bloc communist countries, and the subsequent triumph of Western capitalism – a triumph that Francis Fukuyama referred to in his famous book as ‘the end of history’ – George Bush Snr. began to use the specific phrase ‘New World Order’ in public speeches.

    This fascinating fact offers some circumstantial evidence for Sutton’s reading. Presuming that Sutton is correct, humanity is living right now within the period of ‘synthesis’ – the birth of a NWO led by the West, and principally the United States. (And perhaps it will come as no surprise to adherents of Sutton’s analysis that a new ‘dialectic’ has suddenly appeared to take the place of the old, i.e. Communism versus Capitalism is replaced with the West versus Islamic Fundamentalism.)

    Antony Sutton’s series of booklets on Skull and Bones begins with hisIntroduction to the Order,7  in which he points out that – despite them being commonly associated with conspiracy – organisations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission are ultimately not secret, and have large public memberships. Likewise, it could be added that despite the fact the Bilderberg conferences are not open to the press or public, the names of the people who attend these yearly private meetings are not concealed. (The minutes of the 1999 meeting in Sintra, Portugal were even leaked and published wholesale on the internet.) Lists of members of the above groups can be found in Robert Gaylon Ross’s Who’s Who of the Elite, Members of the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Skull and Bones Society.)

    Sutton suggests that organisations such as the above form a larger ‘outer circle’ of members, while societies such as Skull and Bones form part of an ‘inner circle’ of truly secret groupings, of which there is a still further ‘inner core’ – the ‘decision-making core’ – which remains completely out of public view, i.e. truly hidden (or, literally, ‘occult’). This is a reasonable hypothesis. From what is known of the Bilderberg conferences, for example, it could be inferred that their essential motivation is to further the Western Capitalist Project through high-level networking and the grooming of young talent. To put it in another way, they are working for the economic, political and cultural domination of a globalised world by the West – in particular by the English-speaking peoples led by the United States and Britain. (Although the Bilderberg conferences include guests from around the world, the emphasis is on North America and Europe, and its leadership is Anglo-Saxon.)

    From what is known of the Bilderbergers – and much has reached the public domain – there appears to be no more conspiracy than that. Groups such as Skull and Bones (and Sutton deduces that there are others such as Scroll and Key) are not completely secret in that their existence and membership are well documented. According to Sutton these are the ‘core’, with similar objectives to the more public groups but with more focused and consciously-held goals.

    In contradistinction to the Bilderbergers etc., true secret societies usually have elaborate initiation ceremonies and use ritual as a critical part of their mutual enterprise. The brotherhoods Steiner speaks of, as has already been mentioned, are also built on Masonic principles of secrecy and ritual, but are hidden from public view.

    In relation to the groups referred to above, it is quite possible that such genuinely occult brotherhoods form part of the inner, ‘decision-making’ core, which Sutton refers to. Having said that, as Sutton points out, most members of the larger groups would have no inkling of any subterfuge or conspiracy, and neither would many members of Skull and Bones. This work would be left to the directors, or ‘initiates’, with esoteric knowledge and understanding. According to Steiner, the specific brotherhoods he is referring to not only have the conscious goal of maintaining Anglo-American domination, but complement this aim with real esoteric insight – i.e. an understanding of the evolutionary cycles referred to above.

    The above sketch gives a useful framework for comprehending how public groups such as Bilderberg, more secret groups like Skull and Bones, and the occult societies that Steiner refers to might interact and co-exist. In this sense, the true occult societies would be the central inspiration for the larger intersecting groups of organisations with politically active individuals. To my mind, such a complex picture is more convincing than the nebulous idea of a single all-powerful ‘Illuminati’ that is supposedly responsible for creating a massive conspiracy that controls every aspect of modern life.

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    Footnotes

    1. Karma of Untruthfulness Volumes I & II, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1988 and 1992.
    2. See further in Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Spiritual Origins of Eastern Europe and the Future Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Temple Lodge Publishing, London, 1993.
    3. The Anglo-American Establishment was only published in 1981, Books in Focus, New York.Tragedy and Hope was published in 1966 by Macmillan, New York.
    4. See Terry Boardman, Mapping the Millennium, Behind the Plans of the New World Order, Temple Lodge Publishing, London, 1998, and Amnon Reuveni, In the Name of the ‘New World Order’, Manifestations of Decadent Powers in World Politics, Temple Lodge Publishing, London, 1996.
    5. The Transcendental Universe, Lindisfarne Press, New York, 1993, pages 98-99.
    6. Daily Telegraph, London, 12 July 2004.
    7. The Secret Cult of the Order (1983), An Introduction to the Order (1984), How the Order Creates War and Revolution (1985), How the Order Controls Education (1985), Veritas Publishing Co., Aukland. A more recent and high profile study is Alexandra Robbins Secrets of the Tomb.

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