Robert Bridge - 20 November, 2009

The EU is coming under fire for shunning democratic principles as candidates for top jobs assemble behind closed doors with secret societies as “selection day” approaches.

What does the ultra-secretive Bilderberger Club, Henry Kissinger, and closed-door meetings made up of anonymous politicians, bankers and industrialists have in common with transparency, democratic procedure and open societies?

If you answered ‘nothing’ you would find yourself in rather cozy company. In fact, the European Union’s secretive election process more resembles a Vatican conclave to elect a new pope than a modern experiment in democratic procedure. Indeed, the only thing the EU needs to do now is build a smokestack in Brussels so that a puff of smoke will tell us when their arcane ritual is complete (Note: a top-ranking EU official will defend the process behind the election process at the end of this article).

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Herman Van Rompuy, the man widely expected to be appointed the first President of Europe this week, has called for new eco-taxes and levies on the financial sector to fund a more powerful European Union.

Bruno Waterfield - 16 Nov 2009

Belgium’s prime minister made the controversial proposal, leaked to a Flemish newspaper, during a secret dinner to promote his candidacy hosted by the elite Bilderberg Group.

The comments have added to a backlash against Mr Van Rompuy who, while still the favourite, has been identified as a federalist who is being championed as part of a Franco-German “stitch up” ahead a summit dinner that will appoint an EU President in Brussels on Thursday.

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Also see: “Future EU president attends Bilderberg dinner” and “Van Rompuy shows his hand at Bilderberg Group dinner“

A well-researched article on climate-change-hysteria collusion between the Club of Rome and Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.

No ‘conspiracy theory,’ scheme hatched by CFR was sold to Bush, now Obama

Jerome R. Corsi - October 23, 2009

NEW YORK – The integration of the United States with Canada and Mexico, long deemed by many as little more than a fanciful “conspiracy theory,” was actually an idea promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations and sold to President Bush as a means of increasing commerce and business interests throughout North America, according to a top Canadian businessman.

Thomas d’Aquino, CEO and president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives – the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – confirmed in an interview recently published in Canada the accuracy of what WND first reported over three years ago: namely, that the Council on Foreign Relations was the prime mover in establishing the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP.

Published by the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel Oct. 4, the d’Aquino interview verifies that the creation of the SPP was not a “conspiracy theory” but a well-thought-out North American integration plan launched by his organization, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, along with the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States.

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Blackmailed by the Bomb: Nuclear Anxiety and the Cult of the Superweapon

Paul and Phillip Collins | 2009-10-18 - Under the aegis of a transnational coalition between the Saudi elite and the American elite, the Khan network would become a major supplier of weapons equipment to Iran, Libya, Malaysia, and North Korea. In summation, the nuclear proliferation witnessed during the late 20th century and the early 21st century was no accidental occurrence. Ultimately, it was by design.

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Inside the Grassy Knoll interview | Full Throttle Radio interview with Paul and Phillip D. Collins | 03/30/2008 interview with Paul Collins on Live From Roswell

Michael Barker - October 19, 2009

“Laurance Spelman Rockefeller… was, in fact, Mr. Conservation, the man who had done more than any other living American to place outdoor issues — recreation, beauty, national and state parks, environmental education, a responsible combination of development and conservation — clearly on the public agenda.”
—Robin Winks, 1997 (1)

(Swans - October 19, 2009) The late Laurance Rockefeller (1910-2004) is often regarded to be one of America’s most influential elite conservationists, and in 1991 he was rewarded by President George H. W. Bush with the Congressional Gold Medal for contributions to conservation and historical preservation. The fourth son of the heir to the Standard Oil Company empire, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Laurance, in the words of his official biographer, Robin Winks, was Mr. Conservation. Having served as the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund from 1958 until 1968, in some way or form Laurance tended to be involved in “[m]ost of the great conservation battles of the mid-1960s.” Yet despite the high level of influence welded by the Rockefeller family more generally, Laurance is “barely present in most” books recording the Rockefellers work. (2) Therefore, this article will critically examine his environmental activities throughout the 1960s and question the authenticity of his popularly celebrated environmental image.

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James P. Tucker, Jr. - American Free Press (Issue # 40, October 5, 2009)

But nationalists and populists around the world ready to fight to retain financial sovereignty

Bilderberg has had front-men call anew for creating a global currency and establishing major European Union-style regions for the administrative convenience of a planned world government. Both steps were taken in September, one by the new Bilderberg-crowned prime minister of Japan and one separately by the UN.

The Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a global currency in a report made public on September 7. UN countries should agree on a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, UNCTAD said. The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, it said.

Heiner Flassbeck, a former German deputy finance minister, is co-author of the report calling for a global currency. He worked with then U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in 1997-98 to contain the Asian financial crisis. Summers is a longtime Bilderberg luminary and has been photographed by AFP at annual secret Bilderberg confabs.

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Franklin Scandal trailer 1b

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The continuation of the trailer for an documentary in development about the story behind Nick Bryant’s book, “The Franklin Scandal— A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal”

A chilling exposé of corporate corruption and government cover-ups, this account of a nationwide child-trafficking and pedophilia ring in the United States tells a sordid tale of corruption in high places. The scandal originally surfaced during an investigation into Omaha, Nebraska’s failed Franklin Federal Credit Union and took the author beyond the Midwest and ultimately to Washington, DC. Implicating businessmen, senators, major media corporations, the CIA, and even the venerable Boys Town organization, this extensively researched report includes firsthand interviews with key witnesses and explores a controversy that has received scant media attention.

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Gary Horne - September 06, 2009

The elite think our mistakes are more serious and see us as needing their benevolent care, since we don’t have their level of “sophistication”. Such arrogance is the road to tyranny, as warned by writer C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

For the sake of benevolence, the Elites in Power are willing to implement by force the Elites in Towers’ utopian fantasies. The Benevolent Eliteness accepts the advice of intellectuals with little or no critical scrutiny. The blind acceptance of global warming is one example. As a result, unrealistic grandiose schemes are proposed which always seem to result in the need for more Benevolent Elitenesses.

Abstract and pdf.

Excerpt:

V.2 Seat of power

Having identified important shareholders in the global markets, it is now also possible to address the following questions. Who holds the power in an increasingly globalized world? How important are individual people compared to the sphere of influence of multinational corporations? How eminent is the influence of the financial sector? By looking in detail at the identity of the power holders featured in the backbones, we address these issues next.

Andrew Cusack - 15 August 2009

PERCHED AMID THE bluegum trees on the slopes of Devil’s Peak in Cape Town is the memorial to one of the most brilliant & cunning men the world has ever produced. Cecil John Rhodes may have been born in Bishop’s Stortford, England, but his worldly glories all emanated from the Cape of Good Hope, and so it’s appropriate that his memorial stands here in Cape Town. His first commercial enterprise in South Africa was founding the Rhodes Fruit Farms (now Rhodes Food Group) which still exist on the road from Stellenbosch to Franschoek, and has since expanded throughout the Western Cape, and to the Transvaal and Swaziland. But it was his creation of the diamond monopoly De Beers out of the Kimberley mines that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Ten years after being elected to the Cape Parliament, he was made Prime Minister of the Cape in 1890, but his catastrophic and illegal attempt to seize the independent Transvaal in 1895 forced his resignation from politics in disgrace.

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By Br. Bede Vincent

Consider C. Wright Mills, probably the first American scholar to bother tracking the elites in the US and to theorise about decision-making outside the formal legitimating rituals of elections etc. His 1956 book the Power Elite—published ten years before Quigley’s—was entirely marginalised[1]. His argument was that there is actually a complex institutional structure for class formation in the US and this is still the fundamental taboo in all US political and social science, class. Dwight Eisenhower would allude to this in his farewell address as the “military-industrial complex”. However Mills concept was far broader. The competing theories and the ones essentially maintained even on the Left in the US are Popper, Bell and Schlesinger[2].

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Michael Barker - August 24, 2009

(Swans - August 24, 2009) Tens of thousands of philanthropic foundations finance social change within the United States, and last year they distributed $45.6 billion worth of grants. Thus given the not insignificant amounts of money being distributed by such foundations, an important question to ask is: how has this funding influenced anti-racism research and the evolution of race-related activism more generally? Yet to date few scholars in the field of race relations have attempted to address this simple yet critically important question. Scholarly attention has of course been paid to the role of right-wing foundations in promoting often racist neoliberal politics, but for reasons unknown, the influence of liberal foundations has for the most part been left untouched. This phenomenon is worrying given the small yet growing critical literature on philanthropy.

As might be expected, liberal philanthropists like many other unaccountable and undemocratic bodies regularly downplay the magnitude of their influence on society, successfully disguising the arguably crucial hegemonic function they fulfill for ruling elites. Of course, similar claims from other key powerbrokers — like the mainstream media — are rightfully met with skepticism, but in the case of liberal foundations the opposite appears to be the case. Consequently researchers (in most fields) have naively accepted the liberal foundations’ own benign sounding rhetoric at face value, and have ignored or belittled their influence on democratic processes.

One of the most important books exploring the detrimental influence of liberal foundations on social change was Robert Arnove’s edited collection Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (G.K. Hall, 1980). Contrary to popular interpretations of the effects of liberal philanthropy, Arnove observes that liberal foundations like the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation “have a corrosive influence on a democratic society” and “represent relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in effect, establish an agenda of what merits society’s attention.” Arnove and Nadine Pinede recently updated this critique noting that while the big three foundations — that is, Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie — “are considered to be among the most progressive in the sense of being forward looking and reform-minded,” they are also “among the most controversial and influential of all the foundations.” Indeed, as both Edward Berman and Frances Stonor Saunders have demonstrated, the activities of all three of these foundations have been closely entwined with the work of US foreign policy elites, including most notably the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (1)

Despite having long associations with both the CIA and also the civil rights movement (relationships that were sustained simultaneously throughout the 1960s), the big three foundations continue (without criticism, except from the Right, that is) to play an important role in funding anti-racism work. Therefore in the light of this information, this article will provide the first comprehensive (and critical) historical overview of the role of liberal philanthropy in funding both racially based advocacy efforts and anti-racism research. The study will begin by highlighting the role played by liberal foundations in the production of two academic books that are widely recognised as having exerted an influential role on the evolution of the civil rights movement. Then, with a strong focus on the role of the Ford Foundation, the article will review how liberal philanthropists deradicalised the civil rights movement, and will then go on to provide a brief overview of the range of anti-racism projects that the Ford Foundation has supported to date. Finally, the article will conclude by offering a number of recommendations for how anti-racism activists may begin to move away from their (arguably unsustainable) reliance on liberal foundation philanthropy.

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Lord Mandelson with his host Jacob Rothschild in Corfu. The Business Secretary talked briefly about the Lockerbie bomber to the son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, who was also staying at the Rothschilds’ villa.

What really drove the release of ‘bomber’ Abdelbaset al-Megrahi? Compassion – or politics and trade deals? Was he even guilty? David Randall investigates

Independent | Aug 23, 2009

It’s a very long time since conspiracy theorists had a week as good as this one. The saga of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was already murky enough, but now, to the doubts about the evidence against him, the alleged multi-million payouts to the prime prosecution witness, and the far-from-told story of US and British intelligence involvement, we can add suggestions of secret talks and trade deals, and the possibility that his release was not done in the name of compassionate justice, but that of oil, financial services and hotel-building.

This weekend, suspicious minds don’t have to seek very far for the material to construct explanations other than the official ones. There is the meeting in 2007 between Colonel Gaddafi and Tony Blair, then still Prime Minister. Oil and gas deals mingled with the fate of Megrahi (then yet to be diagnosed with cancer), according to the Libyans. There’s the meeting between Gaddafi’s son and Peter Mandelson in the inevitable setting of a Rothschild villa. The Duke of York, batting for Britain as ever, is involved. There may have been, say some sources, many more meetings between British and Libyan officials – something which, one might think, a simple release on compassionate grounds would not warrant. There are British business leaders now openly rubbing their hands together at the suddenly revitalised opportunity for UK banks, oil interests, security contractors, and stores to move in on Libya’s considerable available funds.

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Andrew Gavin Marshall - August 19, 2009

This article is the 5th and final part in the series, “Global Power and Global Government,” published by Global Research.

Part 1: Global Power and Global Government: Evolution and Revolution of the Central Banking System
Part 2: Origins of the American Empire: Revolution, World Wars and World Order
Part 3: Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve
Part 4: Forging a “New World Order” Under a One World Government

Transnational Totalitarianism

Global trends in political economy suggest that “democracy” as we know it, is a fading concept, where even Western industrialized nations are retreating from the system. Arguably, through party politics and financial-corporate interests, democracy is something of a façade as it is. However, we are entering into an era in which even the institutions and image of democracy are in retreat, and the slide into totalitarianism seems inevitable.

The National Intelligence Council report, Global Trends 2025, stated that many governments will be “expanding domestic security forces, surveillance capabilities, and the employment of special operations-type forces.” Counterterrorism measures will increasingly “involve urban operations as a result of greater urbanization,” and governments “may increasingly erect barricades and fences around their territories to inhibit access. Gated communities will continue to spring up within many societies as elites seek to insulate themselves from domestic threats.”[1] Essentially, expect a continued move towards and internationalization of domestic police state measures to control populations.

The nature of totalitarianism is such that it is, “by nature (or rather by definition), a global project that cannot be fully accomplished in just one community or one country. Being fuelled by the need to suppress any alternative orders and ideas, it has no natural limits and is bound to aim at totally dominating everything and everyone.” David Lyon explained in Theorizing Surveillance, that, “The ultimate feature of the totalitarian domination is the absence of exit, which can be achieved temporarily by closing borders, but permanently only by a truly global reach that would render the very notion of exit meaningless. This in itself justifies questions about the totalitarian potential of globalization.” The author raises the important question, “Is abolition of borders intrinsically (morally) good, because they symbolize barriers that needlessly separate and exclude people, or are they potential lines of resistance, refuge and difference that may save us from the totalitarian abyss?” Further, “if globalization undermines the tested, state-based models of democracy, the world may be vulnerable to a global totalitarian etatization.”[2]

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