JOHN F. MCMANUS - 30 AUGUST 2010

Launched in 1973, the Trilateral Commission (TC) listed an initial roster of 187 members, all of whom hailed from three areas: Western Europe, North America, and Japan (hence the name Tri-lateral).

Today, the revamped European Group has members from 25 countries, many once part of the Soviet bloc. The North American Group whose members originally came from only Canada and the U.S. now has several from Mexico. And what was once solely a Japanese portion has been re-named the Asian-Pacific Group with 13 countries represented including Australia, New Zealand, India, and China. As a result of reaching out virtually worldwide, TC’s roster now lists 18 “Participants from Other Areas” such as Russia, Taiwan, Israel, Turkey, Africa, and South America. Total membership in 2010 has grown to 390, more than double the number at inception.

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Paul and Phillip D. Collins continue their discussion of the choice facing President Barrack Obama… Technocracy or transformation. Join us to examine the technocratic elements of the administration’s recovery program, the Trilateralist influences on the President, and the dialectical manipulation of the Tea Party Movement. [Listen here]

Mario Borghezio, Lega Nord (ITALY), Member of the European Parliament with the group ‘Europe of Freedom and Democracy’, questions the nominations of Bilderberg and Trilateral attendees for the posts of EU President and EU foreign minister.

Broadcast March 6, 1989 with C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb.

Andrew Gavin Marshall - August 3, 2009

The Bilderberg Group and the European Union Project

In 1954, the Bilderberg Group was founded in the Netherlands, which was a secretive meeting held once a year, 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.”[1] Regular participants include the CEOs or Chairman 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.[2]

Joseph Retinger, the founder of the Bilderberg Group, was also one of the original architects of the European Common Market and a leading intellectual champion of European integration. In 1946, he told the Royal Institute of International Affairs (the British counterpart and sister organization of the Council on Foreign Relations), that Europe needed to create a federal union and for European countries to “relinquish part of their sovereignty.” Retinger was a founder of the European Movement (EM), a lobbying organization dedicated to creating a federal Europe. Retinger secured financial support for the European Movement from powerful US financial interests such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefellers.[3] However, it is hard to distinguish between the CFR and the Rockefellers, as, especially following World War II, the CFR’s main finances came from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation and most especially, the Rockefeller Foundation.[4]

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James Perloff - 23 July 2009

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama consistently promised Americans “change.” Such promises aren’t new to the voting public.

When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he said: “The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get … changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders.” And top Carter aide Hamilton Jordan promised: “If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I’d quit.” Yet Carter selected Vance as Secretary of State and Brzezinski as National Security Adviser; the “same group of insiders” had been shifted around; and Jordan did not quit.

Carter’s administration was dominated by members of the Trilateral Commission, which had been founded by Brzezinski and David Rockefeller. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Carter, he protested:

I don’t believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group, but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don’t think that any Administration of the U.S. Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction.

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Geithner (CFR, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg) had a little talk with his elite buddies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He was specifically asked about China’s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, and his proposal.

Listen to the adjectives Geithner uses to describe the communist money-man from China: “Remarkable … thoughtful, very careful, distinguished central banker. … I have tremendous respect for him…”

Is it a surprise then - given Geithner’s own subservience to the group - that Xiaochuan is listed as a member of the Trilateral Commission (2003 and 2004)?

Robert Eringer - February 21, 2009 12:00 AM

With spring nearly upon us, the Trilateral Commission will soon blossom into its annual conference — scheduled for Tokyo, the weekend of April 24-26. This networking elite of politicians, bankers, industrialists and intellectuals from North America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea strives to shape foreign and economic policies of nations from behind the scenes. Who are these Commissioners — and who commissioned them?

The notion of a tri-sphere concept, combining movers and shakers from three geographic regions, was first broached at a Bilderberg conference.

So what is Bilderberg — and from where does it derive its authority?

It is an elite group of self-appointed global manipulators — from North America and Europe — who have met privately since 1954 to quietly influence governments.

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Patrick Wood - January 30, 2009

As previously noted in Pawns of the Global Elite, Barack Obama was groomed for the presidency by key members of the Trilateral Commission. Most notably, it was Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller in 1973, who was Obama’s principal foreign policy advisor.

The pre-election attention is reminiscent of Brzezinski’s tutoring of Jimmy Carter prior to Carter’s landslide election in 1976.

For anyone who doubts the Commission’s continuing influence on Obama, consider that he has already appointed no less than eleven members of the Commission to top-level and key positions in his Administration.

According to official Trilateral Commission membership lists, there are only 87 members from the United States (the other 337 members are from other regions). Thus, in less than two weeks since his inauguration, Obama’s appointments encompass more than 12% of Commission’s entire U.S. membership.

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Patrick Wood - 08 January 2009

In economic and financial desperation, leaders around the globe are openly calling for the creation of a “New World Order,” including prominent “old guard” members of the Trilateral Commission. Is the baby about to be born?

The return of the Trilateral undead

It’s not accidental that so many of the original members of the Trilateral Commission, all of whom are now well into their 80’s, have returned to dance in the limelight once again.

TC Members like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volker and Brent Scowcroft, for instance.

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Patrick Wood - December 9, 2008

[Editor's note: members of the Trilateral Commission and companies with Commission representation appear in bold type.]

Since 1973, this writer has made inquiry as to the location and ownership of the vast stores of monetary gold (400 oz., .999 pure bars) in the world. There has not been a formal audit on Fort Knox, for instance, since the Eisenhower administration. Official statistics on gold holdings are often contradictory. Getting plain answers from any Central Bank in the world, including the Fed, is virtually impossible.

This paper points out a pattern of manipulation that has been clearly observed by many people. However, patterns do not exist in a vacuum, but rather they are evidence of the existence of a stable and consistent methodology. Clearly, more study needs to be done in identifying the finer parts of the methodology and its designers, but this is a good start!

When Richard Nixon canceled the Bretton Woods system in 1971, exchangeability of paper dollars for gold was terminated. In 1970 alone, available gold vs. dollars outstanding had shrunk from 55 to 22 percent, thus exerting pressure for investors to switch to gold to avoid further dilution of dollar assets.

Although the economic and financial experts swore that gold was an outmoded, ineffective and useless financial asset, cooler heads knew better. In recent years, these same experts have reversed field and are now proclaiming that gold is still, and always has been, a consistent monetary asset. Why the flip-flop?

The economic chaos in the world today is a direct result of policies set in motion to foster a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NIEO was the explicit creation of the Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1973, and their early papers and task force reports clearly asserted their NIEO plans.

Members of the Trilateral Commission were instrumental in creating the European Union as well. The EU is the prototype of global governance that will soon exert its influence to reshuffle world relationships.

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Steve Watson - Nov 7, 2008

Meet some of president elect Obama’s leading foreign and domestic policy advisors and likely administration members, every one of them a prominent member of the Council On Foreign Relations.

Will these people bring about “change” or will they continue to hold up the same entrenched system forged by the corporate elite for decades?

Susan E. Rice - Council on Foreign Relations, The Brookings Institution - Served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Clinton from 1997 to 2001. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright is a longtime mentor and family friend to Rice. Critics charge that she is is ill disposed towards Europe, has little understanding of the Middle East and would essentially follow the same policies of Condoleeza Rice if appointed the next Secretary of State or the National Security Adviser.

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Murray Dobbin - October 22, 2008

Was the federal election just a bad dream? After five weeks of fear and loathing, disappointment and disbelief, Canadians woke up to election results that were hardly different than when the election started. Most of the commentary since has been about numbers and pro-Harper media spin. The man who is claiming a new “enhanced” mandate actually received 168,737 fewer votes than last time but garnered an additional 19 seats. The turnout, at 59 per cent, was the lowest in our history, which means that the Harper Conservatives will govern the country with the support of fewer than 23 per cent of the eligible voters. Democracy in Canada has seldom seemed so corrupted or so unrepresentative.

For many of the 62 per cent who voted against Harper and his unhidden agenda, there has been an outpouring of demands for a coalition government of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc to form a minority government as soon as they can conceivably bring down the Harper government.

The movement for proportional representation suddenly has thousands of new recruits and supporters as Fair Vote Canada’s website is being flooded with visitors and its petition has been sent out through hundreds of individual e-mail lists.

Those of us on the left can be enraged by Harper’s win, but we should not be surprised. The political right has been working for this result for some 20 years with a campaign deliberately aimed at lowering Canadians’ expectations of what is possible from government, and hence elections. The campaign to give democracy a cold shower actually started with the 1975 publication of a book called The Crisis of Democracy. Put out by the Trilateral Commission, the most powerful elite group in the world at the time, it concluded that there was an “excess of democracy.” The authors lamented that the public now questioned “the legitimacy of hierarchy, coercion, discipline, secrecy, and deception — all of which are in some measure inescapable attributes of the process of government.” A governable democracy, the American co-author Samuel P. Huntington wrote, requires a large degree of “apathy and non-involvement.” That they now have it is no accident.

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From August Review

North American Group

Richard L. Armitage, President, Armitage International LLC, Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State

James L. Balsillie, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Research in Motion, Ltd., Waterloo, ON

Alan R. Batkin, Vice Chairman, Eton Park Capital Management, New York, NY

Nani Beccalli-Falco, President and Chief Executive Officer, GE International, Brussels, Belgium

*C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs

Catherine Bertini, Professor of Public Administration, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; Senior Fellow, Agricultural Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; former Under Secretary-General for Management, United Nations; former Executive Director, UN World Food Program.

Robert D. Blackwill, President, BGR International, Washington, DC; former Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning; former Ambassador to India

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, U.S. Navy (retired), John M. Shalikashvili Chair in National Security Studies, National Bureau of Asian Research; Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership, Army War College and Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA; former Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command

Herminio Blanco Mendoza, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Soluciones Estratégicas, Mexico City, NL; former Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development

David G. Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company, Washington, DC

Lael Brainard, Vice President and Founding Director, Global Economy and Development Center, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC

Harold Brown, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; former General Partner, Warburg Pincus & Company, New York, NY; former U.S. Secretary of Defense

*Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC; Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

[...]

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F. William Engdahl - September 30, 2008

The unexpected rejection by the US Congress of the Bush Administration financial rescue plan, TARP on September 29 has opened up the spectre for the first time of a 1931-style domino wave of worldwide bank failures. That is already underway across the US banking spectrum with the failure, nationalization or forced liquidation in the past two weeks of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, of the giant Washington Mutual mortgage lender, of the nation’s fourth largest deposit bank, Wachovia. That was on top of a wave of smaller bank failures that began with IndyMac in the spring. For some it is appealing and more simple to grasp the magnitude of these titanic events in the US-centered financial world by assuming it is all part of a pre-planned grand conspiracy by the Money Masters, what in the 1920s in the USA was termed the Money Trust, to control the entire financial world.

As the details of the present crisis reveal, there are huge ideological fault lines making for chaos and a potential meltdown of the Laissez Faire financial system. That present system, which was built on the back of Wall Street financial and banking deregulation since 1987 when Alan Greenspan, a devout follower and close friend of radical individualist Ayn Rand, became Wall Street’s man at the Federal Reserve for almost 19 years, is over now with the failure of the Henry Paulson $700 billion bailout scheme. Governments worldwide now face no alternative but to begin the painful process of putting the financial genie back in the bottle and re-regulating an out-of-control financial system. The failure of the UK Government and the US Government to address that fundamental issue is behind the present crisis of confidence.

A brief look at history

The Great Depression in Germany in 1931 began with a seemingly minor event—the collapse of a bank in Vienna, Creditanstalt, that May. For readers interested in more on the remarkable parallels between that crisis and that of today, I recommend the treatment in my earlier volume, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.

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