Bilderbergs: Masterminds of the Western world

You probably have never heard of them, but they may have already sealed your country’s fate.

For 58 years, the Bilderberg Conference, an unofficial conclave of 100-odd powerful people has been meeting in secluded places under a complete media blackout. The security at these annual gatherings should give you an idea of how powerful these people are: air force jets fly overhead, commandoes ring the outer perimeter, and the local police are known to rough up anyone coming within a mile of the conference venue.

On June 3, 2012 they concluded their meeting in Chantilly, Virginia, United States.

Officially, the Bilderbergs do not exist. Only once in their history, after being harried by a small group of non-mainstream journalists, were they forced to issue a statement, saying they needed an off-the-record meeting to talk freely, without media distraction.

But these are the same people who meet annually at Davos and G-8. Makes you wonder what exactly are they talking so freely about.

These are not just any rich and influential people. They are the richest and most powerful people on the planet. Among the members of this club are George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Paul Wolfowitz (former World Bank president), Henry Kissinger (who got the Nobel Peace Prize soon after he authorised chemical warfare against Vietnam), David Rockefeller (international financier and long time chairman of the Rockefeller family-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank), Zbigniew Brzezinski (who used to offer free advice on how to break up Russia), Tony Blair (best known for lying about Iraqi WMDs), Peter Sutherland, the former chairman of British Petroleum (which played a direct role in the invasion of Iraq), sundry European royalty, CIA directors past and present, directors of MI6 (the British secret service), and other equally dodgy characters.

You get the picture. This is a club of people who want to preserve Western supremacy ad infinitum.

Desperate situation

Soviet expansion, the emergence of China, India and other former colonies as independent countries, and the bickering between Europeans and Americans worried many in the West. How could the West get back in the game?

A University of Huddersfield, England, review of British intelligence operations mentions the central role played by MI6 assets like Josef Retinger, a Polish fixer and drifter, who saw the need for a high-powered "talking-shop" to ease tension between British and American groups over Cold War disputes.

Retinger knew no politician would back his plans, so in 1952 he approached a former Nazi SS officer, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and asked him to serve as honorary head of the organisation. After establishing a small European committee, Retinger and Bernhard turned their attention to the United States.

Born in the CIA

American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist Kai Bird, writes in the book, The Making of the American Establishment: In late 1952, Retinger went to America to try the idea out on his American contacts. Among others, he met David Rockefeller and Bedell Smith, then director of the CIA. After Retinger explained his proposal, Smith said, "Why the hell didn’t you come to me in the first place?"

Backed by endless supplies of CIA cash, on May 29, 1954, the first conference was held in the Hotel de Bilderberg (hence the name), a secluded hotel in Holland, near the German border.

Invitations were only sent to people who through their special knowledge or experience, their personal contacts and their influence in national and international circles could help to further the aims set by the Bilderberg Group.

Only once in its history has there been a no-show – in 1976, when the Virginia conference was cancelled after Prince Bernhard was caught taking a $1 million bribe from US aerospace giant Lockheed.

(Virginia continues to be the most popular venue for Bilderberg Conferences – it is the home of the CIA.)

Silence of the hacks

Most people, even the very well-read, are unaware of the group’s existence. That’s because for nearly six decades no mainstream media outlet, barring The Guardian (only since 2008), has considered these gatherings of the rich and powerful to be newsworthy, when a trip by any one of them individually would surely make headlines.

The news blackout should give you an idea of the cover-up. Last year, for instance, Bill Gates attended. Gates makes news when he goes abroad for a malaria conference, and yet when he attends a secret conclave the media is silent.

Of course, the top editors are all there. Bilderberg has, at one time or another, had representatives of major US and European newspapers and network news outlets attend meetings. These media people are invited on the condition that they promise to report nothing.

The hacks certainly don’t seem to mind. For them clinking champagne glasses with former American presidents, Wall Street insiders and royalty is a heady experience.

It’s about control

What exactly do the Bilderbergs want? Plain old fashioned power. Perhaps to establish a cryptocracy, a form of government where the real leaders are hidden or unknown.

In June 1991 at their meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, David Rockefeller reportedly argued for "supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers, which is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries".

Journalist Bill Moyers spoke about the power of David Rockefeller in a 1980 TV documentary, The Secret Government: "David Rockefeller is the most conspicuous representative today of the ruling class, a multinational fraternity of men who shape the global economy and manage the flow of its capital. Private citizen David Rockefeller is accorded privileges of a head of state. He is untouched by customs or passport offices and hardly pauses for traffic lights."

"Rockefeller’s strategy," writes author Will Banyan in his book The Proud Internationalist, "also reveals something fundamental about wealth and power: it does not matter how much money one has. Unless it is employed to capture and control those organizations that produce the ideas and the policies that guide governments and the people who eventually serve in them, the real power of a great fortune will never be realized."

Interestingly, in the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, this is exactly what Gordon Gekko tells a young trader who accuses him of being money-minded: "It’s never about the money; it’s about the game between people." 

Indeed, it’s about control.

Bilderberg doesn’t operate alone

Bilderberg is part of a triad which has two other members. The first is the Trilateral Commission, a private organisation that fosters closer cooperation among the US, Europe and Japan. It was established in 1973 when mutual relations between these three blocs were on a downward spiral.

Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party’s nominee for President in the 1964 election, wrote in his book With No Apologies: "The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centres of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future."

Interestingly, this year one of the attendees was Fu Ying, the serving vice foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China. It remains to be seen what prompted the invitation. Was it an acknowledgement of the fact that Chinese cash is currently bailing out the United States and Europe? Perhaps. Or is Bilderberg becoming more inclusive? Unlikely. Here's why.

"I prefer land to niggers"

The Trilateral Commission is an off-shoot of the Council on Foreign Relations, the third member of the triad. Established in 1921, the Council has a murky history going back to Cecil Rhodes, the architect of Apartheid in South Africa.

According to the UK’s Independent, the Western media rarely invokes the name of Cecil John Rhodes; his name is more associated with Oxford Scholarships than with murder. But it was Rhodes who originated the racist "land grabs" to which Zimbabwe’s current miseries can ultimately be traced. It was Rhodes, too, who in 1887 told the House of Assembly in Cape Town that "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa". In less oratorical moments, he put it even more bluntly: "I prefer land to niggers."

When, in 1877, he first made his will, he urged his executors to use his fortune to establish a secret society that would aim to "redden" every area of the planet. He envisioned a world in which British settlers would occupy Africa, the Middle East, South America, the Pacific and Malay islands, China and Japan, before restoring America to colonial rule and founding an imperial world government.

"He was deeply impressed," writes his lifelong companion Leander Starr Jameson, "with a belief in the ultimate destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race. He dwelt repeatedly on the fact that their great want was new territory fit for the overflow population to settle in permanently, and thus provide markets for the wares of the old country – the workshop of the world."

It was a dream of mercantile Lebensraum for the English.

Riding on Rhodes

Rhodes used some of his vast wealth acquired from diamond mining to set up his Rhodes Scholarships and also to fund the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK, and in America, the Council on Foreign Relations. These institutes are ostensibly think tanks but in reality are designed to steer the political processes of the Anglo-American bloc.

With funding provided mainly by the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, today the Council has some 5,000 members, and some of them have been key officials in many US administrations. It has influence with the CIA and the American armed forces as well, and can count on Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as its backers.

Together, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission have a degree of influence that is truly alarming. Collectively, they have the ability to subvert democracy and bypass elected representatives.

Former AFP editor James P. Tucker says Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission are good at picking future American presidents. He says, "Actually, they like to own both horses in a two-horse race. Here is the line-up: Jerry Ford, Bilderberg; Jimmy Carter, Trilateral; President Bush the Elder; Trilateral and Bill Clinton, Bilderberg." In fact, Clinton was an obscure Governor from Arkansas when he attended the conference in 1991; a year later he was elected president. Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney was reportedly present this year.

Target Syria

Among the participants at this year’s Bilderberg Conference was Bassma Kodmani. She was also attended the 2008 conference, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. As the executive director of the Orwellian-sounding Arab Reform Initiative, an organisation set up in 2004 by the Council on Foreign Relations, her job is to pave the way for democracy – or some form of it – in the region. She’s also a founding member of the Syrian National Council, which is a euphemism for a bunch of CIA-backed terrorists.

In an interview to The Guardian, Bilderberg expert Webster Tarpley said, "She’s a NATO agent, a destabiliser, a colour revolution queen. The fact that Kodmani was there is a scary one for Syria."

Showdown

Clearly, it is a scary scenario for many countries who may want to pursue an independent foreign policy not aligned with the US or its satellites. With the world's centre of gravity shifting East and the West losing critical economic mass, Bilderberg is the fountainhead of 21^st century colonialism. Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran are the prelude to this new global land grab.

But whether Bilderberg has the balls to subvert emerging blocs like the BRICS remains to be seen. Taking on the collective might of China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa might not be as easy as whacking Iraq.

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