Let's Get Started: Some Of My Sources

Nowadays, in the post 9/11-era at the beginning of the third millenium of the current era, almost everyone has somewhat indulged in dealing with conspiracy theories. Either opposing them vehemently, spreading them on the internet or considering them just to be somewhat goofy and childish, with movies like "The DaVinci Code", Mel Gibson's "Conspiracy Theory" (German Title: "Fletcher's Visionen") and Jim Carrey's "The Number 23" among many others, it's become a part of pop culture, if not culture in general. It's been a while since Jack Nicholson played the "strung-out on acid" type of conspiracy theorist-lawyer in "Easy Rider", yet the character has stayed with us, apparently resembling some sort of crude archetype in the collective unconscious. But is there any goddamn truth to the whole chitter-chatter? Is there a secret group that controls the world from behind the scenes?

Well, yes and no. There undoubtedly are conspiracies. And there are rich and influential people holding meetings outside the open realm and with no or little access given to the press. Sometimes though, as the case with the later discussed Bilderberg Group, the press is given access, yet is asked not to report on the conference in return.

Oh, and without wanting to bore anyone, let me get downright scientific for a second and give you an idea on what my sources are, because I know that especially in academic circles the pressure is hard on conspiracy theories these days. So let me start off by introducing you to some of my sources:

Anthony C. Sutton

- British-born economist, historian, and writer, who studied at the universities of London, Goettingen and California.
- Economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles
- Research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution (also known as Hoover Institute)
- His works were quoted by renouned authors and power-brokers such as Zbigniew Brzezinski.

He wrote, among other topics, books about the semi-secret Yale-based order "Skull & Bones", of whom both George W. Bush and John Kerry, the republican and democratic candidates of the 2004 election, were members. Other works include "Wall Street And The Rise Of Hitler", in which he uncovers George W. Bush's grandfather's (and thus George Bush sen.'s father's) financing of Hitler's war machinery through accounts managed by the same elite circle that both dominated Skull & Bones as well as installed the Federal Reserve banking system, which has been running Wall Street eversince. By the way, Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, was actually convicted of these crimes under the "Trading With The Enemy Act" in 1942 and if you won't take my word or Mr. Sutton's word for it feel free to look that one up in the New York Times Archive.

Carroll Quigley

- Attended Harvard university, where he studied history and got his B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees.
- Went on to teach at Princeton, Harvard and Georgetown University.
- After Bill Clinton was elected to the office of president of the USA in 1992, he explicitely thanked Carroll Quigley, his mentor in college, in his acceptance speech.

Carroll Quigley wrote two books of particular interest with regards to the topic of conspiracies, entitled "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time" and "The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden". In these books, Quigley admits to having been in contact with a conspiratorial group of world-wide proportions. In his own words, from page 950 of "Tragedy and Hope":

"There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."

Alfred W. McCoy

- Earned his B.A. at Columbia and Ph.D in Southeast Asian history at Yale university.
- Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Awarded the Grant Goodman Prize by the American Association for Asian Studies for his career contributions to the study of the Philippines.

Alfred W. McCoy started out doing research on opium cultivation in the Golden Trinagle in the early 70s as part of his Ph.D thesis, which resulted in the publishing of his masterpiece on CIA involvement in the international drug trade "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. CIA complicity in the global drug trade." In the new and revides edition from 2003, McCoy offers a comprehensive summary of the agency's involvement with the drug trade since its establishment, including such touchy topics as the involvement and the work of Pultizer-prize-winning journalist Gary Webb regarding a guns-for-coke trade-off deal between the CIA and the Contras, which ultimately led to the 80ies' crack epidemic and the rise of such notorious drug king-pins as "Freeway" Ricky Ross.

But well, these are my main sources. I have used these people's work among other sources to verify the information given in the videos below. However, should I have over-looked any mistakes or wrong statements made in the videos, please feel free to use the commenting option to let me know.

The Bilderberg Group

Just to start off somewhere, let's start with the before-mentioned Bilderberg Group. Basically, it's a group meeting of more than a hundred very influential people from the business world, international banking, politics, royalty and also some media. They meet once a year and have done so every year since its establishment in 1954 (with few exceptions). The meetings are held at five-star hotels that usually border on a lake and feature a 18 hole golf-course. Usually, the information about where and when these meetings are held leaks to the internet just a couple of days before the beginning of the conference, yet the name of the hotel is typically not revealed. By the way, the name of the group, "Bilderberg", is a reference to the Bilderberg Hotel, in which 1954's first meeting had taken place. There are no press-releases by the Bilderberg Group as such, yet a list of participants is made available to the public through the Secretary of their office in Leiden, Netherlands. I personally had them fax me a list of participants, once. So the group is semi-secret, I guess you could say. They go to great lengths in terms of concealing the place and the hotel in which they will meet, until they actually do. Participants are urged not to give interviews regarding what other people have said at the Bilderberg conferences. So the Bilderberg etiquette would, for example, consider the statement: "I went to Bilderberg last year and believe it is a wonderful opportunity for people that need to work together anyway to speak freely with each other without having to worry about being politically correct", to be fine, while frowning upon a statement such as: "Last year at the Bilderberg conference my dear friend Henry Kissinger made a plea for the oil price to keep rising until the bubble finally bursts, which has become miraculously true". By the way, I am making stuff up here, so don't treat these fictional examples as real, genuine quotes, please.

Anyway, participants usually only come from Europe or North America, though there have been few occasions of Japanese participants. The reason you will probably never have heard of this particular organization is definitely not that the names on the list wouldn't be big enough. Let's take a look at some of 2008's participants:

Royalty:

NLD Netherlands, H.M. the Queen of the
NLD Orange, H.R.H. the Prince of
BEL Philippe, H.R.H. Prince
ESP Spain, H.M. the Queen of


Bankers:

USA Bernanke, Ben: S. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Banking System
INT Trichet, Jean-Claude: President, European Central Bank
INT Zoellick, Robert B.: President, The World Bank
GER Ackermann, Josef: Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG
CAN Clark, Edmund: President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
ITA Draghi, Mario: Governor, Banca d’Italia
USA Ford, Jr., Harold E.: Vice Chairman, Merill Lynch & Co., Inc.
USA Geithner, Timothy F.: President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
FIN Honkapohja, Seppo: Member of the Board, Bank of Finland
USA McDonough, William J.: Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Chairman, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
CAN McKenna, Frank: Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
GBR McKillop, Tom: Chairman, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
AUT Scholten, Rudolf: Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
ESP Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias: Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander


Politicians:

CAN Adams, John: Associate Deputy Minister of National Defence and Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada
INT Almunia, Joaquín: Commissioner, European Commission
TUR Babacan, Ali: Minister of Foreign Affairs
NLD Balkenende, Jan Peter: Prime Minister
PRT Balsemão, Francisco Pinto: Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
GRC Alogoskoufis, George: Minister of Economy and Finance
SWE Bildt, Carl: Minister of Foreign Affairs
PRT Costa, António: Mayor of Lisbon
GBR Clarke, Kenneth: Member of Parliament
USA Daschle, Thomas A.: Former US Senator and Senate Majority Leader
GER Fischer, Joschka: Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
FRA Jouyet, Jean-Pierre: Minister of European Affairs
POL Kwasniewski, Aleksander: Former President
GER Klaeden, Eckart von: Foreign Policy Spokesman, CDU/CSU
SWE Olofsson, Maud: Minister of Enterprise and Energy; Deputy Prime Minister
GBR Osborne, George: Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
USA Paulson, Jr., Henry M.: Secretary of the Treasury
FRA Pérol, François: Deputy General Secretary in charge of Economic Affairs
USA Rice, Condoleezza: Secretary of State
CZE Schwarzenberg, Karel: Minister of Foreign Affairs
NLD Timmermans, Frans: Minister of European Affairs

Power Brokers:

USA Holbrooke, Richard C.: Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
INT Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de: Secretary General, NATO
USA Johnson, James A.: Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (Obama’s man tasked with selecting his running mate)
GBR Kerr, John: Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc.
USA Kissinger, Henry A.: Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
USA Rockefeller, David: Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank


Intellectuals:

USA Ajami, Fouad: Director, Middle East Studies Program, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
USA Crocker, Chester A.: James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University
USA Farah, Martha J.: Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience; Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
USA Feldstein, Martin S.: President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research
CHE Forstmoser, Peter: Professor for Civil, Corporation and Capital Markets Law, University of Zürich
NLD Halberstadt, Victor Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
USA Kravis, Marie-Josée: Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
CAN Martin, Roger: Dean, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
HUN Martonyi, János: Professor of International Trade Law; Partner, Baker & McKenzie; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Mathews, Jessica T.: President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
USA Perle, Richard N.: Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
GER Perthes, Volker: Director, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
USA Ross, Dennis B.: Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
USA Rubin, Barnett R.: Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center for International Cooperation, New York University
USA Shultz, George P.: Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
USA Summers, Lawrence H.: Charles W. Eliot Professor, Harvard University
USA Vakil, Sanam: Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
USA Wolfowitz, Paul: Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Industry:

ITA Bernabè, Franco CEO, Telecom Italia Spa
FRA Collomb, Bertrand Honorary Chairman, Lafarge
CAN Desmarais, Jr., Paul Chairman and co-CEO, Power Corporation of Canada
AUT Ederer, Brigitte: CEO, Siemens AG Österreich
ITA Elkann, John: Vice Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
FRA Margerie, Christophe de: CEO, Total
USA Mundie, Craig J.: Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
FIN Ollila, Jorma: Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc
USA Schmidt, Eric: Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google

Now, two things should be kept in mind: a) this list is by no means comprehensive, it is just a compilation of some of the better known participants of this year's conference; b) even though there are some people that show up almost every year, there is quite a big fluctuation with regards to the invited guests - it is not a static group. So, why is it that no-one seems to want to cover these meetings? The press sure enough loves all the commotion regarding G8 summits, so why is it they hardly ever report on Bilderberg? Simple answer: They aren't supposed to. Every year, some influential media figures get invited. In return, they agree not to ruin Bilderberg's discretion. After more than fifty conferences there simply aren't any big publications left, whose top staff hasn't been to Bilderberg. Over the years, all of them went and all of them learned how to keep their mouth shut. Here are some people in the media that went to the Bilderberg conference 2008:

Media Players:

FIN Blåfield, Antti: Senior Editorial Writer, Helsingin Sanomat
AUT Bronner, Oscar: Publisher and Editor, Der Standard
USA Gigot, Paul: Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
USA Graham, Donald E.: Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company
GER Nass, Matthias: Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
GRC Papahelas, Alexis: Journalist, Kathimerini
DNK Rose, Flemming: Editor, Jyllands Posten
CHE Spillmann, Markus: Editor-in-Chief and Head Managing Board, Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG
GBR Bredow, Vendeline von Business Correspondent, The Economist
GBR Wooldridge, Adrian D. Foreign Correspondent, The Economist

Okay, so apparently there are some kinds of meetings of highly influential people going on frequently behind the scenes - that hardly can be seen as rock-solid proof of a conspiracy, right? Well, I guess not. But what it does actually prove, is that the media is - at least in this case - more than willing to 'play nice' and keep their mouth shut, as long as the big dogs let them come and play every once in a while. Especially in contrast with the insane amount of protest that the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, attracted last year, these de facto secret kind of "under the radar" meetings of top power brokers seem extremely weird. It is absolutely bizarre to me that the pseudo-leftist mob that went to target the G8-summit chose this particular target, since all that was going on there was democratically elected Finance Ministers and Heads of State doing the job they are supposed to do, while alsmost simultaneously the real power-brokers of the world met in early June in Washington behind the scenes with little press, let alone any kind of democratic control or media scrutiny. Is it just me, or does that seem a little bit strange?
So if you have never heard about this group and are curious as to what it might be about, watch the following, wonderful documentary, which takes a look at Bilderberg as well as the - for the most part - extremely weird people that cover the story:

The Bilderberg Group



Anyway, let me try to get back to the whole conspiracy ordeal and explain both what it is the nutjobs claim to be the truth about the conspiracy as well as what we all, including those who dismiss the theories, can learn from dealing with this topic, in the next post.