David Dastych – The 58th annual Bilderberg Group Meeting was held in Greece, May 14-17 (It’s address: Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel, Apollonos Avenue 40, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece). As usual, since the first reunion in the Hotel de Bilderberg near Arnhem in Holland, May 29 to 31,1954, the Western “elite conclave” held behind closed doors aroused much interest and suspicion.
The initiator of the Bilderberg Group (or Club) meetings, now bringing together about 130-150 of the most powerful and influential people from the Western World, was a Polish exile Dr.Jozef Hieronim Retinger. “He was worried about anti-Americanism and the advance of Communism in Western Europe. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands agreed to sponsor the idea, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Walter Bedell Smith, threw his weight behind it and so did the White House.” (The Times)
Jan (John) Pomian, a Polish secretary of Dr. Retinger, in his essay “Memoirs of an Eminence Grise,” described the first meeting of the prominent people that were to initiate the Bilderberg Group:
“Then in May 1954 the first conference took place in a secluded hotel called the Bilderberg, near Arnhem in Holland. There were about eighty participants, including some twenty Americans. It was a very high-powered gathering of prominent politicians, industrialists, bankers and eminent public figures, writers, trade unionists and scholars. Prince Bernhard, Paul van Zeeland and John Coleman took the Chair in turn. A certain atmosphere of tense expectation, noticeable when people who are gathered together for the first time warily feel their way, was soon dissipated, thanks largely to the charm, easy manner and sense of humour of the Prince. Speakers were only allowed five minutes at a time which helped to liven up debates, while the pungent interventions of C.D. Jackson, Denis Healey, Lord Boothby and a few others added bite to the discussions.
In addition to the plenary meetings, meals and drinks were occasions for some of the most interesting, stimulating and often amusing exchanges. After three days of living together in this secluded place, which participants left only once, when Prince Bernhard invited them to cocktails at the Royal Palace nearby, a certain faint but discernible bond was created. A new entity was born. But it was difficult to define what it was. Its purpose, its methods and its structure were new and original. They did not bear any analogy and did not fit into any known category. For the time being, for lack of any better term, it was called the Bilderberg Group after the name of the hotel in which the first meeting took place.”
Jozef Retinger initiated the original Bilderberg conference in 1954, and was its Secretary until his death in 1960. He was also Secretary General the European Movement and a co-founder of the European Community, preceding the European Union.
Who really was Retinger? A brave man from a prominent Polish family of Krakow, who took part in parachuting missions during the II WW, a free-mason, and – as Stephen Dorril revealed in his book: ‘MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations’ published by Fourth Estate, London, 2000 – Retinger was an MI6 asset (agent). His connections in the political and financial world were so wide and important that he might have influenced the post-war history of Europe and of the world. Bilderberg Group was his creation, to become a powerful “human tool” to shape the future if not of the entire globe, then of the Western World for sure.
Conspiracy theories and Realpolitik
The fifty five years of the history of the Bilderberg Group and its 58 secretive meetings provided many reasons for authors of various conspiracy histories, claiming that this secret society ruled the world, at least the Western World. Moreover, the omni-powerful Group was accused of every evil that perspired in the years since its first meeting in 1954.
The world is too big and too complicated to be governed by any, though powerful and prominent, “secret conclave” of politicians, bankers, CEOs of big corporations and of the media and military leaders. But the Bilderbeg Group imposed some influence upon the policy of the Western governments and financial centers. Its members also advocated and promoted globalization and centralization of power, leading to continetal centers of super-state administration, like the existing European Union and the idea of a North-American Union, and finally to a World Government as the ultimate goal.
Reports leaking from the Bilderberg meetings, indicate that some most important political and economic decisions could be conceived and discussed by members of the Group and, eventually, some crucial decisions could be taken behind the closed doors during these meetings. For example, an advanced information about forthcoming economic events and trends could be tracked back to annual reunions of the Bilderberg Group.
Daniel Estulin, a Spanish author acclaimed as the world’s foremost investigative authority on Bilderberg Group, came to the United States in fall of 2007 to promote the first edition of his best-seller “TheTrue Story of the Bilderberg Group” and he told his American audiences about the upcoming housing mess in the U.S.A. and the resulting financial turmoil. On similar tour in Spring 2008, he annnouced that America and the world were just a few months from a major financial calamity (read more CFP, May 5, 2009).
Daniel Estulin, Jim Tucker, and other journalist sources who have infiltrated Bilderberg meetings in the past have routinely provided information about the Bilderberg agenda that later plays out on the world stage, proving that the organization is not merely a “talking shop” as debunkers claim, but an integral planning forum for the New World Order agenda, concocted by some secretive financial-political groups in the West.
Indeed, just last month Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s. Bilderberg’s agenda for a European federal superstate and a single currency likely goes back even further. A BBC investigation uncovered documents from the early Bilderberg meetings which confirmed that the European Union was a brainchild of Bilderberg.
In spring 2002, when war hawks (the “neo-cons”) in the Bush Administration were pushing for a Summer invasion of Iraq, Bilderbergers expressed their desire for a delay and the attack was not launched until March the following year.
In 2006, Estulin predicted that the U.S. housing market would be allowed to soar before the bubble was cruelly popped, which is exactly what transpired.
In 2008, Estulin predicted that Bilderberg were creating the conditions for a financial calamity, which is exactly what began a few months later with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. (Paul Joseph Watson, Global Research, May 7, 2009)
As for 2009, Estulin’s sources also tell him that Bilderberg will again attempt to push for the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, a key centerpiece of the agenda to fully entrench a federal European Union superstate, by forcing the Irish to vote again
on the document in September/October 2009 despite having rejected it already, along with other European nations, in national referendums.
“One of their concerns is addressing and neutralizing the anti-Lisbon Treaty movement called “Libertas” led by Declan Ganley. One of the Bilderberger-planned moves is to use a whispering campaign in the US media suggesting that Ganley is being funded by arms dealers in the US linked to the US military,” reports CFP.
When the former Solidarity Union leader and President of Poland, Lech Walesa, took part in “Libertas” party national gatherings in Rome (May 1) and in Madrid (May 13), some Polish politicians and media accused him of supporting the Irish billionaire Gandley and his “Libertas” transnational party being a “tool of Moscow” and suporting Russian interests in the European Union. Lech Walesa was paid generously for his speeches at the national conventions (reportedly Euro 100,000 for each presentation) and provided a tremendous international publicity for the Ganley’s party.
Bilderberg has routinely flexed its muscles in establishing its role as kingmaker. The organization routinely selects presidential candidates as well as running mates and prime ministers.
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were both groomed by the secretive organization in the early 1990’s before rising to prominence. There is also a supposition that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been also approved by the Bilderberg Group.
Conspiracy theories always simplify the complicated and controversial world trends to suit the “properties” of their authors. Far from taking such theories as granted, we have to admit that Realpolitik could be also carried out and influenced by such gatherings of prominent, wealthy and powerful people like the 130-150 Bilderbergers.
Is the Western World losing ground?
The world we know and accept as ours never was ideal but always was perceived as the relatively best place to live in. In past centuries, the Western civilization based on Judeo-Christian tradition,religion and a set of constant positive values, such as individual freedom, democracy and free-market economy survived many wars and other calamities, rejected extreme negative ideologies like Communism and Fascism and – at the end of the 20th century – it seemed to enter its “Golden Age” in peace and prosperity. The peaceful triumph of the West over the Communist Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War that could become “hot” at any time, confronting the major nuclear state-powers, resulted in a sort of self-imposed feeling of comfort and satisfaction.
The United States emerged from the Cold War as the most powerful state on Earth and the only “super-power” – by military,economic and political standards. It looked like “Pax Americana” would remain instact for a very long time and the American free market economy would lead a general globalization of the economic activity, producing more and more cheaper goods and contributing to the enlargement of spheres of prosperity, not only in the Western World but also in other regions of our planet. On the other hand, there was expressed a strong belief in the West that freedom and democracy could spread all over the world by an example of the U.S.A. and other democratic countries.
But soon all these expectations were bound to fail.
The Western democratic system succeeded in some countries of the formerly Communist-dominated Eastern Europe, but not in Russia and not in a number of ex- Soviet Republics that turned into independent states. Authoritarian regimes still dominate in a great number of countries, in some (like Russia) with surface elements of democracy and freedom, and in other ones (like China, Vietnam, Cuba) with a reformed but still overwhelming Communist ideology and political clout.
“Pax Americana” ended abruptly on September 11, 2001 as a result of successful Islamist terrorist attacks against World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Peaceful and prosperous U.S.A. was totally shocked and the Bush Administration retaliated by a declaration of a “war on terror,” not precising against what terror. Soon after 9/11, the United States and its allies started two wars – in Afghanistan and in Iraq. While the military intervention in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaeda was fully justified and approved by most governments and the public opinion, reasons for invading Iraq to topple the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein were much less convincing, and even falsified. The “war on terror” produced an unexpected backlash in the United States – huge military expenses and an unprecedented curbing of civil liberties in the country.
The US-led military expeditions to far countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, ended by quick temporary victories but resulted in prolonged civil wars in these countries, absorbing the military forces of the U.S. and its allies (Iraq) and the U.S. and NATO (Afghanistan) and, while the West was engaged there, Communist North Korea became a nuclear power and Iran made progress towards building of its own nuclear military capacity, threatening Israel and probably also Europe, Asia and the United States in the forseeable future.
After a victory over Nazi Germany and Japan in the II World War, the United States has fought two prolonged, costly and unsuccessful wars in Asia: in Korea and Indochina. In Korea, America succeeded to defend the South of the country but in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia it had lost the war to the Communists, abandoning the allied regimes and their military forces. It looks like the same fate could repeat in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq – unless the United States proves to be able to gather effective support to the local regimes in their fight against the Islamist insurgency.
The foreign wars impose heavy burden on the U.S. economy, and the European and other allies tend to minimize their military expenses and to withdraw from the battle-zones as soon as possible. The Atlantic Alliance, or the NATO, is subject to a life-test in Afghanistan and the “alliance of the willing” in Iraq is about to vanish.
But the civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not the only trouble of the West. Serious threats might soon emerge in Africa and in Latin America, due to the spread of the Islamist influence (Africa) and of the Communist ideology (Latin America).
The economic crisis
It’s not true that the recent economic and financial crisis originated in the United States by mere chance or by some rule of the economic up-and-down turns, characteristic for capitalism. For a long time, preceding the 2008 downfall on stock-exchanges and in banks and financial corporations, the post-war monetary system has been disintegrated and destroyed by risky operations, promoted by the most trusted and most powerful banks and other financial institutions. These “Ponzi schemes,” financial “pyramids” and multiple, unlawful use of the same collateral were driven by greed and criminal activities of many individuals and institutions, seeking to maximalize their profits. The “bad money” operations were facilitated by an almost total lack of control by the private and state institutions. One of them is the Federal Reserve in the U.S.A.
The housing market, which suffered the most painful and unreversible losses, causing a lost of property to millions of people, was subject to criminal “experiments” by extending unsecured credit to a large number of people with no possibility to pay it back. The false idea that the value of the real property, houses in particular, will grow incessantly led to a collapse of the mortgage loans system, based on “virtual” money proposed to the lenders by creditors.
The results of the crisis are devastating and probably long-term, spreading all over the inter-connected world economic system and causing more and more damage to the banking networks, industries and the building. The economies of whole countries, like Iceland or Latvia, almost totally collapsed due to the crisis symptoms originated in the United States.
As many major banks and financial institutions have become “zombies” devoid of real money reserves, the U.S. Government and the governments of many Western countries engaged into “bail-outs” worth hundreds of billions of US$ and Euro to save the banking systems and the major industries from a total collapse. But the bail-outs on such a huge scale cause a quick and uncontrollable growth of the budget deficit in many countries. That means, more money is being printed, with no material collateral in gold or silver reserves or the real value of the national economy.
This is not a systematic and professional analysis of the financial and economic crisis. But a common sense tells us, that the results of the human-inflicted calamity will charge the future generations and, presently, might cause severe poverty of some 90 million or more people.
The most irritating aspect of the crisis and of the Government-led bail-outs is the behavior of the rich and powerful culprits, of the financial “gurus,” who in fact caused the collapse of the banking systems and still enjoy support of the governments and get most of the bail-out money. Instead of being swept away and forever by the waves of the omni-potent downfall, these people keep their jobs and pay millions in dividends to themselves.
The moral decline
Are we loosing a decent world of stability, sound values and honesty? Yes, we are. Banks and financial institutions are honest no more. Governments and political parties and their leaders cheat the public opinion and indulge in quasi-criminal activities. Governments spy on their own citizens and the main-stream-media are subject to inner control that is more effective than the Communist-time censorship.
There are attempts made by the present U.S. Administration, and by the governments of European countries as well, to curb freedom of speech and to limit free access to the Internet in order to put controls on the population. Free media, like some known and popular U.S. radio-networks, are being exposed to all kinds of pressure to stop informing people about true facts.
Our Western civilization is really endangered. By foreign enemy forces, like the surge of the fundamental Islamism, by the economic crisis caused by a part of us and enslaving the majority of us, by some inner autocratic and secretive forces in our own societies.
It’s the highest time for the people to stand up and protest, to take some important public matters into their own hands and to defend the Constitutional order. Remember Albert Einstein’s words, serving as a motto to this article: “The world is a dangerous place not because of those who do evil but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
This article was first published on Canada Free Press
David Dastych is a veteran journalist who served both in the Polish intelligence and the CIA; jailed in Poland by the Communist regime he spent several years in special prison wards; released in early 1990’s he joined international efforts to monitor illegal nuclear trade in Europe and Asia; handicapped for lifetime in a mountain accident in France, in 1994; now he returned to active life and runs his own media agency in Warsaw.
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