Архива за категорију ‘Putin’

@GreekForGodsGift

септембар 21, 2007

Excellent post. But read my previous post and this one slowly and carefully.

First, I haven’t mentioned a religious state – though majority of it would be Orthodox Christians.

Second, discrimination of minority Muslims, Jews and Gypsies can’t be the policy of it. Of course, there ought to be measures of protection against disloyalty, but not against any religion. So disloyal should be suppressed on the basis of disloyalty, not on the basis of their Gypsyness, Jewishness or Muslimness. BTW, I know some good Gypsies, Muslims and Jews. (I don’t deny there are some not so good – though I’ve never seen a really harmful Gypsy, they are easy to handle.)

Third, in case all mentioned joined, the state couldn’t be referred as Slavic – we’d be a minority ethnic group.

Fourth, history. Late 19th and early 20th century in the Balkans should be carefully studied from the perspective of each of our nations. You’d see the influence of „YoungTurks“ and their religious syncretism (masonic? read also about a false Jewsih Messiah Shabatay Zvi). Bad blood against Serbs and Bulgars and Bulgars and Greeks has been carefully crafted – Bulgarian priests educated in Constantinopolis, in the very Patriarchy in late 19th century were inducing Bulgars in second Balkan war and WW1 to digg eyes of the frescoes in Serbian Churches. I know Serbia did attack Bulgaria once somewhere in the late 19th century (probably 1885), and we were rightfully defeated. Bulgaria did attack Greece in the Second Balkan war, aiming Thesalonica, and was rightfully defeated. I’ll get back to Macedonia later.

The consequence of the First Serbian uprising 1804 – 1815 was the independence of Greece 1824 (or 1832?). Ottoman Empire was needed by West to survive, so new independences were to be managed carefully. Autocephalia of Church of Greece was accompanied with modern nationalism and very bad relations towards the Patriarch of Constantinopolis.

Adrianopolis was liberated – by the Bulgars AND SERBS – the first Serbian Army under the command of (than) Gen. Stepa Stepanovic was on Adrianopolis. After the success, hysteria against Serbs was instigated, so they were even the proposals to capture Serbian Army as war prisoners, which didn’t happen. Head of Bulgarian military resigned for such a behavior (Alas, I don’t know his name). Serbian First Army returned in Serbia. Adrianopolis was returned to Turkey – control of Bosphorus and Dardanelles by Western powers was defended.

That time, Bulgars were ruled by kings of German origin – Koburg (sp?), and were under the strong influence of Germans. Greeks were consicutivelly ruled by two Anglo – German dinasties of kings. Serbs were ruled first by Austrian influenced Obrenovic, than by France influenced Karadjordjevic. Name of British FM during that time was Benjamin Disraeli. Greece did not participate in WW1. They alone had their war with Turkey in 1922-1924 – read about it, and about how they were trapped first to attempt a foolish aim and than left alone to be crushed by Turks, whom expelled and killed 1,5 million Greeks from Asia Minor in 1924, after they already killed 1,5 million and expelled 1,5 Armenians in 1917 (during the revolution in Russia). See how that’s connected with pro-Russian alliance in Russo-Turskish war in 1878 (even Georgians and Armenians joined Russ, not to mention Bulgars and Romanians). In 1924 Greeks were alone, while they made a fundamental error – Turks had nowhere to go, so they had to stand against the vigorous attacks of Greeks.

The first genocide was that one against the Assyrians in British mandated part of Ottoman Empire back in 1903.

All of these were crafted before, it all does have ideological foundation. These three nations were directed exactly in the opposite directions – ideologically, economically, militarily. That’s what’s called BALKANIZATION. Now read those verses from Old Testament about fall of a divided a home and tying a strong to robb his home.

The point is – the elites of Greeks, Serbians and Bulgars were each directed towards a different western power. Most of it was achieved by education, by scholarship, by so called “culture” than by commerce. So each of us become alienated from each other and we became pathetic servants fascinated by the west, but waiting pathetically help from Russia during the hard times. The elites also alienated themselves from their own people.

Since there is strong Serbophilia among the common Greeks (peasants, labor class), not among the elite, and having in mind the character of Greeks (their Imperial past, their wars with Turkey, their war against Italians, their resistance to Hitler, their wars in Cyprus) I see Greeko-Serbian alliance the easiest to achieve, just by taking the soul searching in mind. Having in mind precaucosness and carefulness of Bulgars, they (you) won’t invest in it hard before it’s already visible and at hand. Once they see brothers are waiting for them to be part of equal and strong, they’ll rush to join, but not before. We need elites being willing and aware of that, and that’s the most difficult part. And to avoid covert operations as already happened before regarding Adrianopolis and else.

 

Macedonia was actually the apple of quarrel. Yes, its’ artificial. Most of them were Bulgars, with Serbian and Greek population as well. Late Pres Kiro Gligorov also mentioned the influence of strong Ottoman military there in the late 18th and 19th century to their ethnic composition. But we shouldn’t wonder what are we to do with them. Let us be careful. Let FYROM exist as it’s now. Let them dragged in step-by-step. Once Greeko-Serbian (but not anti-FYROM or anti-Bulgar) alliance exist, they’ll rush to join, too, along with Bulgars, maybe even earlier, but not later.

We first need to see it in our minds. We first need to see how obvious and logical it is. All of us. Operationalization, help of Russia, time, that’s all of secondary importance. It’s the idea that is important first.

I’m also not sure how much time do we have. The events are happening fast.

We wont renounce Kosovo, but the West will recognize it outside U.N. We’ll take the northen part of it in a limited war and we’ll get one frozen conflict. It would have the impact to Bosnia, Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria (you mentioned Deli Orman). So all will see how logical our alliance is. Or Bulgars will stand alone if Turkey is up against them to help Muslims in Deli Orman? Just like Cyprus did it, alone, with “help” of Britain and U.S.?

19/08: Bilderberg 2007 – Towards a One World Empire?

август 23, 2007

http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/corridors.php

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Discussions at the 2007 Bilderberg Group meetings covered concerns over the World Bank presidency, Russia’s muscle-flexing on energy issues and the failure of US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 14, Number 5 (August – September 2007)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

by Daniel Estulin
Email: daniel@danielestulin.com
http://www.danielestulin.com

The Sun has set on Bilderberg 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey. After a sumptuous lunch on this warm and sunny 3rd June, most Bilderbergers returned to their countries of choice, freshly armed with precise instructions from the Steering Committee on how to proceed in covertly expanding the powers of One World Government. Amongst this year’s luminaries in attendance were: Henry Kissinger; Henry Kravis of KKR; Marie-Josée Kravis of Hudson Institute; Vernon Jordan; Etienne Davignon, Bilderberg Group President; Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, daughter of one of the founders, Prince Bernhard; and the King and Queen of Spain.

As a rhetorical question, can someone please explain to me how it is that progressive liberals such as John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as well as do-gooder humanitarians with multiple social projects on the go, such as David Rockefeller and every Royal House in Europe, can perennially attend Bilderberg meetings knowing that the final objective of this despicable group of hoodlums is a fascist One World Empire? How could it be orchestrated?

The idea is to give to each country a political constitution and an appropriate national economic structure, organised for the following purposes: (1) to place political power into the hands of chosen people and eliminate all intermediaries; (2) to establish a maximum concentration of industries and suppress all unwarranted competition; (3) to establish absolute control of prices of all goods and raw materials (Bilderbergers make it possible through their iron-grip control of The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization); and (4) to create judicial and social institutions that would prevent all extremes of action.

NOT PRIVATE, BUT SECRET

Although participants emphatically attest that they attend the Club’s annual meeting as private citizens and not in their official government capacity, that affirmation is dubious-particularly when you compare the Chatham House Rule with the Logan Act in the United States, where it is absolutely illegal for elected officials to meet in private with influential business executives to debate and design public policy.

Bilderberg meetings follow a traditional protocol founded in 1919, in the wake of the Paris Peace Conference held at Versailles, by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) based at Chatham House in London. While the name Chatham House is commonly used to refer to the Institute itself, the Royal Institute of International Affairs is the foreign policy executive arm of the British monarchy.

According to RIIA procedures: „When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed; nor may it be mentioned that the information was received at a meeting of the Institute.“

The Logan Act was intended to prohibit United States citizens without authority from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments. However, there have been a number of judicial references to the Act, and it is not uncommon for it to be used as a political weapon.

Those who have attended Bilderberg Group meetings over the years and flouted the Logan Act include: Allen Dulles (CIA); Senator William J. Fulbright (from Arkansas, a Rhodes Scholar); Dean Acheson (Secretary of State under President Truman); Nelson Rockefeller and Laurance Rockefeller; former President Gerald Ford; Henry J. Heinz II (former CEO, H. J. Heinz Co.); Thomas L. Hughes (former President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Robert S. McNamara (President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank); William P. Bundy (former President of the Ford Foundation, and former editor of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs journal); John J. McCloy (former President of Chase Manhattan Bank); George F. Kennan (former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union); Paul H. Nitze (former representative of Schroeder Bank; Nitze played a very prominent role in matters of arms control agreements, which have always been under the direction of the RIIA); Robert O. Anderson (former Chairman, Atlantic Richfield Co., and Chairman, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies); John D. Rockefeller IV (former Governor of West Virginia, now US Senator); Cyrus Vance (Secretary of State under President Carter); Eugene Black (former President of the World Bank); Joseph Johnson (former President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster (former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and later Superintendent of West Point Academy); Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Adviser to President Carter, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission); General Alexander Haig (once European NATO Commander, former assistant to Henry Kissinger, and later Secretary of State under President Reagan); James S. Rockefeller (former President and Chairman, First National City Bank, now Citibank).

BILDERBERG 2007 CONCLUSIONS

Thanks to our inside sources at the conference, we have compiled what we believe to be an accurate and a credible model of the Bilderberg 2007 conclusions. Following is a summary of some key points with some additional commentary added. Other subjects discussed were climate change and global warming, Turkey’s role in the new European Union, World Bank reforms, Middle East geopolitics, the conflict in Iraq, Iran’s potential nuclear threat, and the future of democracy and populism.

Robert Zoellick and The World Bank

The United States delegation is standing unanimously behind Robert Zoellick’s candidacy as the next President of The World Bank. Zoellick is a 53-year-old Wall Street executive, a former official in two Bush administrations and a free-market fundamentalist. During the meeting, he pledged „to work to restore confidence in the bank“. „We need to put our differences aside and focus on the future together. I believe that the World Bank’s best days are still to come,“ Zoellick said. The chances of Zoellick not being approved for the presidency are slim to none. The final decision is to be made in late June by the bank’s 24-member board of directors.

The United States and Europe have a tacit agreement between them that the World Bank’s President should always be a US national, while its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), should always be headed by a European. Nevertheless, according to our sources at the conference, European Bilderbergers are not at all pleased with continuing the status quo, in which the US nominates a single candidate after informal consultations with World Bank members.

The Zoellick nomination also appears to short-circuit burgeoning calls for reform of this selection process at the World Bank, one of the cornerstones of the global financial architecture as designed by the victors of World War II. One Belgian Bilderberger proposed „a merit-based selection process, without regard to nationality“, something which will obviously be discarded by the inept Bush administration. What is quite remarkable is that on several occasions European Bilderbergers openly rejected the current model, saying „the nomination reeks of double standards“, especially because both the USA and the World Bank preach accountability and transparency to developing countries-the main clients of the bank.

But with the IMF under the control of a Spaniard, Rodrigo Rato, and the European Central Bank headed by a Frenchman, Jean-Claude Trichet, it was difficult to imagine that the USA would give up control of the World Bank. Only the US Federal Reserve would remain in the hands of the Americans.

„Replacing one Bush appointee with another will not resolve the fundamental governance problems of the World Bank,“ said one Scandinavian. „Member governments should reject a back-door deal that leaves the bank’s governance structure intact, and should press for an open, merit-based selection process,“ he said.

Zoellick’s name also raised eyebrows among development groups for his close ties to the US establishment and corporate interests.

One of the attendees (I have not been able to confirm this individual’s identity) asked Zoellick how he was planning to patch up relationships with Third and Fourth World nations when he is best remembered during his tenure as US Trade Representative for arm-twisting poor nations’ governments to adhere to US-imposed intellectual-property laws that make medicines, for example, unaffordable in the developing world. Zoellick has been a close friend to the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, and the bilateral trade agreements he has negotiated effectively block access to generic medications for millions of people.

However, what has really riled both the American and European delegates is the fact that the World Bank’s dirty linen is being washed in public, thanks in great part to Paul Wolfowitz and his ineptness, which incidentally he has blamed on the press.

[Postscript: On 25 June, Robert Zoellick was unanimously elected President of The World Bank for a five-year term, taking over from Paul Wolfowitz on 1 July. In a statement posted at www.worldbank.org, he said: "Once I start at the World Bank, I will be eager to meet the people who drive the agenda of overcoming poverty in all regions, with particular attention to Africa, advancing social and economic development, investing in growth, and encouraging hope, opportunity and dignity."]

Relations with Russia

Another issue of great concern to both American and European Bilderbergers is Russia’s current muscle-flexing on the issue of energy. The controversy over the TNK-BP licence, BP’s Russian venture, is just one of many circumstances causing anger amongst the globalist elite.

One American Bilderberger said that after years of economic stagnation, „Russia is acting against unipolarity’s accommodating ideologies and politics, against its recently resurgent manifestations and machinations, and against the instruments of its perpetuation, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO]„.

Bilderberg 2007 served as a consensus-building exercise to decide on a common policy and strategy to deal with Russia’s resurgence. In particular, Bilderberg is not at all happy with Russia’s current strategy of actively dismantling what remains of „the atmosphere of acquiescence to America’s will“, in the words of one Bilderberger, which arose in the post-Soviet period and was absolutely crucial to the thriving of US-led unipolarity.

That was in the beginning of the 1990s, the early stages of the Yeltsin reign. With the wholesale looting of Russia in the 1990s through shock therapy and the loans-for-shares scheme, engineered by the socialist theoreticians at Harvard such as Jeffrey Sachs, Andrei Schliefer, David Lipton and Jonathan Hay, the country was brought into the dawn of the 21st century capitalist economy. As a result, Russia eventually toppled into anarchy, its population rendered desperate; its ability to support a world-class military establishment was smashed, which then made it inevitable that colonial behaviour would occur. That is exactly what George Ball was proposing during the Bilderberg 1968 meeting in Canada. I’ll get back to Ball later in this section.

Incidentally, the term „shock therapy“ refers to the sudden release of price and currency controls combined with the withdrawal of state subsidies and immediate trade liberalisation within a country-all the necessary ingredients for impoverishment of the society…in this case, Russia.

In Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book The Grand Chessboard,1 „Russia“ and „vital energy reserves“, as it turns out, are mentioned more frequently than any other country and subject in the book. Brzezinski is President Carter’s former National Security Advisor, a co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Club and a close associate of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger. He is the proverbial insider’s insider. According to Brzezinski, global US and thus Bilderberg hegemony depended on having complete control of Russia’s vital energy reserves in Central Asia. As long as Russia remained strong, it remained a threat-a potential block to the complete imposition of Bilderberg-led economic and military will.

Bilderberg energy imperatives and geopolitical control are once again coming to play a key role in the lives of hundreds of millions of unsuspecting people.

Brzezinski spelled out in The Grand Chessboard the compelling energy issue driving American policy: „A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 percent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprise and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 percent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.“

The history of mankind has always shown that controlling the heart of Eurasia was the key to controlling the entire known world. Azerbaijan, containing the riches of the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia, is a case in point. From the US perspective, the independence of the Central Asian states will be rendered nearly meaningless if Azerbaijan becomes fully subordinated to Moscow’s control. To the Bilderbergers, energy imperatives are the end game.

The energy theme appears again later in Brzezinski’s book, written four years before 9/11: „The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the US Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy.“

Clearly, to the Bilderbergers, Russia was the beginning of the end game.

During a presentation titled „Internationalisation of Business“ to the 26-28 April 1968 Bilderberg meeting at Mont Tremblant, Canada, George Ball provided a far more truthful and insightful glimpse into the group’s economic orientation. Ball, who was Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs under JFK and Lyndon Johnson, a Steering Committee member of the Bilderberg Group as well as a Senior Managing Director for Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb Inc., defined the Bilderberg’s new policy of globalisation and how it would shape the New World Order.

As Pierre Beaudry noted in Synarchy Movement of Empire, „…Ball presented an outline of the advantages of a new-colonial world economic order based on the concept of a ‘world company’, and described some of the obstacles that needed to be eliminated for its success. According to Ball, the first and most important thing that had to be eliminated was ‘the archaic political structure of the nation state’.“

In other words, Ball was calling for a return to the old colonialism system, but this time built on the concept of a „world company“.

„Ball wrote: ‘To be productive, we must begin our inquiry by explicitly recognizing the lack of phasing between development of the world company-a concept responding to modern needs-and the continued existence of an archaic political structure of nation states, mostly small or of only medium size, which is evolving only at glacier pace in response to new world requirements of scope and scale.’“

Beaudry concluded: „It was clear for Ball that the very structure of the nation state, and the idea of the commonwealth, or of a general welfare of a people, represented the main obstacle against any attempt of freely looting the planet, especially the weak and poor nations of the world, and represented the most important impediment to the creation of a neo-colonial world empire. The priority of the world company is obviously based on international free trade without restraint, that is, trade measured by the British standard of profit of buying cheap and selling dear. The problem is that national governments have priorities, which are different than and contrary to those of a looting company…“

On page 39 of a Bilderberg transcript from the 1968 meeting at Mont Tremblant, Ball self-assuredly stated the following: „Where does one find a legitimate base for the power of corporate managements to make decisions that can profoundly affect the economic life of nations to whose governments they have only limited responsibility?“

In other words, Messrs Rockefeller and Davignon, what Mr Ball would like to know is: how does one establish a Halliburton type of world company, which would greatly surpass in authority any government on the planet? Isn’t that what „world company“, run by the ruling class, stands for?

Not according to Bilderberg President and Belgian multimillionaire Etienne Davignon. During his 2005 BBC interview, Mr Davignon said: „I don’t think a global ruling class exists. Business influences society, and politics influences society-that’s purely common sense. It’s not that business contests the right of democratically elected leaders to lead.“

Is that so, Mr Davignon? Current parliamentary democracy works on the basis of an „elected“ head of state and a parliament, which can be dumped any time you decide to orchestrate a crisis and put a third branch of government in charge of its financial system, called an „independent central banking system“.

In the United States, this „independent“ banking system is known as the Federal Reserve, a privately owned bank interlocked with the Bilderberg Group. In Europe, the independent banking system is run through the European Central Bank, whose monetary policies are put together by the leading members of the Bilderberger elite, such as Jean-Claude Trichet. In Britain, this independent system is run by the Bank of England, whose members are also full-time members of the Bilderberg Group’s inner circle. The independent central banking system controls the emission of currency, controls national credit and interest rates, and, any time the government displeases it, uses its power to orchestrate the overthrow of the government. The British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was overthrown because she opposed the wilful handover of British sovereignty to the global world company superstate designed by the Bilderbergers. This is what Kuhn, Loeb and Lehman Brothers have been building worldwide, by way of mergers and acquisitions, from the 1960s until today. In the past decades, the entire deregulation policy of US industries and banking was precisely set up in response to this blueprint scenario for creating giant corporations for a new empire whose intention is nothing short of perpetual war.

Could the eventual dismemberment and weakening of Russia-to the point that it could not oppose US military operations that have now successfully secured control of the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia-been part of a multi-decade plan for global domination? Most credible senior analysts definitely believe so.

At a 1997 symposium held in Bonn, Germany, Dr Sergei Glazyev, Chairman of the Economic Policy Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, explained: „This colonisation, masked as reforms, destroyed the basic institutions of Russian society along the following basic lines: (1) destruction of the financial system of the state by means of an endless build-up of the state debt pyramid, shrinking of the tax base, deepening of the non-payments crisis, and disorganisation of the monetary system; (2) destruction of the scientific and technological potential of the country, achieved by means of a many-fold reduction in state financing of science, the collapse of technological cooperation and scientific production integration in the course of mass privatisation, and the refusal of the government to have any scientific and technical, industrial or structural policy at all; (3) sale of controlling blocs of shares in the leading and most valuable Russian firms, in industry, electric power and telecommunications, to foreign companies; (4) Transfer of the right to exploit the most valuable Russian raw materials deposits to transnational corporations; (5) establishment of foreign control over the Russian stock exchange; (6) establishment of direct foreign control over the shaping of Russian domestic and foreign economic policy.“

The Bilderberg conclusions are striking in their candidness: „The US can no longer ride roughshod over, nor bully, nor simply ignore resurgent Russia, rising China or the globe’s regimes that supply the vital oil that fuels the US economy. Something must be done, and urgently, in order to cut deeply into Russia’s mounting global energy leverage. The US-Russia strategically deteriorating relations are one victim of this geopolitical struggle for energy supremacy.“

One Finnish delegate’s opinion that „no US-Russia military confrontation is likely, no matter how tense things should get“ is increasingly an unsafe one as a more desperate US pushes back against a much more aggressive Russia. Dr Henry Kissinger added that „aggressive, unilateralist US foreign policy has forced ‘axis of evil’ states to accelerate their pursuit of nuclear weapons to immunise themselves against US military strikes“.

Richard Perle pointed out that in response to aggressive US tactics across the globe, Russia has undertaken asymmetric steps to undermine the ability of the US to project its military power effectively into their neighbourhoods and into those of their partners and allies. When one American Bilderberger tried to object, European delegates brought up China’s recent response to US intentions to weaponise space: a simple and relatively inexpensive demonstration of destruction of its satellite. The example produced snickering in the room, much to the chagrin of the Americans.

Afghanistan and the price of treason

Another subject under discussion dealt with Afghanistan. It was commonly agreed by the attendees that the US-led NATO alliance/mission is in a state of quagmire and that „the situation in the country is getting worse“. The problem can be defined, in the words of one British Bilderberger, as „one of the unreal expectations“. He went on to explain that clamouring for democratic reform while simultaneously propping up Pashtun warlords without delivering serious progress „has managed to discredit a lot of our basic notions in the eyes of the Afghans“.

Bilderbergers, however, aren’t the only ones left scratching their heads as to how Western governments and their carefully chosen Afghan partners have managed to spend billions of dollars in development assistance with little to show for it.

Catastrophe is good for business; always has been. Without suffering, there would be no humanitarian assistance. And without humanitarian assistance, there would be no room for undercover intelligence network operations as part of Western imperatives for geopolitical control.

The worse it looks, the better it sells. While the American people were getting their daily diet of ubiquitous images of repression, suffering and burka-clad Afghani women beamed into every living room in America, a propaganda campaign was surreptitiously launched in the pages of newspapers and glossy magazines. The New York Times and the New Yorker were greasing the gears of the misery machine by urging the US government, the United Nations and anyone who would listen to „do something“-amid the jewellery advertisements. Terror and horror, like expensive jewellery, became commodities.

Today, Afghanistan and its African cousins of Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Congo and Rwanda and the rest of the nations blessed with Western humanitarian help are all basket cases. Bilderbergers seem to be asking: how is it possible that humanitarian missions of such scale and magnitude could have failed so miserably? Is it a case of good-intentioned exercises going bad due to corruption, greed and lack of oversight? Or is it the merciless dismemberment of yet more foreign lands and cultures exercised stealthily through humanitarian aid agencies tied to the larger apparatus of government?

Furthermore, the US government’s support for known Afghani drug warlords adds another vital clue to the puzzle. The amount of profit generated annually by the drug trade, according to the United Nations, is somewhere around $700 billion in tax-free cash flow per year. Seven hundred billion dollars a year is too much money to hide in a sock. You need a lot of experience and expertise to move those kinds of funds stealthily. Does anyone doubt that Afghanistan is about drugs? Does anyone doubt that the CIA is involved?

For example, the CIA financed the Muslim Brotherhood in 1977 and trained the mujahedin in preparation for the campaign of collusion between Washington and right-wing Islam: the Afghan War. The roots to the Afghan conflict can be traced to Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, the centre of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activity. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, alleged airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified as a Muslim Brother in several Western publications such as the Washington Post (22 September 2001), the Observer (23 September 2001) and Newsweek (31 December 2001). Other Muslim Brothers involved were Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, an Egyptian by the name of Ayman al-Zawahiri, is also a lifelong member of the Brotherhood.

Robert Dreyfuss, in his extremely important book Devil’s Game,4 explained it thus: „They returned to Afghanistan and formed a branch of the Brothers, the Islamic Society. Later, these same ‘professors’, as they were known, would form the backbone of the Afghan mujahedin who waged a US-backed, decade-long war against the Soviet occupation. The three leading ‘professors’ were Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.“ Sayyaf and Hekmatyar, two big-time Pashtun drug traffickers and CIA assets, were backed by Pakistani Intelligence as well as Pakistan’s own „branch“ of the Brotherhood and funded by Saudi money.

There is yet another link between the Brotherhood and the super-secret Bilderberg Group. In the early 1980s, Bilderberger Michael Ledeen of the ultraconservative American Enterprise Institute and Bilderberger Richard Perle used Hekmatyar as a poster boy of anti-Soviet resistance at the time when Hekmatyar was actively working with Hezb-i-Islami terrorists to undermine America’s influence in Afghanistan. Does anyone reading this doubt that this is hardly a coincidence?

First came the „humanitarian relief“ through non-government organisations. In short order, this was followed by the US military which came to the rescue out of the goodness of its heart for „purely humanitarian objectives“. Once on the ground, it became an exercise in „nation-building“. In the end, it morphed into the hunt for a terrorist dictator.

During an animated discussion at Bilderberg 2007 in Istanbul, one Italian asked if the US-led NATO forces have „the will to stay the course“. In the wake of the US military siege of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001, the commanding general, Tommy Franks, reportedly said it was not his intention to „get embroiled in a Soviet-style long-term engagement as in the 1980s“. Now, however, American Bilderbergers are pressuring NATO allies to provide larger troop contributions to the cause.

Dr Kissinger insisted that „the will“ is lacking and so „we must now begin to acknowledge our limits“. „The choices facing us are very difficult,“ reflected one European Royal, wholeheartedly agreeing with Kissinger’s assessment on the lack of commitment and will. A NATO representative categorically stated that the West has neither the political intelligence nor the understanding to fight a protracted, decade-long counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan.

A MEANS TO AN END?

The Bilderberg Group is not the end but the means to a future One World Government. This organisation has grown beyond its secretive beginnings to become a virtual shadow government which decides in total secrecy at annual meetings how its plans are to be carried out. The ultimate goal of this nightmare future is to transform Earth into a prison planet by bringing about a single globalised marketplace, controlled by a One World Government, policed by a United World Army, financially regulated by a World Bank, and populated by a microchipped population whose life’s needs have been stripped down to materialism and survival-work, buy, procreate, sleep-all connected to a global computer that monitors our every move.

And it is becoming easier because the development of telecommunications technology together with profound advances in present-day knowledge and new methods of behaviour engineering to manipulate individual conduct are converting what, in other epochs of history, were only evil intentions into a disturbing new reality. Each new measure, viewed on its own, may seem an aberration, but a whole host of changes, as part of an ongoing continuum, constitutes a shift towards total enslavement.

But there is hope. In almost every corner of the planet, stress points are beginning to fracture and people are starting to take sides. There is a general awakening taking place as people hold mirrors up to the irrationality that’s being imposed upon them. This awakening is beginning to empower our collective learning and understanding. You see, the powers-that-be have told us that world events are too difficult for the layperson to understand. They lied! We have been told that national secrets must be zealously protected. Indeed, they must! No government wants its citizens to discover that its best and brightest participate in massive collusion, conspiracy and pillaging of the planet.

Now, as the year 2007 unfolds, we find ourselves at the crossroads. The road we take from here will determine the very future of humanity and whether we will become an electronic global police state or remain free human beings. We must always remember that it is not up to God to bring us back from the „New Dark Age“ planned for us. It is up to us. Forewarned is forearmed. We will never find the right answers if we don’t ask the right questions.

Endnotes:

1. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Chessboard: American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1997
2. Beaudry, Pierre, Synarchy Movement of Empire, Leesburg, Virginia, USA, 2005, Book IV, chapter 4, pp. 104-05, at
http://www.pehi.eu/organisations/SME/Synarchy_Movement_of_Empire_book_04.pdf
3. Glazyev, Sergei, „From a Five-Year Plan of Destruction to a Five-Year Plan of Colonisation“, EIR Bonn Symposium, 1997
4. Dreyfuss, Robert, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2005
5. Smucker, Philip, „Missions impossible: NATO’s Afghan dilemma“, Asia Times Online, 1 June 2007
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF01Df01.html

About the Author:

Based in Spain, Daniel Estulin is an award-winning investigative journalist who has been researching the Bilderberg Group for over 15 years. He is the author of La Verdadera Historia del Club Bilderberg (2005), a bestseller in Spain and now in its 13th printing; it has been translated into 24 languages and sold to over 42 countries. The English-language edition, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, is to be published by Trine Day, USA in September 2007 (available through Amazon.com). The sequel, Los Secretos del Club Bilderberg (2006), is already in its second printing in Spanish; bidding for international rights is scheduled for (northern) autumn 2007.

Estulin’s previous contribution to NEXUS was in 2005 with „Breaking the Silence: Bilderberg Exposed“ (vol. 12, no. 5). The original text of this 2007 article is at the web page http://www.danielestulin.com/?op=noticias&noticias= ver&id=345&idioma=en.

Daniel Estulin can be contacted by email at daniel@danielestulin.com. For more information, visit his website at http://www.danielestulin.com.

DELEGATES AT BILDERBERG 2007

Istanbul, Turkey, 31 May – 3 June 2007

This year’s delegation included many of the most important politicians, businessmen, central bankers, European commissioners and executives of the Western corporate press. They were joined at the table by leading representatives of European royalty.

According to the Bilderberg Steering Committee list which this author has had access to, the following names have now been confirmed as attendees at the Bilderberg 2007 conference (uncharacteristically, David Rockefeller was not present).

Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (USA); George Alogoskoufis, Minister for Economy and Finance (Greece); Ali Babacan, Minister for Economic Affairs (Turkey); Francisco Pinto Balsemo, Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA SGPS, former Prime Minister (Portugal); Michel Barnier, Vice President, Merieux Alliance; former Minister for Foreign Affairs (France); Michael Barone, Senior Writer, US News & World Report (USA); Martin Bartenstein, Federal Minister of Economics and Labour (Austria); Nicolas Baverez, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP (France); Her Majesty Queen Beatrix, Queen of The Netherlands (The Netherlands); Leonor Beleza, President, Champalimaud Foundation (Portugal); Franco Bernabe, Vice Chairman, Rothschild Europe (Italy); Rosina M. Bierbaum, Professor and Dean, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan (USA); Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs, former Prime Minister (Sweden); Mehmet A. Birand, Columnist (Turkey); Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs & Co. (USA); Anders Borg, Minister for Finance (Sweden); Charles G. Boyd, President and CEO, Business Executives for National Security (USA); Umit N. Boyner, Member, Executive Board, Boyner Holding (Turkey); Vendeline A. H. von Bredow, Business Correspondent, The Economist; Rapporteur (Germany); Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group (USA); Oscar Bronner, Publisher and Editor, Der Standard (Austria); Hubert Burda, Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda Media Holding (Belgium); Gerald Butts, Principal Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister of Ontario (Canada); Cengiz Candar, Journalist, Referans (Turkey); Henri de Castries, Chairman of Management Board and CEO, AXA (France); Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO, Grupo PRISA media group (Spain); Hikmet Cetin, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs and former NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan (Turkey); Kenneth Clarke, Member of Parliament (UK); Timothy C. Collins, Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holding, LLC (USA); Frans van Daele, Permanent Representative of Belgium to NATO (Belgium); George A. David, Chairman, Coca-Cola HBC SA (Greece); Etienne Davignon, Vice-Chairman, Suez-Tractebel, Honorary Chairman, Bilderberg Meetings (Belgium); Richard Dearlove, Master, Pembroke College, Cambridge (UK); Kemal Dervis, Administrator, UNDP (Turkey); Anna Diamantopoulou, Member of Parliament (Greece); Thomas E. Donilon, Partner, O’Melveny & Myers LLP (USA); Mathias Dopfner, Chairman and CEO, Axel Springer AG (Germany); Cem Duna, Former Ambassador to the European Union (Turkey); Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings, Inc. (USA); Anders Eldrup, President, DONG AS (Denmark); John Elkann, Vice Chairman, Fiat SpA (Italy); Ulrik Federspiel, Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Denmark); Martin S. Feldstein, President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research (USA); Timothy F. Geithner, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (USA); Paul A. Gigot, Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal (USA); Eival Gilady, CEO, The Portland Trust, Israel (Israel); Dermot Gleeson, Chairman, AIB Group (Ireland); Emre Gonensay, Professor of Economics, Isik University, and former Minister for Foreign Affairs (Turkey); Marc Grossman, Vice Chairman, The Cohen Group (USA); Alfred Gusenbauer, Federal Chancellor (Austria); Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations (USA); Victor Halberstadt, Professor of Economics, Leiden University, former Honorary Secretary-General of Bilderberg Meetings (The Netherlands); Peter D. Hart, Chairman, Peter D. Hart Research Associates (USA); Frank Heemskerk, Minister for Foreign Trade (The Netherlands); Paul Hermelin, CEO, Cap Gemini SA (France); Richard C. Holbrooke, Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (USA); Jan H. M. Hommen, Chairman, Reed Elsevier NV (The Netherlands); Jaap G. de Hoop Scheffer,* Secretary-General, NATO (The Netherlands/International); Atte Jaaskelainen, Director of News, Sports and Regional Programmes, YLE (Finland); Kenneth Jacobs, Deputy Chairman, Head of Lazard USA, Lazard Freres & Co. LLC (USA); James A. Johnson, Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC (USA); Vernon E. Jordan, Jr, Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frres & Co. LLC (USA); His Majesty, King Juan Carlos I,* King of Spain (Spain); Jyrki Katainen, Minister of Finance (Finland); Jason Kenney, Member of Parliament (Canada); Muhtar Kent, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Coca-Cola Company (USA); John Kerr (Lord Kerr of Kinlochard), Member, House of Lords, Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (UK); Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates (USA); Eckart von Klaeden, Foreign Policy Spokesman, CDU/CSU (Germany); Klaus Kleinfeld, President and CEO, Siemens AG (Germany); Mustafa V. Koc, Chairman, Ko Holding AS (Turkey); Bruce Kovner, Chairman, Caxto Associates LLC (USA); Henry R. Kravis, Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (USA); Marie-Josée Kravis, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc. (USA); Idar Kreutzer, CEO, Storebrand ASA (The Netherlands); Neelie Kroes, Commissioner, European Commission (The Netherlands/ International); Bernardino Leon Gross, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Spain); Mogens Lykketoft, Member of Parliament (Denmark); William J. Luti, Special Assistant to the President for Defense Policy and Strategy, National Security Council (USA); Jessica T. Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (USA); Michael McDowell, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Ireland); John R. Micklethwait, Editor, The Economist (UK); Mario Monti, President, University Commerciale Luigi Bocconi (Italy); Craig J. Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation (USA); Egil Myklebust, Chairman, SAS and Norsk Hydro ASA (Norway); Matthias Nass, Deputy Editor, Die Zeit (Germany); Ewald Nowotny, CEO, BAWAG PSK (Austria); Christine Ockrent, Editor-in-Chief, France Television (France); Jorma Ollila, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chairman and CEO, Nokia Corporation (Finland); George Osborne, MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (UK); Laurence Parisot, President, MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France) (France); Christopher Patten, Member, House of Lords (UK); Richard N. Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA); Rick Perry, Governor of Texas (USA); Volker Perthes, Director, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Germany); HRH Prince Philippe of Belgium (Belgium); Rodrigo de Rato y Figaredo, Managing Director, IMF (International); Olli Rehn, Commissioner, European Commission (International); Heather Reisman, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. (Canada); Mat’as Rodriguez Inciarte, Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander, Ciudad Grupo (Spain); Olivier Roy, Senior Researcher, CNRS (France); Paolo Scaroni, CEO, Eni SpA (Italy); Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google (USA); Rudolf Scholten, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG (Austria); Jorgen E. Schrempp, former Chairman of the Board of Management, DaimlerChrysler AG (Germany); Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum (Switzerland); Robert W. Scully, Co-President, Morgan Stanley (USA); Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas (USA); Josette Sheeran, Executive Director, UN World Food Programme (USA); Kristen Silverberg, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Interational Organization Affairs (USA); Domenico Siniscalco, Managing Director and Vice Chairman, Morgan Stanley (Italy); Javier Solana,* High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union and the Western European Union (International); Her Majesty Queen Sophia, Queen of Spain (Spain); Ayse Soysal, Rector, Bosphorus University (Turkey); Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University (USA); Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman, BP PLC, and Chairman, Goldman Sachs International (Ireland); Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (Sweden); Paul A. Taggart, Professor of Politics, University of Sussex (UK); Sidney Taurel, Chairman and CEO, Eli Lilly and Company (USA); J. Martin Taylor, Chairman, Syngenta International AG (UK); Peter A. Thiel, President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC (USA); Teija Tiilikainen, State Secretary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Finland); Michel Tilmant, Chairman, ING NV (The Netherlands); Jean-Claude Trichet, Governor, European Central Bank (France/International); Jens Ulltveit-Moe, CEO, Umoe AS (Norway); Daniel L. Vasella, Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG (Switzerland); Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (The Netherlands); Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman, Investor AB (Sweden); Vin (J.V.) Weber, Partner, Clark & Weinstock (USA); Guido Westerwelle, Chairman, Free Democratic Party (Germany); Ross Wilson, Ambassador to Turkey (USA); James D. Wolfensohn, Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC (USA); Paul Wolfowitz, President, The World Bank (International); Joseph R. Wood, Deputy Assistant to the Vice President, National Security Affairs (USA); Adrian D. Wooldridge, Foreign Correspondent, The Economist; Rapporteur (UK); Arzuhan Dogan Yalindag, President, TUSIAD (Turkey); Erkut Yucaoglu, Chairman of the Board, MAP, former President, TUSIAD (Turkey); Philip D. Zelikow, White Burkett Miller Professor of History, University of Virginia (USA); Robert B. Zoellick,* former US Trade Representative, former Deputy Secretary of State, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs (USA).

* Known to have attended Bilderberg 2007, although not included on the official list of attendees distributed by the Bilderberg Meetings office.

19/08: Bilderberg 2007 – Towards a One World Empire?

август 23, 2007

http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/corridors.php

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Discussions at the 2007 Bilderberg Group meetings covered concerns over the World Bank presidency, Russia’s muscle-flexing on energy issues and the failure of US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 14, Number 5 (August – September 2007)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

by Daniel Estulin
Email: daniel@danielestulin.com
http://www.danielestulin.com

The Sun has set on Bilderberg 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey. After a sumptuous lunch on this warm and sunny 3rd June, most Bilderbergers returned to their countries of choice, freshly armed with precise instructions from the Steering Committee on how to proceed in covertly expanding the powers of One World Government. Amongst this year’s luminaries in attendance were: Henry Kissinger; Henry Kravis of KKR; Marie-Josée Kravis of Hudson Institute; Vernon Jordan; Etienne Davignon, Bilderberg Group President; Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, daughter of one of the founders, Prince Bernhard; and the King and Queen of Spain.

As a rhetorical question, can someone please explain to me how it is that progressive liberals such as John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as well as do-gooder humanitarians with multiple social projects on the go, such as David Rockefeller and every Royal House in Europe, can perennially attend Bilderberg meetings knowing that the final objective of this despicable group of hoodlums is a fascist One World Empire? How could it be orchestrated?

The idea is to give to each country a political constitution and an appropriate national economic structure, organised for the following purposes: (1) to place political power into the hands of chosen people and eliminate all intermediaries; (2) to establish a maximum concentration of industries and suppress all unwarranted competition; (3) to establish absolute control of prices of all goods and raw materials (Bilderbergers make it possible through their iron-grip control of The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization); and (4) to create judicial and social institutions that would prevent all extremes of action.

NOT PRIVATE, BUT SECRET

Although participants emphatically attest that they attend the Club’s annual meeting as private citizens and not in their official government capacity, that affirmation is dubious-particularly when you compare the Chatham House Rule with the Logan Act in the United States, where it is absolutely illegal for elected officials to meet in private with influential business executives to debate and design public policy.

Bilderberg meetings follow a traditional protocol founded in 1919, in the wake of the Paris Peace Conference held at Versailles, by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) based at Chatham House in London. While the name Chatham House is commonly used to refer to the Institute itself, the Royal Institute of International Affairs is the foreign policy executive arm of the British monarchy.

According to RIIA procedures: „When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed; nor may it be mentioned that the information was received at a meeting of the Institute.“

The Logan Act was intended to prohibit United States citizens without authority from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments. However, there have been a number of judicial references to the Act, and it is not uncommon for it to be used as a political weapon.

Those who have attended Bilderberg Group meetings over the years and flouted the Logan Act include: Allen Dulles (CIA); Senator William J. Fulbright (from Arkansas, a Rhodes Scholar); Dean Acheson (Secretary of State under President Truman); Nelson Rockefeller and Laurance Rockefeller; former President Gerald Ford; Henry J. Heinz II (former CEO, H. J. Heinz Co.); Thomas L. Hughes (former President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Robert S. McNamara (President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank); William P. Bundy (former President of the Ford Foundation, and former editor of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs journal); John J. McCloy (former President of Chase Manhattan Bank); George F. Kennan (former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union); Paul H. Nitze (former representative of Schroeder Bank; Nitze played a very prominent role in matters of arms control agreements, which have always been under the direction of the RIIA); Robert O. Anderson (former Chairman, Atlantic Richfield Co., and Chairman, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies); John D. Rockefeller IV (former Governor of West Virginia, now US Senator); Cyrus Vance (Secretary of State under President Carter); Eugene Black (former President of the World Bank); Joseph Johnson (former President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster (former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and later Superintendent of West Point Academy); Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Adviser to President Carter, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission); General Alexander Haig (once European NATO Commander, former assistant to Henry Kissinger, and later Secretary of State under President Reagan); James S. Rockefeller (former President and Chairman, First National City Bank, now Citibank).

BILDERBERG 2007 CONCLUSIONS

Thanks to our inside sources at the conference, we have compiled what we believe to be an accurate and a credible model of the Bilderberg 2007 conclusions. Following is a summary of some key points with some additional commentary added. Other subjects discussed were climate change and global warming, Turkey’s role in the new European Union, World Bank reforms, Middle East geopolitics, the conflict in Iraq, Iran’s potential nuclear threat, and the future of democracy and populism.

Robert Zoellick and The World Bank

The United States delegation is standing unanimously behind Robert Zoellick’s candidacy as the next President of The World Bank. Zoellick is a 53-year-old Wall Street executive, a former official in two Bush administrations and a free-market fundamentalist. During the meeting, he pledged „to work to restore confidence in the bank“. „We need to put our differences aside and focus on the future together. I believe that the World Bank’s best days are still to come,“ Zoellick said. The chances of Zoellick not being approved for the presidency are slim to none. The final decision is to be made in late June by the bank’s 24-member board of directors.

The United States and Europe have a tacit agreement between them that the World Bank’s President should always be a US national, while its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), should always be headed by a European. Nevertheless, according to our sources at the conference, European Bilderbergers are not at all pleased with continuing the status quo, in which the US nominates a single candidate after informal consultations with World Bank members.

The Zoellick nomination also appears to short-circuit burgeoning calls for reform of this selection process at the World Bank, one of the cornerstones of the global financial architecture as designed by the victors of World War II. One Belgian Bilderberger proposed „a merit-based selection process, without regard to nationality“, something which will obviously be discarded by the inept Bush administration. What is quite remarkable is that on several occasions European Bilderbergers openly rejected the current model, saying „the nomination reeks of double standards“, especially because both the USA and the World Bank preach accountability and transparency to developing countries-the main clients of the bank.

But with the IMF under the control of a Spaniard, Rodrigo Rato, and the European Central Bank headed by a Frenchman, Jean-Claude Trichet, it was difficult to imagine that the USA would give up control of the World Bank. Only the US Federal Reserve would remain in the hands of the Americans.

„Replacing one Bush appointee with another will not resolve the fundamental governance problems of the World Bank,“ said one Scandinavian. „Member governments should reject a back-door deal that leaves the bank’s governance structure intact, and should press for an open, merit-based selection process,“ he said.

Zoellick’s name also raised eyebrows among development groups for his close ties to the US establishment and corporate interests.

One of the attendees (I have not been able to confirm this individual’s identity) asked Zoellick how he was planning to patch up relationships with Third and Fourth World nations when he is best remembered during his tenure as US Trade Representative for arm-twisting poor nations’ governments to adhere to US-imposed intellectual-property laws that make medicines, for example, unaffordable in the developing world. Zoellick has been a close friend to the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, and the bilateral trade agreements he has negotiated effectively block access to generic medications for millions of people.

However, what has really riled both the American and European delegates is the fact that the World Bank’s dirty linen is being washed in public, thanks in great part to Paul Wolfowitz and his ineptness, which incidentally he has blamed on the press.

[Postscript: On 25 June, Robert Zoellick was unanimously elected President of The World Bank for a five-year term, taking over from Paul Wolfowitz on 1 July. In a statement posted at www.worldbank.org, he said: "Once I start at the World Bank, I will be eager to meet the people who drive the agenda of overcoming poverty in all regions, with particular attention to Africa, advancing social and economic development, investing in growth, and encouraging hope, opportunity and dignity."]

Relations with Russia

Another issue of great concern to both American and European Bilderbergers is Russia’s current muscle-flexing on the issue of energy. The controversy over the TNK-BP licence, BP’s Russian venture, is just one of many circumstances causing anger amongst the globalist elite.

One American Bilderberger said that after years of economic stagnation, „Russia is acting against unipolarity’s accommodating ideologies and politics, against its recently resurgent manifestations and machinations, and against the instruments of its perpetuation, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO]„.

Bilderberg 2007 served as a consensus-building exercise to decide on a common policy and strategy to deal with Russia’s resurgence. In particular, Bilderberg is not at all happy with Russia’s current strategy of actively dismantling what remains of „the atmosphere of acquiescence to America’s will“, in the words of one Bilderberger, which arose in the post-Soviet period and was absolutely crucial to the thriving of US-led unipolarity.

That was in the beginning of the 1990s, the early stages of the Yeltsin reign. With the wholesale looting of Russia in the 1990s through shock therapy and the loans-for-shares scheme, engineered by the socialist theoreticians at Harvard such as Jeffrey Sachs, Andrei Schliefer, David Lipton and Jonathan Hay, the country was brought into the dawn of the 21st century capitalist economy. As a result, Russia eventually toppled into anarchy, its population rendered desperate; its ability to support a world-class military establishment was smashed, which then made it inevitable that colonial behaviour would occur. That is exactly what George Ball was proposing during the Bilderberg 1968 meeting in Canada. I’ll get back to Ball later in this section.

Incidentally, the term „shock therapy“ refers to the sudden release of price and currency controls combined with the withdrawal of state subsidies and immediate trade liberalisation within a country-all the necessary ingredients for impoverishment of the society…in this case, Russia.

In Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book The Grand Chessboard,1 „Russia“ and „vital energy reserves“, as it turns out, are mentioned more frequently than any other country and subject in the book. Brzezinski is President Carter’s former National Security Advisor, a co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Club and a close associate of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger. He is the proverbial insider’s insider. According to Brzezinski, global US and thus Bilderberg hegemony depended on having complete control of Russia’s vital energy reserves in Central Asia. As long as Russia remained strong, it remained a threat-a potential block to the complete imposition of Bilderberg-led economic and military will.

Bilderberg energy imperatives and geopolitical control are once again coming to play a key role in the lives of hundreds of millions of unsuspecting people.

Brzezinski spelled out in The Grand Chessboard the compelling energy issue driving American policy: „A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 percent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprise and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 percent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.“

The history of mankind has always shown that controlling the heart of Eurasia was the key to controlling the entire known world. Azerbaijan, containing the riches of the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia, is a case in point. From the US perspective, the independence of the Central Asian states will be rendered nearly meaningless if Azerbaijan becomes fully subordinated to Moscow’s control. To the Bilderbergers, energy imperatives are the end game.

The energy theme appears again later in Brzezinski’s book, written four years before 9/11: „The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the US Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy.“

Clearly, to the Bilderbergers, Russia was the beginning of the end game.

During a presentation titled „Internationalisation of Business“ to the 26-28 April 1968 Bilderberg meeting at Mont Tremblant, Canada, George Ball provided a far more truthful and insightful glimpse into the group’s economic orientation. Ball, who was Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs under JFK and Lyndon Johnson, a Steering Committee member of the Bilderberg Group as well as a Senior Managing Director for Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb Inc., defined the Bilderberg’s new policy of globalisation and how it would shape the New World Order.

As Pierre Beaudry noted in Synarchy Movement of Empire, „…Ball presented an outline of the advantages of a new-colonial world economic order based on the concept of a ‘world company’, and described some of the obstacles that needed to be eliminated for its success. According to Ball, the first and most important thing that had to be eliminated was ‘the archaic political structure of the nation state’.“

In other words, Ball was calling for a return to the old colonialism system, but this time built on the concept of a „world company“.

„Ball wrote: ‘To be productive, we must begin our inquiry by explicitly recognizing the lack of phasing between development of the world company-a concept responding to modern needs-and the continued existence of an archaic political structure of nation states, mostly small or of only medium size, which is evolving only at glacier pace in response to new world requirements of scope and scale.’“

Beaudry concluded: „It was clear for Ball that the very structure of the nation state, and the idea of the commonwealth, or of a general welfare of a people, represented the main obstacle against any attempt of freely looting the planet, especially the weak and poor nations of the world, and represented the most important impediment to the creation of a neo-colonial world empire. The priority of the world company is obviously based on international free trade without restraint, that is, trade measured by the British standard of profit of buying cheap and selling dear. The problem is that national governments have priorities, which are different than and contrary to those of a looting company…“

On page 39 of a Bilderberg transcript from the 1968 meeting at Mont Tremblant, Ball self-assuredly stated the following: „Where does one find a legitimate base for the power of corporate managements to make decisions that can profoundly affect the economic life of nations to whose governments they have only limited responsibility?“

In other words, Messrs Rockefeller and Davignon, what Mr Ball would like to know is: how does one establish a Halliburton type of world company, which would greatly surpass in authority any government on the planet? Isn’t that what „world company“, run by the ruling class, stands for?

Not according to Bilderberg President and Belgian multimillionaire Etienne Davignon. During his 2005 BBC interview, Mr Davignon said: „I don’t think a global ruling class exists. Business influences society, and politics influences society-that’s purely common sense. It’s not that business contests the right of democratically elected leaders to lead.“

Is that so, Mr Davignon? Current parliamentary democracy works on the basis of an „elected“ head of state and a parliament, which can be dumped any time you decide to orchestrate a crisis and put a third branch of government in charge of its financial system, called an „independent central banking system“.

In the United States, this „independent“ banking system is known as the Federal Reserve, a privately owned bank interlocked with the Bilderberg Group. In Europe, the independent banking system is run through the European Central Bank, whose monetary policies are put together by the leading members of the Bilderberger elite, such as Jean-Claude Trichet. In Britain, this independent system is run by the Bank of England, whose members are also full-time members of the Bilderberg Group’s inner circle. The independent central banking system controls the emission of currency, controls national credit and interest rates, and, any time the government displeases it, uses its power to orchestrate the overthrow of the government. The British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was overthrown because she opposed the wilful handover of British sovereignty to the global world company superstate designed by the Bilderbergers. This is what Kuhn, Loeb and Lehman Brothers have been building worldwide, by way of mergers and acquisitions, from the 1960s until today. In the past decades, the entire deregulation policy of US industries and banking was precisely set up in response to this blueprint scenario for creating giant corporations for a new empire whose intention is nothing short of perpetual war.

Could the eventual dismemberment and weakening of Russia-to the point that it could not oppose US military operations that have now successfully secured control of the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia-been part of a multi-decade plan for global domination? Most credible senior analysts definitely believe so.

At a 1997 symposium held in Bonn, Germany, Dr Sergei Glazyev, Chairman of the Economic Policy Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, explained: „This colonisation, masked as reforms, destroyed the basic institutions of Russian society along the following basic lines: (1) destruction of the financial system of the state by means of an endless build-up of the state debt pyramid, shrinking of the tax base, deepening of the non-payments crisis, and disorganisation of the monetary system; (2) destruction of the scientific and technological potential of the country, achieved by means of a many-fold reduction in state financing of science, the collapse of technological cooperation and scientific production integration in the course of mass privatisation, and the refusal of the government to have any scientific and technical, industrial or structural policy at all; (3) sale of controlling blocs of shares in the leading and most valuable Russian firms, in industry, electric power and telecommunications, to foreign companies; (4) Transfer of the right to exploit the most valuable Russian raw materials deposits to transnational corporations; (5) establishment of foreign control over the Russian stock exchange; (6) establishment of direct foreign control over the shaping of Russian domestic and foreign economic policy.“

The Bilderberg conclusions are striking in their candidness: „The US can no longer ride roughshod over, nor bully, nor simply ignore resurgent Russia, rising China or the globe’s regimes that supply the vital oil that fuels the US economy. Something must be done, and urgently, in order to cut deeply into Russia’s mounting global energy leverage. The US-Russia strategically deteriorating relations are one victim of this geopolitical struggle for energy supremacy.“

One Finnish delegate’s opinion that „no US-Russia military confrontation is likely, no matter how tense things should get“ is increasingly an unsafe one as a more desperate US pushes back against a much more aggressive Russia. Dr Henry Kissinger added that „aggressive, unilateralist US foreign policy has forced ‘axis of evil’ states to accelerate their pursuit of nuclear weapons to immunise themselves against US military strikes“.

Richard Perle pointed out that in response to aggressive US tactics across the globe, Russia has undertaken asymmetric steps to undermine the ability of the US to project its military power effectively into their neighbourhoods and into those of their partners and allies. When one American Bilderberger tried to object, European delegates brought up China’s recent response to US intentions to weaponise space: a simple and relatively inexpensive demonstration of destruction of its satellite. The example produced snickering in the room, much to the chagrin of the Americans.

Afghanistan and the price of treason

Another subject under discussion dealt with Afghanistan. It was commonly agreed by the attendees that the US-led NATO alliance/mission is in a state of quagmire and that „the situation in the country is getting worse“. The problem can be defined, in the words of one British Bilderberger, as „one of the unreal expectations“. He went on to explain that clamouring for democratic reform while simultaneously propping up Pashtun warlords without delivering serious progress „has managed to discredit a lot of our basic notions in the eyes of the Afghans“.

Bilderbergers, however, aren’t the only ones left scratching their heads as to how Western governments and their carefully chosen Afghan partners have managed to spend billions of dollars in development assistance with little to show for it.

Catastrophe is good for business; always has been. Without suffering, there would be no humanitarian assistance. And without humanitarian assistance, there would be no room for undercover intelligence network operations as part of Western imperatives for geopolitical control.

The worse it looks, the better it sells. While the American people were getting their daily diet of ubiquitous images of repression, suffering and burka-clad Afghani women beamed into every living room in America, a propaganda campaign was surreptitiously launched in the pages of newspapers and glossy magazines. The New York Times and the New Yorker were greasing the gears of the misery machine by urging the US government, the United Nations and anyone who would listen to „do something“-amid the jewellery advertisements. Terror and horror, like expensive jewellery, became commodities.

Today, Afghanistan and its African cousins of Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Congo and Rwanda and the rest of the nations blessed with Western humanitarian help are all basket cases. Bilderbergers seem to be asking: how is it possible that humanitarian missions of such scale and magnitude could have failed so miserably? Is it a case of good-intentioned exercises going bad due to corruption, greed and lack of oversight? Or is it the merciless dismemberment of yet more foreign lands and cultures exercised stealthily through humanitarian aid agencies tied to the larger apparatus of government?

Furthermore, the US government’s support for known Afghani drug warlords adds another vital clue to the puzzle. The amount of profit generated annually by the drug trade, according to the United Nations, is somewhere around $700 billion in tax-free cash flow per year. Seven hundred billion dollars a year is too much money to hide in a sock. You need a lot of experience and expertise to move those kinds of funds stealthily. Does anyone doubt that Afghanistan is about drugs? Does anyone doubt that the CIA is involved?

For example, the CIA financed the Muslim Brotherhood in 1977 and trained the mujahedin in preparation for the campaign of collusion between Washington and right-wing Islam: the Afghan War. The roots to the Afghan conflict can be traced to Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, the centre of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activity. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, alleged airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified as a Muslim Brother in several Western publications such as the Washington Post (22 September 2001), the Observer (23 September 2001) and Newsweek (31 December 2001). Other Muslim Brothers involved were Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, an Egyptian by the name of Ayman al-Zawahiri, is also a lifelong member of the Brotherhood.

Robert Dreyfuss, in his extremely important book Devil’s Game,4 explained it thus: „They returned to Afghanistan and formed a branch of the Brothers, the Islamic Society. Later, these same ‘professors’, as they were known, would form the backbone of the Afghan mujahedin who waged a US-backed, decade-long war against the Soviet occupation. The three leading ‘professors’ were Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.“ Sayyaf and Hekmatyar, two big-time Pashtun drug traffickers and CIA assets, were backed by Pakistani Intelligence as well as Pakistan’s own „branch“ of the Brotherhood and funded by Saudi money.

There is yet another link between the Brotherhood and the super-secret Bilderberg Group. In the early 1980s, Bilderberger Michael Ledeen of the ultraconservative American Enterprise Institute and Bilderberger Richard Perle used Hekmatyar as a poster boy of anti-Soviet resistance at the time when Hekmatyar was actively working with Hezb-i-Islami terrorists to undermine America’s influence in Afghanistan. Does anyone reading this doubt that this is hardly a coincidence?

First came the „humanitarian relief“ through non-government organisations. In short order, this was followed by the US military which came to the rescue out of the goodness of its heart for „purely humanitarian objectives“. Once on the ground, it became an exercise in „nation-building“. In the end, it morphed into the hunt for a terrorist dictator.

During an animated discussion at Bilderberg 2007 in Istanbul, one Italian asked if the US-led NATO forces have „the will to stay the course“. In the wake of the US military siege of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001, the commanding general, Tommy Franks, reportedly said it was not his intention to „get embroiled in a Soviet-style long-term engagement as in the 1980s“. Now, however, American Bilderbergers are pressuring NATO allies to provide larger troop contributions to the cause.

Dr Kissinger insisted that „the will“ is lacking and so „we must now begin to acknowledge our limits“. „The choices facing us are very difficult,“ reflected one European Royal, wholeheartedly agreeing with Kissinger’s assessment on the lack of commitment and will. A NATO representative categorically stated that the West has neither the political intelligence nor the understanding to fight a protracted, decade-long counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan.

A MEANS TO AN END?

The Bilderberg Group is not the end but the means to a future One World Government. This organisation has grown beyond its secretive beginnings to become a virtual shadow government which decides in total secrecy at annual meetings how its plans are to be carried out. The ultimate goal of this nightmare future is to transform Earth into a prison planet by bringing about a single globalised marketplace, controlled by a One World Government, policed by a United World Army, financially regulated by a World Bank, and populated by a microchipped population whose life’s needs have been stripped down to materialism and survival-work, buy, procreate, sleep-all connected to a global computer that monitors our every move.

And it is becoming easier because the development of telecommunications technology together with profound advances in present-day knowledge and new methods of behaviour engineering to manipulate individual conduct are converting what, in other epochs of history, were only evil intentions into a disturbing new reality. Each new measure, viewed on its own, may seem an aberration, but a whole host of changes, as part of an ongoing continuum, constitutes a shift towards total enslavement.

But there is hope. In almost every corner of the planet, stress points are beginning to fracture and people are starting to take sides. There is a general awakening taking place as people hold mirrors up to the irrationality that’s being imposed upon them. This awakening is beginning to empower our collective learning and understanding. You see, the powers-that-be have told us that world events are too difficult for the layperson to understand. They lied! We have been told that national secrets must be zealously protected. Indeed, they must! No government wants its citizens to discover that its best and brightest participate in massive collusion, conspiracy and pillaging of the planet.

Now, as the year 2007 unfolds, we find ourselves at the crossroads. The road we take from here will determine the very future of humanity and whether we will become an electronic global police state or remain free human beings. We must always remember that it is not up to God to bring us back from the „New Dark Age“ planned for us. It is up to us. Forewarned is forearmed. We will never find the right answers if we don’t ask the right questions.

Endnotes:

1. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Chessboard: American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1997
2. Beaudry, Pierre, Synarchy Movement of Empire, Leesburg, Virginia, USA, 2005, Book IV, chapter 4, pp. 104-05, at
http://www.pehi.eu/organisations/SME/Synarchy_Movement_of_Empire_book_04.pdf
3. Glazyev, Sergei, „From a Five-Year Plan of Destruction to a Five-Year Plan of Colonisation“, EIR Bonn Symposium, 1997
4. Dreyfuss, Robert, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2005
5. Smucker, Philip, „Missions impossible: NATO’s Afghan dilemma“, Asia Times Online, 1 June 2007
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF01Df01.html

About the Author:

Based in Spain, Daniel Estulin is an award-winning investigative journalist who has been researching the Bilderberg Group for over 15 years. He is the author of La Verdadera Historia del Club Bilderberg (2005), a bestseller in Spain and now in its 13th printing; it has been translated into 24 languages and sold to over 42 countries. The English-language edition, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, is to be published by Trine Day, USA in September 2007 (available through Amazon.com). The sequel, Los Secretos del Club Bilderberg (2006), is already in its second printing in Spanish; bidding for international rights is scheduled for (northern) autumn 2007.

Estulin’s previous contribution to NEXUS was in 2005 with „Breaking the Silence: Bilderberg Exposed“ (vol. 12, no. 5). The original text of this 2007 article is at the web page http://www.danielestulin.com/?op=noticias&noticias= ver&id=345&idioma=en.

Daniel Estulin can be contacted by email at daniel@danielestulin.com. For more information, visit his website at http://www.danielestulin.com.

DELEGATES AT BILDERBERG 2007

Istanbul, Turkey, 31 May – 3 June 2007

This year’s delegation included many of the most important politicians, businessmen, central bankers, European commissioners and executives of the Western corporate press. They were joined at the table by leading representatives of European royalty.

According to the Bilderberg Steering Committee list which this author has had access to, the following names have now been confirmed as attendees at the Bilderberg 2007 conference (uncharacteristically, David Rockefeller was not present).

Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (USA); George Alogoskoufis, Minister for Economy and Finance (Greece); Ali Babacan, Minister for Economic Affairs (Turkey); Francisco Pinto Balsemo, Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA SGPS, former Prime Minister (Portugal); Michel Barnier, Vice President, Merieux Alliance; former Minister for Foreign Affairs (France); Michael Barone, Senior Writer, US News & World Report (USA); Martin Bartenstein, Federal Minister of Economics and Labour (Austria); Nicolas Baverez, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP (France); Her Majesty Queen Beatrix, Queen of The Netherlands (The Netherlands); Leonor Beleza, President, Champalimaud Foundation (Portugal); Franco Bernabe, Vice Chairman, Rothschild Europe (Italy); Rosina M. Bierbaum, Professor and Dean, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan (USA); Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs, former Prime Minister (Sweden); Mehmet A. Birand, Columnist (Turkey); Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs & Co. (USA); Anders Borg, Minister for Finance (Sweden); Charles G. Boyd, President and CEO, Business Executives for National Security (USA); Umit N. Boyner, Member, Executive Board, Boyner Holding (Turkey); Vendeline A. H. von Bredow, Business Correspondent, The Economist; Rapporteur (Germany); Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group (USA); Oscar Bronner, Publisher and Editor, Der Standard (Austria); Hubert Burda, Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda Media Holding (Belgium); Gerald Butts, Principal Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister of Ontario (Canada); Cengiz Candar, Journalist, Referans (Turkey); Henri de Castries, Chairman of Management Board and CEO, AXA (France); Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO, Grupo PRISA media group (Spain); Hikmet Cetin, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs and former NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan (Turkey); Kenneth Clarke, Member of Parliament (UK); Timothy C. Collins, Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holding, LLC (USA); Frans van Daele, Permanent Representative of Belgium to NATO (Belgium); George A. David, Chairman, Coca-Cola HBC SA (Greece); Etienne Davignon, Vice-Chairman, Suez-Tractebel, Honorary Chairman, Bilderberg Meetings (Belgium); Richard Dearlove, Master, Pembroke College, Cambridge (UK); Kemal Dervis, Administrator, UNDP (Turkey); Anna Diamantopoulou, Member of Parliament (Greece); Thomas E. Donilon, Partner, O’Melveny & Myers LLP (USA); Mathias Dopfner, Chairman and CEO, Axel Springer AG (Germany); Cem Duna, Former Ambassador to the European Union (Turkey); Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings, Inc. (USA); Anders Eldrup, President, DONG AS (Denmark); John Elkann, Vice Chairman, Fiat SpA (Italy); Ulrik Federspiel, Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Denmark); Martin S. Feldstein, President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research (USA); Timothy F. Geithner, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (USA); Paul A. Gigot, Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal (USA); Eival Gilady, CEO, The Portland Trust, Israel (Israel); Dermot Gleeson, Chairman, AIB Group (Ireland); Emre Gonensay, Professor of Economics, Isik University, and former Minister for Foreign Affairs (Turkey); Marc Grossman, Vice Chairman, The Cohen Group (USA); Alfred Gusenbauer, Federal Chancellor (Austria); Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations (USA); Victor Halberstadt, Professor of Economics, Leiden University, former Honorary Secretary-General of Bilderberg Meetings (The Netherlands); Peter D. Hart, Chairman, Peter D. Hart Research Associates (USA); Frank Heemskerk, Minister for Foreign Trade (The Netherlands); Paul Hermelin, CEO, Cap Gemini SA (France); Richard C. Holbrooke, Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (USA); Jan H. M. Hommen, Chairman, Reed Elsevier NV (The Netherlands); Jaap G. de Hoop Scheffer,* Secretary-General, NATO (The Netherlands/International); Atte Jaaskelainen, Director of News, Sports and Regional Programmes, YLE (Finland); Kenneth Jacobs, Deputy Chairman, Head of Lazard USA, Lazard Freres & Co. LLC (USA); James A. Johnson, Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC (USA); Vernon E. Jordan, Jr, Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frres & Co. LLC (USA); His Majesty, King Juan Carlos I,* King of Spain (Spain); Jyrki Katainen, Minister of Finance (Finland); Jason Kenney, Member of Parliament (Canada); Muhtar Kent, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Coca-Cola Company (USA); John Kerr (Lord Kerr of Kinlochard), Member, House of Lords, Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (UK); Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates (USA); Eckart von Klaeden, Foreign Policy Spokesman, CDU/CSU (Germany); Klaus Kleinfeld, President and CEO, Siemens AG (Germany); Mustafa V. Koc, Chairman, Ko Holding AS (Turkey); Bruce Kovner, Chairman, Caxto Associates LLC (USA); Henry R. Kravis, Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (USA); Marie-Josée Kravis, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc. (USA); Idar Kreutzer, CEO, Storebrand ASA (The Netherlands); Neelie Kroes, Commissioner, European Commission (The Netherlands/ International); Bernardino Leon Gross, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Spain); Mogens Lykketoft, Member of Parliament (Denmark); William J. Luti, Special Assistant to the President for Defense Policy and Strategy, National Security Council (USA); Jessica T. Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (USA); Michael McDowell, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Ireland); John R. Micklethwait, Editor, The Economist (UK); Mario Monti, President, University Commerciale Luigi Bocconi (Italy); Craig J. Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation (USA); Egil Myklebust, Chairman, SAS and Norsk Hydro ASA (Norway); Matthias Nass, Deputy Editor, Die Zeit (Germany); Ewald Nowotny, CEO, BAWAG PSK (Austria); Christine Ockrent, Editor-in-Chief, France Television (France); Jorma Ollila, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chairman and CEO, Nokia Corporation (Finland); George Osborne, MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (UK); Laurence Parisot, President, MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France) (France); Christopher Patten, Member, House of Lords (UK); Richard N. Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA); Rick Perry, Governor of Texas (USA); Volker Perthes, Director, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Germany); HRH Prince Philippe of Belgium (Belgium); Rodrigo de Rato y Figaredo, Managing Director, IMF (International); Olli Rehn, Commissioner, European Commission (International); Heather Reisman, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. (Canada); Mat’as Rodriguez Inciarte, Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander, Ciudad Grupo (Spain); Olivier Roy, Senior Researcher, CNRS (France); Paolo Scaroni, CEO, Eni SpA (Italy); Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google (USA); Rudolf Scholten, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG (Austria); Jorgen E. Schrempp, former Chairman of the Board of Management, DaimlerChrysler AG (Germany); Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum (Switzerland); Robert W. Scully, Co-President, Morgan Stanley (USA); Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas (USA); Josette Sheeran, Executive Director, UN World Food Programme (USA); Kristen Silverberg, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Interational Organization Affairs (USA); Domenico Siniscalco, Managing Director and Vice Chairman, Morgan Stanley (Italy); Javier Solana,* High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union and the Western European Union (International); Her Majesty Queen Sophia, Queen of Spain (Spain); Ayse Soysal, Rector, Bosphorus University (Turkey); Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University (USA); Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman, BP PLC, and Chairman, Goldman Sachs International (Ireland); Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (Sweden); Paul A. Taggart, Professor of Politics, University of Sussex (UK); Sidney Taurel, Chairman and CEO, Eli Lilly and Company (USA); J. Martin Taylor, Chairman, Syngenta International AG (UK); Peter A. Thiel, President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC (USA); Teija Tiilikainen, State Secretary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Finland); Michel Tilmant, Chairman, ING NV (The Netherlands); Jean-Claude Trichet, Governor, European Central Bank (France/International); Jens Ulltveit-Moe, CEO, Umoe AS (Norway); Daniel L. Vasella, Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG (Switzerland); Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (The Netherlands); Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman, Investor AB (Sweden); Vin (J.V.) Weber, Partner, Clark & Weinstock (USA); Guido Westerwelle, Chairman, Free Democratic Party (Germany); Ross Wilson, Ambassador to Turkey (USA); James D. Wolfensohn, Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC (USA); Paul Wolfowitz, President, The World Bank (International); Joseph R. Wood, Deputy Assistant to the Vice President, National Security Affairs (USA); Adrian D. Wooldridge, Foreign Correspondent, The Economist; Rapporteur (UK); Arzuhan Dogan Yalindag, President, TUSIAD (Turkey); Erkut Yucaoglu, Chairman of the Board, MAP, former President, TUSIAD (Turkey); Philip D. Zelikow, White Burkett Miller Professor of History, University of Virginia (USA); Robert B. Zoellick,* former US Trade Representative, former Deputy Secretary of State, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs (USA).

* Known to have attended Bilderberg 2007, although not included on the official list of attendees distributed by the Bilderberg Meetings office.

The Cold War: Fears of an unfinished victory

мај 30, 2007

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/IE31Ag01.html
The Cold War: Fears of an unfinished victory
By W Joseph Stroupe

„The Cold War is dead!“ read the newspaper headlines of 1991, and ever since, confidence has been absolute that the victory of the West over the former bloc of the East was a complete one – until lately.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Cold War-style speech in Munich in February and its combative follow-up, the State of the Nation speech in April, are being matched by Russia’s stiffening,

and its mounting assertiveness, in opposition to any bolstering or reconsolidating of ailing US-led unipolarity.

Around the globe, Russia is acting against unipolarity’s accommodating ideologies and politics, against its recently resurgent manifestations and machinations, and against the instruments of its perpetuation, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Russia is actively and now more openly working to bring to an end what remains of the atmosphere of acquiescence to America’s will, whether it be willing or unwilling acquiescence, that arose in the post-1991 period and that was absolutely crucial to the thriving of US-led unipolarity. The United States, it turns out, achieved and maintained its global hegemony largely by the consent of the globe’s lesser powers who, fearful of standing up to or opposing „the last superpower“ and distinctly insecure about the potency of their own leverage, permitted it to dominate without the considerable encumbrances and obstructions that are now arising.

Since US overreach after the Iraq invasion of 2003, and the subsequent decline of the US and the unrelenting rise of Russia, China and India, in concert with the globe’s key resource-exporting regimes, have become ever more strident, even brazen, in opposition to US global hegemony. The US can no longer ride roughshod over, nor bully, nor simply ignore resurgent Russia, rising China, or the globe’s regimes that supply the vital oil that fuels the US economy.

In the face of such developments, the US isn’t finished in its attempt to stand unipolarity back on both its feet. It has by no means conceded the game. Instead, belatedly recognizing the damage done by its distraction in Iraq, a desperate and determined US is refocusing and getting started on the geopolitical project of restoring its lost global might.

Against the backdrop of a renewed US push to enlarge NATO membership eastward, expand its mission to take on a global range, establish anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) defenses in Europe and the Caucasus along Russia’s western and southern flanks, instigate and re-energize the „colored“ revolutions, and cut deeply into Russia’s mounting global energy leverage, US-Russia relations are sharply and strategically deteriorating. So are US-China relations, as economic protectionism mounts on the part of the US and it builds up its military forces and proxies in Southeast Asia aimed at containing China’s rise.

This worsening state of East-West relations is prompting rising fears that the loudly proclaimed Cold War victory of the West in 1991, contrary to appearances, may be turning out to have been an unfinished, incomplete victory after all. The death of the formal Cold War did not in itself automatically guarantee the death of all its virulent elemental components, nor of its style of thinking, nor of the enduring global forces that prompted its emergence in the first place shortly after World War II.

In one famous scene in the movie Terminator II, the frightening assassin is melted down and blasted into mercury-like droplets that are spattered over a wide area of pavement. Initially that appeared to be the complete and welcome end of the assassin. But then dread revisited our heroes as they watched each of the spattered droplets begin to reassemble again into the living terminator, but in a new and restyled form that bore little obvious resemblance to its previous form. That monster proved to be much more resilient than our heroes had ever imagined. Why? Because its component parts refused to die.

Is it possible that certain potent elements of the Cold War refused to die, but went instead into a long hibernation, only to reassemble and re-emerge now into a newly styled neo-cold war?

Heightened fears of a nuclear catastrophe
Today, the threat of nuclear catastrophe remains potent, and even though we generally aren’t talking about a catastrophe resulting from an East-West confrontation, sharply rising US-Russia tensions over planned ABM complexes in Poland, the Czech Republic and the Caucasus are ratcheting up fears of a scrapping of arms treaties, a proliferation of missiles on both sides, heightened strategic tensions, and possible confrontation in which nuclear weapons could be employed, either purposefully or by accident.

In reaction to the US plans, Russia is building up its strategic nuclear arsenal by placing multiple independently targeting re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) in its advanced Topol-M missiles. Russia also threatens to scrap treaties and build up conventional missiles along the borders with states cooperating in the United States’ ABM scheme, and it further asserts its right to attack and destroy the sites as they become operational. The former assumption, that virtually no US-Russia military confrontation is likely, is increasingly an unsafe one as a more desperate US pushes back against a much more assertive Russia.

In important ways the nuclear threat today is more insidious and worrisome than before as radical states acquire the technologies and non-state terrorist groups bent on the destruction of the West seek the technology. The credible case can be made that both sides, East and West, are massively contributing to the worsening state of nuclear fear. Aggressive, unilateralist US foreign policy provides compelling motivation for so-called „axis of evil“ states to accelerate their pursuit of nuclear weapons to immunize themselves against US military strikes. And Russia, China and others are only too happy to sell nuclear technology to such states to further their own economic and geopolitical aims, failing to consider properly the global consequences.

The new arms race
A new kind of arms race is also increasingly in evidence. The US has pursued an aggressive policy in regions across the globe, while comparatively weaker powers such as Russia and China have taken asymmetric steps to level the playing field and undermine the ability of the US to project its military power effectively into their neighborhoods and into those of their partners and allies.

Wide proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies has been the direct result of the persistent yet sometimes hidden East-West rivalry over regional and global influence, a rivalry that only temporarily eased after 1991. The response of Russia and China to the NATO bombing of the sovereign state of Serbia in 1999 was to engage in determined efforts to form a Russia-China axis and to militarize it in response to the encroachment from the West. Since then the determination in the East to meet ever more deeply encroaching force with asymmetric force multipliers has been bolstered by aggressive Western policies, both military and political/ideological.

However, today’s arms race is quite different from that of the Cold War. Russia and China are now pleased to let the US spend itself deeper and deeper into economic jeopardy while they, in turn, spend far less on potent asymmetric weapons and strategies that effectively exploit the vulnerabilities of large, unwieldy US weapons platforms.

As Putin stated recently, Russia’s responses are „asymmetrical“ and „potent“, and Russia will not let the US goad it into a costly arms race. Likewise, China’s response to US moves and intentions to weaponize space was a simple and relatively inexpensive demonstration of its satellite killer, which left thousands of chunks and particles of debris smack in the middle of the low-earth orbits of most US spy satellites – in effect, China has planted a very inexpensive time bomb there.

Therefore, the correct measure of the potential destructiveness of today’s arms race is not the competing sums of money spent by
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/IE31Ag02.html
both sides. Instead, it is the potency of Russian and Chinese asymmetric systems and strategies and their wide proliferation to US rivals.

These two elements of the Cold War, fears of nuclear catastrophe and the arms race, have refused to die. Instead, they have morphed into forms that are insidious and just as deadly as ever. Hence the Cold War victory of 1991 is proving to be an unfinished one, with serious consequences today as a neo-cold war signals its ominous emergence on the global stage.

Putin has been vocal in roundly condemning US-led unipolarity and foreign policy. Whether or not Putin’s Cold War-style criticism of the US genuinely signals the emergence of a new cold war depends on your definition of the term „cold war“.

An examination of two more of the components of the old Cold War, (1) hot proxy wars and (2) „winner takes all“ ideological warfare, prove instructive. The reader should be careful to resist the unfounded yet immensely popular notion that says only the rising of entirely familiar evils, such as an old-style cold war that employs the old principles and ideologies, is something to be concerned about.

Prudently, the reader should be alert for signs of equally destructive evils masquerading in a different, newly styled and only apparently less threatening veneer, a facade intentionally constructed to provide cover for both background and foreground machinations aimed at achieving precisely the same aim as those of the principal participants in the old Cold War – the seizing of irrevocable global control and dominance by one side.

A new kind of proxy war
Newly styled proxy „wars“ between East and West are being sponsored – „wars“ for increased leverage in strategically vital regions via willing proxies. Whereas in the old Cold War such proxy wars were „hot“ conflicts, they are now, generally speaking, political „wars“.

The East sponsors proxies in Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela, which obliges the West to engage and/or compromise and perhaps overreach in an effort to roll back the rising potency of those sponsored proxies. The recent North Korea nuclear deal is a potent example, a deal in which the US is undoubtedly compromising for apparently little or no tangible benefit in return. And its impotency and isolation are showcased, leading to a dilution of its leverage on the regional and global stages.

The West sponsors proxies such as Chechen separatists and „colored“ revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and expands the European Union and NATO to include former Soviet states, all aimed at obliging Russia and the East to make concessions, cutting into the influence and control they exercise in energy-rich strategic regions, aimed at affording the West increased leverage in those same regions.

Obviously, these actions by both the East and West can sometimes end up in a hot war, as Iraq did, and as Iran seems likely to, but generally this is a newly styled version of the „hot proxy wars“ component of the old Cold War. As such, it aptly illustrates the principle mentioned earlier of evils as equally destructive as those inherent in the old Cold War masquerading under a new and updated facade. In a world where the energy-dependent industrialized economy is the norm and where such wars are almost always engaged in over the issue of control of strategic resources, everyone knows the enormous stakes.

The new ideological war
Consequently, there arises the matter of the „winner takes all“ ideological warfare component one expects to find in a cold war. In the old Cold War it was democratic capitalism vs communism, and when the West won the Cold War in 1991 it did take virtually all the spoils.

Yet today it is also true that Russia and China have, in effect, co-opted certain democratic and capitalistic principles, amalgamated these with facets of totalitarianism and communism, to form so-called „managed democracies“ or „sovereign democracies“ to make a profoundly effective economic assault on the global center of economic might – the liberal democratic-capitalistic West.

So effective is that assault that it is now widely recognized that the global economic compass irrevocably points to Eurasia – the global center of economic might is shifting to the East, led by China. In reality, nearly all the spoils of the West’s Cold War victory are being incrementally handed back to the East as authoritarian democracy credibly threatens to become economically and geopolitically ascendant over liberal democracy.
That present, newly styled ideological war between the liberal democracy of the West and the authoritarian democracy of the East plays directly into the race to achieve control of global strategic resources. In the old Cold War the ideological rivalry gave thick cover to the quest on each side for control over oil – the industrialized West’s Achilles’ heel. Today, just as in the past, ideology is used on both sides to justify and to implement geopolitical moves that are really aimed at achieving control of strategic global resources.

The West instigates „colored“ liberal-democratic revolutions in certain strategically vital regions, promotes liberal-democratic reform in other strategically vital regions, and invades to bring democracy at the point of a gun in yet other places, all in an effort to achieve „regime changes“ that will underwrite a consolidation of the West’s control of strategic resources – for such moves are only tried where strategic resources are abundant or where their transit to markets in the West is at stake.

Conversely, the East bolsters autocratic regimes while simultaneously helping such regimes to proliferate around the globe, encourages state takeovers of resources industries, and assists such regimes to form authoritarian democracies and authoritarian resources-based and exports-based corporate states similar to the ones found in Russia and China, respectively. All the while, the potent ideological justification of the inequitability and destructiveness of US-led unipolarity, and the desirability of the more democratic „multipolar“ world order, is employed to justify and implement all such moves.

In today’s East-West rivalry, the vital ideological component provides only a thin veneer for the geopolitical moves in the Great Game over control of strategic global resources, and the side that wins that game will absolutely take all the spoils of war.

The war no longer in the shadows
Clearly, all the fundamental Cold War components are present today in a newly styled but potent form. Additionally, just as was the case in the old Cold War, the aims and the stakes are identical – the seizing of irrevocable global control by one side and the loss of political, economic and even military autonomy and might by the losing side.

Consequently, we do not have now a reviving of the old Cold War, but rather the ongoing emergence from the shadows of an entirely new style and type of cold war, the neo-cold war, as an expression of the irreversible, fundamental and ongoing competition and rivalry between an unrelenting rising East and a West that insists, at almost any cost, on recapturing and retaining all the spoils of its old Cold War „win“; spoils that are already slipping through its fingers as the global momentum in almost every sphere shifts in the favor of Russia, China, India and the East.

Increasingly, East and West are polarized along the closely braided twin dividing lines of (1) the issue of unipolarity vs so-called multipolarity and the intimately intertwined issue of (2) who shall control strategic global resources – the West or the East? Any neutral ground between East and West is rapidly disappearing as states are being pressured by both sides to declare their true positions by their actions.

Events signifying deepening global polarization into two de facto geopolitical blocs opposed to each other and the resulting mounting East-West rivalry and divide are the signal that the neo-cold war does already exist and is emerging from the shadows.

W Joseph Stroupe is author of the books Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of the West and Grand Reversal: Russian Global Ascendancy and is editor of Global Events Magazine, online at www.GlobalEventsMagazine.com.

Will Russia Block Kosovo Independence?

мај 24, 2007

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1624851,00.html

By YURI ZARAKHOVICH/MOSCOW

„We agreed to seek a solution that will satisfy all parties,“ said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on recent talks between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Kosovo. Except, added Lavrov, „No such solution is immediately in sight.“

The Serbian province of Kosovo, whose 2 million people are predominantly ethnic Albanians and want independence, has been administered as a U.N. protectorate since NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign forced Serbian withdrawal in 1999. Now, U.N.’s special envoy Marti Ahtisaari has proposed de facto independence under European Union supervision for Kosovo, with a view to subsequently integrating both it and Serbia into the EU. Ahtisaari’s plan is backed by the U.S. and NATO countries, but Russia strongly objects to what it describes as a dangerous precedent for separatists elsewhere. And as an historical ally of Serbia, Russia cannot turn down Belgrade’s pleas of help, particularly at a time when Putin is promoting an image of himself as a strident defender of Russia and its allies against the designs of NATO. In the year of Russia’s parliamentary and presidential elections — however token those may be — Putin wants Russians to feel proud of Moscow’s growing readiness to challenge the U.S. and bully the EU, which is increasingly dependent on Russian fuel supplies.

Still, the grim reality for Russia, summed up by Secretary Rice to Echo Moskvi Radio station during her recent visit, is that „Kosovo will never again be part of Serbia. It’s not possible.“ And Russia does not have sufficient leverage to change that reality — although it can use its U.N. Security Council veto to freeze the process, once the Ahtisaari plan is put to vote. Off the record, Russian officials indicate that this is, indeed, what Russia will most likely do, for the lack of other options.

The separatism theme is played differently by Moscow in different contexts: Russia brutally burns out separatism in Chechnya, but it endorses the efforts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to break away from pro-NATO Georgia, as well as those of Moldova’s breakaway region of Trans-Dniestria. Russia uses these separatist entities to turn up heat on Georgia and Moldova, and the separatist movements in all three demand Russian recognition, and subsequent incorporation into Russia. Hence, Moscow’s headache: Should it go along with the Ahtisaari plan, it must insist that the same approach be applied to Russian allies, lest it loses face both with them and with its own increasingly nationalist population. But should Russia derail the Ahtisaari plan on grounds of opposing separatism, it has to find a better rationale to encourage its own separatist clientele.

The issue also has implications for the image of the protagonists in the Islamic world: Helping Muslim Albanians win independence may help the Western powers repair their image in the Muslim world, whereas resisting the Albanians’ secession will cause a lot of bad blood in the Muslim world for Russia. Another factor is Serbia’s own unreliability. Over centuries, Serbia always asked for Russia’s protection first, and ended up siding with the West second, leaving Russia with a lot of egg on the face and in a lot of trouble for all its pains. Even with the current rise of Serbian nationalism, piqued by the West’s position on Kosovo, Belgrade is more likely to cut a deal with the West and opt for the EU’s patronage rather than for Moscow’s.

Serbia certainly has reasons to be piqued. Despite the NATO countries pledging even handedness, they appear oblivious to the fact that the tables in Kosovo have been turned since 1999. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 on Kosovo, demanded to guarantee the safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons to their homes. But since 1999, the Albanians have forced out some 200,000 Serbs, who cannot freely return. NATO peacekeepers always are not always able to calm down clashes between Albanians and the few Serbian enclaves still remaining in Kosovo. Though Kosovo will never again be a part of Serbia, the U.S. might be too hasty seeking to have both peoples integrated into the EU before they have learned how to co-exist. Helping develop functioning — and inevitably cooperative — economies in Serbia and Kosovo might prove a necessary pre-requisite. It takes time. In this respect, the likelihood of a desperate Russian veto may be a blessing in disguise for the region.