I reread the 2009 edition of Estulin’s book [1] again, as I now have this project of rereading the books on my book shelves. Both in the first reading ten years ago and now I was somewhat puzzled by this book. Obviously Estulin has inserted some invented suspension story chapters, like how the Bilderbergs tried to murder him with a missing lift in Ch.1 and how he set KGB snipers on rooftops in Rome in Ch.9. I can understand why an author would like to include fiction parts in a conspiracy book. If the book is fiction, then arguably fact parts are also fiction in a legal sense and the author does not claim anything that he could be charged for, in theory, that is. It was not these fiction parts that puzzled me. It was that Estulin presents the Conspiracy (i.e., Them) as the Bilderberg Group, by which he means David Rockefeller and the rest of the band, as the American edition of 2009 says at the very end of the book. The book contains many photos of the participants of Bilderberg meetings, some documents (like invitations to the meeting), and the main thesis is that David Roccefeller and his friends rule the world through the Bilderberg Group, the Council of Foreign Affairs and the Trilateral Commission, that they want to destroy all nations, stop the economic growth, and establish some kind of One World dictatorship. Zionists are barely mentioned, Jews were not behind the Communist revolution in Russia, it was Rockefeller. In fact, there is no Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and apparently never was. It is the Bilderberg Group. Estulin does mention the Neocons as people to whom Israel’s security is more important than American security, but they are a small separate group. The book presents Estulin’s thesis in a way that most readers probably discard both his thesis of the Bilderberg Group and the alternative versions of this conspiracy as crazy conspiracy theories. I suspect that is the goal of the book.
Let us first look at Estulin’s thesis that it is the Bilderberg Group. The Postscriptum includes are summaries of discussions in Bilderberg meetings since 2005. The discussions seem to be free form brainstorming of the world economy and politics. The beginning of the book gives lists of participants in some of these meetings. As there recently are about 140 participants in a meeting and they are from different fields (politicians, business men, bankers, academics) I would divide them into small groups (say, of 7 people) and set them in brainstorming sessions focusing on a selected topic for the first day (two groups for one topic. That would make 7*20=140), and then collect them into a plenary session where the small group results are presented and comments can be posed. The little trustworthy information there is about Bilderberg meetings is that they do brainstorming and there are some seven preselected topics. I did not find any statement if the participants are first divided into small groups, but it would be logical. Naturally, such a gathering of influential people allows for informal meetings between some participants over dinner or a drink in the hotel bar. I have once been in a brainstorming course. Engineers often use brainstorming as an early stage in product development. Such brainstorming can be quite stimulating. An essential part of the idea of brainstorming is that even crazy ideas are proposed. Politicians and other important people certainly appreciate the custom of Bilderberg meetings that no discussions are referred to in the press or elsewhere. Secrecy of the place and the time of the meeting is natural as so many important people gathered in one hotel present an obvious security risk. The Bildberger meetings do not make decisions. The expressed goal is to increase understanding between (Western) Europeans and Americans about important world matters.
Based on what is presented in Estulin’s book every normally intelligent reader will doubt his thesis. He does not give any reasons to suspect that there is anything notorious in the Bilderberg meetings. What is wrong with free discussions between Europeans and Americans concerning world economy and politics?
But there is one But. Estulin does bring it up, but then he covers everything with a whitewashed version of the New World Order conspiracy theory. The But is that what do you imagine would be the result if you were to arrange such a meeting and send invitations to very important people. How many of these people would answer and be willing to join your meeting? I would guess zero. Why should they come to join a brainstorming session over world matters, even if the discussions were most stimulating? There is no reason why they would like to reveal what they actually think of some topic. They do not need your meeting for meeting other important people. They meet them often enough in other events. You probably would not expect to have in your meeting David Rockefeller (assuming you arranged the meeting before he died 2017) or Henry Kissinger (who today is 96 years old but was younger had your meeting been earlier). Both were attending Bilderberg meetings initially organized by Prince Bernard and Jósef Retinger – not unimportant people like you or me, but still not the very top of the world. And it is not only these two luminaries. The list of participants includes former ministers, CEOs of the biggest firm and other such people that surely would not appear in your meeting. Yet these important people think, for some reason or another, that Bilderberg meetings are worth attending to.
So, there is a But. There is a mismatch of what the interest to a brainstorming meeting is and what is should be.
The great willingness in attending the meetings is probably because the founders and financial supporters of the Bilderberg meetings represented something very important. The financier was David Rockefeller, who also financed the Council of Foreign Affairs, an American think tank, and the Trilateral Commission, a discussion forum between the USA, Europe and Japan. Henry Kissinger, a Presidential advisor, was heavily involved in all these activities.
I do not think the reason was Prince Bernard. Prince Bernard of the Netherlands helped found the World Wildlife Fund, which does not sound especially notorious. In his early years he worked in the statistics department of IG Farben, which actually was an economic espionage unit – that is some connection to the secret world. Prince Bernard was forced to leave the Bilderberg after the Lockheed Bribery Scandal in 1976, but the Bilderberg meetings continued with success, so the reason why important people attended after 1976 was clearly not Prince Bernard.
The other founder was Jósef Retinger. He died in 1960, soon after the Bilderberg meetings had started, so meeting Retinger was also not the reason, but Retinger was an interesting and mysterious person. The best text of Retinger I found from the Web is [2]. Retinger is credited with the idea of European unification, which directly lead to the EU. Estulin says that the unification of Europe was a consequence of the Marshall plan, which required opening Western European markets. Unifying Europe and later also North American into larger economic areas is a central goal of the so-called globalists.
Retinger had very high connections, proposed unification of Europe and was a cofounder of the Bilderberg meetings. That is not especially suspicious, but there is more secrecy in his character. In 1944 Polish Jewish Retinger parashooted to Poland and told the Polish underground that the country will be taken by Soviets. Apparently some Polish underground people were not so happy with this news and tried to kill him. Retinger was the main advisor of the Polish government in exile in London during the war. It follows that Retinger was aware of, and probably recommended, the unfortunate Warsaw uprising, which was a hopeless effort without Western aid and helped Communists to take over Poland. It seems to me that there was a plan to give Poland to Communists. The Great Britain gave guarantees to Poland when Hitler pressed the corridor issue. It was a main reason why Poland did not yield to Hitler in the Danzig question and that the local war started a world war. Yet, the Western Allies did not declare a war on the Soviet Union, which also attacked Poland. Apparently at the end of the war American troops even delayed their advance so that the Soviet Union could occupy Eastern Europe. Poland fell under Communism and the Great Britain did not object to it, though the war nominally started for the defense of Poland and Poles fought bravely in the Battle of Britain and in Monte Cassino. That looks like a plan.
The Polish troops that fought and took Monte Cassino belonged to the Ander’s Army formed from Polish POWs in the Soviet Union. Originally this army had 4000 Jewish soldiers, including Menachem Begin, but when the army was in the Middle East, 3000 of the Jewish soldiers left the army. Very clearly, the Jewish soldiers knew that Israel was going to be created after the war and they were needed as the basis of Israel defense forces. After the war Menachem Begin’s Irgun started the terrorist attack campaign against the British Mandate. It follows that Jewish leaders (the rich ones) were planning the creation of Israel during the war. These rich pre-Zionists, like Rothschilds, were planning a homecountry for Jews in Palestine ever since 1860. They brought the USA to the First World War to the Allied side and for this important help Jews gave to the Great Britain, Zionist were rewarded by the Balfour declaration.
I think it is very logical to suggest that one of the main goals of the First World War was go get the promise of the homeland for Jews in Palestine. One old theory how the war started is that bankers wanted the war and Freemasons got it started. I find this theory quite probable. If so, then the main goal of the Second World War was to force Jews to Palestine and the creation of Israel, as there could not be Israel without Jews. The German attack to Poland was necessary as Poland had the largest Jewish population and this population was to be transported by force to the East in a way where the strongest would survive, as a very common opinion at that time was that Eastern European Jews are a degenerated race and need to be cleansed. This is naturally fully according to Old testament prophecies which tell of cleansing the nation with fire. The survivors were to be later to be moved to Palestine. When Jews were moved away from Poland, the country was given to Communists. I think it would be very logical that a Jew with very high connections, like Jósef Retinger, would have been involved in this plan. If not, he would have been in opposition to Jewish rich pre-Zionists, who did want Israel.
As Jósef Retinger was one of the founders of Bilderberg conferences, David Rockefeller was a banker and Henry Kissinger was a very high level politician planning the world order, the conclusion is that the Bilderberg conferences are indeed a part of some plot. Traditionally, such a plot was the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. It had special interest in the creation of Israel, so in Estulin’s analysis the Neocons would belong to some variant of this plot. Jews do not have any special role in David Estulin’s book and he has later claimed that there is no Judeo-Masonic conspiracy: it is the Bilderberg Group, David Rockefeller and the gang
Is this so? It is not possible to deny the existence of the Masonic conspiracy, only that it has not been active after the Second World War. Leo Trotsky once studied the history of Freemasons (while in the prison) and concluded that Freemasonry is constant revolution. So it was. The New World means America and the New World Order originally meant the American system, democracy, as opposed to the Old World Order which was the European powers. The slogan: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, sounds peaceful, even laudable, but the real content of these words was wars and revolutions. Europe was rather peaceful in the 18th century before Masons started their revolutions, though European powers fought in colonies. The first Masonic war was the American War of Independence. Then there was the French Great Revolution and an effort to reform the Polish Constitution, which led to the divisions of Poland. Napoleon’s troops spread the Masonic slogan everywhere in Europe. After Napoleon followed some time of lesser activity, but in 1848 Masons made many revolutions. Their revolutionary activities culminated in the Paris Commune of 1871, but after that time Masons very probably started the First World War and lifted Bolsheviks to power in Russia. Freemasons were behind the New Turks revolution in Turkey and practically all Central and South American freedom fighters were Freemasons from a lodge which only focused on creating revolutions in America. Revolutionary Freemasons were leftists (descendants of Jacobins and often called Illuminati in the 19th century). When they were forced to stop, a more extreme leftist form of the same ideology, Communists, continued the revolution. The connection to Jewish bankers is not so clearly established for Freemasons as it is for early Communists, who were funded by Wall Street bankers. Estulin explains this funding, but does not mention the role of Jacob Schiff. However, this funding can be deduced also in the case of Freemasons. the Rothschild family funded both sides in Napoleonic wars. Napoleon is today recognized as a Freemason. It is long known that his army spread French (revolutionary) Freemasonry. It is simply impossible to do successful revolutions and independence wars without funding, thus Masons were funded and by excluding candidates we come to Jewish bankers. Very logically, Jews got full citizen rights when Napoleon got into power. But this is past and today one cannot find this old Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, just as Estulin notices. Instead one finds think tanks like CFA, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg. Yet, these organizations do not set any programs for the New World Order and the New World Order is not Masonic any more.
We can drop the Freemasons from the conspiracy, and Communists also nearly disappeared. This leaves the bankers. Banker is actually a wrong term as it brings to the mind a bank which takes deposits from people, pays some interest for them, and invests the money to something paying better interest. The banks of the bankers in the plot are not of this kind. They do not take deposits. They have their own money saved long ago. They are investment banks, or in an old term, money lenders. Money lenders earn by lending money and getting interest. Any event, such as a war or a catastrophe, which causes losses usually forces governments to take large loans. Often it is from money lenders, investment banks. Today there is the World Bank. I guess it is controlled by the same group. After the Battle of Waterloo Nathan Rothschild pulled the London stock market and made huge profits. It is certainly possible to earn money on wars, revolutions, stock market crashes and other catastrophes. Global free market tends to crash every now and then. For somebody with inside information this tendency gives a way to earn handsomely. Estelin’s extracts from the Bilderberg meeting of 2007 clearly tell that the housing bubble in the USA is bound to collapse in the relatively near future, as it did and caused the stock market crash of 2008.
There is another aspect to open markets, not only earning on crashes. Some people have a rather naive view to global capitalism and open markets, like Johan Norberg in [3]. For him globalization means that you can buy bananas and whatever in the nearest shop, that there is the ownership right, the corruption level is not too high and import customs are not making foreign products too expensive, and so on all the way through the liberalistic myth. All good things follow from capitalism and democracy. It is not true that automation destroys workplaces: there is always work. Norberg maintains that you do not need to be the best in doing it: it is enough to specialize in what you do best, because the other specialize in what they do best, so there is a place for you. (That is, in an empty universe, as in global markets there are producers of exactly everything you can think of, so to compete you do need to be as good as the others). But this is not the reality of open markets.
We can look at trade from the early beginnings. There always was trade, even in the stone age. Through the ages this trade was luxury goods (as ordinary goods were produced locally and transport added costs), slaves, spices, some necessary articles like flint, or salt, or tar, or furs. The items were paid by other items or by gold and silver. Such trade did make trade centers rich but the trade could not grow very large, as imported goods were expensive. Only after Europeans got colonies the open market grew. Originally the idea was simply to steal gold and silver from colonies. If something could be produced there, like sugar, then it could be transported to Europe and sold. The goal of this trade was to fill the coffins of the crown, as the crown always needed gold. Norberg thinks that this basic idea in mercantilism of gold flowing to your coffins (the balance of trade being positive) is incorrect and that the the trade of goods itself is positive as it raises the standard of living. Yet, any firm selling on open markets does think that the goal is to get gold into your own coffins.
This idea of trade worked: the colonies were exploited and did not develop independence, while the home country got gains from the trade as both gold and products. Industrialization changed this all. After machines started weaving clothes, what was needed was a market where to sell the products. Open markets also suited well to this situation. The Southern states of the USA produced cotton with African slaves. These slaves were paid with American liquor or British goods. The cotton was taken to England and weaved to clothes by machines. These clothes were sold in India. Indians got the money to buy the clothes by selling opium to China. The opium trade was handled by the Baghdadi Jewish David Sassoon, the Rothschild of the East. As keeping markets open belongs to the idea of free trade, the British had opium wars against China which tried to protect its people from addiction but failed every time. Naturally, in this trade the idea was not that Indians start weaving clothes with machines. Norberg tells (and regrets) that this system still works: free trade agreements impose high customs to any processed goods from the Third World to developed countries. Raw materials, like coffee beans from Haiti, can be exported to the EU without a high import custom, while if Haiti imported material and produced clothes out of them, these clothes would face a high import custom in the EU. The same principle applies in all such free trade. Especially agricultural products, that the EU self produces, are protected by customs against developing countries. Norberg thinks this is a deviation of the free trade as he understands it, but this is not a deviation of free trade as it has always been.
Free markets therefore are not as they may appear to somebody who thinks theoretically. In the same way, moving work from Europe to East Asia need not at all have the positive idea of improving the world economy. The actual goal can very well be the destruction of the prevalent world order, as destruction of the Ancient Regime was the goal of Freemasons in the 19th century, and the goal of the Communists in the 20th century. It is certainly possible that some countries cannot find anything they can specialize in and anything they can sell in the world market, and therefore they have to protect their markets and accept a slower growth rate.
Open markets and low customs naturally benefit many countries. If we take a small European country which does not have oil or gas, it will have to import these products from the world market. They will have the world market price and if the country imposes an import tax on them, then it is the people and companies of the country that pay this tax. It is the same the other way: if the export countries impose an import tax against the products this small country exports to the world market, the small country must lower the price so that the product remains competitive. Again it is the people of the small country who pay for the tax. The British Empire was large once, but England was always small compared to the world. It is natural that England supported free trade. It is also natural that Sweden or Finland support free trade: they have to import many things. In general, trying to produce everything in your own country cannot lead into products that are as good and cheap as those produced with larger resources in the world market. This basic truth of open markets is correct, but it does not necessarily follow that everything else that might be true actually is true. In open global markets countries can be tricked into taking large development loans. It is a typical way how a usurer would work in the old times. It can still work today. A way to protect against it is not to have a free flow of capital. Limiting the flow of capital decreases economic growth in some cases, but in some other cases it is the best that can be done in a bad situation.
People, who get invited to Bilderberg meetings, most probably are not plotting anything. They are likely to be believers in globalization and open markets of the type of Johan Norberg. But it does not change the situation: these meetings are a part of a plot and this plot does not need to have such laudable goals as the believers of free markets think it has. Nothing in the history shows that optimism is based on facts. I read another book, Opium globalizacji by Prezemysław Wielgosz [4]. He is a leftist and repeats some marxistic arguments, but some of the arguments may well be valid. Those include that a capitalistic market must grow and if it does not grow it gets into stagnation. The second one is that global open markets are instable and experience crashes due to missing controls. There is no place to analyze these problems in this post, and I should include at least half a dozen other books if I wanted to address these issues. All I want to say is that there probably is a gang, this gang is not as Estulin describes it, this is likely to be the old banker club, and Bilderberg very probably is a part of it, though no decisions are taken in those meetings.
There were not that many pieces of information in the book that were new to me, but I must credit Estulin with one. He tells that the USA sold the Soviet Union uranium in 1944, that is, before the bomb was ready. Venona files give light to how the Soviets got the know-how to make the atomic bomb (both Jews, like Rosenbergs, and non-Jewish leftists, like Klaus Fuchs, about 30% people mentioned in Venona files are Jews). Estulin’s information fits well to the general picture that there was a quite strong conspiracy supporting the Soviet Union, not only the American Communist Party.
References:
[1] Daniel Estulin, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, Polish edition Sonia Draga, 2009.
[2] Bogdan Podgórski: Józef Retinger – prywatny polityk
http://niniwa22.cba.pl/retinger_agent_mason.htm
[3] Johan Norberg, Defence of Global Capitalism, Finnish edition Ajatus, 2004.
[4] Prezemysław Wielgosz, Opium globalizacji, Dialog, 2004.