More fun with conspiracy theories

World Bank president Robert Zoellick has been in Greece on unspecified business since May 14th, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s public schedule is mysteriously empty for the next couple days, Josef Ackermann, head of Deutsche Bank, will be travelling “somewhere in Europe” while Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, will not be around until the end of the week. Yep, it's conspiracy theorists wet dream time again, the Bilderburg Group is meeting this weekend at a hotel in Vouliagmeni, Greece, just south of Athens. Do 140 of the world's most powerful people meet every year to make key decisions on international policy that essentially control the world?

Named after the Bilderberg hotel in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, where the first meeting was held in 1954, the group operates under the Chatham House Rules, meaning that 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. Adding more fuel to the conspiracist's view is the total media blackout maintained at these meetings; it's truly amazing that a group of names like this could have met just outside Washington, DC last year with almost no mainstream press coverage. Therefore, like any good conspiracy story, we're forced to mostly rely on rumor and coincidence to piece most of the Bildeberg story together.

So how does a group that doesn't even have a web page control the world? Seems the groups origins can be linked to the Knights of Malta, whose Hospitaller's connections are almost as strong a conspiracy magnet as the Templars, through its organizer, Joseph Retinger, a Pole who effectively forged ties with the European Council of Princes, the CIA, and Britain's MI6 to create the New World Order (NWO) think-tank. Bill Clinton was just a governor from Arkansas when he was invited in 1991, Margaret Thatcher's first appearance in 1975 was a near disaster as she needed to be prodded to join the discussion. When she finally did, she was marked for higher office. That other Clinton, Hillary, may have been convinced to let Obama become the next president at the 2008 event, privacy being ensured by locking reporters in the bathroom of a plane! Wars don't simply happen either, many say Bildeberg at the very least set the timeline for the latest Iraq war, facilitated the Falklands war by determining sanctions should be imposed on Argentina and perhaps triggered the war to bring down Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.

Finance and politics mix freely at Bilderberg, of that there can be no doubt. This year's focus will more than likely be the global economy, pushing to the backseat the North American union plans feared by many a loony. Who am I calling loony? Bilderberg did put together the European Union after all. Working on ways to get the Lisbon Treaty to pass will be on the agenda, with bets being placed on thinking they will focus a smear campaign on “Libertas”, an anti-treaty group led by Declan Ganley. One of the Bilderberger supposed planned moves is to use a whispering campaign in the US media suggesting that Ganley is being funded by arms dealers in the US linked to the US military. Having come so far, the EU project now numbers 27 countries (and of course the Eurovision song contest this weekend) they will find a way to get the treaty ratified, with or without Ireland's 'yes' vote. Retinger didn't bring Bildeberg into existence by himself, his strongest supporter was Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands. German-born Bernhard was a card-carrying Nazi and member of the SS, a fact that makes another conspiracy about the group, that it is a zionist organization, hard to swallow. Alden Hatch wrote a biography of Prince Bernhard where he insists that Bilderberg was the cradle of the European Community - later rebranded European Union. He describes Bilderberg's ultimate goal as a one-world government.

Of course most of the rumors this year are swirling around the economic crisis. Bilderberg 'guru' Daniel Estulin claims the pre-meeting booklet sent out to attendees stated they are looking at two options: Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline, and poverty ... or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency. Credence to Estulin's claims are strengthened by his previous claims of using leaked information from his sources of what was said at the 2006 meeting in Canada and 2007 in Turkey to correctly predict the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown in his book The True Story of the Bilderberg Group. According to Estulin, they plan to continue to deceive millions of savers and investors who believe the hype about the supposed up-turn in the economy, setting them up for massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead. The bank “stress tests” conducted by Washington were little more than a shameless hoax. Hmm, why not? After all, the oil shocks of 1973 and last year both could have been masterminded by the group to get the petrodollar engine revving. In Europe, Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon recently admitted they "helped create the euro in the 1990s"; now thanks to the crisis it could be fast tracked into use in the 11 EU countries still not using the currency.

This latest admission seems all the creepier as this super secret society has been taking steps towards more transparency going so far as issuing a press release for the first time last year. How else could the acceptance by the public to handing over the economy to the banksters during the past 6-months be explained than the fact that we actually want to be controlled by these people. As far back as 1991, permanent Bilderberg member David Rockefeller said:

"It would have been quite impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries ..."

The club is strictly European and American, very white and very male. According to Bilderberg founder member Dennis Healy: "Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren't politicians. We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising, to bring them together with financiers and industrialists who offer them wise words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy." Are they Satan preparing the ground for a NWO through economic collapse, the coming food shortage and the ensuing war leading to the global government's birth to restore order? Do they want to create a global department of health out of the World Health Organization, a global treasury with a global currency out of the IMF? Are they telling the Americans to sign onto International Criminal Court treaty? Is climate change simply part of a plan to impose a global carbon tax to fund it all? Probably not, but whether it's the Bilderberg's who are marching us down the path toward the corporate autocracy or not, we seem to be going on our own anyway.

Suspicious

Can you remember something you wanted to be true so badly that you'd have done anything to make it happen. Perhaps a Christmas wish when you were eight, the outcome of a life-saving surgery on a loved one, or if only that girl in class would stop at your desk and say hi. Imagine now that you'd have had that power to make it so but by using that power you would've had to cross some moral boundary, be it lying, cheating or hurting someone else. Would you have used your power? Well, it seems we live in a world where most people will do whatever it takes to advance their cause, and sadly, we all seem more than willing to sit on the sidelines applauding their deception.

The results of the so-called stress tests on US banks were released last week, while across the pond here in Europe, Wednesday night Barcelona defeated Chelsea to reach the Champion's League final where they'll face Manchester United. Perhaps two unrelated events, yet both conform to a pattern of manipulation and deception. You need to reassure investors and the public that banks are safe to keep the financial world afloat, invent a 'stress test' to prove their solvency; you need a championship final that will ensure more interest and thus advertising dollars, fix a match.

In Washington you had US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a man who made his name being wined and dined by the big banks during his time as head of the New York Reserve Bank, announcing that these same banks need a few billion to stay afloat. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, "I think I can, I think I can..." the markets have reacted predictably by staging a rally, receiving the news that the banks are OK as an indication to continue to bid up prices on Wall Street. Even before the results were announced, Geithner had told us the results would be "reassuring". While the tests revealed a capital shortfall in the nations 19 biggest banks of $75 billion, the IMF declared recently that this number is closer to $275 billion (page 13) and folks like Nuriel Rubini have cast even more dire predictions. But on Wall Street, it seems like the more you believe, the higher the market.

European football is a confusing world for a Canadian transplant. However, the myriad of leagues and cups can be ignored when it comes the the Champions League where the best of the separate national leagues get thrown together in an effort to find one continental club champion. While North American sports have their Goliaths who always seem to be in the running, your Yankees, Patriots, Red Wings and Lakers, the last decade or so has brought a new buzzword, parody. Measures such as salary caps and reverse standing draft order have allowed unexpected challengers to emerge, notably the Tampa Bay Rays in baseball and the Arizona Cardinals in football last year. Meanwhile, in Europe, every year seems like a repeat of the previous, with the same teams qualifying over and over. This year was no exception as Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea made it to the semi-final round once again with the only change being Arsenal making it instead of Liverpool (who fell in the quarters). Predictability breeds boredom in sports and UEFA wanted to avoid a second consecutive final involving Chelsea and Manchester United.

It's hard to imagine that a banking system which was so broken but a few months ago, needing trillions of dollars to get credit flowing again could now only be $75 billion short. Supposedly, the test was meant to ensure that the banks could survive a 'worst-case scenario' economy, an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent next year, an economic contraction of 3.3% this year and a 22% further decline in housing prices — the losses by the 19 banks could total $600 billion this year and next, or 9.1 percent of the banks’ total loans, regulators concluded. That rate of loss would be higher than any other since 1921. While the adverse situation was supposed to be unlikely, it is not that much worse than what has happened so far, unemployment hit 8.9% this month as 'only' 539,000 non-farm jobs were lost, the smallest number since October. 5.7 million people have lost there job in America since December 2007. Of course the results could have meant something if the banks hadn't been allowed to dictate the terms of the tests, but we'd hate to have had the results mean something, that would have just caused investors to sell bank shares, wiping out the weaker banks and allowing capitalism to work its magic by making room for new, stronger players to rise up and take their place. Oh yeah, that's what should have been done ages ago, instead, Tim & Co. have kept their friends firmly in place at the head of world finance.

UEFA, the administrative and controlling body of European football, is run by Michel Platini, a man who has made no attempt to hide his contempt of English teams, going so far as hinting at banning teams such as Chelsea and Man U. But does his England hating mean that he would instruct the referee to help Barcelona get by Chelsea? Well, why was Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo even given the assignment? At least 2 non-calls were absolute no-brainers and a couple others were more than arguable. Adding fuel to the fire, it's come out that UEFA had posted a dummy match report on its website hours before kick-off, a report that correctly, as it turned out, predicted the final 1-1 score, that Barcelona would score a late equalizer and even predicted three of the four Chelsea players who would get booked, Ballack, Alex and Drogba. Or did the advertisers lean on Platini in a bid to avoid another Chelsea-Man U final which would have been anathema to the rest of the continent? Before the match, even English papers were abuzz with articles proclaiming that Barcelona needed to win "for the good of football".

So, here we are with the banksters controlling the economy and the advertisers controlling European football, what a lovely corporatist world we live in! All we need now is a little lithium added to our water supply and we'll be as cuddly as kittens. As usual, greed has been allowed to run amok, resulting in a fixed world where the outcome is decided before kick-off or the opening bell. Since the bank stress tests were first announced on Feb. 10th, the S&P 500 financial index has gone from 133.13 on February 9 to 96.18 two weeks later on apocalyptic nationalization fears, but through careful managing of leaks and results, the index has roared back, closing above 175 on Friday. Close your eyes, make a wish and all is good. Football, the beautiful game, seems no better, through luck or manipulation, we'll have our dream final come May 27th as Manchester United face Barcelona FC in Rome. Fans are happy and more importantly, continental advertisers are happy. Who needs a level playing field? Maybe I should just ignore it all and be happy with the masses.