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Who really runs the world?

“A lot of people dismiss the notion of a “secret society” out of hand. To them, talk of the Bilderbergs and Freemasons sounds far-fetched, if not outright crazy. But that’s partly because it’s easier not to believe. After all, to believe that a small, secretive group of powerful individuals is calling the shots behind the scenes means conceding that our fate, generally speaking, is out of our control. It means accepting the rich and powerful run the world, and that our very democracy, in many ways, is a sham. Still, these societies really do exist. Are they really puppet masters pulling the strings on the world stage? Only they know. We’re left to speculate. Still, we can at least acknowledge their existence. And maybe, by evaluating the scant information we do have, start to shed light on their influence in global politics. So let’s get started…

The Bilderbergs

In the sleepy town of Watford, England, a caravan of town cars with blacked out windows winds through the hills. Helicopters fly low overhead, landing at The Grove — a centuries-old chateau-turned-resort.

There’s a small group of protesters, but they’re easily corralled on a grassy knoll by the hundreds of state security agents on hand. Oddly, there’s no press. Roads are closed and the perimeter is secured. The entire town is on lockdown.

“I think it’s outrageous that the local taxpayer has to pick up the tab for ostensibly a private meeting of trillionaires, probably the most wealthy people in the world,” bemoans Watford town Mayor Dorothy Thornhill. “Hertfordshire Constabulary have suddenly got this unexpected budget strain dumped on them at literally a month’s notice. It’s not on.”

It’s the 2013 meeting of the Bilderbergs, and all of the world’s elite are in attendance: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker, Christine Legarde, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Larry Summers, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Angela Merkel, George Soros, Warren Buffett, the Rockerfellers, and more…

The goal of their meeting: To determine the fate of the world.

Bilderberg Framework

It may sound like a Dan Brown novel, but it’s not.

This top-secret, invitation-only meeting has taken place every year since 1954. The inaugural meeting was in Oosterbeek, Netherlands at the Bilderberg Hotel, from which the group got its name.

Annual attendees — 80 of the world’s most powerful people — are members. The rest are chosen by the group’s Steering Committee. Some attendees are invited occasionally because of their knowledge or involvement in relevant topics. Others are first-timers, chosen for their possible later usefulness.

They must come alone. Personal assistants and body guards are quarantined in a separate hall. And the host state provides security to keep outsiders at bay. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labor, and communications. And the meeting follows Chatham House Rules, letting attendees freely express their views in a relaxed atmosphere, knowing nothing said will be quoted or revealed to the public.

Most importantly, you must never talk about the meetings.

Bilderberg Agenda

Daniel Estulin investigated the group for 15 years. His book, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, was published in 2005.

He describes the cabal as a “shadow world government” — a “private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe [and America] say what they never dare say in public.”

Estulin describes their agenda thusly:

  • One international identity that observes one set of universal values.
  • Centralized control of public opinion through propaganda.
  • A New World Order with rulers, subjects, and the illusion of democracy.
  • A “zero-growth society” without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers.
  • Manufactured crises and perpetual wars.
  • Establishing the UN as a de facto world government.
  • Making NATO a world military.

The ultimate goal: A One World Government with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one World Bank.

Bilderberg Partners

The Bilderberg network allegedly controls a number of think tanks and corporations that influence governmental policy around the world.

One such institution is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the U.S. nonprofit, nonpartisan center that influences foreign policy and international affairs.

One of its 1921 founders, Edward Mandell House, lived in the White House during Woodrow Wilson’s term as president. House reportedly set Wilson’s policies, helped draft the Treaty of Versailles, helped pass the Federal Reserve Act in December 1913 and ratify the 16th Amendment shortly thereafter.

Those actions gave money creation power to bankers and created the federal income tax.

David Rockefeller is the honorary chairman of the CFR, as well as the only member of the Advisory Board for the Bilderberg Group.

David Rockerfeller also founded the Trilateral Commission (TC), another “discussion group” established to push the Bilderberg agenda.

Since 1940, every Secretary of State, except James Byrnes, has been a member of the CFR or TC.

On page 405 of his Memoirs, David Rockfeller wrote:

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Many presidential candidates were also CFR members, including Herbert Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and John McCain.

The groups are also responsible for spawning a huge number of CIA directors and Treasury Secretaries.

So clearly, the Bilderbergs have considerable influence in the United States and the world at large.

And they’re not the only ones.

The Freemasons

They claim to be a fraternal group of men seeking only self-improvement and the betterment of society, but the Freemasons have long been suspected of occult worship and shadow manipulation.

The group got its beginnings 1717 London, where it first attracted the ire of Christians skeptical of the group’s religious practices.

As an organization, the Freemasons claim to believe in a supreme being, a “grand architect.” But not everyone is convinced that architect is the Christian God. Some even believe it’s Satan. It could also be Baal, Baphomet, Dajjal, Rahu, Osiris, some combination of these, or an entirely original conception independent of any other earthly religion.

It’s impossible to know, since the group has been very successful at keeping its rituals secret.

As its symbolism suggests, the Freemasons are a pyramid organization. That means a select few at the top know everything, while the majority of members at the base know little.

Its not enough to simply join the Masons. You need to work your way up the ranks, proving your usefulness and relying on other members for help. Only then will you learn the truth…

Dollars and Sense

Critics say evidence of the group’s occult practices hides in plain sight. The Freemason symbol of a compass and a square form a pentagram. This pentagram is the group’s calling card, discretely featured on our money and in the cityscape of Washington D.C.

You have to admit, it seems odd to have a pyramid with an all-seeing eye on our $1 bill. It’s also odd that the words decorating that pyramid read: “Annuit Coeptis Novus Ordo Seclorum,” which translates to “Announcing the Beginning of the New World of the Ages” or “New World Order.”

And what’s more, if you lay a pentagram over the pyramid, the points reach the letters M-A-S-O-N.

mason's on the dollar

In 1790, President George Washington, a Freemason, appointed another Freemason, the French-born Pierre Charles L’Enfant, to design the federal capital.

An aerial view of the city shows the Capitol building, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and White House form a plane. On that plane, the Capitol building, Jefferson Memorial, and White House form the Freemason compass.

Connected to the compass is the upside down pentagram, formed by DuPont Circle, Logan Circle, Washington Circle, Mt. Vernon Square, and the White House.

dc conspiracy

The Network

Of course, the Freemasons’ aren’t just cheeky designers, content to slip their secret symbols into American icons. Their members hide in plain sight, as well.

In addition to George Washington — who earned the distinguished title of Master Mason — 13 other Freemasons made it to the office of President. That includes James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford.

In fact, the Washington Bible, on which many presidents take the oath of office, is a Masonic bible. It belongs to the St. Johns Lodge in New York City.

Generals, Supreme Court Justices, and many influential artists, actors, and musicians were Masons, too.

That includes Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and Francis Scott Key.

J. Edgar Hoover headed the FBI as a Mason. Senators John McCain and Bob Dole ran for president as Masons. And astronauts John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin flew to the moon — or faked it, depending on what you believe — as Masons. Aldrin even brought a Masonic flag to the moon in 1969.

John Wayne, Clark Gable, Harry Houdini, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Mozart… all Masons. Henry Ford, too. Some even say Jack the Ripper was a Mason.

Architects of the New World Order

Clearly, the group has infiltrated every aspect of society, consolidating power at both the federal and local level.

But what is the ultimate goal?

The accumulation and perpetuation of their power and influence, for one. But maybe more, as well.

The Freemasons are suspected of:

  • Plotting the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana, Abraham Lincoln, John Lennon, and Pope John Paul I.
  • Rigging the justice system.
  • Instituting the income tax.
  • Faking the moon landing.
  • And orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks.

So keep your eye out for secret handshakes.

The Skull and Bones

It’s easy to dismiss the Order of the Skull and Bones as a bunch of college kids playing games…

But if you look deeper, it’s easy to see how a small group of students at one of the world’s most prestigious universities could evolve into a powerful collective of influential policymakers.

At best, Bones is a tightly-knit network of rich and powerful men, and at worst, a demonic organization with ties to the Freemasons and the Illuminati.

The Devil and Don Quixote

The Order of the Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 by William Russell, who had spent a year in Germany fraternizing with members of the mystical and elite clubs he found there. That includes groups that mimicked the Enlightenment-era Illuminati, which was allegedly destroyed in 1785.

When Russell returned, he tapped Alfonso Taft, father of President William H. Taft, as a recruit and co-founder.

Members worshipped Eulogia, a fake goddess of eloquence. They glorified pirates, and reportedly hatched schemes of world domination at the “Tomb,” an imposing block of windowless granite, furnished on the interior with fittingly morbid décor such as coffins.

The Tomb is rumored to have a landing pad on the roof for the society’s private helicopter. And members conduct initiation rituals in the rear courtyard.

Ron Rosenbaum is a columnist for the New York Observer and Yale classmate of George W. Bush, a Bonesman. He lived next to the Tomb and even managed to secretly record an initiation ceremony.

Here’s how he described it…

“There is a devil, a Don Quixote, and a Pope who has one foot sheathed in a white monogrammed slipper resting on a stone skull. The initiates are led into the room one at a time. And once an initiate is inside, the Bonesmen shriek at him. Finally, the Bonesman is shoved to his knees in front of Don Quixote as the shrieking crowd falls silent. And Don Quixote lifts his sword and taps the Bonesman on his left shoulder and says, ‘By order of our order, I dub thee knight of Eulogia.’ A woman holds a knife and pretends to slash the throat of another person lying down before them, and there’s screaming and yelling at the neophytes.”

Rosenbaum also said Bonesmen spend much of their time fixating on death, lying down in coffins, and even desecrating human remains.

Legend has it, in 1918, Prescott Bush — George W.’s grandfather — and a band of Bonesmen robbed the grave of the Apache Indian chief Geronimo. They took the skull and some personal relics, including his saddle, and brought them back to the Tomb. Bonesemen claim they’re still there in a glass case.

An Island Unto Themselves

Again, it would be easy to chalk this up to typical collegiate mischief, thrill-seeking, and fraternity, if the group didn’t spawn so many powerful members.

A look at the Skull and Bones roster reveals a well-connected network of powerful Bonesmen.

They’ve controlled the fortunes of the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford families, as well as posts in the Central Intelligence Agency, the American Psychological Association, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

In addition to the Tafts and Bushes, the Bones claim…

  • Pierre Jay, the first chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  • Winston Lord, the Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, ambassador to China, and Assistant U.S. Secretary of State.
  • David Boren, Governor of Oklahoma, U.S. Senator, and President of the University of Oklahoma.
  • Raymond Price, speechwriter for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Bush.
  • Stephen Allen Schwarzman, co-founder of The Blackstone Group.
  • FedEx founder Frederick Wallace Smith.
  • John Chafee, U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Navy, and Governor of Rhode Island.
  • William Donaldson, who was appointed chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by George W. Bush. (President Bush tapped five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration.)
  • William P. Bundy, the State Department liaison for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
  • U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
  • John Kerry, the U.S. Senator and current Secretary of State who ran against George W. Bush in the 2004 election.
  • And Austan Goolsbee, staff director to and chief economist of President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

And that’s just a small sample. Senators, statesmen, athletes, bankers, captains of industry… even actor Paul Giamatti. The Skull and Bones are everywhere, which is shocking considering the group is relatively small.

Only 15 members are admitted each year, which means there’s only about 800 living members at any one time. Yet this small network is politically potent.

It goes without saying that the society itself has amassed its own small fortune. The Bones’ assets are managed by the society’s alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association. The association was founded in 1856 by William Russell and Daniel Coit Gilman, a Bonesman who later became the president of the University of California, the first president of Johns Hopkins University, and the founding president of the Carnegie Institution.

The Skull and Bones even have their own island — Deer Island, located on the St. Lawrence River by Alexandria, New York.

What goes on there, like what goes on inside the Tomb, is a mystery.

Conclusion

Obviously, the Bilderbergs, Freemasons, and Skull and Bones fraternity have considerable sway in global politics. Again, it’s impossible to say what their agendas really are. We only know that they work towards their own ends, using their insider status and unscrupulous means for their own profit and empowerment. And these are only the most powerful and secretive of the groups out there that do this.

Financiers funnel and hide wealth for billionaires around the globe. Wall St. conspiracies have manipulated interest rates affecting hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of transactions and loans.

Then there are the gold, silver, and currency manipulations, which the elites are trying desperately to throw out of courtrooms, mostly with success.

Retirement accounts are being pilfered by managers that collect kickbacks and bonuses from investments designed to underperform, all while double dipping with account fees.

No wonder there is a constantly growing group of people looking to insulate themselves from the politicians, bankers, and corporate executives trying to limit our personal freedoms and hijack or finances.”

Who really runs the world?

“It seems that, in the hierarchy of power, the top of the pyramid is untraceable. You say politicians are in charge, as they are the ones signing documents into law. Then you go one step further, and say that big business is in charge, as they are the ones funding the politicians. Then you go one step further and say that bankers are in charge, as they control the money supply. Then you take it one step further, and say that there is a secret coalition of beings controlling everything, who remain nameless and mysterious to the rest of the public. From there, conspiracies abound. Just about anything is possible.”

Who really runs the world?

“Who really runs the world? We’re not talking in a power-brokers-conspiring-in-the-back-room sort of way. Rather, by looking at the institutions that countries themselves have set up to organize the world’s affairs, can we determine who is doing most of the managing?

That’s the question Eric Werker, associate professor in the Business, Government, and the International Economy unit at Harvard Business School, asks in a new working paper, Who Runs the International System? Power and Staffing at the United Nations Secretariat. He conducted the research with Dartmouth College Assistant Professor of Economics Paul Novosad.

Among their findings: Powerful countries including the United States, China, and India have less administrative influence than you might think , while small but rich democracies such as Finland and New Zealand are overrepresented.

Does it matter?

“There are two views of the United Nations,” says Werker. “Either you think it matters or you don’t.”

In the first camp are those who believe that the United Nations has real influence on the world by setting rules and norms between nations. “Just the conversations that are happening in the UN are important in determining international priorities—do we go after landmines, or gender disparity, or corruption? Any of these decisions will help some countries and hurt others.”

In the other camp are those who believe that despite all of these powers, the United Nations merely reflects the agendas of the states within it.

Either way, the national makeup of senior positions that run the United Nations can tell us a lot about which countries are actually calling the shots in world affairs. “Even if you think the UN is merely reflecting the world order instead of creating it, you should still know who is running it,” says Werker.

Although the United Nations Secretariat, the executive arm of the organization, has some 43,000 employees worldwide, most of the strategic decisions are made by 80 or so senior members. Headed by the Secretary-General, the Secretariat plays key roles in agenda-setting for various deliberative UN organizations and manages global peace-keeping operations—including the UN’s response to the Ebola outbreak. There is keen competition and string pulling among nations to win those upper level staff appointments.

While those members, in theory, are supposed to check their national allegiances at the door, in practice that’s not the case, says Werker. “Both the UN’s own analysis and remarks by diplomats over the decades have indicated nations really do act in their own national interest.”

By looking at the national composition of Secretariat staffing over the years, Werker hypothesized that it is possible to show the changing nature of world power, providing another and perhaps better way to measure international influence than traditional measures such as counting the number of tanks and bombs countries possess. “War, thankfully, is a very rare event,” he says. “When two countries do go to war, it means that one of them has miscalculated. By contrast, in this setting you have a constant struggle in real time between every nation in the world vying for influence within the Secretariat.”

In order to figure out who has been winning that competition, Werker and Novosad consulted the Yearbook of the United Nations. They constructed a database of every senior official in the Secretariat from 1945 to 2008—some 4,000 names in all. Then, consulting news reports and international directories, they determined the nationality of each of those officials.

Finally, Werker and Novosad compared the percentage of officials from each country to the percentage of that country’s world population in order to determine the amount to which a nation was overrepresented in the Secretariat, “who was punching above their weight,” says Werker. When they did so, a small number of demographically similar countries came out on top.

The small, the rich, the Nordic

“We found a handful of smaller, richer, democracies most represented by this metric, including Sweden, Norway, and Finland,” he says. Rounding out the top five were two other small, rich, democracies — New Zealand and Ireland. In the top 10 also appeared Denmark and Switzerland, along with seeming long shots, Panama, Jamaica, and Uruguay.

Werker wasn’t surprised about the overrepresentation of Scandinavian countries, given their high rankings for education and low rankings for corruption. “The mandate of the UN on staffing is supposed to rest on three things: competence, integrity, and the third being national representation,” Werker says.

Even when controlling for the first two measures, the top countries shared other characteristics. Chief among them were willingness to make investments in international diplomacy—both in terms of their number of consulates and embassies and the amount of money they put in diplomatic efforts. While military spending also correlated with influence in the early years of the institution, it has been less of an indicator in more recent years, says Werker.

Instead, the countries that seem to be overrepresented reflect a kind of “soft power,” more adept at working behind the scenes in international institutions.

“At HBS we talk about different kinds of leadership, and sometimes the best leaders are those who rarely have to do or say anything, but can be very effective through quiet example-setting,” says Werker. “Maybe we just trust Scandinavians to be nice neutral parties to undertake these jobs, which is the ultimate soft power compliment, where you don’t even think they are working in their national interest. That doesn’t mean if push came to shove, they would win a military battle, but the best kind of war is one you don’t have to fight.”

Less influence for US, China

As for the United States, even though it still represents the largest country in terms of actual representation, its UN-related influence has steadily waned relative to population. At least until the 1980s, that didn’t seem to matter, says Werker, since its voting record matched that of allies that maintained high degrees of representation. In the past 35 years, however, the US has diverged from positions of its allies, leading to a decline in its relative power within the organization.

Perhaps the most surprising finding in the survey is the degree to which burgeoning economic powers such as Brazil, India, and China, have remained underrepresented in the Secretariat—ranking 83, 89, and 95 respectively.

“You can look at this in two ways,” says Werker. “Either in spite of being a military and economic power, these countries haven’t yet been able to project soft power. Or, you can take another view, that these countries are rejecting the global system. Either way, it’s not clear that it’s in the best interest of the world for these rising powers to take a back seat when it comes to solving international conflicts.”

Then again, says Werker, it took Germany and Japan many years after World War II in order to reach higher levels of representation, and both countries still lag compared to other G8 countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Canada.”