Chapter 2
THE GREAT TRUST
2.1 The Military-Industrial Complex
2.2 Five Monopolies 2.3 Who Owns the Stock? 2.4 Who Owns the Media?
In 1888, Edward Bellamy wrote a book entitled
Looking Backward:
2000-1887 in which he predicted the future exactly as it happened:
The nation... organized as the one great business corporation in
which all other corporations were absorbed; it became the one
capitalist in the place of all other capitalists... the final
monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed
up... The epoch of trusts had ended in The Great Trust.(1)
2.1 THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
The bankers have invested their vast fortunes in every branch of
commerce, cementing monopolies with interlocking shareholdings and
directorships. In
John
D. Rockefeller's immortal phrase "competition is a sin."
The establishment of the European-American petrochemical cartel was
achieved in 1929 with the marriage of I.G. Farben of Germany to
I.C.I. and Shell Oil of Great Britain, and to Standard Oil and
DuPont of America.(2) The cartel was formed after I.G. Farben
discovered how to make petroleum out of coal. I.G. agreed not to
enter the petroleum market so long as Standard Oil did not enter the
chemical industry unless as a partner with Farben.
By
the beginning
of WWII, Farben had become the largest industrial enterprise in
Europe, the largest chemical company in the world, and part of the
most powerful cartel in history. Besides the afore-mentioned
companies, it had cartel agreements with 2000 companies around the
world including Ford Motor Co, Alcoa, General Motors, Texaco,
Proctor and Gamble, and virtually every enterprise that involved
chemicals.
Hermann Schmitz, president of Bayer A.G and I.G. Farben during WWII,
who also largely directed the Deutsche Bank, held a substantial
amount of stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey.(3) G. Edward
Griffin's investigation into the cancer industry found that the
cartel agreement signed between Standard Oil and Farben on 9
November 1929 involved the exchange of some of Farben's patent
rights over the coal-hydrogenation process for $30,000,000 of
Standard's stock.
The Rockefeller group concealed its Farben
holdings in false fronts and dummy accounts and when Farben's vast
holdings were finally sold in 1962, the Rockefellers were the
dominant force in carrying out the transaction.(4) Paul Warburg,
another founding member of the Wall St. banking cartel, was also a
director of several Farben subsidiaries.(5)
A cartel is a grouping of companies that are bound together by
contracts or agreements designed to promote inter-company
cooperation and thereby reduce competition between them. Some of
these agreements may deal with harmless subjects such as industry
standards and nomenclature. But most of them involve the exchange of
patent rights, the dividing of regional markets, the setting of
prices, and agreements not to enter into product competition within
specific
categories.(6)
In 1937, Fortune magazine editorialized:
By and large, the chemical industry has regulated itself in a manner
that would please even a Soviet Commissar... The industry...is...
the practitioner of one definite sort of planned economy.
In 1973, the United States Tariff Commission observed:
In the largest and most sophisticated multinational corporations,
planning and subsequent monitoring of plan fulfillment have reached
a scope and level of detail that, ironically, resemble more than
superficially the national planning procedures of Communist
countries.
Far from the money powers fighting for free-markets and against
government regulation, the exact opposite is true. Giant cartels use
government regulation and anti-trust laws to break up smaller
cartels or to prevent competitors entering into the market. The
ultimate objective is a feudal 'command and control' society in which
the corporations use government to diminish our freedoms.
2.2 FIVE MONOPOLIES
Corporate monopolies over,
-
water
-
food
-
energy
-
medicine
-
information,
...are just some manifestations of The Great Trust today.
The explosive growth of three private water utility companies in the
last 10 years raises fears that mankind may be losing control of its
most vital resource to a handful of monopolistic corporations. In
Europe and North America, analysts predict that within the next 15
years these companies will control 65 percent to 75 percent of what
are now public waterworks.
The companies have worked closely with
the World Bank and other international financial institutions to
gain a foothold on every continent. A yearlong investigation by the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a
project of the Center for Public Integrity,(7) found that world's
three largest water companies - France's Suez and Vivendi
Environnement, and British-based Thames Water owned by Germany's RWE
AG - have expanded into every region of the world since 1990.
Three
other companies, Saur of France, and United Utilities of England
working in conjunction with Bechtel of the United States, have also
successfully secured major international drinking water contracts.
But their size pales in comparison to that of the big three. The
water companies are chasing a business with potential annual revenue
estimated at anywhere from $400 billion to $3 trillion.(8)
In 2002, the American retailer Wal-Mart was the biggest company in
the world, with turnover of $219 billion ahead of Exxon at $191
billion and General Motors at $177 billion. Five retailers-
Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger, Albertson's and Ahold- take 33% of
American grocery sales.(9) In the U.K. there is even more
consolidation: 60-75% of groceries are purchased in the top 5
supermarkets.(10)
The oil industry is dominated by five companies: ( In order of size)
-
ExxonMobil
-
Royal Dutch-Shell
-
British Petroleum-Amoco
-
Chevron-Texaco
-
TotalFinaElf
Interestingly the recent Exxon
-Mobil merger reunited the two biggest chunks of John D.
Rockefeller's Standard Oil monopoly dismantled by the U.S.
government 90 years ago. Mobil was Standard Oil of New York and
Exxon was Standard Oil of New Jersey. (11)(12)
The world's drug industry is dominated by 10 companies whose total
market value at the time of writing exceeded (U.S.) $ 1.1
trillion.(13)
Rank in (U.S.) $ billion:
-
Pfizer $244
-
Johnson and Johnson $161
-
Merck $124
-
GlaxoSmithKline $119
-
Novartis $113
-
Amgen $83
-
Roche $ 72
-
AstraZeneca $70
-
Eli Lilly $ 67
-
Wyeth $58
In 1985, there were 50 substantial media conglomerates in the U.S.
By Year 2000 there were six:
-
AOL Time Warner
-
The Walt Disney
Company
-
Bertelsmann
A. G
-
Viacom
-
Newscorporation
-
Vivendi Universal
Vivendi
Universal is the parent company of Vivendi Environment, the water
conglomerate. Recently legal rulings in Europe clearly indicate that
there is more trans-Atlantic consolidation to come.
The London
Financial Times reported on 21 July 03:
The passage into law of the Communications Bill closes a turbulent
chapter in the history of UK media... allowed the lifting of the bar
on investments in ITV or Channel Five by non-European interests, the
largest of which are US media conglomerates... the bill is, by
international standards, extremely liberal on ownership but highly
structured for content regulation, to be applied by Ofcom, the new
media regulator. (14)
This followed a European Court of Justice ruling in
favor of
mergers and acquisitions. On 4 June 2002, the BBC reported that the
European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that restrictions by some
European governments on foreign ownership of privatized companies
are illegal. The decision makes it more difficult for governments to
block foreign investment in former state-owned firms on national
interest grounds, paving the way for more cross-border takeovers and
mergers. The decision has also boosted a planned overhaul of E.U.
takeover law aimed at making it easier for firms to launch
cross-border mergers and acquisitions.
The reform is an important
element of E.U. plans to create a single European market for
investment services by 2005.(15)
2.3 WHO OWNS THE STOCK?
A recent article in the
London Financial Times indicates why it is
impossible to gain an accurate estimate of the wealth of the trillionaire banking elite. Discussing the sale of Evelyn
Rothschild's stake in Rothschild Continuation Holdings, it states:
..[this] requires agreement on the valuation of privately held
assets whose value has never been tested in a public market. Most of
these assets are held in a complex network of tax-efficient
structures around the world. (16)
Queen Elizabeth II's shareholdings remain hidden behind Bank of
England Nominee accounts. The Guardian newspaper reported in May
2002,
... the reason for the wild variations in valuations of her private
wealth can be pinned on the secrecy over her portfolio of share
investments. This is because her subjects have no way of knowing
through a public register of interests where she, as their head of
state, chooses to invest her money. Unlike the members of the
Commons and now the Lords, the Queen does not have to annually
declare her interests and as a result her subjects cannot question
her or know about potential conflicts of interests...
In fact, the
Queen even has an extra mechanism to ensure that her investments
remain secret - a nominee company called the Bank of England
Nominees. It has been available for decades to all the world's
current heads of state to allow them anonymity when buying shares.
Therefore, when a company publishes a share register and the Bank of
England Nominees is listed, it is not possible to gauge whether the
Queen, President Bush or even Saddam Hussein is the true
shareholder. (17)
By this method, the trillionaire masters of the universe remain
hidden whilst Forbes magazine poses lower ranking billionaires like
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as the richest men in the world.
Retired management consultant Gaylon Ross Sr, author of Who's Who of
the Global Elite, has been tipped from a private source that the
combined wealth of the Rockefeller family in 1998 was approximately
(U.S.) $11 trillion and the Rothschilds (U.S.) $100 trillion.(18)
However something of an insider's knowledge of the hidden wealth of
the elite is contained in the article, Will the Dollar and America
Fall Down on August 19?.." on page1 of the 12th July 2001 issue of
Russian newspaper, Pravda(19).
The newspaper interviewed
Tatyana
Koryagina, a senior research fellow in the Institute of
Macroeconomic Researches subordinated to the Russian Ministry of
Economic Development (Minekonom), on the subject of a recent
conference concerning the fate of the U.S. economy:
Koryagina: The known history of civilization is merely the visible
part of the iceberg. There is a shadow economy, shadow politics and
also a shadow history, known to conspirologists. There are [unseen]
forces acting in the world, unstoppable for [most powerful]
countries and even continents.
Pravda: Just these forces intend to smash America on August 19?
Koryagina: There are international "super-state" and
"super-government" groups. In accordance with tradition, the
mystical and religious components play extremely important roles in
human history. One must take into account the shadow economy, shadow
politics and the religious component, while predicting the
development of the present financial situation.
Pravda: Still, I don't understand what could be done to this giant
country [the U.S.], whose budget is calculated in the trillions of
dollars.
Koryagina: It is possible to do anything to the U.S... whose total
debt has reached $26 trillion. Generally, the Western economy is at
the boiling point now. Shadow financial activities of $300 trillion
are hanging over the planet. At any moment, they could fall on any
stock exchange and cause panic and crash. The recent crisis in
Southeast Asia, which touched Russia, was a rehearsal.
This is a startling revelation: $300 trillion of wealth is secretly
controlled by an unspecified cabal of the world's richest families.
The power of Rothschild family was evidenced on 24th September 2002
when
a helicopter touched down on the lawn of Waddedson Manor, their
ancestral home in Buckinghamshire, England. Out of the helicopter
strode Warren Buffet, -touted as the second richest man in the world
- and Arnold Schwarzenegger, candidate for the Governorship of
California.
They'd come to rub shoulders with James Wolfensohn,
President of the World Bank and Nicky Oppenheimer, Chairman of De
Beers at a two day conference hosted by Jacob Rothschild. Arnold
went on to secure the governorship of one of the biggest economies
on the planet a year later.
The fact that he was initiated into the
ruling class in the Rothschilds' English country manor is more
evidence of the international nature of the cartel and the location
of its centre of gravity. (20)
2.4 WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
The New World Order would be in serious trouble, if for one day, the
mainstream media put the pieces together and told the whole truth,
'the story behind the story'. Editing certain news out of the press
has been just as important as putting propaganda in, probably more
so. Westerners receive relatively little news about the atrocities
committed in the socialist dictatorships especially in the former
Soviet Union and communist China which continue to this day. The
last thing they want the public to hear on the evening news is the
fact that its our money which has kept these regimes afloat, or to
find out who helped them into power.
In 1917 Congressman Oscar Callaway told the House that, in 1915 JP
Morgan interests and their subsidiary organizations purchased the
editorial policies of the 25 most important newspapers in the U.S.
By controlling the policy of the most important, they were able to
control the general policy of the whole media. They used this power
to turn public opinion in favor of entering the First World
War.(21)
The Rockefellers took over the Morgan empire, and in the
1950s they had one of their pharmaceutical company directors and
publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, appointed
as Director of the Associated Press. They also owned the trend
setting magazines Time, Life, Fortune, and Newsweek.(22) Laurance
Rockefeller was a director of The Reader's Digest, a barometer of
orthodox thinking, especially on the medical issues in which his
family had enormous financial interests. (23)
Forbes Magazine's recent bio' of media tycoon,
Conrad Black read:
67% ownership in Ravelston Corp., a privately held company, gives
him control of a 78% stake in Hollinger Inc., a publicly traded
Canadian holding company with real estate and other investments.
Hollinger, in turn, owns 32%of the equity and 73% of he voting
control of Hollinger International, the Big Board media company that
owns the newspapers.
There is also a hefty dose of debt financing in
this chain. Thus does Black, with a mere $13 million of his own
equity money in the till, control $2 billion in media assets. The
assets are impressive: Black's 129 newspapers include the Chicago
Sun-Times, the fifth-largest paper in the U.S.; the Jerusalem Post,
with a circulation of 110,000; and the London Daily Telegraph, which
has 40% of the market for national broadsheet newspapers in the U.K...
Directors include such illuminati as Henry Kissinger; former
Illinois Governor James R. Thompson; financier Henry Kravis' wife,
Marie-Josée Kravis; former ambassador to Germany Richard Burt; and
Richard Perle, the controversial member of the Defense Policy
Board." (24)
Forbes ranks two media billionaires, Silvio Berlusconi and
Rupert
Murdoch, at numbers 3 and 4 in the world in terms of power and
influence even though their wealth is ranked 45 and 54 respectively.
-
Italy's Prime Minister owes much of his influence to Fininvest, his
investment firm that owns 49% of Mediaset, Italy's largest
television network. He also has interests in banking, insurance and
publishing.(25)
-
Murdoch's media empire includes NewsCorporation and
its U.K. subsidiary News International, British Sky Broadcasting
Group, Sky Global Networks Inc. and Fox Entertainment Group. Besides
T.V. networks and newspapers, this group also owns the publisher
HarperCollins.(26)(27)
Two sisters Anne and Barbara Cox own 98% of Cox Enterprises which
controls 17 daily newspapers (including flagship Atlanta
Journal-Constitution), 15 TV stations, 78 radio stations and cable
systems (6.5 million users). Their personal wealth is estimated to
be $11billion each.(28)Two thirds of Viacom's voting stock is
controlled by Sumner Redstone whose personal wealth is estimated at
$9.7 billion.(29) Viacom now owns CBS, Infinity Broadcasting,
Paramount, Nickelodeon, MTV, and Blockbuster. In 1980 Ted Turner
launched America's first 24 hr. cable news service, CNN. Turner
Broadcasting Systems was bought by Time Warner in 1996 but Turner
remains Time Warner's largest individual shareholder (only 1% at
June 2003) and sits on its board.(30)
Sir Evelyn de Rothschild used to sit on the board of The Daily
Telegraph (31) and Edouard de Rothschild bought the controlling
stake in French left-wing newspaper, Liberation, in December 2004.
(32)
From July 1999 to March 2002, The Carlyle Group, an $18 billion
private equity firm, held a 40% stake in the French daily Le Figaro.
Carlyle Group investors have included Frank Carlucci, former U.S.
Defense Secretary and Deputy Director of the CIA; the Bin Laden
family; and former heads of state, George Bush Sr. and John Major.
In March 2004, Le Figaro was purchased by Serge Dassault, head of
Dassault Aviation a major military contractor.(33)
However, ownership, directorship and censorship is not the whole
story of media manipulation. Much of what appears in the press is
shaped by the education of journalists and their sources. The roots
of the 'psychological operation' are in the schools, universities,
charities, think-tanks and policy institutes - the subject of the
next chapter.
Chapter 2 End Notes
-
Dr. Stanley Monteith, The Brotherhood of Darkness, Hearthstone
Publishing, 2000,
p.15
-
G. Edward Griffin, World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17,
American Media, second edition 1997, p.183
-
Manning P, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart,
1981, pp. 29, 56, 69, 116-17; 134-35. see article by Dr Leonard
Horowitz at
http://www.lightstreamers.com/horowitz/Solving_The_Anthrax.html
-
G. Edward Griffin, op cit.,p.236
-
G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, American Media,
Fourth Edition, 2002, p.482 and Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and
the Rise of Hitler, CSG and Associates, 1976 p.164
-
Griffin, World Without Cancer, pp.187-189
-
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ),The
Water Barons, a report for The Center for Public Integrity, 2003.
See http://www.icij.org/water/default.aspx
-
Bill Marsden, Cholera and The Age of The Water Barons, The Center
for Public Integrity, 2003. See
http://www.icij.org/water/report.aspx?sid=ch&rid=44&aid=44
-
Impact of Wal-Mart on Retail Consolidation and Standardization,
Infosys TechnologiesLtd. See
http://www.infosys.com/knowledge_capital/thought-papers/WalMart_Impact_on_Retail-Consolidation.pdf
-
What's Wrong With Supermarkets? CorporateWatch. See
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/pages/whats_wrong_suprmkts.htm
-
James A. Paul, Iraq: the Struggle for Oil , Global Policy Forum,
August, 2002 (revised December, 2002). See
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2002/08jim.htm#4
-
Jobs slashed at new oil colossus, BBC news, London, 1 December 1998.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_company_file/222402.stm
-
The 2003 Global Scoreboard, BusinessWeek Online, November 2003. See
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/global_1000/2003/index.asp?sortCol=ind_code&sortOrder=ASC&pageNum=19&resultNum=25&country=
-
The United States of Television, Global Policy Forum. See
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/mergers/0721tv.htm
-
EU Court Boosts Foreign Mergers, Global Policy Forum. See
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/mergers/eucourtmerger.htm
-
French Rothschild is set to take helm in London, Charles Pretzlik,
Banking Editor, The Financial Times, London, 10 February 2003.
-
Horses, stamps, cars - and an invisible portfolio, The Guardian,
London, 30 May 2002. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/jubilee/story/0,11550,724327,00.html
-
Robert Gaylon Ross Sr. See
http://www.4rie.com/index.html#Anchor-51540
-
Dr. Alexandr Nemets, Expert: Russia Knew in Advance, Encouraged
Citizens to Cash Out Dollars, Newsmax.com, 17 Sept. 2001. See
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/9/16/103951.shtml
-
Arnold and Buffett's Loaded Elephant Gun? Buffett's Back with the
Terminator!,Reuters 24 Sept. 2002 .See copy at
http://www.infowars.com/print/nwo/schwartz_roths.htm
-
Monteith, op cit., p.31
-
Hans Ruesch, The Drug Story. See
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/new_world_order/Rockefeller_Drug_Censor_Empire.html
-
Dr Leonard G. Horowitz, Death In The Air, Tetrahedron Publishing
Group, 2001 p.364. See
http://www.tetrahedron.org/index.html
-
Robert Lenzner, Press Lord Pressed, Forbes Magazine, 26 May 2003.
See http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0526/052.html
-
The 10 Most Powerful Billionaires, Forbes Magazine, 17 March 2003.
See http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2003/0317/115.html
-
Keith Rupert Murdoch, tearsheet, Forbes Magazine, November 2003. See
http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromMktGuideIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedMktGuideId=130391
-
Who Owns What: News Corporation, Columbia Journalism Review, 21 July
2003. See http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/newscorp.asp
-
Star Power, Forbes Magazine, 10 June 2003. See
http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/1006/048.html
-
Sumner M Redstone, World's Richest People 2003, Forbes Magazine. See
http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/10/2003/
LIR.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2003&passListType=
Person&uniqueId=KJHY&datatype=Person
-
Robert E. (Ted) Turner, World's Richest People 2003. Forbes
Magazine. See
http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/10/2003/LIR.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2003&passListType=Person&uniqueId=ETX7&datatype=Person.
-
Dominic Rush, Black narcissi, The Times Business section, 28 March
2004
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8209-1055652_2,00.html
-
Colin Randall, Banker sets sights on Left-wing newspaper, The
Daily Telegraph, 15 December 2004
http://www.policestateplanning.com/rothschild_buys_left_wing_newspaper.htm
-
Dassault Buys Le Figaro from the Carlyle Group,
policestateplanning.com
http://www.policestateplanning.com/dassault_buys_le_figaro_from_the_carlyle_group__.htm
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