Chapter 2
First published January 2004
Last updated March 2005
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THE GREAT TRUST 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 'comand and control' society in which the corporations use government to diminish our freedoms.
2.2 FIVE MONOPOLIES
Corpororate monopolies over water, food, energy, medicine, and 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, and 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, and 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 favour 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?
Relevant articles >> 1 |
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 favour 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
1. Dr. Stanley Monteith, The Brotherhood of Darkness, Hearthstone Publishing, 2000, p.15
2. G. Edward Griffin, World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17, American Media, second edition 1997, p.183
3. 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
4. G. Edward Griffin, op cit.,p.236
5. 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
6. Griffin, World Without Cancer, pp.187-189
7. 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
8. 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
9. Impact of Wal-Mart on Retail Consolidation and Standardization, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
10. What's Wrong With Supermarkets? CorporateWatch.
11. 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
12. 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
13. The 2003 Global Scoreboard, BusinessWeek Online, November 2003.
14. The United States of Television, Global Policy Forum.
15. EU Court Boosts Foreign Mergers, Global Policy Forum.
16. French Rothschild is set to take helm in London, Charles Pretzlik, Banking Editor, The Financial Times, London, 10 February 2003.
17. Horses, stamps, cars - and an invisible portfolio, The Guardian, London, 30 May 2002. See
18. Robert Gaylon Ross Sr.
19. 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
20. Arnold and Buffett's Loaded Elephant Gun? Buffett's Back with the Terminator!, Reuters
24 Sept. 2002 .
21. Monteith, op cit., p.31
22. Hans Ruesch, The Drug Story.
23. Dr Leonard G. Horowitz, Death In The Air, Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2001 p.364.
24. Robert Lenzner, Press Lord Pressed, Forbes Magazine, 26 May 2003.
25. The 10 Most Powerful Billionaires, Forbes Magazine, 17 March 2003.
26. Keith Rupert Murdoch, tearsheet, Forbes Magazine, November 2003.
27. Who Owns What: News Corporation, Columbia Journalism Review, 21 July 2003.
28. Star Power, Forbes Magazine, 10 June 2003.
29. Sumner M Redstone, World's Richest People 2003, Forbes Magazine.
30. Robert E. (Ted) Turner, World's Richest People 2003. Forbes Magazine.
31. Dominic Rush, Black narcissi, The Times Business section, 28 March 2004
32.Colin Randall, Banker sets sights on Left-wing newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, 15 December 2004
33. Dassault Buys Le Figaro from the Carlyle Group, policestateplanning.com
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