Bilderberg’s only purpose is to impress on guests that NATO is world’s most powerful military and that US is in charge of it. Invited elites are expected to sell this notion to their governments and public opinion. Bilderberg has no problem with Russia, just thinks all countries should be subservient to US-Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire, 5/9/2011

.
Bilderberg is “the Lobby of the most powerful military organization in the world,” NATO…..Formed in 1954, “the goal was to mobilize the elite for the [anticipated] Cold War….[Invitees] were chosen to influence their respective governments and public opinion in their countries.”...Bilderberg Alliance “is not a pact against Moscow, but rather the defence-and possibly the extension-of Washington’s zone of influence.…All participants agreed that to save the “free world“, that freedom should be put “in brackets””….Security for meetings is provided by “soldiers of the NATO Alliance,” rather than by police in host countries.”…Dutch “Prince Bernhard became less visible after he was caught influence peddling (Lockheed Martin scandal).”…“The Prince admitted, in a series of interviews given between 1996 and 2002 (on condition that they were made public only after his death), that he had received a $1 million “sweetener” from Lockheed.” UK Telegraph 

May 9, 2011, “What you don’t know about the Bilderberg-Group,” voltairenet.org, Thierry Meyssan 

“The idea that the Bilderberg Group is behind the creation of a mysterious future World Government has been spreading for years. Having had access to the archives of this very secret club, Thierry Meyssan shows that this belief leads in a false direction, serving to mask the true identity and function of the Group. In reality, the Bilderberg Group is a creation of NATO. It aims to influence key leaders on a global scale and, through them, to manipulate public opinion to get it to embrace the ideas and actions of the Northern Atlantic Alliance.” 

"Every year since 1954, over one hundred of the most prominent personalities of Western Europe and North America meet – behind closed doors and under maximum security – within the Bilderberg Group. This exclusive seminar lasts for three days and almost nothing of the debates filters to the outside world…. 

In order to find out what the Bilderberg Group is or isn’t, I searched for documents and first hand witnesses. I obtained access to all of its records for the period 1954-1966 and numerous later documents, and I was able to talk with a former participant that I’ve known for years. No other journalist to date, including the authors who have popularized today’s stereotypes, has had access to this wealth of internal documents of the Bilderberg Group. 

Here’s what I discovered… 

“The First Meeting” 

“70 personalities from 12 different countries attended the first meeting of the Group. It was a three-day seminar, from May 29 to 31, 1954, near Arnhem (Netherlands). The guests were housed in two nearby hotels, but the debates were held in the Bilderberg Hotel, which gave the Group its name. 

[Image: 1954, first meeting of Bilderberg group at Bilderberg hotel, via Voltaire]  

The invitations with a letterhead from the Soestdijk Palace are intriguing: “I earnestly request your presence at the informal International Conference, to be held in the Netherlands in late May. This conference wishes to explore a number of issues of great importance for Western civilization and is intended to stimulate mutual understanding and goodwill through a free exchange of views.” The invitations were signed by the Prince Consort of the Netherlands, Bernhard zur Lippe-Biesterfeld, and accompanied by several pages of administrative information concerning transportation and accommodation. At most, we learn that the delegates originated from the United States and 11 from Western Europe, and that 6 sessions of 3 hours each were scheduled. 

Given the Nazi past of Prince Bernhard (who had served in the SS cavalry until his marriage in 1937 to Princess Juliana) and in the context of McCarthyism in the U.S., it’s clear that the “issues of great importance for Western civilization” revolved around the struggle against communism. 

Once there, the anticipation of the guests was mitigated by the two chairmen: U.S. entrepreneur John S. Coleman and outgoing Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Paul van Zeeland. The first was an active partisan of free trade and the second a supporter of the European Defense Community (EDC) [1]. Last but not least, at the far end of the table (see photo) sat Joseph Retinger, the intellectual influence behind the British. All this suggests that the Dutch and British monarchies sponsored this meeting to support the European Defense Community and the economic model of free-market capitalism against the anti-Americanism that the Communists and the Gaullists were promoting. 

However, appearances are deceiving. The goal was not to campaign for the EDC, but to mobilize the elite for the Cold War. 

His Royal Highness, Prince Bernhard, was chosen to convene this conference because his status as a prince consort would give it a Stately character without being formal. In fact, he was used to hide the real sponsor: an inter-governmental organization which intends to manipulate the governments of some of its Member States.

[Image: Pool in NATO’s new hq, via Assar architects, cost of new 2017 hq, $1.2 billion] 

John S. Coleman was not yet the President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, but he had already created the “Citizen’s Committee for a National Trade Policy” – CCNTP. According to him, absolute free trade, that is to say, the renunciation of all customs duties, would allow countries allied with the United States to increase their wealth and finance the European Defense Community (in other words, rearm Germany and integrate its potential military power within NATO). 

However, the documents in our possession show that the CCNTP was a “Citizen’s” committee in name only. This is actually an initiative of Charles D. Jackson, the White House psychological warfare adviser. The operation was controlled in reality by William J. Donovan, the former commander of the OSS (the U.S. intelligence service during the war) [which later became the CIA], now in charge of building the American branch of the new secret service of NATO, Gladio [2]. 

Paul van Zeeland was not only the promoter of the European Defense Community, but also a politician of great experience. At the Liberation, he chaired the Independent League for European Cooperation (ILAE) whose objective was to create a customs and monetary union. This organization was established by Joseph Retinger, mentioned earlier. 

Specifically Retinger, who was acting as secretary for the Bilderberg conference, served during the war in the English secret services (OES) of General Colin Gubbins. A Polish adventurer, Retinger found himself advisor to the Sikorski government in exile in the United Kingdom. In London, he livened up the small world of governments in exile and compiled one of the best address books in newly liberated Europe. 

His friend, Sir Gubbins, officially left the service and the SOE was disbanded. Retinger ran a small textile business, which served as a “cover”. In fact, alongside his counterpart Donovan, he was responsible for creating the English branch of Gladio [NATO’s secret service]. He participated in all of the preparatory meetings of the Bilderberg conference and was present among the guests, seated next to Charles D. Jackson. 

Unknown to the participants, the secret services of NATO were, in fact, the organizing power behind the scenes. Bernhard, Coleman and Van Zeeland were used as fronts. 

Contrary to the idea developed by the creative journalists who imagined the Bilderberg Group forging a secret World Government, this club of influential leaders is in reality a lobbying tool to promote NATO’s interests. It is in fact much more serious and dangerous, because it is NATO which aims to be the secret World Government – guaranteeing the international status quo and maintaining U.S. influence. 

Moreover, the security of each subsequent meeting was not provided by the police of the host country, but by the soldiers of the NATO Alliance. 

Among the ten speakers [at the first meeting in 1954], there were two former Prime Ministers (Guy Mollet, France, Alcide de Gasperi, Italy), three officials of the Marshall Plan, the Cold War hawk (Paul H. Nitze) and, above all, an extremely powerful banker (David Rockefeller). 

According to the preparatory documents, approximately 20 people were in the inner circle. They knew more or less in detail those who were pulling the strings and preparing in advance their work. The smallest details were prepared before hand and nothing was left to chance. On the other hand, the fifty other participants knew nothing of what was happening behind the scenes. They were chosen to influence their respective governments and public opinion in their countries. The seminar was organized to convince these leaders and incite them to diffuse the point of view of the NATO Alliance in their respective countries. 

The debates didn’t address the major international problems, but rather analyzed the supposed ideological strategy of the Soviets and set out how it should be countered by the “free world“. 

The first statements assessed the communist threat. The “conscious communists“ are individuals who intended to put their homeland at the service of the Soviet Union in order to impose a collectivist world. They must be fought. But it was a difficult challenge because these “conscious communists” in Europe were embedded with a mass of Communist voters who knew nothing about their evil plans and followed them in hopes of improved social conditions. 

Gradually, the rhetoric became more radical. The “free world” must oppose the “world communist conspiracy“, not only in a general way, but also by responding to specific questions concerning U.S. investments in Europe or on decolonization. 

Finally, the speakers addressed the main problem which the Soviets, according to them, were exploiting to their advantage. For cultural and historical reasons, the political leaders of the “free world” used different arguments in the U.S. and in Europe, arguments that sometimes contradicted one another. The most emblematic cases are the purges organized by Senator McCarthy in the United States. They were essential to save democracy, but the method was perceived in Europe as a form of totalitarianism. 

The final message was that no diplomatic negotiation, no compromise was possible with the “Reds“. The role of the Communists in Western Europe had be prevented at any cost, but it would take cunning: as they cannot just be arrested and shot. They should be neutralized discreetly, without their voters realizing what’s happening. In short, the ideology developed was that of NATO and Gladio. No one said that elections should be rigged or that moderates should be assassinated, but all participants agreed that to save the “free world“, that freedom should be put “in brackets”. 

Although the proposed European Defense Community (EDC) was defeated three months later in the French Parliament under the attacks of the Communist deputies and the “nationalist extremists” (in other words, the partisans of de Gaulle), the Congress was none the less considered a success. Despite appearances, there was no intention to support the creation of the EDC or any other specific policy. The real goal was to spread the ideology of the ruling elite by influencing the opinion makers, who in turn would influence the rest of society. Objectively, the Western Europeans were less aware of the freedoms that they were being denied and increasingly aware of the freedoms that were not available to the people of Eastern Europe. 

The Bilderberg Group becomes an organization 

A second conference was held in Barbizon, France, from March 18th to 20th 1955. 

The idea that the conferences would be held annually and that they required a permanent secretariat became increasingly evident. Prince Bernhard became less visible after he was caught influence peddling (Lockheed Martin scandal). He was replaced by the former British Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home (1977-80). The following Presidencies were held by former German Chancellor and President Walter Scheel (1981-85), former Governor of the Bank of England Eric Roll (1986-89), former NATO Secretary General Peter Carrington (1990-98), and finally the former vice-president of the European Commission Etienne Davignon (since 1999). 

For many years the Chairman of the Bilderberg Group was assisted by two Secretary Generals, one for Europe and Canada (the vassal states) and one for the U.S. (the ruler), however, there has been only one Secretary General since 1999. 

From one year to the next, the debates have been highly redundant. This is why the guests change regularly. But there is always a core group who prepares the conference in advance and the newcomers who are taught the atlanticist rhetoric in vogue. 

Currently, the annual seminars bring together over 120 participants, including one third of the permanent core group members. They were selected by the Alliance based on their social network and their capacity to influence the rest of society, irrespective of their particular functions in society. Thus, they remain members of the core group even after changing their job. 

Here is the exact list of the core group, including members of the Board of Directors, which serve as fronts for the guests, and the less visible members, in order to not scare away the newcomers….[listed below at end of this post] 

Henry Kissinger is the main person responsible for invitations to the Bilderberg Group.… 

The Bilderbergers don’t necessarily represent the companies or institutions in which they work. However, it is interesting to observe the diversity of their political and economic influence. 

The Lobby of the most powerful military organization in the world 

In recent years, the number of topics discussed at the annual conferences has increased to keep up with world events. But the subjects of discussion are not really important, because the discussions have no precise objectives in and of themselves. The conferences are merely a pretext to convey other messages.

Unfortunately, we do not have access to the most recent preparatory documents and we can only speculate about the directives that NATO will try to disseminate through these leaders of opinion. 

The reputation of the Bilderberg Group has led some authors to imagine that the Group nominates people to important positions.

This is ridiculous and it obscures those who truly pull the strings behind the scenes within the Atlantic Alliance. 

For example, during the last U.S. presidential elections [2008], it was reported that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton disappeared on June 6, 2008, in order to negotiate an end to their rivalry. In reality, they participated in the annual conference of the Bilderberg Group in Chantilly, Virginia (USA). The following day, Mrs. Clinton announced that she was retiring from the race. Some authors concluded that the decision was taken during the Bilderberg meeting. The logic is faulty, since the decision was already a foregone conclusion three days before, given the number of votes for Senator Obama at the Democratic Party’s nominating committee. 

According to our sources, something else happened. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton concluded a financial and political agreement. Senator Obama bailed out his rival financially and offered her a position in his administration (Clinton refused the vice-presidency and instead chose the State Department) in exchange for her active support during the campaign against McCain. Then, the two leaders were presented by James A. Johnson to the Bilderberg Conference, where they assured the participants that they would work together.… 

Similarly, it was reported that the Bilderberg Group held an impromptu dinner outside of the Conference on November 14th, 2009 at the Chateau de Val Duchesse, owned by the King of Belgium. The former Prime Minister of Belgium, Herman van Rompuy, delivered a speech. Five days later he was elected president of the European Council. Once again, some authors wrongly concluded that the Bilderberg Group had been the “kingmaker”.

In reality, the President of the European Union could not be chosen outside of the NATO circles, and it should be remembered that the European Union itself was the result of several secret clauses in the Marshall Plan. In addition, this choice must be endorsed by the Member States. This type of decision requires lengthy negotiations and is obviously not taken during an informal dinner with friends. 

Also according to our source, the Bilderberg Group President, Etienne Davignon, convened this special [2009] dinner to introduce Van Rompuy to his influential relays. These contacts were all the more necessary since the first person to occupy the new post of President of the European Council was totally unknown outside of his own country. During the meal, Mr. Van Rompuy outlined his program for creating a European tax to directly fund the institutions of the Union without going through the Member States. The role of the Bilderbergers was to proclaim far and wide, that they know Herman von Rompuy and testify to his qualities to chair the Union. 

The reality of the Bilderberg Group is less romantic than some authors have imagined. The incredible deployment of military force to ensure security during the meetings is not so much intended to protect, but rather to impress those who participate. It does not display their power, but instead shows that the only real power in the West is NATO. Everyone has the “choice” to either support NATO and be supported by it… or fight it and be relentlessly crushed. 

In addition, although the Bilderberg Group developed an anti-communist rhetoric when it was created, it was not oriented against the USSR and is not today oriented against Russia. It follows the strategy of the Alliance which is not a pact against Moscow, but rather the defence-and possibly the extension-of Washington’s zone of influence. At its inception, NATO had hoped to integrate the Soviet Union, which would have implied a commitment from Moscow not to challenge the division of the world stemming from the Conferences of Potsdam and Yalta. 

Recently [2011 or earlier] the Alliance met with President Dmitry Medvedev at the Lisbon Summit and proposed that Russia join the group. It was not intended to be a form of subservience, but recognition of the existing New World Order, in which all of Central and Eastern Europe now falls under the U.S. orbit. Russian membership would be a sort of peace treaty: Moscow would concede defeat in the Cold War and recognize the new division of the world. 

In this case, the Bilderberg Group would invite Russian personalities to its annual meetings. Bilderberg would not ask these personalities to influence public opinion in Russia in order to Americanise them, but to convince them to renounce their dreams of past greatness and glory.” 

Thierry Meyssan 

Source Komsomolskaïa Pravda (Russia)

.........
Translated from French by Michael McGee.

Footnotes
……………………… 

“[1] The EDC is a project aimed at creating a European army within NATO. It was rejected by Parliament in 1954 at the instigation of the French Gaullists and the Communist Party. It was not until 2010-11 that this project began to take form under the Franco-British partnership within NATO and during the War on Libya.

[2] “NATO’s Secret Armies,“, by Daniele Ganser. This work is published in serial form on Voltairenet.org in French.
[3] “The Story of Obama: All in the Company“ (Part I and II), by Wayne Madsen, Voltaire Network, 20 August 2010.”
………………………………………..
...............

Board of directors Josef Ackermann Swiss Banker, head of Deutsche Bank, Vice-Chairman of the Forum in Davos. Roger C. Altman U.S. Banker, a former campaign adviser to John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, Chairman of investment Bank Evercore Partners Inc. Francisco Pinto Balsemão Former Socialist Prime Minister of Portugal (1981-83), president and founder of the largest group of Portuguese television SIC. (T) Fran Bernabè Italian banker, current director of Telecom Italia. (T) Henri de Castries CEO of the French insurance-company AXA. Juan Luis Cebrián Director of the Spanish media and broadcasting group Prisa. W. Edmund Clark Canadian banker, CEO of Toronto-Dominion Bank Financial Group. Kenneth Clarke Former vice president of British American Tobacco (1998-2007), British minister of Justice, vice president of the European Movement UK. George A. David CEO of Coca-Cola. Étienne Davignon Belgian businessman, former vice president of the European Commission (1981-85), current vice president of Suez Tractebel. Anders Eldrup CEO of the Danish gass and oil corporation DONG Energy. Thomas Enders Director of Airbus. Victor Halberstadt Economy professor at the Dutch university of Leiden, business-consultant for various corporations such as Goldman Sachs and Daimler-Chrysler. James A. Johnson U.S. financier, he was a major contributor to the Democratic Party and an architect of the nomination of Barack Obama. He is vice-chairman of the investment bank Perseus. John Kerr of Kinlochard Former UK Ambassador to Washington, Vice President of oil group Royal Dutch Shell. (T) Klaus Kleinfeld German CEO of the U.S. aluminium giant, Alcoa. Mustafa V. Koç CEO of Koç Holding, the largest Turkish company. Marie-Josée Drouin-Kravis Economic columnist in print and broadcast media in Canada. Researcher at the very militaristic Hudson Institute. She is the third wife of Henry Kravis. Jessica T. Mathews Former Director of Global Affairs at the National Security Council of the United States. Current director of the Carnegie Foundation. Thierry de Montbrial Economist, founding director of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) and the World Policy Conference. Mario Monti Italian economist, former European commissioner for the protection of free-trade (1999-2005), co-founder of the Spinelli Group for European federalism. Egil Myklebust Former president of Norwegian employers, director of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). Matthias Nass Assistant director of the German Newspaper Die Zeit. Jorma Ollila Finnish businessman, former CEO of Nokia, current president of Royal Dutch Shell. Richard N. Perle Former Chair of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee at the Pentagon, He is a key leader of the Straussians (disciples of Leo Strauss) and as such, a major figure of neo-conservatism. Heather Reisman Canadian businesswoman, CEO of the Publishing Group Indigo-Chapters. Rudolf Scholten Former Austrian Finance Minister, Governor of the Central Bank. Peter D. Sutherland Former Irish EU Commissioner for competition, then director general of the World Trade Organization. Former director of British Petroleum, current chairman of Goldman Sachs International, former President of the European section of the Trilateral Commission, and Vice-President of the European Round Table of Industrialists, now honorary president of the European Movement - Ireland. J. Martin Taylor Former MP, CEO of the chemical and agribusiness giant Syngenta. Peter A. Thiel U.S. Businessman, CEO of PayPal, president of Clarium Capital Management and Facebook shareholder. Daniel L. Vasella CEO of the Swiss pharmaceutical group Novartis. Jacob Wallenberg Swedish banker, he is the director of many transnational companies.
..............................
Members of the hidden core group Carl Bildt Former Liberal Prime Minister of Sweden (1991-94), former special envoy of the European Union and the UN in the Balkans (1995-97, 1999-2001), the current Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs. (T) Oscar Bronner CEO of the Austrian daily Der Standard. Timothy C. Collins American investor, director of the investment fund Ripplewood. (T) John Elkann CEO of the Italian group Fiat Auto (his grandfather Gianni Agnelli was for forty years one of the leaders of the Bilderberg Group. He inherited the family fortune after the natural death of his grandfather Giovanni and the premature death of his uncle Edoardo. However, police sources were convinced that Edoardo was murdered after he converted to Shia Islam, so that the family fortune would remain within the Jewish branch of the family). Martin S. Feldstein Former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan (1982-84), and current economic adviser to Barack Obama. He was on George W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He teaches at Harvard. (T) Henry A. Kissinger Former national security adviser and U.S. Secretary of State, central figure of the U.S. military-industrial complex, current president of the consulting firm Kissinger Associates. Henry R. Kravis U.S. financier, investment fund manager KKR. He’s a major fundraiser for the Republican Party. Neelie Kroes Former liberal Dutch minister of Transport, European commissioner for competition, and current Commissioner of the digital society. Bernardino Léon Gross Spanish diplomat, Secretary General of the Presidency of the Socialist Government of Jose Luis Zapatero. Frank McKenna Former member of the Supervisory Commission Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s ambassador in Washington (2005-06), Vice-President of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands She is the daughter of Prince Bernhard. George Osborne British Minister of Finance. This neo-conservative is seen as a eurosceptic, meaning that he is opposed to the participation of the United Kingdom in the European Union, but he is a supporter of the organization on the continent within the Union. Robert S. Prichard Canadian economist, director of print and audiovisual Torstar. David Rockefeller The patriarch of a long line of Bankers. He’s the oldest member of the core group of Bilderbergers. He is also chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a similar organization incorporating Asian participants. James D. Wolfensohn Australian Banker who acquired U.S. citizenship to become President of the World Bank (1995-2005), now director of the consulting firm Wolfensohn & Co. Robert B. Zoellick American diplomat, U.S. diplomat, former U.S. Trade Representative (2001-05), current president of the World Bank.

UK monarchy has tied its financial survival to the world continuing to believe the multi-trillion dollar imaginary CO2 danger lie, revenue from offshore wind turbine leases is expected to provide much future monarchy income-Daily Mail, 10/24/2010, 12/31/2010

.
“The [UK] Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore windfarms….A spokesman for Republic, which campaigns for a more accountable Royal Family, said: ‘It is wholly inappropriate that the Palace should have such a direct interest in a subject like windfarms, given Prince Charles’s obsession with renewable energy. It raises the question as to whether he is seeking to increase his own investment portfolio each time he makes a favourable reference to wind power.’.“…..Prince Charles was even allowed to try to convince some Texas lawmakers to see things his way: “A conference was also held at the Texas Capitol in Austin in which a video of Prince Charles personally addressing Texan politicians on the subject of climate change was shown.”…4/3/2012, UK Guardian

10/24/2010, “Queen’s £38m a year windfarm windfall," Martin Delgado for The Mail on Sunday 

“How much the [8] European Monarchies cost [as of 2010]"

“Great Britain £68m [US$85.7 million]
– Holland £33.8m
– Norway £23.9m
– Belgium £11.7m
– Denmark £10.5m
– Sweden £10.2m
– Spain £7.4m
– Luxembourg £7.2m 

“The Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore windfarms. 

They will net up to £37.5m extra income every year from the drive for green energy because the seabed within Britain’s territorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate.

[Image: Prince Charles at Highgrove, Rex] 

Under new measures announced by Chancellor George Osborne last week, the Royals will soon get 15% of the profits from the Estate’s £6bn property portfolio, rather than the existing Civil List arrangement. 

Experts predict the growth in offshore windfarms could be worth up to £250m a year to the Crown Estate. 

There are already 436 turbines in operation around the UK’s 7,700-mile coastline – but within a decade that number is set to reach nearly 7,000. 

Prince Charles is a vociferous campaigner for renewable energy sources such as these, but is opposed to turbines being erected on land – particularly near his own homes….But he has expressed enthusiasm for siting them offshore. 

The Crown Estate said profits from windfarms in Britain’s territorial waters – which extend almost 14 miles from the coast – could rise to £100m a year, giving the Royals £15m. 

But industry experts said this was an under-estimate and that the true figure was likely to be nearer £250m by 2020, with £37.5m for the Royals. 

They currently receive about £30m a year from the Civil List and other grants – a figure that will be frozen until 2012 when it will be replaced by the new mechanism, called the Sovereign Support Grant…. 

If the experts are correct about windfarm returns, the Monarchy’s budget would more than double, to around £68m. 

The canny boost to Royal finances was quietly slipped through as part of last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review. 

In what one source described last night as a ‘masterstroke’ by the Prince’s closest adviser Sir Michael Peat, 250 years of history was overturned by scrapping the arrangement under which taxpayers’ money has been used to fund the Royals and pay for the upkeep of their palaces. 

The Civil List – which has financed the Monarchy since King George III surrendered all revenues from the Crown Estate after running up massive debts – meant the Royal finances were accountable to Parliament, but the Sovereign Support Grant will avoid such scrutiny…. 

By 2020, 6,400 turbines – each one rising 500ft above the sea – are expected to be in operation around the UK coastline. Household energy bills will have to rise to pay for the £75 billion expansion, which has been described as one of the biggest engineering projects in recent history. 

The EU has told Britain it must generate more of its energy needs from renewable sources. But critics say the plan to increase Britain’s dependence on green energy is flawed and could leave homes and business suffering routine power cuts within five years. Sir Martin Holdgate, former chief scientist at the Department for the Environment, said: ‘There is pressure to act on climate change. But when you look at the cost per unit, it is a rather expensive way of providing electricity.’… 

Revenue to the Estate from the windfarms rose by 44% last year to a ‘low base’ of £2.6m. But with the third round of contracts handed out in January, companies bidding for the work say a bonanza is on the horizon. 

The UK’s first offshore windfarm was commissioned in December 2000 off Blyth Harbour in Northumberland. 

In the following year, leases were awarded for the development of 18 sites. North Hoyle off Merseyside was switched on in December 2003, Scroby Sands off Norfolk followed in 2004 and Kentish Flats in the Thames Estuary became operational a year later. 

Since then, the pace of expansion has quickened substantially. There are now a total of 436 working turbines at 13 locations from Walney Island in the Irish Sea to Foreness Point off Margate, Kent. 

A further 309 are being built at four sites. Planning permission has been granted for 817 more windmills at seven farms. Yet another 519 turbines at five sites are being considered by planning authorities. 

Eon, Centrica, EDF, Scottish Power and npower are among the suppliers that have been awarded contracts to develop windfarms. The firms pay the Crown Estate a rental fee to run their cables along the seabed from the turbines to the shore. 

The companies also have to pay a percentage of the money they make from generating electricity…. 

A spokesman for Republic, which campaigns for a more accountable Royal Family, said: ‘It is wholly inappropriate that the Palace should have such a direct interest in a subject like windfarms, given Prince Charles’s obsession with renewable energy. It raises the question as to whether he is seeking to increase his own investment portfolio each time he makes a favourable reference to wind power.’… 

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: ‘Nobody yet knows how the Sovereign Support Grant is going to work. The details have not yet been finalised with the Treasury. It is wild speculation to discuss what might or might not happen in 2020.’ Clarence House declined to comment on behalf of Prince Charles.” 
………………………………………. 

Added: New income stream frees UK monarchy from oversight by the peasants: “There is concern, too, that reverting to the old system will destroy a process that serves to underline the crucial democratic principle that the monarchy exists only by the consent of the people.” 

12/31/2010, “One’s in the money! Why Prince Charles’s secret 20-year campaign could make him the richest king in history,” UK Daily Mail, Geoffrey Levy

“The bombshell was one no one noticed. Four months ago, as George Osborne made his first Budget speech to the Commons unleashing the biggest public spending cuts in living memory, he slipped in a brief – and almost unnoticed – passage about the financing of the Royal Family. 

The Chancellor said he intended to scrap the Civil List system that has been in place since 1760 – and that to most people has worked pretty well – and replace it with a new one…. 

From 2013, the Civil List will be scrapped and the monarchy will be financed by what’s been titled the Sovereign Support Grant – comprising a share of the profits made by the Crown Estate, a vast £6.6billion property empire where the profits go to the Treasury…. 

So just how did this hugely significant development in royal financing come about? 

Step forward the Prince of Wales, whose constant stream of handwritten letters to Government ministers urging them to consider various issues are known in Westminster as ‘black spider’ memos. 

For Charles, the Chancellor’s announcement was the culmination of a personal campaign he has waged for more than 20 years. Indeed, it was [Charles] the spendthrift heir to the throne – whose 149 staff include three chauffeurs and 25 domestic ‘personal’ staff of butlers, dressers, chefs and valets, and who spent £125,000 on his gardens at Highgrove last year – who first came up with the idea in the late Eighties. 

Charles, whose extravagance has even been criticised by the Queen, wasn’t playing things by halves. His original proposal, presented to the Thatcher government (only to see it refused), was that the entire income from the Crown Estates should revert to the sovereign, just as it did before George III was forced to strike a deal with ministers. 

The Estate’s income is immense: £211million last year and it is expected to rise to a whopping £450million by 2020. It was already approaching £60million – no small sum – when, as Charles’ official biographer Jonathan Dimbleby put it back in 1994, he ‘floated the notion’ after ‘his back-of-an-envelope calculations (showed) it would more than match the total government expenditure on the monarchy’. 

The prince not only wrote letters detailing his big idea, but also initiated talks with the Thatcher government. His view, as explained by one of his circle involved in the discussions, was that ‘it would have been enormously effective in making the household independent and vigorous,…and good for the standing of the monarchy as an autonomous [parasitic] institution’. 

Quite so. And it would also have turned the future King Charles into probably the richest monarch in British history. This would have helped a man who has been criticised by his own mother for employing too many servants and taking too much equipment (his personal white leather loo seat, for example) whenever he travels. 

To be fair to Charles, he understandably deplores the ‘cap in hand’ element that tends to characterise the negotiations that take place every ten years between palace advisers and Government over what is inevitably described in Left-wing newspapers as the Queen’s ‘pay rise’. 

‘Charles…feels it is unseemly for the monarchy to have to go round with a begging bowl. He has always wanted to put an end to that.’ 

But the questions is, why has George Osborne apparently acceded to Charles’s demand, particularly at a time of national austerity? Did he simply succumb to the Prince’s concerted campaign? 

One close friend has said that he would be ‘hugely surprised’ if Osborne had not been in receipt of those urgent ‘black spider’ memos since becoming Shadow Chancellor under David Cameron in 2005. 

Osborne is said to have been persuaded by the ‘cap in hand’ argument and, for his part, says the change in the way the royal family is funded is simply to ensure Chancellors who succeed him ‘will not have to return to the issue’. 

But there is also a deep suspicion in certain political quarters that Charles is intent on feathering the royal nest. There is concern, too, that reverting to the old system will destroy a process that serves to underline the crucial democratic principle that the monarchy exists only by the consent of the people. [But not enough "concern" to stand up for the people. The US is also effectively a monarchy.]… 

As Prince of Wales, Charles receives an independent income from the Duchy of Cornwall – a comforting £17.1million [US$21.5 million] last year, before tax. As king, he would no longer get this, but instead receive the profits from the Duchy of Lancaster — yet another land and property portfolio (172,000 acres of land, estuaries and rivers, huge Stock Exchange and property investments, with the most valuable possession being the Manor of Savoy in London, an area between the Strand and the Embankment) held in trust for the royals. 

The duchy provided the Queen with £13.2million last year (which she uses to cover the expenses of her immediate family who carry out royal duties, including her children Andrew, Edward and Anne). Her income from this source has risen by an impressive 125 per cent in the past ten years. 

But neither of the two duchies is more than a minnow compared to the vast Crown Estates, with assets ranging from Regent Street in London’s West End shopping area, Ascot racecourse and Windsor Great Park, 265,000 acres of farmland, as well as ownership of our national seabed stretching out 12 nautical miles around Britain. 

It was the huge wealth potential from this seabed beneath 7,700 miles of coastline that attracted attention to George Osborne’s proposal for the monarch to receive 15 per cent of the Crown Estate’s profits. Otherwise the new royal finance plans might have gone through unnoticed. 

For it’s no secret that the natural resources in our seabed are a goldmine that could hoist the Crown Estate’s income into the stratosphere. 

That will certainly be the case if one development which Prince Charles has been pushing for with all his usual eco-enthusiasm — offshore wind farms — gets the go-ahead. Charles, a student and vociferous campaigner for renewable energy, is vehemently opposed to wind turbines being erected on land where, he says, they are a ‘horrendous blot on the landscape’. He refuses to have them on his Duchy of Cornwall estates. 

But he supports them being built offshore. And by a happy coincidence, any offshore wind farm will have to pay rent to the Crown Estates. At present there are 436 wind turbines around the UK’s coastline. By 2020, that number is predicted to rise to almost 7,000 and could push the Crown Estate’s present income to something approaching half a billion pounds a year — and rising. 

It’s quite a thought that Prince Charles originally wanted ALL of this money — as opposed to just 15 per cent — to pay for the upkeep of the monarchy. For he believes that turning back the clock to the old system — by which it is funded by the Crown Estate and not directly by the Government — would give the monarchy financial independence, as well as freedom from politicians [and peasants].  

But critics of his vision fear that, free from constraint by parliamentary control, he would be free to indulge himself by interfering in national issues [they didn’t “fear” it enough to do anything about it] instead of adhering to the crucial tradition of [apparent] strict impartiality so coolly maintained by the Queen [who for many decades has done nothing to scale back the aggressive globalist political activities of her husband Prince Philip and son Charles]. Professor Robert Hazell, Professor of Government at University College London, says: ‘It seems a retrograde step. It would remove Parliament’s role in approving the size of the Civil List.’…

The royals’ income would more than double to around £67.6million in ten years — just at the same time as millions of subjects will have been forced into a decade of belt-tightening. There wouldn’t be too much ‘consent of the people’ in that. 

Sensibly, Osborne — pressured by Lib Dems in the Coalition and aware of accusations of unfairness at a time of austerity everywhere else — has insisted on limits and has decided that the sums paid under the new system must be capped. 

Conversely, in the highly unlikely circumstance that the Crown Estate’s earnings might fall, there will also be a safety-net minimum payment. How high and how low these figures will be is yet to be decided, although I understand that talks between Government ministers and palace aides are already getting under way.

But it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that a system that has existed for 251 years seems suddenly to have been replaced by something akin to chaos. 

One wouldn’t expect the Prince Charles to accept blame for this mess, even though the new payment system is his own personal victory.”…

……………………………… 

Added: Climate "action:" The “global climate” industry was created by the US political class and charged to US taxpayers beginning Nov. 16, 1990 with the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990. USGCRP permanently enshrined global climate danger funding throughout the Executive branch and at least 13 federal agencies. US taxpayers financed creation of a new global industry. As chart below shows, climate “action” took off in 1990 via billions of US taxpayer dollars each year, largely without taxpayers’ knowledge and to this day ignored by the media and political class. 
 

......

“Note and Sources: The data shown here are funding disbursements by the White House U.S. Global Change Research Program and its predecessor, the National Climate Program, available at NCP 1988, 43; Climate Science Watch 2007; and Leggett, Lattanzio, and Bruner 2013. These data, however, do not represent congressional climate science funding appropriations to other government agencies. As we show later in a more detailed assessment of U.S. government climate science funding,the numbers here, especially those for more recent years, greatly underestimate the actual level of funding.” pdf p. 4

Fall 2015, “Causes and Consequences of the Climate Science Boom,“ independent.org, Butos and McQuade

“1. The [US]Government’s Role in Climate Science Funding…[is] embedded in scores of agencies and programs scattered throughout the Executive Branch of the US government. While such agency activities related to climate science have received funding for many years as components of their mission statements, the pursuit of an integrated national agenda to study climate change and implement policy initiatives took a critical step with passage of the Global Change Research Act of 1990. This Act established institutional structures operating out of the White House to develop and oversee the implementation of a National Global Change Research Plan and created the US GlobalChange Research Program (USGCRP) to coordinate the climate change research activities of Executive Departments and agencies.[33] As of 2014, the coordination of climate change-related activities resides largely in the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which houses several separate offices, including the offices of Environment and Energy, Polar Sciences, Ocean Sciences, Clean Energy and Materials R&D, Climate Adaptation and Ecosystems, National Climate Assessment, and others. The Office of the President also maintains the National Science and Technology Council, which oversees the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability and its Subcommittee on Climate Change Research. The Subcommittee is charged with the responsibility of planning and coordinating with the interagency USGCRP. Also, the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy is housed within the President’s Domestic Policy Council. While Congress authorizes Executive branch budgets, the priorities these departments and agencies follow are set by the White House. As expressed in various agency and Executive Branch strategic plans, these efforts have been recently organized around four components comprising (1) climate change research and education, (2) emissions reduction through “clean” energy technologies and investments, (3) adaptation to climate change, and (4) international climate change leadership.[36]….By any of these measures, the scale of climate science R&D has increased substantially since 2001. Perhaps, though, the largest funding increases have occurred in developing new technologies and tax subsidies. As can be seen from Table 1, federal dollars to develop and implement “clean energy technologies” have increased from $1.7 billion in 2001 to $5.8 billion in 2013, while energy tax subsidies have increased from zero in 2001 and 2002 to $13 billion in 2013, with the largest increases happening since 2010. The impact on scientific research of government funding is not just a matter of the amounts but also of the concentration of research monies that arises from the focus a single source can bring to bear on particular kinds of scientific research. Government is that single source and has Big Player effects because it has access to a deep pool of taxpayer (and, indeed, borrowed and created) funds combined with regulatory and enforcement powers which necessarily place it on a different footing from other players and institutions….Government’s inherent need to act produces a particular set of decisions that fall within a relatively narrow corridor of ends to which it can concentrate substantial resources.

2. By any standards, what we have documented here is a massive funding drive, highlighting the patterns of climate science R and D as funded and directed only by the Executive Branch and the various agencies that fall within its purview.[40] To put its magnitude into some context, the $9.3 billion funding requested for climate science R and D in 2013 is about one-third of the total amount appropriated for all 27 National Institutes of Health in the same year,[41] yet it is more than enough to sustain a science boom. Its directional characteristic, concentrated as it has been on R&D premised on the controversial issue of the actual sensitivity of climate to human-caused emissions, has gone hand in hand with the IPCC’s expressions of increasing confidence in the AGW hypothesis and increasingly shrill claims of impending disaster.... 

10. The USGCRP operates as a confederacy of the research components of thirteen participating government agencies, each of which independently designates funds in accordance with the objectives of the USGCRP; these monies comprise the program budget of the USGCRP to fund agency cross-cutting climate science R and D.[34] The departments and agencies whose activities  comprise the bulk of such funding include independent agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, US Agency for International Development, the quasi-official Smithsonian Institute, and Executive Departments that include Agriculture, Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology), Energy, Interior (the US Geological Survey and conservation initiatives), State, and Treasury.[35] 

11. The past 15 years have seen a sustained program of funding, largely from government or quasi-government entities.[31]The funding efforts are spread across a bewildering array of sources and buried in a labyrinth of programs, agency initiatives, interagency activities, and Presidential Offices, but what they seem to have in common is an adherence to the assumption that human activity is primarily responsible for the warming observed in the latter part of the 20^th century. Funding appears to be driving the science rather than the other way around. And the extent of this funding appears not to have been heretofore fully documented. [32]”…
……………………………. 

Comment: We’re told daily that US hasn’t taken “climate action,” when it’s the exact opposite. As shown above US taxpayers financed creation of the entire “climate” industry and largely maintain its existence today. Most know that even if global CO2 terror existed, China is the only country who could cure it. In any case, it’s never been about “climate,” it’s always been about silencing US taxpayers and converting them to global slaves. The entire US political class favors open borders-with one exception: US taxpayers inside the old borders have to pay all the bills.
…………………………… 

Added: “A fifth of official development aid is now diverted to climate policy. Money that used to be spent on strengthening the rule of law, better education for girls, and improved health care, for instance.”…Economist Richard Tol has served on 4 UN IPCC reports: 

 2/10/2014, “Hot Stuff, Cold Logic,” The American Interest, Richard Tol 

“A fifth of official development aid is now diverted to climate policy. Money that used to be spent on strengthening the rule of law, better education for girls, and improved health care, for instance, is now used to plug methane leaks and destroy hydrofluorocarbons. Some donors no longer support the use of coal, by far the cheapest way to generate electricity. Instead, poor people are offered intermittent wind power and biomass energy, which drives up the price of food. But the self-satisfaction environmentalists derive from these programs does not put food on poor peoples’ tables. 

In sum, while climate change is a problem that must be tackled, we should not lose our sense of proportion or advocate solutions that would do more harm than good. Unfortunately, common sense is sometimes hard to find in the climate debate. Desmond Tutu recently compared climate change to apartheid.¹ Climate experts Michael Mann and Daniel Kammen compared it to the “gathering storm” of Nazism in Europe before World War II.²
That sort of nonsense just gets in the way of a rational discussion about what climate policy we should pursue, and how vigorously we should pursue it.” (end of article^{)
..........
1}Tutu, “We Fought Apartheid. Now Climate Change Is Our Global Enemy”, Guardian, September 20, 2014.
²Mann and Kammen, “The Gathering Storm”, Huffington Post, September 19, 2014.” 

“Richard Tol teaches economics at the University of Sussex and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a veteran of four assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
………….




..........

Syria is exact opposite of what Americans are being told. Ignorance of American population allows US to decree death of nations as it did with Libya and is trying to do in Syria. US is backing brutal Islamic terrorists in Syria to destroy millions of innocent lives for US profits-Stephen Kinzer, Boston Globe, 2/18/2016

.
“If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. In Syria, it is: “Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!” This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.”  

Feb. 18, 2016, “The media are misleading the public on Syria,“ Boston Globe, Stephen Kinzer, opinion 

“Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo [Feb. 2016] is the latest reason why. 

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: 

“Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.
 
This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies have been pushing militants [Islamic terrorists] out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The militants’ hold on the city could be ending. 

Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars,” one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, “The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS— so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?” 

This does not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a “liberated zone” for three years but is now being pulled back into misery. 

Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.  

This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media. 

Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world now comes from reporters based in Washington. In that environment, access and credibility depend on acceptance of official paradigms. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank “experts.” After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria. 

Inevitably, this kind of disinformation has bled into the [2016] American presidential campaign. At the recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United Nations peace efforts in Syria were based on “an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva.” 

The precise opposite is true. In 2012 Secretary of State Clinton joined Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in a successful effort to kill Kofi Annan’s UN peace plan because it would have accommodated Iran and kept Assad in power, at least temporarily. No one on the Milwaukee stage knew enough to challenge her. 

Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably. 

Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. In Syria, it is: “Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran!Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!” This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.” 

“Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Follow him on Twitter @stephenkinzer.”
……………………………………………… 

Added: 

After White Helmet’s 2017 Oscar, “Boston Globe columnist Stephen Kinzer [article above] was one of a number of serious  journalists who expressed disappointment over the Academy’s selection, writing on Twitter: “Congratulations to al-Qaeda and Syrian jihadists for the #Oscar given to a film about their PR outfit, the White Helmets."”… 

3/3/2017, “An Oscar for a Propaganda Flick,” Consortium News, Patrick Hennigsen 

“Last Sunday night, “The White Helmets,” directed by Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara, took home an Academy Award for best documentary short. But this was not a conventional documentary film. The footage was provided by a terrorist-affiliated NGO based in Turkey, operating in Syria, and which is primarily funded by the U.S. State Department [US taxpayers], the British Foreign Office, the Netherlands, and other NATO members and Gulf states to the tune of over $150 million and whose chief remit is producing U.S.-led “coalition” propaganda images for mass media consumption. 

The film, funded and distributed by Netflix, seems to be an extension of that remit. [Watch the film’s trailer here.]

Normally we think of documentaries as films that are supposed to speak truth to power, but this film does the opposite. It reinforces an Anglo-American establishment power structure responsible for one of the most violent, dirty wars in modern history [Syria]. It reinforces a collection of lies placed on heavy rotation by the political and media establishments since the conflict began…. 

The fact that a documentary about The White Helmets received an Oscar simply confirms what a glorious bubble the entertainment industry resides in, and how easy it is these days for a documentary film to be used for the purposes of propaganda and made to reinforce a mainly U.S.-U.K. foreign policy project. 

To Hollywood, it’s a feel-good documentary, designed to make us feel good about a dirty war in Syria. But this is a level of distortion that would make even Joseph Goebbels’s head spin…. 

Back when the war was getting started, both [Mrs.] Clinton and [then British Foreign Minister William] Hague were busy front-running their “Friends of Syria” whistle-stop tour around the Middle East and Europe, securing Gulf cash commitments while grooming their hand-picked “opposition” government-in-exile, holding court in various five-star hotels in Paris, London and Istanbul. 

The U.S. had tried this only a year earlier with Libya, and at the time in 2011-2012, they had every reason to believe that the Libyan formula could be repeated in Syria. Those hopes were dashed by early 2013, when it became apparent that Libya was officially a failed state…. 

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of extremist foreign fighters and jihadi soldiers of fortune began pouring into Syria. It was an invasion. This was the West’s proxy army, ready to decapitate the government, dismember the state and destabilize the region – with the full blessing of Washington D.C. and its partners. 

The Troika of Washington-London-Paris then doubled down by pouring billions of dollars in lethal weapons to various fighting groups laying in wait in Turkey and Jordan, as well as those already active in Syria. There were a number of well-documented arrangements, but one of the most successful working models was for the CIA and its European NATO partners illegally supplying the weapons funneled through Jordan and Turkey – and all paid for by Saudi, Qatari cash. 

All the while, the public was told by the U.S.-led “Coalition” all of this was for the “moderate rebels” in Syria. These were meant to be the “freedom fighters” that Ronald Reagan referred to back in the 1980s. As it turned out, these “freedom fighters” in Syria were a chip off the old block from the violent, psychopathic U.S.-backed and CIA-trained paramilitary death squads, which would wreak havoc and terrorize El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras. 

In Syria, they are much worse in fact, as they employed a potent brand of warped, radical Salafi and Wahabist religious fervor as the central axis of their self-styled, Medieval nihilistic raison d’etre. Yes, these are the moderates, backed by the U.S., U.K., France, Turkey, Germany, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, every other NATO member state, and of course, Israel, which has skillfully stayed out of the media firing line. It’s a collective project. The mission: “regime change” in Syria – to overthrow by force – the government in Damascus. 

As dirty wars go, none is filthier than this one. As the U.S. and the U.K. ran point on public relations for this criminal enterprise, their big challenge was selling it to their electorates. In order to justify the dirty war, a narrative had to be constructed and maintained. This required a relentless negative public relations campaign demonizing the Syrian government and all of its agencies. The following original talking points were therefore reinforced: 

–Syria’s peaceful “Arab Spring” uprising happened in 2011, and was violently squashed by the government.
–Assad is a brutal dictator, and is illegitimate.
–The Syrian government and its armed forces are deliberately killing their own people.
–The U.S.-NATO and Gulf-backed armed “rebel” opposition is legitimate.
–Syrian and Russian Airforce are only killing civilians, and not militant and terrorists.
–Terrorists do not exist in Syria or are only a tiny element opposed by the “moderate rebels” and other Syrians “fighting for freedom.”
–Therefore, Assad must be removed from power and replaced with a U.S.-approved government. 

Add to this, the entrance of Russia in the fall of 2015 at the lawful invitation of Damascus, and Russia was added to the demonization campaign. 

These talking points were then repeated and recycled, over and over, and held up as justification for U.S.-led, crippling economic and diplomatic sanction against the Syrian state and the destructive policy of flooding the region with arms. 

In the summer of 2014, an added bonus for the U.S. was inserted into the mix – the emergence of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Sham). The appearance of ISIS allowed the U.S. to fly air sorties over Syria, allegedly to fight ISIS, although after two years the U.S. had produced little if any verifiable progress in “defeating” ISIS. In truth, the U.S. had hoped that ISIS, along with the other Al Qaeda affiliates, would somehow do the job of destabilizing Syria and overthrowing the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. 

Meanwhile, on-script Western media operatives and politicians alike still referred to the jihadists as “rebels” and “armed opposition” – violent radical terrorist groups like Jabbat al Nusra (Nusra Front), Ahrar al Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zinki, Jaish al-Fatah (The Army of Conquest), along with some radical remnants of Sen. John McCain’s beloved “Free Syrian Army.  ” This was all part of the public relations con. 

The ‘White Helmets’  

But that wasn’t enough. Washington and London needed a face for the evening news. They needed to personalize the conflict in order to help maintain the illusion of a “civil war” in Syria. 

This is where the White Helmets come in. A merry band of men, comprised of “ordinary citizens, from bakers to teachers to painters,” all donning the White Helmets to save humanity in this moment of turmoil.

[Image]: “A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military.”] 

Raed Saleh, the group’s [White Helmet's] spokesman, says his organization is guided by a verse in the Qu’ran: “To save one life is to save all of humanity.” No doubt a beautiful line, but like so many aspects of the White Helmets – it’s been applied cosmetically. 

Who would dare be so insensitive as to challenge such a perfect story? For war planners in Washington and London, the White Helmets provided the P.R. cushion they needed to help sell a filthy proxy war to Western audiences. By creating and managing their own “first responder” NGO, the U.S., U.K. and its other stakeholder partners have been able to leverage public sympathies – enough to keep the project going, until the war was either won or lost, or until someone caught on to the scam. 

In 2014, a number of independent researchers in the West began to detect the White Helmets’ unmistakable stench of dupery. Cory Morningstar’s article, “SYRIA: AVAAZ, PURPOSE & THE ART OF SELLING HATE FOR EMPIRE” (April 2014). In an article in Counterpunch in April 2015, Rick Sterling summarized the White Helmet roll-out [“About those chlorine gas attacks in Syria,” 4/3/2015] and basic agenda: “In reality the White Helmets is a project created by the UK and USA. Training of civilians in Turkey has been overseen by former British military officer and current contractor, James Le Mesurier. Promotion of the program is done by ‘The Syria Campaign” supported by the foundation of billionaire Ayman Asfari. The White Helmets is clearly a public relations project which has received glowing publicity from HuffPo to Nicholas Kristof at the NYT. White Helmets have been heavily promoted by the U.S. Institute of Peace (U.S.I.P.) [which was founded by US Congress in 1984] whose leader began the press conference by declaring ‘U.S.I.P. has been working for the Syrian Revolution from the beginning.’” 

There was also the work of researcher Petri Krohn’s notable wiki site “A Closer Look at Syria,” which cracked the facade. They were followed by extensive investigations by Vanessa Beeley who has since produced a formidable volume of research and analysis on the White Helmets and other similar NGO projects, all of which are readily available on 21st Century Wire. 

Interestingly, mainstream media defenders of the White Helmets such as Michael Weiss, a senior fellow at NATO’s own propaganda think tank the Atlantic Council, as well as editor at the dubious Daily Beast, claim that criticism of the White Helmets is a Russian plot organized by Putin himself. Weiss’s conspiracy theory is expected considering his employer’s affiliation, but such typical hyperbolic accusations belie the fact that the first individuals to expose this pseudo NGO are not Russian, but rather independent writers and researchers from the U.S., Canada and Great Britain and why not – because it’s their tax dollars that are funding the White Helmets. 

It’s also worth noting that in December 2016 when the Nusra terrorist hold over East Aleppo was collapsing, it was Michael Weiss who was responsible for circulating bogus reports, including that women in East Aleppo were committing “mass suicide” to avoid “mass rape” by Assad’s soldiers. 

“Seventy-nine of them were executed at the barricades. The rest — everyone under 40 — were taken to warehouses that look more like internment camps. They face an unknown fate,” Weiss said. “This morning 20 women committed suicide in order not to be raped.” 

Weiss’s source for these sensational reports: terrorists in East Aleppo. This was just one of many fake news stories disseminated in the mainstream media. Weiss then went on to repeat the fabricated story to a global mainstream audience on CNN’s Don Lemon Show. 

In reality, and according to countless first-hand on-the-ground eyewitness testimonies collected by 21WIRE and other media outlets, as the Syrian Army began liberating East Aleppo, the so-called “moderate rebels” promoted by Weiss and other Western media operatives were using residents as human shields, and in some cases shooting residents who attempted to flee terrorist enclaves prior to government forces liberating the eastern half of the city. 

Dramatic Video 

With direct funding to the White Helmets from U.S.-led Coalition countries already well in excess $150 million – international stakeholders expect a return on their investment. That return comes in the form of dramatic “search and rescue” videos, some of which may have even been produced in Turkey and which were then sent in a highly coordinated fashion to the editorial desks of CNN, NBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and others. At no time have any of these Western or GCC-based “journalists” ever queried the authenticity of the staged video and photographic productions supplied by the White Helmets…. 

In the run-up to the White Helmets’ failed Nobel Peace Prize bid in October, CNN even went so far as to plant a fake story about a “barrel bomb” hitting a “White Helmets Center” in Damascus [sole source for the story was White Helmets]…. 

‘Smart Power’ and the NGO Complex 

Still, despite the group’s obvious links to the U.S. and U.K. governments, and to known extremists and terrorists – the Western media continues to accept this NGO as if it were a legitimate ‘Civil Defense’ organization. The pseudo NGO strategy is part of an over-arching Western strategy which is related to the term “Smart Power“ (following on from Soft Power) where Western governments create shadow state organizations designed to co-opt and ultimately usurp actual state agencies – in effect weakening the real civil body by replacing it with a fake version of the original…. 

But even Nazi war propaganda filmmaker Riefenstahl could hardly imagine propaganda on this scale – a third-sector NGO and integrated media arm attached to dozens of governments, paramilitary military units, intelligence agencies, hundreds of corporate media outlets, and with a multi-million dollar crowd-funding facility. 

If nothing else, the White Helmets operation is impressive in its scope. It’s the West’s template for building a Shadow State in target nations. If it’s successful in Syria, this formula will be recreated in other marginal hot zones around the globe. That’s why the White Helmets are being guarded so closely by the Western establishment. 

Doubts over Authenticity 

Boston Globe columnist Stephen Kizner was one of a number of serious  journalists who expressed disappointment over the Academy’s selection, writing on Twitter: “Congratulations to al-Qaeda and Syrian jihadists for the #Oscar given to a film about their PR outfit, the White Helmets….

Hollywood ‘Change Agents’ 

One of the White Helmets documentary’s biggest advocates was Hollywood actor George Clooney. In the run-up to the Oscars, Clooney, along with his wife – celebrity human rights lawyer, Amal Clooney – personally campaigned on behalf of the film. Clooney’s interest was more than just that of a liberal activist. AP reported that Clooney is in the process of producing a feature-film version of the “White Helmets.”… 

As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Clooney seems to relish his role of celebrity humanitarian. Unfortunately, fellow members of the Council include an impressive line-up of war criminals and other dignitaries, like former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as well as a chief architect of the collapse of Libya and the dirty war in Syria, Hillary Rodham Clinton…. 

In the case of Syria, it’s the U.S., U.K., Turkey, France and GCC support of violent, armed extremists – who the White Helmets are exclusively embedded with. 

The cynical use of the classic American gospel hymn, “When the Saints Go Marching In” as the documentary’s theme song by filmmakers Natasegara and Von Einsiedel speaks to level of manipulation of the narrative…. 

Power-activism is personified by numerous online marketing campaigns calling for a No Fly Zone in Syria. At the Oscar ceremony, both Natasegara and Von Einsiedel called for “an end to the war in Syria” – a sentiment that everyone can agree on – but it rings hollow given their P.R. support for a direct Western military intervention under the guise of a “No Fly Zone.” 

Compare that to the words of U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and Tima Kurdi, the aunt of three-year-old Alan Kurdi who washed-up on a beach to become the face of the tragic face of the migrant crisis. Both Gabbard and Kurdi appeared on global media calling for the U.S. and its Coalition allies to STOP sending arms, cash and support to extremists and terrorist “rebels” in Syria. Only this can bring an end to the war and allow refugees to return to Syria, said both Gabbard and Kurdi. 

This plea is real and reflects the facts on the ground, as opposed to the fake narrative constructed by Natasegara and Von Einsiedel, which carefully whitewashes all clandestine involvement by U.S., U.K. and its partners which have aided in the systematic destruction of Syria over the last six years, not to mention the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands. 

It is no coincidence that many members of the White Helmets have extremist ties and that this fact is being covered-up by Natasegara and Von Einsiedel who are literally portraying the group as “saints” – revealing the level of deception involved in this story…. 

If they were real filmmakers interested in the truth, they would have paused to question why this group was founded by a senior British Military intelligence officer, James Le Mesurier; why it is based in Turkey and not Syria; and why the group only operated exclusively in Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria), Ahrar al Sham (another Al Qaeda affiliate) and ISIS-held areas in Syria; why are White Helmets members routinely pictured with weapons and with terrorists. The answer is simple to anyone with half a brain and who is being honest: the White Helmets are composed mainly of partisan extremists. 

Still, all of this is noticeably missing from Natasegara and Von Einsiedel’s storybook version of the White Helmets, which is inexcusable considering how there’s no shortage of readily available evidence pointing directly to White Helmets’ ties to terrorists…. 

Little attention is paid to stopping corrupt officials at the corporate level in London, Belgium, New York or Washington. In fact, many of the biggest corporate donors to these “good causes” projects are connected to the very same corporate behemoth that activists purport to be fighting against. 

This cycle of power-activism feeds into the cycle of neocolonialism – in what researcher Cory Morningstar so rightly refers to as “the wrong kind of green.” 

As it turns out, the International Anti-Corruption Conference is funded by Transparency International (T.I.), one of the main players in the globalist “anti-corruption” syndicate, which is very much linked to the work of Hollywood activists like Clooney. In the past, T.I. has been accused of cooking its own books in its anti-corruption investigations, including an incident in 2008 where the organization used falsified data to try and frame the Chavez government in Venezuela during one of T.I.’s anti-corruption investigations. This is a good example of NGO smart power being used to undermine a target nation. Clooney and Natasegara are just two of the many public faces who represent this network…. 

One of the saddest parts of this whole story is that the power of marketing and propaganda means that tens of thousands of unwitting members of the public have been duped into donating their hard-earned money for this dubious NGO. If the wider public knew what Aleppo residents already know – that the White Helmets function as a support group alongside known terrorists groups like Al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zinki,  ISIS and others (all known extremist groups operating inside of Syria), the White Helmets would not be celebrated as humanitarian but rather condemned as a multimillion-dollar fraud, customized by the West to give cover to the illicit practice of arming and supporting “rebel” terrorists by the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others. 

By all accounts, White Helmets video-and-photo propaganda has been instrumental in aiding in the recruitment of new terrorists – new fighters from the West, Middle East and Asia – who see the contrived news reports and believe the false narrative being portrayed by mainstream media news agencies. 

In this way, you could say that because the mainstream Western media is not vetting any of this material and has defaulted into a Western foreign policy bias, these major media outlets are complicit in helping recruit more terrorists internationally. In other words, they are providing material support and comfort to known violent, religious extremists terrorists…. 

On June 1, 2014, White Helmet deputy Yussef called for the shelling of civilians during elections in Damascus. He declares that this murderous act would be the “greatest declaration of revolution.” Are these the words of a “neutral, impartial, humanitarian”? Here we can see the White Helmets calling for direct violence against civilians who are doing nothing more than exercising their right to vote – in their own country. [See the full story here.] 

So to even suggest that the White Helmets are “unarmed and neutral civilian volunteers” is tantamount to fraud. The fact that filmmakers Natasegara, Von Einsiedel and Netflix are using this false statement in their film and public relations material demonstrates outright deception on their part. 

If Netflix were to take this issue seriously, after reviewing readily available evidence they would remove this film from their distribution chain, and Natasegara and Von Einsiedel should return their award to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” 

[For more on this topic and photos showing White Helmet connections to terror groups, go to http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/03/02/forget-oscar-give-the-white-helmets-the-leni-riefenstahl-award-for-best-war-propaganda-film/]













..................