http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/edcetera/2009/07/30/that_bilderberg_bo ok.html
That Bilderberg Book Posted by Bruce Ramsey A reader came to me with the book, ³The Bilderberg Group² by Daniel Estulin and asked me to read it. It is a conspiracy book about a group of political, corporate and academic leaders who meet every year and allow no press to attend and want no publicity. Investigating and denouncing such a group might might appeal to the right or the left. I saw it recommended by the staff at Powell's Books, and assumed the appeal was to the left. My reader was on the right. Mainstream newspapers like The Seattle Times ignore books like "The Bilderberg Group." The fans of this kind of book accuse us of suppressing the truth. We are part of the conspiracy. We are the controlled media. Once in a while I think we of the mainstream media ought to read and comment on books like this--because they're out there, our readers are reading them, and they wonder why we "suppress" them. By this blog, I give the book some publicity--albeit the publicity of being kicked. My reaction to the book was like the fellow on Amazon.com who wrote: This is purely rabid fabulation, and we are asked to believe it without a single source citation (how convenient that this topic can only be discussed by individuals whose identities must remain classified). Henry Kissinger and a bunch of royals and businessmen have been responsible for every election, coup, assassination and case of diarrhea since the 1950s? I found the unbelievability too much to stomach, and I could do no more than skim the book after page 50. I made it to page 48. Here is some of what I wrote to the man who gave me a copy: Dear Mr. ------------, I regret to say I don¹t think much of Daniel Estulin¹s book, ³The Bilderberg Group.² I have not read all of it, but I have had enough. It is not believable. I am not an expert on the world he purports to describe. But I am a writer. I can tell when a writer is on solid ground. Estulin isn¹t. Take the story at the beginning of the book about how he almost fell down an elevator shaft (which he interprets as an attempt to murder him). If the Bilderbergers were as powerful as he says, and they wanted to murder him, they would have done itand in a more publicity-averse way than having him fall down an elevator shaft in the middle of Canada¹s largest city. The story, if you think about it, is highly improbable. But the reader who can bring himself to believe it is led to believe all else this man sayselse, why would the Bilderbergers be trying to kill him? There is more (p. 17): Years later I found out why Vladimir had come to me. He was a double agent who had worked for the KGB and MI5. Or was it MI5 and the KGB? Somewhere along the line his cover was blown The method here is to initiate the reader into a special group of in-the-know; of mixing facts with assertions so that the casual reader won¹t tell them apart, and to draw lines between A and B, when A is the person you want to impeach and B is a known wickedness. Here is an example on page 20: Most reports contend the original members named their alliance the Bilderberg Group after the hotel where they made their covenant. Author Gyeorgos C. Hatonn, however, discovered that German-born Prince Bernhard was an officer in the Reiter SS Corp in the early 1930s and was on the board of an I.G. subsidiary, Farben Bilder. Pause here. Note the word, ³covenant,² suggesting secret cabals. The author has not established there was a covenant. Same with ³alliance.² He has not established that, either. Then comes the statement that Prince Bernhard was in the Reiter SS Corps and worked for I.G. Farben. The source is one the reader has never heard of: more secrets! Actually these facts are open knowledge, available on the Internet, on Prince Bernhard¹s Wikipedia page. Bernhard was excused for these connections, partly because the Reiter SS was, according to Wikipedia, not much more than an ³equestrian riding group² for aristocrats, and because of all the anti-Nazi things he did after the war started, none of which Estulin mentions. And who is the weird-sounding Gyeorgos C. Hatonn? Estulin quotes this man without saying who he is. I had never heard of him, but I googled him, too, and out popped his book, Creation, the Sacred Universe: The Incubation of the Phoenix. It¹s nuts. There are a bunch of other books of Hatonn¹s, with equally outlandish titles. All of them appear to be plumb crazy. Anyway, back to the paragraph in Estulin¹s book on page 20: In his book, "Rape of the Constitution, Death of Freedom," Hatonn claims Prince Bernhard drew on his Nazi history in corporate management to encourage the super-secret policy making group to call themselves Bilderbergers after Farben Bilder, in memory of the Farben executives¹ initiative to organize Heinrich Himmler¹s ³Circle of Friends²elite wealth-building leaders To establish a menacing meaning for the name ³Bilderberg²--otherwise only the name of a Dutch hotel--Estulin has drawn a line between Prince Bernhard and Hitler¹s Reichsfuehrer-SS. The inference is that ³Bilderberg² is a reference to a secret Nazi ³circle.² How do we know this? Because ³Hatonn claims² it. That¹s all. He claims it. And if you read some Hatonn, you will see that Hatonn claims all kinds of stuff. Weird stuff. Unbelievable stuff. That Estulin relies on Hatonn as an authority on a prominent person¹s Nazi connections, or on anything, condemns Estulin as a grossly unreliable fellow. He relies on questionable sources again and again. On page 29 he quotes the Spotlight, which he admits was ³a newspaper of dubious agendas,² but delicately avoids that it was Willis Carto¹s anti-Semitic rag. He quotes it anyway. On page 48 he refers to New World Order Corruption in Canada, by Robert O¹Driscoll and Elizabeth Elliott, published by Saigon Press. Who are they? Who is Saigon Press? (But then, who is TrineDay, Estulin¹s publisher? Some outfit out of Walterville, Oregon, that publishes books on the Illuminati and the ³9-11 mystery plane.²) On page 44, Estulin quotes John Coleman, identified as a former MI6 secret agent, saying that nuclear power generates ³abundant cheap electricity² and has been suppressed in order to keep poor countries dependent on rich-country aid. But nuclear power has not been cheap, and has been most successful in wealthier countries that have the capital and technical culture to use it. To argue that nuclear is a cheap leg up for poor countries is to go against common knowledge. An author can argue against common knowledge, but he has to show that he¹s right. Here Coleman, the ³secret agent,² merely asserts it, and Estulin believes him. Regarding Otto van Amerongen, another Bilderberg figure, skip to page 30: Werner Ruegemer, who co-directed a 2001 television documentary about Otto [von Amerongen]¹s family firm, alleged that von Amerongen was a Nazi spy in Portugal, involved in selling shares of stock stolen from Jews and gold plundered from the central banks of European nations that Hitler had conquered. Ruegemer also claimed that von Amerongen exported tungstena key armaments metal used to harden steel in rifles and artilleryto Germany from Portugal, the only nation still trading tungsten with Germany through the war. No responsible author writes that a prominent person, or any person, is alleged to have been a Nazi spy. To call someone a Nazi spy, ³alleged² or otherwise, is per se libel under U.S. law, with two exceptions. First, it is not libel if it is true, and secondly, it is not libel if the person is dead. Von Amerongen is dead. According to his Wikipedia entry, he died in 2007, two years before Estulin¹s book came out. (Wikipedia does mention that he ³was sent to Portugal to handle import-export business² for his dad¹s company during the war, when he would have been 24 years old, so maybe the tungsten part is true.) Estulin does the ³alleged² thing also on page 5: It became known to me from deep undercover sources within the meeting that the 1996 conference was allegedly to be used as a staging ground for the imminent breakup of Canada. And on page 37: In fact, some say the Bilderberg Group is really a creation of MI6 under the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Damn it, are these facts or not? It does not cut the mustard for a supposedly well-researched book to print that ³some say² a thing is true. Is it true? Who says it? And note how Estulin uses the phrase, ³in fact² when he has no fact in his hand, and, in the previous quotation, how he uses ³known to me² when nothing is known to him. Knowledge implies facts, and these are not facts. I¹m a writer. I know these tricks. The author also makes wild claims directly, all by himself. In the first 48 pages (as far as I got), he says: --That Margaret Thatcher was ³dumped as head of state by her own Conservative Party on Bilderberg orders² (p. 29) --That John Edwards was ³literally chosen² as John Kerry¹s running mate by Bilderberg members (p. 36); --That Bilderbergers want to establish ³mind control² and ³destroy all national identity² (p. 41); --That Bilderbergers want to stop all economic growth (p. 42) and ³de-industrialize the world by suppressing all scientific development² (p. 44)--a very strange desire for the heads of Chase Bank, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, et.al.; --That Bilderbergers want to create ³a socialist welfare state, where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination² (p.43). --That the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 was staged (p. 46). I appreciate your coming here and giving me the book, and your sincere belief in it. But I can¹t believe it. Best wishes, Bruce Ramsey Seattle Times editorials ===== KrisMillegan Springfield, OR 1 comments August 1, 2009 at 8:08 AMRating: (0) (0) Report abuse Howdy Bruce, I am the publisher of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group. "Some outfit out of Walterville, Oregon, that publishes books on the Illuminati and the '9-11 mystery plane.'" Hmm, using your writer's tricks to demean what we do? Is it your belief that we need not know anything about the Illuminati or the "9/11" the day that "changed every thing?" You trash something, without even reading the whole book. Two questions, sir. Did your newspaper report on the 2007 Bilderberg meeting held in Chantilly Virginia? If not, why not? Peace, Kris MIllegan land li Christchurch 1 comments August 1, 2009 at 1:40 AMRating: (0) (0) Report abuse The writer's chief complaint seems to be that he is an experienced writer, whereas Estulin seems not to be. It's the material, not the rawness. And I don't like Ramsey's suggestion that the only possible reason for saying "alleged" would be to avoid a lawsuit. To help Ramsey get on the long and sad road to realising the facts: my suggestion for a start point. See mindjustice.org - a site run by a graduate in law. It contains international research on some of these matters (not specifically Bilderberg though). Amongst its substantial work is this. A human rights expert has recently brought forward the little-known fact that it is still legal to experiment on US citizens without their consent. The famous Clinton memorandum that was supposed to fix all that stuff never passed through all the necessary stages. It was MindJustice brought this news forward (see Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 09, I think it was). Nobody realised. When you read the MindJustice material you will start to understand why SOME outfit like Bilderberg (not necessarily that one) has to be seeking a return to slavery for us "inferior" people. Because the research is undeniable. And there has to be a reason for it. Alex Robb Victoria, BC 1 comments July 30, 2009 at 4:18 PMRating: (0) (0) Report abuse The problem with this article is that it criticizes the shoddy scholarship of Estulin rather than takes seriously the arguments and serious evidence presented (admittedly, sometimes alongside outlandish and unsubstantiated stories). Estulin is a fine investigator but not a very good writer or academic. There is some scholarsly work on this subject, but its hard to find and its the absence of serious scholarship on the international relations implications of the Bilderberg meetings (and other globalist groups such as the CFR and the Trilateral Commission) is disconcerting. On the Trilateral Commission see Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). And Holly Sklar, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1980). For articles in a peer-reviewed journal articles on the Bilderberg conferences see V. Aubourg, "Organizing Atlanticism: The Bilderberg Group and the Atlantic Institute, 1952-1963," Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 2 (2003), H. Wilford, "CIA Plot, Socialist Conspiracy, or New World Order? The Origins of the Bilderberg Group, 1952-55," Diplomacy & Statecraft 14, no. 3 (2003), P. Murphy, "By Invitation Only: Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip, and the Attempt to Create a Commonwealth 'Bilderberg Group', 1964-66," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33, no. 2 (2005).
