• AFP only news outlet at Bilderberg-related meeting in Washington.
By Mark Anderson —
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Bilderberg group’s Steering Committee chairman waltzed into Washington September 17 to speak to the Brookings Institution on how to keep the European Union’s (EU) member states in line while enlarging the EU toward greater “prosperity.”
AMERICAN FREE PRESS caught up with elusive jet-setter Henri de Castries, the French insurance and investment banking magnate whose committee decides who can attend the annual Bilderberg meetings and what topics the charitable chaps will cover, behind an armada of armed guards with real reporters never allowed inside, of course.
The evening’s moderator was longtime Washington Post newsman, Jimmy Lee Hoagland. He couldn’t resist lampooning those who deplore Bilderberg’s nearly 63 years of ultra-secrecy.
“If you follow the conspiracy blogs . . . Bilderberg is a secret society that runs the world,” Hoagland said with a smirk. He claimed Bilderberg is just “a lively discussion group.”
Hoagland is the guy who was hounded for years by late AFP Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker for never reporting about Bilderberg despite Hoagland’s own attendance and decades of attendance by top Post brass.
Brookings trustee Antoine van Agtmael, reciting de Castries’s lengthy pedigree, abruptly added, “Finally, he’s chairman of the very wellknown Bilderberg Group . . .” even though scarcely one in 10,000 Americans know that Bilderberg exists. Brookings didn’t even list de Castries’s Bilderberg chairmanship in its advance notice of his delivery of the 12th Raymond Aron Lecture at Brookings, hosted by Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe.
De Castries was the chief speaker. He was joined by Donald Kohn, senior economic studies fellow at Brookings and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. He’s now affiliated with the Bank of England—the centuries-old nerve center of worldwide Rothschild banking that undergirds Bilderberg, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and other global networks.
This meeting about keeping Europe on a treadmill of ever-more centralized rule and a pre-decided destiny toward supposed prosperity was a virtual globalist extravaganza, as Brookings President Strobe Talbot, a longtime member of the Trilateral Commission—a key Bilderberg ally—also delivered brief remarks at a lecture series which covers “current issues affecting the transatlantic relationship.”
To the discerning ear, a transatlantic future of ever-increasing complexity, coupled with an EU that may loosen the reins somewhat but won’t grant any member states a divorce from central rule, is foreseen by the world managerial class that inhabits Brookings and Bilderberg.
In essence, de Castries argued for an Americanized Europe which fits in with recent reports by this AFP writer that Bilderberg’s founding with Central Intelligence Agency money, and its early coordination with the European Movement, were based on the American system being a model for a united Europe to follow, not the other way around.
De Castries revealed some likely elements of Bilderberg’s future outlook, including:
• A new “Franco-German axis,” which he said is needed because EU governors have been trying to steer the EU as a whole—all 28 member states—which is difficult and is prompting fears that the EU bloc will break up. Creating such an axis would break down EU governance into a manageable component comprised of the union’s two most powerful nations. “We need to start with a smaller core and move [forward],” de Castries stated. His strategy included:
• Applying a strategy to reduce the likelihood of Britain leaving the EU, a prospect that Bilderberg evidently fears. Moreover, that strategy would not require altering existing European treaties.
• Taking steps toward a fiscal union (EU member states transferring their national-level taxation and budgeting powers to Brussels) and toward a banking union (more power granted to the European Central Bank, which would become more like the Federal Reserve) are still considered necessary, as AFP revealed in previous Bilderberg reports.
• Improving Europe’s security, competitiveness and education—meaning more defense spending to counter Russia and other threats; reduced public spending, reduced taxes and “entitlement” reform (much like U.S. corporate interests wanting to cut Social Security for retirees but maintain military spending); and investing more in primary education and universities to foster the idea of improved European competitiveness.
De Castries believes there is a sluggish European outlook on free-market economics due to traditional European welfare-state policies. He apparently would replace that with American style neo-liberal capitalism, which, he neglected to mention, tends to favor large corporations and banks over the middle class he professes to value.
“There will be no economic leadership if we don’t re-invent the political leadership,” de Castries added about the EU. He said he also wants the European economy to thrive on less aversion to risk-taking, greater innovation and a higher number of patents being approved.
Kohn remarked that Europe is wobbling due to recent “stress tests,” including the U.S. financial crisis of a few years ago “that bled into Europe” and the current migrant crisis. However, the Brookings speakers were careful not to acknowledge that the current migrant wave of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Middle Eastern states (and a score of African nations) is largely the result of ongoing U.S.-NATO-UK military operations destroying the refugees’ home countries.
Expressing concern about the EU’s apparent political “instability,” Kohn recalled that the EU’s member states, as the union evolved, had to give up considerable power to central command in Brussels but still want to retain some power, which creates tension and imbalances.
He invoked a “bicycle metaphor,” meaning, “If the EU doesn’t keep moving it will fall down.” He even admitted that the monetary union (the Eurozone is 19 of the 28 EU states) is not altogether sustainable—unless a greater economic union (with the above-noted fiscal and banking unions, under a U.S.-style capitalistic system) is pursued.
Speaking in terms of a broader, deeper Europe, de Castries stressed, “If we want to have ‘more Europe’”—with a more deeply integrated EU and more member states added to the mix—“we have to undertake the necessary economic reforms.”
Oddly, he added that man-made global warming, in his view, is a reality and if the world ever gets more than 2 degrees warmer than it is now, in terms of average global temperature, than the entire globe could become “not insurable.” That cryptic claim came from his standpoint as chairman and CEO of global insurer AXA.
Reduced to the basics, it appears that de Castries and Kohn—while arguing to sustain and expand a union of nations that each have unique histories and cherished traditions—just cannot conceive of the possibility that these nations were never meant to be merged in the first place.
Instead of more fractured formulas and grandiose schemes, the best options would be to dissolve the EU, disband Bilderberg and release Europeans from a union that’s pitched as a haven of freedom and democracy, but is a debtor’s
prison micromanaged by mattoids whose power hinges on commandeering the money supply and credit of all peoples.
AFP Roving Editor Mark Anderson is a veteran reporter who covers the annual Bilderberg meetings and is chairman of AFP’s new America First Action Committee, designed to involve AFP readers in focusing intensely on Congress to enact key changes, including monetary reform and a pullback of the warfare state. He and his wife Angie often work together on news projects.
There are no signs at all that these natural forces are diminishing the more everyone in Europe speaks English and lives in the EU. Quite the contrary, the common English language allows us to understand how different we are and be glad of it. The natural trend is actually for us to break down into the even smaller political units which existed before European colonial expansion required larger home bases to run the Empires from—Scotland, Catalonia, Basque, Malta, etc., were once all separate countries and are becoming so again. There are probably two or more natural countries in England alone—North, South and (?) South West.
Unlike the USA, the impetus which formed the EU was never a grassroots Founding Fathers’ dream—any future attempt by the Global Elite at any greater union in Europe (for their own convenience, not ours) is certain to bust the whole shebang!
I thought that there was one already (The E.U.)!?