By Isaac Davis

Every four years, the illusion of democracy and accountable government is reinforced to the public by an expensive media circus and presidential election. Meanwhile, an annual conference of members of the world’s wealthiest and most influential is held in near-secrecy with little attention given to the significance of such a gathering.

Why are we encouraged to vote for politicians, but discouraged from considering the sobering fact that the United States and other Western nations are now ruled by a corporate and private oligarchy?

An intensive research study by Princeton University in 2014 concluded that the US is indeed more accurately described as a functioning oligarchy, rather than a democracy or a republic. An oligarchy is a small group of people who effectively control a country, a business, or an institution. Rulers may distinguish themselves as royalty, politicians, businessmen, wealthy, highly educated, or as people in positions of military control.

The study also found: “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.” [Source]

Attendees and organizers of the Bilderberg conference hold key positions of influence in government, industry, or are of significant social influence. They have the capacity to affect world events in ways that elected officials simply do not. The conference is a chance for them to congregate without the burden of official responsibilities or a permanent record.

Every year, between 20-150 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media are invited to take part in the meeting. The meeting is a forum for informal discussions about megatrends and major issues facing the world.

The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed. Thanks to the private nature of the meeting, the participants are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions. – Bilderberg

Bilderberg represents the globalization of empire, a form of international rule where the ideas and goals of a wealthy elite are realized through an organization of business and personal contacts.

Coverage of this event is mostly done by independent journalists who face serious harassment and intimidation by law enforcement and private security, which is in stark contrast to the volume and type of media attention given to presidential politics.

What most Americans believe to be ‘Public Opinion’ is in reality carefully crafted and scripted propaganda designed to elicit a desired behavioral response from the public.

And noted Australian academic and activist Alex Carey (1922 – 1988) explained the three most important 20th century developments – “The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. – Canadian writer Ken Adachi

The passion that the American people have for self-governance is evident in how seriously people take local and national American politics. It would be impressive to see this same energy directed at the roots of global problems by re-directing accountability onto those who are better deserving of our collective attention.

A righteously outraged and unified public is capable of swift and furious social and political change, which is why the elite use propaganda. Some 90% of all media consumed in the world is owned and controlled by just 6 mega-corporations, who, byomission and other tactics, work to manufacture consent while keeping we the people divided in every way possible.

What are your thoughts about this? Should a public seeking political change focus itself instead on the organizations and individuals that influence government, rather than argue over candidates?

Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here.

This article (Americans Argue Over Puppets While Global Masters Meet in Secrecy) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution toIsaac Davis and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.

ISIS’s referral to 29-year-old Mateen as a “soldier” of the group’s "caliphate," territorially centered in Iraq and Syria but which the group has global ambitions for, is effectively a claim of responsibility for the nightclub attack.

"God allowed Omar Mateen, one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America, to carry out an attack entering a crusader gathering in a night club...in Orlando in Florida, killing and wounding more than 100 of them," a bulletin from ISIS’s official Al-Bayan radio said, AFP news agency reported. The broadcast alsomentioned that Sunday’s attack was the highest death toll in America since the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

This broadcast represents a change in language from a previous statement issued on Sunday. The group’s semi-official Amaq news agency posted a message on Sunday following the massacre, saying that Mateen was an “Islamic State fighter.”

The statement read: “Source to Amaq: The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter,” citing a death toll higher than the official count.

After November’s Paris attacks, in which an ISIS cell killed 130 people in the French capital, the group referred to the attackers as “soldiers,” rather than calling them “fighters” in their official language.

The change in rhetoric from the Amaq statement to the radio statement is one that the group may have made to offer the impression that, like the Paris attacks, the group directed Mateen’s actions. But there is no evidence to suggest that he was directly ordered by the ISIS leadership to carry out such an attack.

The FBI’s special agent on the case Ronald Hooper confirmed that Mateen made a 911 call from the Pulse nightclub in which he pledged allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but authorities have said they are still investigating his links to the group.

The FBI has acknowledged that they had investigated Mateen, a son of Afghan immigrants, for links to a U.S. citizen who traveled to Syria to become a suicide bomber, but cleared him, allowing him in recent weeks to purchase the AR-15 assault rifle used in the attack.

(Newsweek)

By Michael Gray

The March 6, 2013, death of David Rossi — a 51-year-old communications director at Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank — came as the institution teetered on the brink of collapse.

Rossi was found dead in an alleyway beneath his third-floor office window in the 14th-century palazzo that served as the bank’s headquarters.

A devastating security video shows Rossi landing on the pavement on his back, facing the building — an odd position more likely to occur when a body is pushed from a window.

‘Yes he killed himself. But there’s a question: Could it be suicide by extortion … There’s a couple suspicions I have.’

- Val Broeksmit, on his stepfather's suicide

As he lay dying, two murky figures appear. Two men appear and one walks over to gaze at the banker. He offers no aid or comfort and doesn’t call for help before turning around and calmly walking out of the alley.

About an hour later, a co-worker discovered Rossi’s body. The arms were bruised and he sustained a head wound that, according to the local medical examiner’s report, suggested there may have been a struggle prior to his fall.

But the death was ruled a suicide, to the disbelief of Rossi’s widow, Antonella Tognazzi. She was quoted in the Italian press as saying her husband “knew too much.” She staged public demonstrations and hired a lawyer to investigate her husband’s death.

Among the evidence Tognazzi pointed to was the alleged suicide note, in which Rossi referred to her as Toni. He never called her Toni, she said.

Modal Trigger

Two days prior to his death, according to his wife, Rossi sent a cryptic email to the bank’s CEO, Fabrizio Viola. “I want guarantees of not being overwhelmed by this thing,” he wrote. “We would have to do right away, before tomorrow. Can you help me?”

It remains a mystery what specifically Rossi thought could “overwhelm” him just before his death, but many have speculated that he was referring to Monte Paschi’s troubled financial position.

Rossi was a close confidant of former bank president Joseph Mussari, who was the driving force behind Monte Paschi’s 2008 $7.5 billion takeover of Banca Antonveneta. Many banking analysts agreed at the time that Monte Paschi paid too much in the acquisition that Deutsche Bank financed.

The same year as Rossi’s death, European and US regulators began to probe what would become known as the Libor scandal, in which London bankers conspired to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate — an overnight interest rate that determines the interest banks charged on mortgages and auto and personal loans across the globe. It also determines the rate that banks like Monte Paschi pay for loans like the one it used to finance the purchase of Banca Antonveneta. The scandal would cost international banks — most notably Deutsche — nearly $20 billion in fines.

Additionally, Monte Paschi got involved in risky derivatives that took heavy losses during the financial crisis of 2008. The esteemed bank, founded 20 years before Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, was being investigated at the time of Rossi’s death for its handling of billions in these risky derivative bets involving Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

In October 2014, Mussari and two other Monte Paschi executives were convicted by Italian authorities for obstructing regulators and misleading investigators on the bailed-out Italian bank’s finances in the wake of the acquisition of Banca Antonveneta. In January of this year, three executives from Deutsche Bank were also implicated civilly, including Michele Faissola, the wealth management director of the German bank — charged by Italian authorities with colluding with the troubled Monte Paschi in falsifying accounts, manipulating the market and obstructing justice. Faissola denies these charges.

Modal Trigger

While at least 40 bankers have killed themselves in the 17-month period starting in March 2013 in the wake of the global banking scandal, the circumstances of Rossi’s death — and two others — stand out as particularly mysterious.

In January 2014, the body of William Broeksmit, 58, a high-ranking Deutsche Bank executive, was found hanging in his London flat from a dog leash tied to the top of a door.

Financial papers were strewn about, and on a dog bed near the body were a number of notes to family and friends. One was addressed to Deutsche Bank CEO Anshu Jain, with an apology. But that note — never publicly revealed until now — offered no clue as to the reason he was sorry.

Broeksmit’s high-ranking colleague at Deutche was Michele Faissola, who arrived on the gruesome scene after Broeksmit’s wife told his stepson, Val Broeksmit, to phone him. He arrived minutes later, and began going through the bank papers and read the suicide notes.

“He did go to my father’s computer which was, at the time, I thought a little weird,” said Val Broeksmit.

There is no evidence Faissola was involved in any misconduct related to Broeksmit’s death, but the stepson said he still wonders what, if anything, Faissola was searching for. Faissola declined comment.

In emails provided to The Post by his stepson Val, Broeksmit had just messaged friends about his excitement to go on a ski vacation scheduled for a week later.

Modal Trigger

Although a report from Broeksmit’s clinical psychologist revealed that Broeksmit was “very anxious about authorities investigating areas of the bank at which he worked,” his depression over the Libor investigation the year before seemed to have lifted, according to a doctor who’d given him a clean bill of health a month before his death, said his stepson. Val found other unsettling facts while going over his father’s personal papers and emails.

“Yes he killed himself,” Val Broeksmit told The Post. “But there’s a question: Could it be suicide by extortion, could it be suicide by pressure or saying if you don’t do this, we’re going to do this? There’s a couple suspicions I have.”

In early 2013, Jain planned to make Broeksmit chief risk officer for the entire bank. He was an expert in the esoteric field of derivatives, of which Deutsche had roughly $60 trillion worth on its books. But German banking regulators nixed the appointment because they said he lacked the requisite experience.

Broeksmit left the bank in June, but a few months later took a position in New York as a director of Deutsche Bank Trust Company of America, the US arm of the German banking giant. It was his reward for his long service after butting heads with German banking authorities.

DBTCA was the former Banker’s Trust, which Deutsche bought in 1998. It’s the custodial arm for wealthy clients to park money for trust funds and other long-term investing.

My father was the first to go

“[My father] didn’t just want to show up,” said Val Broeksmit.

A month before his death, William Broeksmit wrote — in what his son says shows his anger — to fellow executives, asking why he should take the lead on the sticky matter of the upcoming Federal Reserve-mandated stress test for the bank.

He also questioned the “generous” loan-loss numbers being used by the bank, afraid that federal regulators would see the bank was losing more on loans than the books showed. Large losses could lead the feds to slap the bank with restrictions.

Modal Trigger

“Who is recommending that I do this? I am supposed to be an independent director and this puts me further into a role aligned with management,” he wrote.

Two years ago, the mystery of the banker suicides hit New York City. Calogero “Charles” Gambino, 41, a married father of two, was Deutsche’s in-house lawyer for 11 years at the bank’s downtown headquarters. He was working on defending the bank against Libor charges and other regulatory probes.

On Oct. 20, 2014, Gambino’s body was found by his wife, Maria, hanging from an upstairs balcony of his Brooklyn home, a neatly kept white brick townhouse in Bay Ridge with ornamental stone fretwork at the roofline. The rope was snaked through the banister and tied off on the newel post on the first floor.

There was no reported note and his tight-knit family has refused to speak about his death.

I believe he knew too much

The serious-looking, bespectacled banker was a New York success story — a graduate of St. John’s University and St. John’s Law School who spent two years working at the Securities and Exchange Commission as an enforcement lawyer. He then moved to the white-shoe law firm Skadden Arps as an associate for four years before taking the position at Deutsche Bank, where he moved up the ranks to become an associate general counsel and managing director.

In his work as corporate counsel for Deutsche, Gambino had dealings with many of the bank’s European executives — including Michele Faissola and William Broeksmit.

Mostly it was Gambino’s colleague, outside counsel Mark Stein of Simpson Thatcher, who had the direct contact. Stein, who declined to comment, advised Broeksmit and Faissola in 2012 and 2013 on the Libor probes. Deutsche Bank ultimately reached a settlement with the Department of Justice, paying $12 billion in fines, without any admission of liability.

Gambino’s death was ruled a suicide. In his case and in the cases of both Rossi and Broeksmit, probers never looked for, nor discovered, common threads.

But all three men worked for, or did business with, Deutsche Bank. Moreover, it appears that one or more of the scandals that enveloped Deutsche Bank and/or Monte Paschi since the financial crisis had crossed each of their desks.

It remains to be seen if the circumstances leading to Gambino’s and Broeksmit’s deaths will ever be reconsidered. But questions are being asked and answered in Rossi’s case.

Late last year, Italian authorities exhumed his body and reopened their investigation. A ruling on whether Rossi killed himself or was murdered is expected later this month.

(nypost.com)