Puppets And Puppeteers

Prologue

As much as I tried (and humbly hope I succeeded in) extensively using humor (a dangerous commodity these days…) in my last article, The Economics Of Bullshit, I will this time be really serious about the subject at hand. This article is about the people and entities effectively pulling the strings of power and influence behind the overexposed figures most people come to see as the people in power, let that power be political, financial, religious, etc...

It is important that I first state that I am anything but a conspiracy theorist. I usually flee any conversation when I feel (wrong or right) that the debate is drifting towards dark and secret plots. I may be wrong to do so in some cases. After all, many conspiracy theories have proven to be true. And the CIA is of its own admission the United States’ instrument in fomenting covert operations geared towards uprooting unfriendly regimes, pitting one country/ethnic group/religion against another and devising grand plans to ensure that the United States' vital needs (energy mostly) are secured. This is no secret and even an infant knows that. Fair enough.

What Master Puppeteers are not: a bunch of out of touch stuck up old men...

That being clarified, the other question is: who am I to be privileged to such insights? That is a good question that I unfortunately cannot answer and for good reason. So you have two choices: not go along with anything I say or keep an open mind and hear me out (practically everything that I am about to reveal is 100% verifiable by anyone who knows where to find stuff and is willing to put in a few hours to actually do so). I have absolutely nothing to gain in writing this article other than revealing and subsequently sharing hidden truths, two occupations I happen to thoroughly enjoy. For all I know, many are not going to like what I am about to write... Too bad. Free speech is just about everything to me and I am ready to put my freedom where my mouth is (or my mouth where my freedom is).

The initial definition of a puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, such as a puppet, in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer is hidden from the audience and can operate the puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or her own hands placed inside the puppet or holding it externally. Some puppet styles require puppeteers to work together as a team to create a single puppet character. Obviously, the word puppeteer proved ideal in metaphorically describing one or several highly powerful and influential individuals “pulling the strings” of the puppets most of us consider being free thinking masters of their own destiny. Hence the puppeteers are the real masters of the “show” being played out on the global scene.

In this article, I will refer to three different entities:

1) The audience: basically everyone on this planet, no matter what their political opinions, religion and others personal beliefs. They read the press, listen to the radio, watch television and consult the Internet to forge their conception of the world around them and how it works. This first group’s most prized commodity is their life situation, mostly in financial terms, i.e. money.

2) The puppets: the people that we see in the press, on television, on the Internet, etc… This second group’s most prized commodity is trust. Their lives unfold on a ruthless and endless stage, forcing these puppets to value trust more than anything. Why? Because these puppets are constantly prone to attack, treason, deceit, obsolescence, replacement and even death.

3) The puppeteers: the people animating the puppets; those we do not see and do not know apart from an infinitesimal and select number of people privy to that information. This third group’s most prized commodity is discretion. As they are the ones secretly pulling the strings, it is imperative that they maintain the illusion and for that they need to remain constantly hidden from the audience.

The title of my article being “The Master Puppeteers”, I will focus on this third entity. Which brings to me to state that in practically all cases, the master puppeteers operate through covert organizations most commonly referred to as “secret societies”. Let me please stress once again that the secret societies that I am about to mention are NOT conspiracy theory material and/or legends but established organizations that for some even have a “public” fa?ade.

Typically, a secret society is a club or organization whose activities, events, and inner functioning are concealed from non-members (just like the puppeteers hide from the audience). The exact qualifications for labeling a group as a secret society are disputed, but definitions generally rely on the degree to which the organization insists on secrecy, and might involve the retention and transmission of secret knowledge, denial of membership or knowledge of the group, the creation of personal bonds between members of the organization and the use of secret rites or rituals which solidify members of the group.

Alan Axelrod, the author of the "International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders", defines a secret society as an organization that:

• Is exclusive.
• Claims to own special secrets.
• Shows a strong inclination to favor its own.

David Barrett, author of "Secret Societies: From the Ancient and Arcane to the Modern and Clandestine", uses slightly different terms to define what does and does not qualify as a secret society. He defines it as any group that possesses the following characteristics:

• It has "carefully graded and progressed teachings".
• Teachings are "available only to selected individuals".
• Teachings lead to "hidden truths".
• Truths bring "personal benefits beyond the reach and even the understanding of the uninitiated."

It is important to realize that these groups do exist, many of their members have been exposed and their influence on global policy and governance has been clearly established through journalism, research and academia. I invite you to do your own digging to corroborate my writings.

I will here below write about the three most powerful secret societies (that we know of) and one that is much less known yet clearly still influential.

Skull and Bones

Members of the Skull and Bones (George H. W. Bush is left of the clock), 1947.

The Order of Skull and Bones, a Yale University society, was originally known as the Brotherhood of Death. It is one of the oldest student secret societies in the United States. It was founded in 1832 and membership is open to an elite few. The society uses masonic inspired rituals to this day. Members meet every Thursday and Sunday of each week in a building they call the “Tomb”. According to Judy Schiff, Chief Archivist at the Yale University Library, the names of the members were not kept secret until the 1970s, but the rituals always have been. Both presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush were members of the society while studying at Yale, and a number of other members have gone on to great fame and fortune. The society is surrounded by conspiracy theories. The most popular of which is probably the idea that the CIA was built on members from the group.

Skull and Bones's membership developed a reputation in association with the "Power Elite". Regarding the qualifications for membership, Lanny Davis wrote in the 1968 Yale yearbook:

If the society had a good year, this is what the "ideal" group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the Yale Daily News; a conspicuous radical; a Whiffenpoof; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies' man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a negro, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever ..

Like other Yale senior societies, Skull and Bones membership was almost exclusively limited to white Protestant males for much of its history. While Yale itself had exclusionary policies directed at particular ethnic and religious groups, the senior societies were even more exclusionary. While some Catholics were able to join such groups, Jews were more often not. Some of these excluded groups eventually entered Skull and Bones by means of sports, through the society's practice of tapping standout athletes. Star football players included the first Jewish (Al Hessberg, class of 1938) and African-American (Levi Jackson, class of 1950, who turned down the invitation for the Berzelius Society) students to be tapped for Skull and Bones.

Skull and Bones' "logo" and class of 1920.

Yale became coeducational in 1969, yet Skull and Bones remained fully male until 1992. The Bones class of 1971's attempt to tap women for membership was opposed by Bones alumni, who dubbed them the "bad club" and quashed their attempt. "The issue", as it came to be called by Bonesmen, was debated for decades. The class of 1991 tapped seven female members for membership in the next year's class, causing conflict with their own alumni association, the Russell Trust. The Trust changed the locks on the Tomb and the Bonesmen instead met in the Manuscript Society building. A mail-in vote by members decided 368-320 to permit women in the society, but a group of alumni led by William F. Buckley obtained a temporary restraining order to block the move, arguing that a formal change in bylaws was needed. Other alumni, such as John Kerry and R. Inslee Clark, Jr., spoke out in favor of admitting women. The dispute was highlighted on an editorial page of The New York Times. A second alumni vote, in October 1991, agreed to accept the Class of 1992, and the lawsuit was dropped.

Judith Ann Schiff, Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library, has written: "The names of its members weren't kept secret — that was an innovation of the 1970s — but its meetings and practices were." While resourceful researchers could assemble member data from these original sources, in 1985, an anonymous source leaked rosters to Antony C. Sutton. This membership information was kept privately for over 15 years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it.

Among prominent alumni are former President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft (a founder's son); former Presidents George H. W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush; Supreme Court Justices Morrison R. Waite and Potter Stewart; James Jesus Angleton, "mother of the Central Intelligence Agency"; Henry Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War (1940-1945); U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett, who directed the Korean War; and Henry Luce, founder and publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines.

John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State and former U.S. Senator; Stephen A. Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone Group; Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers; Harold Stanley, co-founder of Morgan Stanley; and Frederick W. Smith, founder of FedEx, are all officially reported to be among the impressive list of members

Freemasons

Freemasons Annual Meeting, 1992.

The Grand Masonic Lodge was created in 1717 when four small groups of lodges joined together. Membership levels were initially first and second degree, but in the 1750s this was expanded to create the third degree which caused a split in the group. When a person reaches the third degree, they are called a Master Mason. Masons conduct their regular meetings in a ritualized style. This includes many references to architectural symbols such as the compass and square. They refer to God as “The Great Architect of the Universe”. The three degrees of Masonry are:

1) Entered Apprentice: a basic member of the group.
2) Fellow Craft: an intermediate degree in which members are meant to develop further knowledge of Masonry.
3) Master Mason: this degree is necessary for participating in most masonic activities.

Some rites (such as the Scottish Lodge) list up to 33 degrees of membership. Masons use signs and handshakes to gain admission to their meetings, as well as to identify themselves to other people who may be Masons. The signs and handshakes often differ from one jurisdiction to another and are often changed or updated. This protects the group from people finding out how to gain admission under false pretenses. Masons also wear stylized clothing based upon the clothing worn by stone masons from the middle ages. The most well-known of these is the apron. In order to become a Mason, you must generally be recommended by a current mason. In some cases you must be recommended three times before you can join. You have to be at least 18 years old and of sound mind. Many religions frown upon membership of the Masons, and the Roman Catholic Church forbids Cath

Joining a Lodge

Print from 1870 portraying George Washington as Master of his lodge.

Candidates for Freemasonry will have met most active members of the lodge they are joining before they are initiated. The process varies between jurisdictions, but the candidate will typically have been introduced by a friend at a lodge social function, or at some form of open evening in the lodge. In modern times, interested people often track down a local lodge through the Internet. The onus is on candidates to ask to join; while candidates may be encouraged to ask, they are never invited. Once the initial inquiry is made, an interview usually follows to determine the candidate's suitability. If the candidate decides to proceed from here, the lodge is balloted before he can be accepted.

The absolute minimum requirement of any body of Freemasons is that the candidate must be free, and considered to be of good character. There is usually an age requirement, varying greatly between Grand Lodges, and (in some jurisdictions) capable of being overridden by a dispensation from the Grand Lodge. The underlying assumption is that the candidate should be a mature adult. In addition, most Grand Lodges require the candidate to declare a belief in a Supreme Being. In a few cases, the candidate may be required to be of a specific religion. The form of Freemasonry most common in Scandinavia (known as the Swedish Rite), for example, accepts only Christians. At the other end of the spectrum, "Liberal" or Continental Freemasonry, exemplified by the Grand Orient de France, does not require a declaration of belief in any deity, and accepts atheists (a cause of discord with the rest of Freemasonry).

During the ceremony of initiation, the candidate is expected to swear (usually on a volume of sacred text appropriate to his personal religious faith) to fulfill certain obligations as a Mason. In the course of three degrees, new masons will promise to keep the secrets of their degree from lower degrees and outsiders, and to support a fellow Mason in distress (as far as practicality and the law permit). There is instruction as to the duties of a Freemason, but on the whole, Freemasons are left to explore the craft in the manner they find most satisfying. Some will further explore the ritual and symbolism of the craft, others will focus their involvement on the social side of the lodge, while still others will concentrate on the charitable functions of the lodge.

The Bilderberg Group

A Bilderberg Group meeting.

The original conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several people, including Polish politician-in-exile Józef Retinger, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting Atlanticism, better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic and defense issues.

The Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands.

Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who agreed to promote the idea, together with former Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland, and the head of Unilever at that time, Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson to deal with the suggestion. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe attended the first conference, along with 11 Americans.

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent steering committee was established with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957 the first U.S. conference was held on St. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.

Organizational structure

Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of approximately 18 nations. Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General. There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group" but former participants receive the annual conference reports. The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". In addition to the committee, there also exists a separate advisory group, though membership overlaps.

Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel became permanent secretary in 1960, upon Retinger's death. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment, William Bundy of Princeton, Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

A 2008 press release from the "American Friends of Bilderberg" stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. According to James A. Bill the ? steering committee usually met twice a year to plan programs and to discuss the participant list ?. The group has an official website at www.bilderbergmeetings.org.

The Custodians

A meeting of Custodians. Jerusalem, 1935.

Probably one of the most underground and lesser known secret societies but probably one the most influential too as it has never been exposed, its members are totally unknown and the society is much smaller than the ones aforementioned. The Custodians were founded around 1930 in Jerusalem by a group of influential political and business Palestinian leaders. On November 29 of 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended the adoption and implementation of the Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine. The end of the British Mandate for Palestine was set for midnight on May 14, 1948. It is said that the founding Custodians held their last meeting in Palestine on May 15, 1948. In 1959, during a general meeting held just outside of London, the Custodians elected 5 Grand Officers, each one to be sent to one of the following five countries: the USA, the UK, France, Greece and Lebanon. In each of these 5 countries, the Grand Officers were to establish a secret presence and following. From 1958 until the present day, little is known about The Custodians. It is said that each Grand Officer successfully established a foothold in the aforementioned 5 countries and that the group slowly grew, recruiting members from the global “Arab intelligentsia” scattered around the world.

The Custodians, initially a Palestinian group, came to accept all Arabs from Lebanese to Tunisians to Saudis. By 1990, it is said that The Custodians had reached over 100 members, practically all in key positions across the Arab and non-Arab world. 1990 marked a turning point in The Custodians’ “constitution” whereby the group declared itself agnostic. Indeed, a significant number of the group’s most influential members were Christian Arabs. From 1990 on, The Custodians continued to grow as a politically and religiously “neutral” group. It is said that at least 5 country rulers/presidents were/are Custodians and that many held/hold senior positions in the governments of over 15 countries, let alone leadership positions in some of the largest global corporations.

Epilogue

Bottom line: real power is always hidden. Because that is the very nature of power. It must remain unseen as much as the puppeteer must hide from the audience, him being seen instantly undermining whatever he is trying to achieve. I therefore find farcical the endless flurry of "power lists" emerging from every public outlet wanting to assert its "authority": 100 most powerful entrepreneurs, 30 most powerful leaders under 30, 50 most powerful Muslims, etc... The title of these lists alone should be your cue to their bullshit nature. Where are the Presidents, inevitable lobbyists and godlike rainmakers on these lists? Well, they are doing everything in their power to actually stay off these comical lists because the last thing they want is the limelight that comes from being on those lists! I often have never heard of a good half of the people on these "power" lists and as for the other half, I suspect them of being on these lists simply to provide, their vanity amply flattered, advertising revenues and possibly even donations as a token of their (surprised) gratefulness to the "outlets" having produced these hilarious lists. Finally, let me take my last laugh at the word "power" in most of these lists? What the heck does that even mean? That these people possess superpowers? That they can fly, become invisible or become fire? Come on people, wake up. These lists are the symptom of a world sick from the bullshit engulfing all aspects of our information outlets, mainstream media being first on that list without any doubt.

About The Author

Charles is the CEO at Corm Capital, a global multi-sector holding company founded in 1998 and active in five main sectors: finance, investments, technology, media and real estate. Charles is also the Founder at OX Factory (an ICT startup incubator), the Founder at OX Media (a fully integrated online media company) and a Founding Partner at Inco Capital (a boutique investment banking firm). He is a shareholder in a number of global startups since 1996, having created a solid, extensive and diversified portfolio of what are now, for the most, successful businesses (some publicly listed). Charles acts as a Trusted Advisor to several global companies where he brings his combined expertise in management, finance and technology to help them achieve a number of critical funding, strategic and business development oriented goals. Charles also acts as a Professional Connector, having assembled one of the most extensive contact networks in the MENASA region and beyond. Other than that, Charles was a hedge fund analyst and investment banker on Wall Street for several years.