Here’s my view on ‘secret societies’. At any given point in history, if there is a secret society with grand ambitions, either it brings in elements of the current top power structure, or it withers and becomes a discussion group of has-beens. To put this another way: the top elites of any given era will end up becoming the dominant members of all important, surviving, secret societies. At the same time, if a society is well established, it will be promoting its members, or people linked with them, to top positions of power (not necessarily as heads of state, more likely as behind-the-scenes advisors). So we end up with an interplay between existing secret societies and emerging centers of power, a kind of co-evolution.

The 13th Century (when the original Illuminati emerged) was the beginning of the capitalist era. It began when a dispersed international network of Genoese bankers achieved dominance over European finance. They soon learned that the financing of governments was the ‘big game’ of the financial world, much more profitable – and secure – than investing in entrepreneurial ventures or other business opportunities.

The most profitable of all was the financing of wars, because when fighting for survival, governments are desperate for funding, and will agree to whatever terms they can get. Particularly profitable is the financing of both sides in a war. That way the war can be kept going as long as possible, both fall deeper and deeper into debt, and when the war is over the victors will be in a position to repay their loans. Not only that, the victors will extract tribute (eg, Versailles Treaty) from the vanquished in order to help refinance the repayments. World War I serves as a classic example of this ‘fund both sides’ investment strategy.

From the beginning the capitalist class has viewed nations as pawns, and treated them as such. It is only natural that this class would think along certain strategic lines. In particular, as regards wars, they would recognize that there are two kinds of outcomes to be sought if one is contemplating stirring up another war. Besides the obvious astronomical profits to be made from any war, regardless of who wins, there is also the geopolitical outcome. In what way is the balance of geopolitical power rearranged by the war? Are the new dominant nations more friendly, or less friendly, to international capital, compared to the preceding arrangement? Which side would we like to win this particular conflict? Which side should we continue funding, and which side should we cut off from their line of credit?

In other words, it is inevitable that the capitalist class would end up taking on the ‘evolution of the world system’ as an ongoing project, with wars being their most potent instrument of change. And obviously the desired evolutionary direction would be toward a ‘capital friendly’ world system. Very little imagination is required, if one is thinking in these terms, to come up with the vision of a one-world government, and a government that is under the control of the capitalist class, as being the ‘ideal’ geopolitical system.

It is inevitable that an ‘Illuminati’ would emerge, under one name or another. And as the center of capitalist power shifted (as from Holland to Britain) it is only natural that the new elites would either join in the existing secret society, or else create a new one along similar lines. Which of these happened at each shift isn’t really that interesting, except to history buffs. My guess is that continuity would prevail. It’s easier to assume chairmanship of an existing organization / network than it is to start a new one. Once in charge, one can bring in friendly new members and purge left-over undesirables. Either way, we end up with a ‘continuity of form’ as regards secret societies, regardless of whether we have ‘continuity of entity’.

In “The Money Masters” (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936) we can see several quotations from recent capitalist elites regarding their agenda to create a one-world government. In the neoliberal globalization project, and the UN reform project, we can see this agenda being moved forward. This current, engineered, financial collapse also advances the agenda. Instead of the biggest banks being liquidated, the governments are being liquidated. A very clever move. Western governments are now firmly under the thumb of this era’s version of The Illuminati, and Henry Paulson is the poster boy of this new regime.