By anonews.co
David Rockefeller is a part of American
history and the only billionaire in the world who is over 100 years old. The
richest oldest man on the planet is due to turn 101 in June.
He is part of a family dynasty whose name is
associated with America and has become legend. His grandfather John D
Rockefeller who died in 1937 was the founder of Standard Oil and the world’s
richest individual.
The name Rockefeller has been associated with
wealth, power, politics, finance, diplomacy, philanthropy, marijuana
prohibition, aliens, UFO’s and conspiracy theories.
One such conspiracy theory is the creation of
a ‘one world order’, according to which a group of ‘Elites’, including David,
are milking the system for their own benefits and the benefit of their friends
and fellow conspirators against the interest of the United States.
They have been accused of setting up
institutions such as the ‘Trilateral Commission’ and the ‘Bilderberg Group’
among others to advance their interests nationally and globally.
Their aim is to create an international world
order under a single umbrella, to deal with global issues, initiated and
controlled by western countries.
Obviously such a hefty vision could be seen
as a conspiracy, by the powerful and the well connected, to dominate and
manipulate the weak and the fragmented people of the world.
David Rockefeller, the last former member of
the unofficial royal family of America, has admitted in an article by The
Independent, that if he is accused of such conspiracies to bring about a ‘one
world order’, then he is proud and guilty as charged.
He says: “Some even believe [the
Rockefellers] are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of
the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’
conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political
and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand
guilty, and I’m proud of it.”
Although the name ‘Rockefeller’ still retains
its resonance, its influence is fading. Being a Rockefeller these days ain’t
what it used to be.
THE INDEPENDENT REPORTS:
David, patriarch of that family and of a
vanished Wasp establishment, celebrated his 100th birthday.
These days he is pretty low in the
billionaires’ pecking order: 603rd according to Forbes magazine, the chronicler
of such matters, with a fortune of “only” $3.2bn.
Even the family’s total wealth, much of it
locked away in trusts, is put at a relatively modest $10bn – enough to buy
fleets of yachts, private jets and a couple of mansions in Belgravia, but not a
patch on his grandfather John D Rockefeller.
When he died in 1937, “Senior”, the founder
of Standard Oil and a contender for the world’s richest ever individual, was
reckoned to have assets equal to 1.5 per cent of US GDP, about $250bn today.
Compared with that, Carlos Slim, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are distant
also-rans.
From almost the moment of his birth, on 12
June 1915, in the embers of the Gilded Age, David was the favourite grandchild:
the one, according to “Senior”, who was “most like myself”.
The others of John Rockefeller Jnr’s six
children are now long gone. Winthrop, a former governor of Arkansas, died in
1973. Abigail, David’s only sister, died in 1976, followed by John in 1978, and
by Nelson – his most famous sibling, governor of New York and Gerald Ford’s
vice-president – in 1979.
Laurance Rockefeller, an airline magnate,
survived until 2004. David is the last one left. And in his day, Nelson
notwithstanding, he was probably the most influential of them all.
David Rockfeller flourished at the intersection
of business, high finance and international diplomacy. He was never elected to
any political office, but in his heyday, in the 1970s and 1980s, he seemed to
know every politician who mattered on the planet.
Part of that went with the job of chairman of
Chase Manhattan, which David sought to make a global bank. Part was due to
merely being a Rockfeller.
“Having the name can be an advantage,” he
once said. “I’m more apt to get through on the telephone to somebody.” Part
perhaps also reflected his much-praised work in US wartime intelligence in
Europe, between 1943 and 1945.
All of this made him a networker of epic
proportions (his Rolodex, in that pre-smartphone age, read like a global Who’s
Who); not surprisingly the journalist and former LBJ aide Bill Moyers once
called him “the unelected but indisputable chairman of the American
establishment”.
From the outset, too, David was a committed
internationalist. To that end, in 1973 he set up the Trilateral Commission,
featuring the West’s great and good, and soon found himself the butt of
conspiracy theorists around the globe.
Today, there’s much hyperventilating about
the secretiveness of the Bilderberg Group (another collection of worthies
favoured by David). But that fuss is nothing compared with the suspicions once
aroused by the Trilateral Commission.
For the right, it was a cabal operating as a
global government; the left saw an unaccountable rich man’s club, promoting
free markets to the exclusion of all else. Senior’s favourite grandson was
accused of being the plotter in chief – and he positively revelled in the charges.
“Some even believe [the Rockefellers] are
part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States,
characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ conspiring with others
around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic
structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and
I’m proud of it.”
But the globetrotting chumminess had its
downside. David Rockefeller, it was said, never met a dictator he disliked.
More specifically, he worked with his friend
Henry Kissinger to persuade President Carter to allow another friend, the
deposed Shah of Iran, into the US in 1979 to be treated for cancer.
The result was the Tehran embassy
hostage-taking and a rupture with Iran that endures to this day.
Most fascinating perhaps is David’s
relationship with the domineering Nelson. His elder sibling was tempestuous,
ferociously ambitious and a compulsive womaniser. As a child, David was
reserved and solitary, with an passion for collecting beetles.
As an adult, he was suave and
non-confrontational, a man who loathed scenes above all else. Not surprisingly,
the pair grew apart, especially after Nelson’s divorce and remarriage to his
mistress Happy Murphy in 1963, a scandal that may have scuppered his
presidential aspirations.
Gradually, starting even before Nelson’s
death, David became the family head, his image further burnished by
philanthropy: over his life, he is reckoned to have given away $900m, including
$79m last year alone. In 2002, he became the first Rockfeller to write an
autobiography, entitled, simply, Memoirs.
Ultimately, David Rockefeller is a reminder
of how even the mightiest dynasties fade. Before the Kennedys, the Rockefellers
were America’s unofficial royal family.
But the last Rockefeller to hold public
office, David’s nephew Jay, retired last year from his Senate seat in West
Virginia. The Kennedys are increasingly history, and, one day, the Bushes and
Clintons will be as well.
The younger Rockefellers have gone their own way.
Most have to make their own living; some have even changed their names. Being a
Rockefeller ain’t what it used to be.
Their political relevance, however, persists.
David, like Nelson, was a “Rockefeller Republican”, a well-born moderate
endowed with a deep sense of noblesse oblige.
If the GOP is to recapture the White House in 2016, a dash of inclusive
Rockefeller Republicanism is essential. And nothing, surely, would more delight
the oldest billionaire on earth.
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