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Bilderberg meetings

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 thenelli01

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10102168/Bilderberg-Group-No-conspiracy-just-the-most-influential-group-in-the-world.html

The Bilderberg was founded in 1954 to bring the leaders of Western Europe and the United States closer as the Soviet Union cemented its control of the Eastern bloc. They met first at the Bilderberg Hotel, near Arnhem, at the instigation of Joseph Retinger, a Polish polio victim who had fought the Nazis during the war. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was the chair. In that first meeting, the participants – including bankers, economists, and the future Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell – debated the Communist threat and the prospect of European integration.

Publicly, the group says it is still merely a debating society – a forum for leaders to "listen, reflect and gather insights" unbound by official policy positions.

 

But while they rankle at the conspiracy theorists, former leaders of the Bilderberg confences says they were the most important events they ever went to, and the freedom of speaking away from the ears of Whitehall officials meant the discussions that took place decisively shaped modern Europe.

 

It is above all a club for life’s winners. George Osborne, Ed Balls and Ken Clarke, the Cabinet Minister who also serves on the group’s steering committee, will arrive this afternoon, as will Mr Mandelson. They will be joined by Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission; Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF; Francois Fillon, the former French Prime Minister; Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner, the former secretaries to the US Treasury; and serving prime ministers, foreign ministers and finance ministers from across north west Europe.

 

The chairmen and chief executives of some of the world’s biggest businesses will attend, with a combined wealth running into hundreds of millions of pounds – from Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Amazon, Google, Shell, HSBC, Lazard, Prudential and Alcoa. Henri de Castries, the chairman of the Bilderberg, is the head of AXA, the insurance giant. Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, is also on the guest list. Goldman Sachs and BP have in recent years been donors to the British committee organising this week's gathering.

 

Then there are the defence officials: Olivier de Bavinchove, the commander of Eurocorps, the EU’s standing army; Sherard Cowper-Cowles, the former British diplomat who now works for BAE Systems; Robert Kaplan, the chief analyst at intelligence firm Stratfor; Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state; and David Petraeus, the former US commander in Afghanistan who briefly ran the CIA. Those are the publicly issued names. A source involved in this year’s planning admits sometimes others may turn up, “just for the day”.

 

On the agenda is economic growth, big data, Africa, medical research and the rise of cyber warfare. The future of the welfare state is likely to be discussed, as one topic is titled "jobs, entitlement and debt". Another session is called simply "current affairs".

 

The debates take place with the delegates seated together in one large room. Some prepare written papers. It is bad form not to join in the discussion; they are not there to listen, a source says. On Saturday afternoon there will be time for golf, followed by dinner at which guests are seated alphabetically. Discussions are minuted and a report of what each guest said circulated, former guests say, but there are no formal resolutions voted on or policies adopted.

 

Few want to talk about it. I’m out of the office when Baroness Williams of Crosby returns my call, but when her secretary learns it is about the Bilderberg she says she cannot speak. The Treasury’s press office do not answer emails asking whether the Chancellor has arranged any meetings with delegates in advance, and if he is attending in an official capacity, or what he might say. Ed Balls’s staff are similarly shy.

 

Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert in Iran at the Washington think thank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who will sit next to Osborne at dinner, politely emails: “The conference is off the record. I will, therefore, be unable to comment on it, before or after.”

 

I asked if he will make a case for the defence of off-the-record meetings. They are far from unique to the Bilderberg. He replies with a link to an old Daniel Pipes essay on the rise of conspiracy theories, which argues they have flourished in the States amongst the politically disaffected, the hard Right and, controversially, the black community. “I sympathise with your point of view, and can recommend this as a frame of reference,” he says.

 

And the conspiracy theoretician-in-chief is Daniel Estulin, a 46-year-old Lithuanian and the author of the best-selling The True Story of the Bilderberg Group. Fidel Castro, the former Cuban leader, is a fan. It argues the group’s founders were former Nazis, and it now gathers to choose presidents and control the media.

 

“Bilderberg is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a conspiracy reality,” he writes from Moscow, where he is filming his weekly show for Russia Today, the Kremlin-backed broadcaster. “It was a vehicle through which private financier oligarchical interests were able to impose their policies on nominally sovereign governments. The idea is the creation of a global network of cartels, more powerful than any nation on Earth, destined to control the necessities of life of the rest of humanity.”

 

A major victory, he tells me, was engineering the 1973 oil price shock to prop up the dollar and make Wall Street rich. He sends me long lens photographs he took of de Castries and Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat, relaxing in chinos and linen jackets at a gathering in Italy. He's unsure what they were up to.

 

He is proud of their record in spotting future leaders. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were invited early in their careers. “The steering committee, because of their wide range of backgrounds, made some very good choices,” he says.

 

Lord Carrington is also frustrated at the theories. “I remember there was this American who thinks it’s a great conspiracy and the Queen is involved, and probably Satan,” he said.

Carrington, now 93, was Margaret Thatcher’s foreign secretary during the Falklands War, and after leading Nato he served as chairman of the Bilderberg in the 1990s. He has never spoken publicly about the role before.

 

“The reason people talk about conspiracy is if you want people to speak freely on matters of importance, either financial or political, they don’t want every word they say reported in the press. It’s been secret in that sense,” he says.

 

I am not very familiar with this group. I have read that many people think they are lizards (?) controlling the world. Does anyone have any insight or opinion on this?

Edited by thenelli01
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Video description:

Uploaded on Feb 24, 2011

this is and EDITED VERSION of me as a guest on the Opie and Anthony show on Sirrius XM radio 202. I asked the former secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, if he and Dick CHeney are lizards from outerspace who eat human flesh, for example: Mexican babies. He did not answer the question directly. He did not deny it. Much was discussed. Anthony Cumia of the show was simultaneously asking some interesting political questions. Mister Rumsfeld was courteous, but he gave me no reason to doubt that he is a lizard

Note that Louis CK is a comic. He's parodying the kind of "reasoning" that makes conspiracy theorists conclude that the Bilderberg group is a conspiracy. Edited by Nicky
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Maybe he couldn't say he was a lizard because if he did, his true form will show.

 

Seriously though, some of the conspiracy theories these people come up with are so out there that it is emotionally convincing - i.e. you want to believe it. But then you remember that they have no evidence.

 

But what would evidence of these "secret" plans look like anyways?

Edited by thenelli01
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   Conspiracies like that can only exist because of the very transparent power structures that people have created and support. I bet people conspire all the time to get advantages over others.,Adam Smith talked about this in the 18th century. A good example of a conspiracy is organized crime. A lot of times when bills get passed they are based on conspiracies to give an industry or interest group what it wants above the interests of "the people". 

 

    Its a mistake though to think that these conspiracies are special or important to examine in anyway. they often rest on the excessive power of the state.  As an example I find the following video to be pretty sober compared to most conspiracy theories. It actually attempts to use testimony. Even this video concludes though that the actual conspiracy is powerless without the power granted to the government. 

 

 

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