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Bilderberg Meeting - A Personal Report By - Jim Bogusz who was at Turnberry on Thursday 14th May 1998 to welcome these plutocrats and register his protest http://www.sjgwp.co.uk/Europe/delegs.htm
John Whitley, Kosovo http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/bild98.htm
Western democracy and press freedom has been undermined by British prime minister Tony Blair's clandestine presence at Scotland's 1998 Bilderberg meeting.
Blair was widely thought to have attended Bilderberg back in 1993, before becoming prime minister, and rumours abound that he is a part of the West's most secretive power elite cabal. The Scottish revelation confirms the close connection.
Since 1954 Bilderberg meetings have brought together the most powerful people in the western world, bankers, the press, corporate interests and top politicians to discuss future policy. Democratic interests are in the minority. They are characterised by extremely high security and a secrecy which is almost absolute. Newspaper columnists who have mentioned Bilderberg have mysteriously 'lost their job'.
For any that might doubt Blair's presence at the 1998 Bilderberg meeting, it has been possible to obtain testimony from a reliable source who uses Turnberry Hotel. Anyone who doubts the assertion can simply ask one of the many staff on duty that weekend. [Turnberry Hotel 01655 331000]
Blair's presence contrasts markedly with his answer to a written parliamentary question from Christopher Gill MP in March this year where he denied any of his government attended Bilderberg.
William Hague, leader of the U.K. opposition appears on the 1998 Bilderberg attendance list but Blair is conspicuous by his absence.
Could the organisers have forgotten to include the British prime minister on the list? Of course not. Blair's name on the list would make it much more difficult to justify the almost complete news blackout.
This throws light upon the purpose of the issuing of an annual list of participants. These lists are marked 'confidential - not for circulation', certainly a contradiction in background for a press release. No explanation is given by the Bilderbergers for this apparent 'gagging order'.
The press releases and participant lists are almost impossible for the public to obtain and aimed only for the eyes of top media bosses. They attempt to disconnect the meetings from world events and deny connections with the most powerful people in the world, current heads of state.
Blair was supposed to have been at the G8 summit in Birmingham during the weekend of 16/17th May 1998. At the very moment 50,000 people, mainly Christians, surrounded the G8 conference centre begging 8 invisible world leaders for debt relief for the developing world, Blair may have been hundreds of miles away at the secret and concurrent Turnberry meeting.
The revelation that the British prime minister attended the 1998 conference adds credibility to various commentators who purport to obtain eyebrow-raising, sometimes extremely worrying, 'leaks'. Indeed Jim Tucker from 'The Spotlight' magazine in the U.S. testified to Blair's presence in his article on the 1998 Bilderberg meeting published immediately after the event.
This cannot but add credibility to Tucker's seemingly outlandish leaks from the Bilderberg Conferences, and adds credence to the 'colour' in articles purporting to be based on inside information.
In one such example Blair was accused in Turnberry (over his reluctance to push Britain into European Monetary Union) of being "...a Maggie Thatcher in long pants". The Bilderbergers are widely reported to have been involved in the overthrow of Prime Minister Thatcher after she returned from an EMU discussion in Rome proclaiming "I refuse to hand over this sovereign nation to thirteen unelected bankers!"
Another of Tucker's leaks this year was that Bilderbergers plan to establish "...a global criminal court that would be superior to the U.S. Supreme Court and to those of all nations"
Press examination of meetings of the power elite is absolutely crucial because of the totalitarian 'top-down' structure of corporate interests that run the conference. For business representatives, their shareholders do not know they attend and for the politicians, the electorate are also in the dark. These meetings compromise both corporate and state accountability.
One of the only participants interviewed at the Turnberry Conference sounded a note of warning when he called for more openness at Bilderberg. George Papandreou, Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs told Alistair McConnachie from The Social Crediter 'Be strongly critical, whatever you write!'
So who else attends these meetings and fails to appear on the Bilderbergers' 'not for circulation' lists? And if the organisers have been caught lying about who attends their meetings how can we trust their promises about import of their discussions?
Unreliable, disturbing 'leaks' from these meetings and official disinformation are certainly not good enough. And the arrest of Mail on Sunday reporter Campbell Thomas, attempting to cover the conference in Turnberry, for 'knocking on a door' was an outrageous affront to legitimate press scrutiny.
The forthcoming venue for the 1999 Bilderberg meeting is thought to be somewhere in Portugal. Another Bilderberg conference cannot be allowed to pass without the openness and proper press inquiry that goes hand in hand with any meaningful democratic system.
The 46th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Turnberry, Scotland, May 14-17, 1998 to discuss the Atlantic Relationship in a Time of Change. Among others the Conference will discuss NATO, Asian Crisis, EMU, Growing Military Disparity, Japan, Multilateral Organizations, Europe's social model, Turkey, EU/US Market Place.
Approximately 120 participants from North America and Europe will attend the discussions. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion.
Bilderberg takes its name from the hotel in the Netherlands where the first meeting took place in May 1954. That meeting grew out of the concern on both sides of the Atlantic that the industrialized democracies in Europe and North America were not working together as closely as they should on matters of critical importance. It was felt that regular, off-the-record discussions would contribute to a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations.
What is unique about Bilderberg as a forum is (1) the broad cross-section of leading citizens, in and out of government, that are assembled for nearly three days of purely informal discussion about topics of current concern especially in the fields of foreign affairs and the international economy, (2) the strong feeling among participants that in view of the differing attitudes and experiences of their nations, there is a continuous, clear need to develop an understanding in which these concerns can be accommodated, and (3) the privacy of the meetings, which have no purpose other than to allow participants to speak their minds openly and freely.
To ensure full discussion, individuals representing a wide range of political and economic points of view are invited. Two-thirds of the participants come from Europe and the remainder from the United States and Canada. Within this framework, on average about one-third are from the government sector and the remaining two-thirds from a variety of fields including finance, industry, labour, education and the media. Participants are solely invited for their knowledge, experience and standing and with reference to the topics on the agenda.
All participants attend Bilderberg in a private and not in an official capacity.
Participants have agreed not to give interviews to the press during the meeting. In contacts with the news media after the conference it is an established rule that no attribution should be made to individual participants of what was discussed during the meeting.
There will be no press conference. A list of participants is appended.
May 14-17, 1998
Chairman
Honorary Secretary General
Participants
Rapporteurs
GB - Carrington, Peter - Former chairman of the Board, Christies International PLC; Former Secretary General, NATO.
NL - Halberdstadt, Victor - Professor of Public Economics, Leiden University
I - Agnelli, Giovanni - Honorary Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
USA - Allaire, Paul A - Chairman, Xerox Corporation
E - Almunia Amann, Joaquin - Secretary General, Socialist Party
P - Balsemao, Francisco Pinto - Professor of Communication Science, New University, Lisbon; Chairman, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
S - Barnevik, Percy - Chairman, ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd
TR - Bayar, Ugur - Chairman, Privitization Administration
I - Bernabe, Franco - Managing Director, ENI S.p.A.
D - Bertram, Christoph - Director, Foundation Science and Policy, Former Diplomatic Correspondent, Die Zeit
NL - Beugel, Ernst H van der - Emeritus Professor of International Relations, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings for Europe and Canada
CDN - Black, Conrad - Chairman, The Telegraph plc
INT - Bonino, Emma - Member of the European Commission
INT - Brittan, Leon - Vice President of the European Commission
GB - Browne, John - Group Chief Executive, British Petroleum Company plc
IRL - Bruton, John - Leader of Fine Gael
GB - Buchanon, Robin - Senior Partner, Bain and Company Inc. UK.
D - Burda, Hubert - Chairman, Burda Media
E - Carvajal Urquijo, Jaime - Chairman, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson S.A. (Spain)
I - Cavalchini, Luigi G - Permanent Representative to the European Union
TR - Cem, Ismail - Minister of Foreign Affairs
CDN - Chretien, Raymond A.J. - Ambassador to the U.S.
RUS - Chubais, Anatoli B. - Former First Vice Prime Minister; Chairman RAO EES
GB - Clarke, Kenneth - Member of Parliament
F - Collomb, Bertrand - Chairman and CEO, Lafarge
INT - Courtis, Kenneth S. - First Vice President, Research Dept., Deutsche Bank Asia Pacific
P - Coutinho, Vasco Pereira - Chairman, IPC Holding
INT - Crockett, Andrew - General Manager, Bank for International Settlements
GR - David, George A. - Chairman of the Board, Hellenic Bottling Company S.A.
B - Davignon, Etienne - Executive Chairman, Societe Generale de Belgique; Former Vice Chairman of the Commission of the European Communities
USA - Deutch, John M. - Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry. Former Director General, Central Intelligence Agency; Former Deputy Secretary of Defence
CDN - Dion, Stephane - Queens Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs
USA - Donilon, Thomas - Partner, O'Melveny & Myers; Former Assistant Secretary of State, and Chief of Staff, U.S. Department of State.
DK - Ellemann-Jensen, Uffe - Chairman, Liberal Party
D - Engelen-Kefer, Ursula - Deputy Chairman of the Board of Management, Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB
USA - Feldstein, Martin S. - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research Inc.
INT - Fischer, Stanley - First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
USA - Forester, Lynn - President and CEO, FirstMark Holdings Inc.
USA - Gadiesh, Orit - Chairman of the Board, Bain and Company Inc.
F - Gregorin, Jean-Louis - Member of the Board of Directors, Matra Hachette
TR - Gezgin Eris, Meral - President IKV (Economic Development Foundation)
B - Goossens, John - President and CEO, Belgacom
GB - Grierson, Ronald - Former Vice Chairman, GEC
USA - Grossman, Marc - Assistant Secretary, US Department of State
F - Guetta, Bernard - Editor in Chief, Le Nouvel Observateur
GB - Hague, William - Leader of the Opposition
GB - Hannay, David - Prime Ministers Personal Envoy for Turkey; Former Permanent Representative to the United Nations
USA - Hoagland, Jim - Associate Editor, The Washington Post
N - Hoegh, Westye - Chairman of the Board, Leif Hoegh and Co. A.S.A.; Former President, Norwegian Shipowners Association
NL - Hoeven, Cees H. van der - President, Royal Ahold
USA - Hoge, Jr., James F. - Editor, Foreign Affairs
GB - Hogg, Christopher - Chairman, Reuters Group plc
USA - Holbrooke, Richard C. - Former Assistant Secretary for European Affairs; Vice Chairman, CS First Boston
P - Horta e Costa, Miguel - Vice-President, Portugal Telecom
D - Ishinger, Wolfgang - Political Director, Foreign Office
D - Issing, Otmar - Member of the Board, Deutsche Bundesbank
GB - Jenkins, Michael - Vice Chairman, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson
USA - Johnson, James A. - Chairman and CEO, FannieMae
USA - Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. - Senior Partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP (Attorneys-at-Law)
GB - Kaletsky, Anatole - Associate Editor, The Times
GR - Karamanlis, Kostas A. - Leader of the Opposition
TR - Kirac, Suna - Vice Chairman of the Board, Koc Holding A.S.
USA - Kissinger, Henry A. - Former Secretary of State; Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc.
INT - Kohnstamm, Max - Senior Consultant, The European Policy Center
D - Kopper, Hilmar - Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank A.G.
NL - Korteweg, Pieter - President and CEO, Robeco Group
CZ - Kovanda, Karel - Head of Mission to the Czech Republic to NATO and the WEU
USA - Kravis, Henry R. - Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
USA - Kravis, Marie-Josee - Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute Inc.
USA - Leschly, Jan - CEO SmithKline Beecham plc.
F - Levy-Lang, Andre - Chairman of the Board of Management, Paribas
FIN - Lipponen, Paavo - Prime Minister
DK - Lykketoft, Mogens - Minister of Finance
CDN - MacMillan, Margaret - Editor, International Journal, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, University of Toronto
CDN - Manning, Preston - Leader of the Reform Party
I - Masera, Rainer S. - Director General, I.M.I.S.p.A.
USA - Matthews, Jessica Tuchman - President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
USA - McDonough, William J. - President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
D - Nass, Matthias - Deputy Editor, Zie Deit
NL - Netherlands, Her Majesty Queen of the
PL - Olechowski, Andrzej - Chairman, Central Europe Trust, Poland
FIN - Ollila, Jorma - President and CEO, Nokia Corporation
I - Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso - Chairman, CONSOB
GR - Papandreou, George A. - Alternate Minister for Foreign Affairs
INT - Prendergast, Kieran - Under-Secertary General for Political Affairs, United Nations
USA - Prestowitz, Clyde V. - President, Economic Strategy Institute
A - Puhringer, Othmar - Chairman of Managing Board, VA-Technologie AG
GB - Purves, William - Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings plc.
CH - Pury, David de - Chairman, de Pury Pictet Turrettini and Co. Ltd.
A - Randa, Gerhard - Chairman of the Managing Board, Bank of Austria
USA - Rhodes, William R. - Vice Chairman, CitiBank, N.A.
GB - Robertson, George - Secretary of State for Defence
USA - Rockefeller, David - Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank International Advisory Committee
E - Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias - Vice-Chairman, Banco de Santander
GB - Roll, Eric - Senior Advisor, SBC Warburg Dillon Read
GB - Rothschild, Evelyn de - Chairman, N M Rothschild and Sons
D - Schremp, Jurgen E. - Chairman of the Board of Mangagement, Daimler Benz A.G.
DK - Seidenfaden, Toger - Editor in Chief, Politiken A/S
I - Siniscalco, Domenico - Professor of Economics; Director of Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei
INT - Solana Madariaga, Javier - Seceretary General, NATO
P - Sousa, Marcelo Rebelo de - Leader of the PSD Party
N - Storvik, Kjell - Governor, Bank of Norway
PL - Suchoka, Hanna - Minister of Justice
USA - Summers, Lawrence H. - Deputy Secretary for International Affairs, US Department of the Treasury
IRL - Sutherland, Peter D. - Chairman, Goldman Sachs International; Chairman, British Petroleum Company plc.
GB - Taylor, J. Martin - Group Chief Executive, Barclays plc.
USA - Thoman, G. Richard - President and CEO, Xerox Corporation
N - Udgaard, Nils M. - Foreign Editor, Aftenposten
CH - Vasella, Daniel - CEO Novartis
USA - Vink, Lodewijk J.R. de - President and CEO, Warner Lambert Company
FIN - Virkkunen, Janne - Senior Editor in Chief, Helsingin Sanomat
B - Vits, Mia de - General Secretary, ABVV-FGTB
A - Vranitzky, Franz - Former Federal Chancellor
INT - Vries, Gijs M. de - Leader of the Liberal Group, European Parliament
S - Wallengerg, Jacob - Chairman of the Board, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken
USA - Whitman, Christine Todd - Governor of New Jersey
D - Wissmann, Matthias - Federal Minister for Transport
INT - Wolfensohn, James D. - President, the World Bank
D - Wolff von Amerongen, Otto - Chairman and CEO of Otto Wolff GmbH
USA - Wolfowitz, Paul - Dean, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
USA - Yost, Casimir A. - Director, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington
GB - Micklethwait, John - Business Editor, The Economist
GB - Wooldridge, Adrian - Foriegn Correspondent, The Economist.
Freelance member, Campbell Thomas, 34, of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, a Special Constable in the Lothian and Borders Police, was arrested by Strathclyde Police in mid-May and locked in a cell for eight hours.
Thomas had been covering the high security Bilderberg Conference for the Daily Mail and was handcuffed and arrested after knocking on a flat door seeking local residents' reactions.
Although he was charged with a breach of the peace, police decided to take no further action.
But Thomas complains "I was treated in an appallingly heavy-handed way, like a common criminal."
It was his second clash with Police in three months.
In February senior officers investigating a mystery death threatened him with obstructing a murder inquiry when he refused to reveal the source of information suggesting a drugs-related fire.
Thomas had attended Kilmarnock police station voluntarily with a photographer, who took a picture of him entering for the record.
A senior uniformed officer admonished him for allowing a picture on the grounds of security implications and in later questioning, when he refused to identify his source, he claims a detective told him "we can be here all night trying to beat it out of you."
He was accused of making up the story and police also contacted the Scotsman newsdesk suggesting the story was untrue.
General Secretary, Chris Underwood complained on that occasion to the Chief Constable of Strathclyde, John Orr. His Deputy wrote in reply admitting one of his officers was wrong to speak with the editor, but claimed there was no malice against Campbell Thomas.
This, however, is not a view shared by Thomas, who believes he has been targeted for victimisation by local police.
Describing the latest incident Thomas says:
"The Scottish Daily Mail sent me to the Turnberry Hotel, Ayrshire, for on-the-scene colour during the Bilderberg Meeting of world politicians, industrialists, financiers and others. I filed some background and local reaction after asking police at the hotel which areas were sealed off.
"On the following day, Friday, May 15, the Mail asked me to return for more of the same. I approached a residential block of flats located off the main road but separate and at least 500 yards from the hotel, intending to obtain reaction and any other comment from locals. No police were in the immediate vicinity and no signs indicated the property or grounds were private.
"I entered the block through a rear door, this being the only visible access, and approached a numbered flat on the first floor from where I could hear music. I knocked on the door and after being asked to wait a moment, it was opened by a woman whom I believed to be in her early 20s. I identified myself as a reporter from the Mail covering the meeting, and asked her if she was a resident in the flat.
"She said she was, but said the building was used to house hotel staff and asked how I got in, adding that she was not allowed to speak to the Press and that the main door should have been locked. I told her how I had entered and then left, the conversation having lasted less than five seconds.
"At a nearby car park I was seized by both arms from behind and frog-marched away by two men in blue boiler suits, whom I suspected were police. Out of public view, I was cautioned and told I was being detained under suspicion of having committed a crime, searched, then handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.
"I was driven to Ayr police station and told this was on the instructions of the divisional commander. On the way, the officer driving referred to having the facts "beaten out of me", a clear reference to the previous complaint. I did not feel he was threatening me.
"At the station a sergeant took my shoes, belt, watch, wedding ring and other property and told me I was being detained under the statutory limits. I was placed in a detention room, in effect a stinking cell with excrement on every wall, soiled toilet paper on the ceiling and flies buzzing around. The Mail was informed of my detention, and I remained there for around five hours until a Sergeant McHarry arrived. I asked him to witness the condition of the cell and he did so, in front of other officers.
"I was taken to an interview room by a plain clothes detective sergeant, along with Sgt. McHarry. During my interview, which was taped, I recounted the above events before being cautioned and charged with breach of the peace, for having placed the female in a state of fear and alarm." I said I understood the charge and replied: "the fiscal will laugh at this."
"The detective then told me I was under arrest and I was taken to a cell where I was left for about two hours. A uniformed sergeant told me I could go after my photograph and fingerprints were taken. I refused, saying I was being treated like a common criminal and I did not believe they had the right to do this. I was told it was "to establish my identity," but I again objected and was told I would be forced to comply.
"I was returned to my cell and then shown regulations apparently allowing the process. On being told the material would be destroyed in the event of no proceedings or my being cleared, I agreed, and was released on an undertaking to appear at Ayr Sheriff Court on Monday, May 18.
"According to the police, I was detained at 2.40 p.m. and released 10.25 p.m.
Martin Smith, solicitor for the Scottish Daily Mail, took a statement from me over the weekend as did the editor, Ramsay Smith. On the Monday morning, Martin Smith told me he had spoken to Jim Kelman, Senior Procurator Fiscal at Ayr, who had decided not to proceed with a prosecution.
"I am an NCTJ-qualified news reporter with eight years' experience. I am also a
serving special Constable with Lothian and Borders Police, with a medal for long service and a civilian commendation for bravery, coincidentally awarded by Strathclyde Police at Ayr police station in 1993.
"My police work includes two months as a media relations officer with Lothian and Borders Police during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edinburgh in 1997, working in the police operations room and with domestic and foreign media at venues throughout the city. The security clearance for my duties was at Deputy Chief Constable and Foreign and Commonwealth Office level.
"Strathclyde Police, had no reason to detain me for nearly eight hours and certainly no grounds to charge me for knocking on a door as part of my journalistic duties.
"It is a sad state of affairs to be arrested while trying to cover the Bilderberg meeting, a controversial and secretive event of which the public knows little apart from what journalists have established ."
The final straw came on May 29 when Thomas received a visit from police and was made to surrender his Special Constable's warrant card.
The officer concerned was a Superintendent from Lothian and Borders Personnel and Training Department accompanied by another.
They told Thomas that although they appreciated his 14 years service, which included a commendation, his position was "untenable and incompatible."
Thomas said: "It was made perfectly clear to me that unless having been officially suspended I resigned voluntarily they would recommend to the Chief Constable that I be sacked."
During a ninety minute interview the superintendent also made reference to what he called "the small matter of the murder inquiry when you refused to reveal your sources."
Thomas has reported the matter to the Scottish Police Federation and is currently considering his position
CIoJ General Secretary, Chris Underwood said: "One could be forgiven for getting the impression that someone somewhere is gunning for our member."
THE Tory civil war over Europe flared up last night after William Hague delivered a passionate denunciation of the single currency and raised the spectre of Asian-style public disorder if it went wrong.
During a visit to France he said the old guard of EU leaders risked widespread civil unrest if they stuck with "50-year-old solutions" to Europe's modern problems. "The single currency is irreversible," he said in his most Euro-sceptic speech since becoming leader. "One could find oneself trapped in the economic equivalent of a burning building with no exits."
Speaking to the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau where he studied for a degree in 1985, Mr Hague sought to demonstrate that he was in the vanguard of a "post Berlin Wall generation" who had a global outlook and were not bound by the vision of Europe set out by the Common Market's founding fathers after the Second World War.
He argued that the EU was "near the limit" of political integration and the single currency could push it beyond that limit. But there were still European politicians who believed it should continue down the path of closer integration, with the creation of a single European state the inevitable destiny.
Mr Hague's speech, demonstrating the thrust of Tory policy towards the EU under his leadership, shattered the party's uneasy truce on Europe. Pro-Europeans led by Michael Heseltine, the former deputy prime minister, said Mr Hague risked splitting the party and was damaging the Tories' prospects of re-election. "He is in danger of losing a very important part of the Conservative Party - the centre ground - and you can't win unless you come from the centre ground," Mr Heseltine told ITN.
Even before the speech was delivered, Kenneth Clarke, the former Chancellor, was preparing the pro-European counter-attack. "If we can't reunite on Europe we aren't going to win any elections," he told Radio 4's Today programme. Ian Taylor, MP for Esher and Walton, said Mr Hague's speech ignored the strength of business support for the single currency.
But Euro-sceptics were delighted that Mr Hague had begun to spell out the political as well as economic arguments against monetary union. One shadow cabinet member said battle had to be joined with the pro-Europeans and it was time to stop "shadow boxing".
Mr Hague said the EU's creators, scarred by war, wanted to replace the nationalism they blamed for the conflict with "loyalty to a European ideal". But, while nationalism in Europe was tainted with fascism, in Britain it had sustained the fight against Hitler. Europe could never be the focus of loyalty for its people, he added. "France is in this sense a nation. So is Britain. Europe is not."
Mr Hague sought to redefine the Euro-sceptics as the true pro-Europeans because their solutions conferred more hope for stability, peace and prosperity. He said the single currency posed the greatest risk to the future because "it could push us beyond the limits of union" - leading to Brussels trying to take power over taxation and spending. He said: "In Asia, those countries that have had the most violent reactions to the financial crisis have been those that do not have a safety valve of democratic elections."
Punch magazine’s report of May 23-June 5 continued, “Few have heard of the Bilderberg Council. But its 120 members are some of the most powerful people on the global stage. It meets amid unparalleled secrecy to discuss the future of the world.”
Punch was referring to the meeting held at Turnberry Hotel, near Girvan on the West coast of Scotland on Thursday 14th - Sunday 17th May 1998. Until very recently, any reference to even the existence of the highly secretive Bilderberg Group was greeted with great skepticism by the world’s media. Punch, along with the Mail on Sunday, the Scotsman, the Scottish Daily Mail, the Scotland on Sunday and The Social Crediter, met outside the gates of Turnberry to find out what was going on.
The 123 participants at the meeting, conducted as always in secrecy and accompanied by a powerful police presence, included Lord Carrington, Chairman since 1990, UK Defence Secretary George Robertson, William Hague Leader of the Opposition, Kenneth Clarke ex-Chancellor the Exchequer, Henry Kissenger and a great clutch of other heavyweight movers and shakers from the world of international banking, industry, multinational corporations, and senior politicians, of whom some are still in power and some others showing real potential!
Investigatory journalist Robert Eringer, in his book The Global Manipulators (Bristol, England: Pentacle Books, 1980) notes that “The steering committee certainly has an amazing eye for choosing guests who are on the way up. Most of the current leaders of the West have emerged from the depths of Bilderberg ... Every British Prime Minister of the past thirty years has attended Bilderberg ...(and) Denis Healey was an early member of Bilderberg and was on the steering committee long before he became Chancellor the Exchequer.” Tony Blair attended the meeting on 23-25 April 1993 at Vouliagmeni in Greece when he was Shadow Home Secretary.
Punch noted, and Bilderbergers would not deny, that the Council meets “amid unparalleled secrecy to discuss the future of the world.” But why? In this context, Robert Eringer wrote to David Rockefeller, Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank to enquire about Bilderberg. An assistant directed him to a Mr. Charles Muller, a Vice President at Murden and Company, “the organisation which assists with the administration of American Friends of Bilderberg, Incorporated.” (p. 11) Muller sent him a printed message which included the suggestion that it was, “In order to assure perfect freedom of speech and opinion, the gatherings are closed and off the record. No resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements are issued during or after the meetings.”
Eringer subsequently established that in fact this is not so. He managed to obtain a copy of a “Strictly Confidential” record of the meeting held in Barbizon, France in March 1955 and one of the September meeting in Garmisch, West Germany the same year, which records that “Participants in this conference may, in light of the consensus of opinion expressed during the discussions, be able to pass these views on to public opinion in their own spheres of influence, without disclosing their source.” (p. 30)
Finally, in a letter to Eringer, one time member Sir Paul Chambers wrote, “I am under obligation not to disclose anything about the Bilderberg Group to anybody who is not a member of that group. I am very sorry that I cannot help, but I am clearly powerless to do so and it would be wrong in the circumstance to say anything to you about Bilderberg.”
There is enough here to allow us to insist that if there are grand strategies to be developed, presumably in the “best interests” of the world’s peoples, they should be made in forums that are subject to full democratic scrutiny and accountability. Not behind locked doors at private meetings of a largely self-appointed elite establishment.
Why should democratically elected representatives attending these meetings feel it necessary to maintain complete secrecy over what is discussed? It is also open to question whether the British Police Force should have provided armed security for such a “private meeting” or whether an Army helicopter should have been used to ferry Defence Secretary George Robertson. According to his spokesman, “He was fulfilling an official engagement as Secretary of State for Defence and, as such, transport was met by public expense.” (Mail on Sunday, Night and Day supplement, June 14, 1998, p. 15.)
According to the official PRESS RELEASE Bilderberg Meetings, dated May 14, 1998: “Among others the Conference will discuss NATO, Asian Crisis, EMU, Growing Military Disparity, Japan, Multilateral Organizations, Europe’s social model, Turkey, EU/USA Market Place.”
Hopefully, journalists are beginning to wake up, at long last, to the idea that Bilderberg is real and that it is a very important influence in the world. Perhaps, the veil of secrecy can be lifted if only a little and with that hope, Alistair McConnachie set out to find participants who might be willing to say something about what was going on inside the hotel.
Hotel staff coming and going would just look at their feet without uttering a world. A reporter for the Scottish Daily Mail who knocked on the doors of the staff accommodation block was arrested, handcuffed and detained for eight hours in Ayr Police Station under Section 14 of the Criminal Justice Act (Scotland), which is invoked when police have reason to suspect an offense has been committed! This episode is reported in The Press Gazette of 22 May.
However, for a few hours on Saturday, between 12 noon and 3pm, the delegates spent time in the grounds, either playing tennis, playing golf on the course by the sea, or visiting Culzean Castle a little up the coast. Alistair McConnachie and a colleague had time to speak to delegates as they passed.
Otto Wolff von Amerongen, Chairman and CEO of Otto Wolff GmbH in Germany was the first to stop and explained that the meeting was structured with short introductions to a chosen topic and then a general discussion. Two British delegates explained that there is a panel which consists of a moderator and two or there people. They have about 10 minutes each on the chosen topic and then there is “discussion questions, which last for 5, 3 or 2 minutes.” There are no introductory documents, and there are no records. At the most there is a page on a 3 hour debate. It doesn’t circulate documents between its members. One of the British delegates explained that it was not possible to mount a conspiracy in a group like the Bilderbergers because it has no existence between its meetings.
George Papandreou, Alternate Minister for Foreign Affairs was out jogging and came over to speak. He said they had been discussing, “Everything. Everything from the Asian crisis to Portugal to whatever else.” He was happy to have his photo taken, “You want to put me in the paper like this? They’ll love it in Greece.” He jogged off, urging, “Be strongly critical, whatever you write!”
A little light is beginning to shine on this group. For example, Will Hutton, Editor of The Observer, who was an attendee at the 13-15 June 1997 Bilderberg Conference at Lake Lanier Islands outside Atlanta, Georgia wrote on 1st February 1998 (“Kinder capitalists in Armani specs”) that “the Bilderberg Conference ... us one of the key meeting of the year ... the consensus established here is the back-drop against which policy is made worldwide”.
A recent former delegate who “holds a senior position in the media” (almost certainly Hutton - SCS) was quoted anonymously at length by Malcolm Macalister Hall in the Mail on Sunday article of June 14, 1998. Macalister Hall writes: “But he says that Bilderberg is part of a global conversation that takes place each year at a string of conferences, and it does form the backdrop to policies that emerge later, ‘There’s the World Economic Forum at Davos in February, the Bilderberg and G8 meetings in April/May, and the IMF/World Bank annual conference in September. A kind of international consensus emerges and is carried over from one meeting to the next. But no one’s really leading it. This consensus becomes the background for G8 economic communiqués; it becomes what informs the IMF when it imposes an adjustment programme on Indonesia; and it becomes what the president proposes to Congress.’”
The Bilderberg Group is one of a constellation of “private groups” with related global agendas. They include the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House). Arnold Toynbee, the central figure at Chatham House for thirty years from 1925 to his retirement in 1955 might have been speaking about the ethos of any one of these groups when he commented that they were “denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands” (International Affairs, Vol. 10).
The Social Credit Secretariat is keen to contribute what it can to ensuring that the agendas of such organisations are made fully open to democratic scrutiny and that especially our elected politicians cease attending such group meetings for so long as they are subject to any instruction to secrecy.
Finally, we put the following comment on record, passed to us, from one of the many people we spoke to and who shall remain nameless, “Book your holidays in Portugal next year.”
Any readers who want a copy of the full list of delegates, or a copy of the original article, are invited to write, enclosing a s.a.e. to The Social Credit Secretariat, 16 Forth Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, Great Britain, EH1 3LH. Telephone 0131 550 3769,
e-mail social.credit@virgin.net
Also see the Internet site at www.scss.gil.com.au
Did you know you have a Bill of Rights, created in 1688 by William and Mary, entitled "An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject"? It amazes me how often it seems to be violated by our politicians while we raise not a murmur of protest. Article 7 actually gives each of us the right to bear arms for our defence, especially against criminals.
The Bill was used by the Americans to draw up their Constitution 99 years later, hence their own "right to bear arms": it came from us.
In 1993 the Speaker of the House of Commons reminded the House, the courts, "and all other persons to take notice of the Bill of Rights, which remains an operative statute that has NOT been amended."
Even a breach of the 1215 Magna Carta is an offence under common law, and every MP is bound by oath of allegiance to respect our laws, especially the Bill of Rights. Attempts to overthrow them is treason. In fact, the Bill requires our rights to be preserved, protected and, where possible, improved.
When a government begins to ban things it is therefore on dangerous ground, but perhaps exploiting the fact that many of the present generation of MPs are said not to even know the Bill exists. In 1996 even the Home Office said: "What Bill of Rights?"
Ironically, the fact that MPs can say what they like in the Commons and be protected by "privilege" also comes from the Bill. Because the Bill cannot be overturned, it seems very likely that the recent total ban on private target-pistol ownership was illegal, but to date no one has challenged it in the courts.
In 1972 however, the greatly-respected Ross McWhirter summonsed the Attorney-General, claiming that signing up the Treaty of Rome was illegal and a breach of the Bill of Rights, forcing British subjects to be bound by laws made since 1958 by foreign powers and therefore without the Queen's Assent. Ross claimed also that the Queen was in breach of her Coronation Oath. He was murdered before the case was tried, allegedly by the IRA, which has always denied responsibility. In 1993 his brother Norris made a similar charge, questioning the legality of the Maastricht Treaty and summonsing the Foreign Secretary for treason.
The Attorney-General took over the case and then he dropped it as "not in the public interest". That breached the Bill of Rights by "suspending the operation of law" and was contrary to natural justice in that the Attorney sat in judgement on his own case.
It could probably be shown in court that all the EU treaties breach the Bill of Rights because our politicians have agreed that EU law must take preference over British law, established over 1,000 years. The latest attack on our Bill of Rights is in Tony Blair's determination to reform the House of Lords.
The Bill clearly states what our Parliament must be: The Monarch to give Royal Assent, the hereditary peers of the House of Lords, and MPs sitting in the Commons as the people's representatives. Any attempt to alter this is a breach of the Bill, and the Law Lords have said they will resist Blair. It only needs one person to take the case to court and it will be out of Blair's hands.
At present the Lords, whatever its shortcomings, is our only effective Opposition. Blair knows that, and it suits his presidential style to reform it into a group of people APPOINTED by Downing Street. Parliament would then be totalitarian. I remain greatly disillusioned with Parliament: Blair would clearly be happier without it.
Recently I wrote to William Hague asking him two important questions of policy. He answered neither which, considering I help to pay his salary, I find both arrogant and discourteous.
So many people I talk to fail to obtain answers from MPs. I sent Mr Hague a copy of my column about the secret Bilderberg Group which is alleged to have originated the idea of the European single currency.
This week he has suddenly warmed to it himself, leaving his own supporters deeply confused. Perhaps I should not be surprised. The Daily Telegraph reported that Hague and Kenneth Clarke had "accepted invitations to a conference of international statesmen in Prestwick, Scotland."
As I reported on May 15, this year's Bilderberg Conference was held in Prestwick, Scotland. A leader has to be decisive, and his troops need to be very clear as to his intentions. Confused troops are often dead troops. Sadly, Mr Hague is becoming vague.
Join Graham Danton on BBC Radio Devon every Sunday, 2-5pm.
WESTERN MORNING NEWS 12/06/98 P11
"NONE so blind as she who will not see" should surely be the label for Kate Ironside if she truly believes "conspiracy theories are out of hand". In a democracy, naturally, room must be found for all opinions - but then opinions should be based on facts.
Clearly Kate Ironside has not read the works of that great patriot, A K Chesterton, MC - in particular The New Unhappy Lords - nor three of that renowned scholar (Oxford) Dr Kitty Little, who researched political subversion in Britain for over 50 years - Mammon Versus God, Treason at Westminster, A World Coup D'Etat is Planned. She has not digested The Perestroika Deception.
So, "nobody is plotting to rid the UK of her sovereign status". Edward Heath admitted on TV to Peter Sissons that he knew he was taking us into a single currency and political union.
Your contributor seems not to know that the UK is rapidly being destroyed - devolution (soon "independence") for Scotland and Wales, a devious "agreement" designed to break off Northern Ireland, the pending regionalisation of England.
All this in 12 months, through the two Bilderbergers resident in Downing Street.
Unless Kate Ironside wakes up quickly to the reality of the conspirings of the Bilderberg Group she will find herself enslaved in the Leninist communism being planned for the world - and in which there will be no WMN, hence no WMN space for her ramblings.
James Hinton
Sherborne.
WESTERN MORNING NEWS 10/06/98
Graham Danton's timely comments on the secretive Bilderberg Group and public apathy do not merit Kate Ironside's impatient rejection of "conspiracy theories". Indeed, public apathy arises in many instances from conspiracy facts denied exposure.
Mr D J Matthews in his letter (WMN, June 3) asks what is the Bilderberg Group and observes: "When we allow so few flawed human beings to accrue so much power there is and will be enormous scope for the tail to wag the dog."
The influence of this elite group has "wagged the dog" and set in motion policies which are global in scope. Bilderbergers themselves, speaking in their "public" capacities, have confirmed the intentions of the Bilderberg steering committee.
Thus, George McGhee, a former US Ambassador to Bonn, declared: "The Treaty of Rome, which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at Bilderberg meetings." The Common Market was "sold" as a market, not as a socialist federation. Secondly, Mr Jack Sheinkman, chairman of the board of the US Amalgamated Bank and a member of the Bilderberg steering committee, transgressed Bilderberg secrecy rules and told the US paper The Spotlight (June 24, 1996): "In some cases [Bilderberg] discussions do have an impact and become policy. The idea of a single currency was discussed several years back before it became policy."
Thirdly, a leaked statement by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for many years on the Bilderberg steering committee, last year. Kissinger stated that NATO had become effectively the United Nation's world army.
The implications of these statements for Britain's continuance as a free nation are serious. Those who deride Graham Danton cannot have it both ways. If they believe in democracy then they believe in openness and public debate. If they do not, they belong in the shadows with the steering caucus of the Bilderberg Group.
Derek Tozer
Taunton.
WESTERN MORNING NEWS 10/06/98
WESTERN MORNING NEWS 25May98 P11
WELL done to Graham Danton, a thousand times over! "Are we blind to the dangers of apathy?" should be in every newspaper in the United Kingdom.
At last, the Bilderbergers have arrived in the South West. I've known of them for quite a while now, but how on earth does one get through to the apathetic population when, as I know, the Press are wary of publishing anything about the true enemy?
It's only fairly recently that the Bilderbergers were being made known to people, through the This England magazine, for example, and I'm pleased to see in his Trago page today in the WMN that our Mr Robertson has mentioned that magazine.
I'm a member of the Campaign for an Independent Britain (81 Ashmole Street, London, SW8 1NF, tel 0181 340 0314) and I know how apathetic people are towards their country. My colleague in Exmouth feels the same.
Our secretary is Sir Robin Williams, Bt, and he has held that position for many years. CIB is a nationwide affair, but how we need the members. It is indeed a big battle, but perhaps at last the light is shining through. The people must know of the Bilderbergers and the other secret groups like the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relatons, our Royal Institute of International Affairs, etc.
I'm convinced there is a "plot" to take over this planet, hence why do we get hints about a "world government"? Why, the Commonwealth has been destroyed when it could so easily have been the best thing on this planet.
How we need good people like Mr Danton and Mr Robertson to wake the British people up to the disaster they are heading for very rapidly.
Keep writing, Mr Danton. God bless you sir.
R D England
Exeter.
WESTERN MORNING NEWS 25/05/98 P11
The occupants of Scotland's golfing Mecca, the Turnberry Hotel, normally have little to fear during their stay apart from an errant drive from the first tee or a tendency to overdo things in the 19th hole. For the party that checked in on May 14, however, things were obviously different. A formidable detachment of armed police was called in to turn one of the country's most prestigious hotels into a five-star fortress. Sniffer dogs prowled the dense woodland sur-rounding the hotel, while bomb-disposal experts stripped down delivery vans for traces of hidden explosive. Not even bags of frozen peas were safe in the face of this obsessive hunt for hidden Semtex, with packets picked at random being ripped open unceremoniously.
One bewildered golfer on the famous links opposite - used for three British Open championships - insisted to his playing partner that he had even seen marksmen stalking the roof of the hotel as he stood to tee off. "What the hell's going on here?" he asked. Few back in the clubhouse had any idea.
Indeed, few people in the country at large would have had much idea as to why most of the Strathclyde constabulary appeared to be earning an enviable amount of overtime guarding a large hotel on Scotland's west coast for four days. For few have heard of the Bilderberg Council.
Depending on your predisposition, the Bilderberg Council is either a jolly for self-important businessmen and up-and-coming or past-it politicians, or a gathering of 120 of the most powerful people in the world who are bent on moulding global policy to their own ends. What we do know is that this meeting of some of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the Western world is conducted in conditions of obsessive secrecy and security
While Bill Clinton and Tony Blair attended the G8 summit of the world's foremost democratically elected leaders 250 miles to the south in Birmingham, they were accompanied by the massed ranks of the world media. In stark contrast, the comings and goings in Turnberry took place under cover of a virtual publicity black-out.
And yet the guests certainly deserved a place on the A-list of global powerbroking. These are not the sort of people one would expect to gath-er for the benefits of the balmy Gulf Stream climate alone. This year's attendees included Leon Brittan, vice-president of the European Commission; Conrad Black, chairman of The Telegraph plc; John Browne, group chief exec-utive of British Petroleum; John Deutch, for-mer director-general of the CIA; Christopher Hogg, chairman of Reuters; Javier Solana Madariaga, Nato secretary-general; Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs and British Petroleum; and Martin Taylor group chief executive of Barclays Bank.
The first VIP spotted sweeping up the heav-ily guarded driveway to the hotel's conference halls, under the watchful gaze of large men in dark suits wearing secret service earphones, was the chairman of the Bilderberg Council for the past eight years, our very own former foreign secretary Lord Carrington. As he was shown into his £600-a-night ocean-view suite facing the Mull of Kintyre, the private jets car-rying the other Bilderbergers were already circling Prestwick airport 15 miles away. Soon Carrington was joined by the billionaire American banker David Rockefeller and the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Tory leader William Hague was there, as was Defence Secretary George Robertson and the former chancellor of the exchequer Kenneth Clarke.
Quite an important get-together then, or so you would be entitled to think. And yet the reception staff at the 132-bedroom Ayrshire hotel would only say it was "closed for a pri-vate function" - It was just the sort of cloak--and-dagger affair that breeds conspiracy theories of world domination by a shadowy cabal.
When asked to explain what some of the richest and most influential figures in the Western world were doing in Scotland, an organiser of the conference said dutifully: "Bilderberg is just a flexible and informal international leadership forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutu-al understanding enhanced."
That brought a belly laugh from the veteran Washington reporter Jim Tucker. He has doorstepped Bilderberg meetings across Europe and the US for the past 15 years - get-ting his 16-stone frame ejected from their chosen hotels on a regular basis. "That's just horseshit," he said. "I've been chasing these guys for all that time. They want you to believe they are simply improving international relations. But they are controlling the world and making decisions that influence all of us with absolutely no democratic control on what they do.
"They meet in a different country in secret every spring. They are making decisions that affect millions of people on this earth and they do it all in the utmost privacy. Yet some of these people are our elected representatives and we have a right to know what is going on."
Tucker a reporter for the right-wing Washington-based weekly newspaper The Spotlight, said the decision to hold the Turnberry conference at the same time as the G8 talks was no coincidence. "They make their decisions here in Scotland and travel down and tell the guys at G8 what they have to agree.
"The Bilderbergers hate me because I won't leave them to rule the world in peace. I don't give a rat's arse. The public has a right to know if they have nothing to hide, they should come out of the closet instead of hiding behind armed police while they discuss all our futures. Turnberry is just like all the other meetings they have. We are kept in the dark and fed bullshit."
While the clandestine events at the Turnberry Hotel sent the conspiracy theorists into warp drive, the only community in Britain aware of the meeting appeared less impressed by the arrival of such a distin-guished group of major players on their patch. The 6,000 inhabitants of Girvan, five miles along the coast from the isolated hotel, watched the massive build-up of police and security men with typical stoicism and barely concealed apathy. Police outriders escorting heavy black VIP cars through the drab streets of the fishing village caused considerably less interest than the announcement of Scotland's World Cup squad. One uninterested drinker in the less-than-impressive Ailsa Craig hotel said: "We know they're having a conference at the hotel and the place has been crawling with coppers for days. We haven't got a clue what it's about." Tales of the intensity of the security net thrown around Turnberry were greeted with mirth. Every vehicle dropping off supplies was meticulously combed by police in combat blacks, resulting in a two-hour turn-around for a simple drop of fruit and vegeta-bles. Two local pipers asked to provide the illustrious guests with traditional entertain-ment had threatened to boycott the hotel after their instruments were dismantled and searched for explosives every time they turned up to play. Each carton of milk was split open and inspected as it arrived. A vintage van car-rying freshly laundered shirts was also searched thoroughly by the police.
Staff at the hotel were photographed and put through special clearance as part of the security clampdown, rather timidly code-named Operation Orchid. From porters to senior managers, the employees were warned about the consequences of revealing any details of the guests to the press. An assistant in the luxury gym at the hotel complained that he even had to request permission from secu-rity staff patrolling the hotel to go to the loo.
Not that the Bilderbergers themselves had too many complaints. Their rooms, normally hired to golfers with few financial handicaps, ranged from a modest £385 to £686 for a suite with a whirlpool bath. In between formulating global policy the powerbrokers enjoyed hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, saunas and steam rooms. The three restaurants run by a member of the Academie Culinaire de France served up Ayrshire beef, fish from nearby Girvan harbour and smoked salmon. A good vintage port, Dow's 1963, was recommended, at a touch under £100 a bottle.
Officially the meeting is private to "encour-age frank and open discussion". An informal "steering committee" is supposed to pick the120 or so attendees who, again according to the official line, are said to be invited solely for their knowledge, experience and standing and "with reference to the topics on the agenda".
While the presence of powerful bankers has preoccupied Bilderberg-watchers, it is worth remembering that many of those invited are from oil and mining companies. Roughly two-thirds come from finance, industry, labour, education and the media, and only one-third from politics, perhaps indicating that real power lies where the money is.
Nevertheless, the conference is credited with selecting and nurturing up-and-coming political talent. Tony Blair first attended when he was a junior opposition spokesman and Bill Clinton attended the 1991 meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany before he announced that he was running for president. Some argue that the conference creates these people. Others say that the "steering committee" -which includes the likes of Henry Kissinger; the former US secretary of state, is simply able to spot the potential high-flyers.
Despite the big names, the conferences attract surprisingly little press. Some journal-ists who have been foolhardy enough to write about them have found their careers suddenly on the wane soon afterwards. In 1974 a Financial Times columnist, Gordon Tether; took a keen interest in the group's activities. He wrote: "if the Bilderberg group is not a con-spiracy of some sort, it is conducted in such away as to give a remarkably good impression of one." Tether found himself sidelined and eventually lost his FT column.
So what were the favoured conspiracy theories doing the rounds with the unsuspecting golfers in picturesque Turnberry last week-end? The Bilderbergers apparently decide when wars should start, how long they should last, when they should end and who should participate. Changes in boundaries as a result of war are agreed and who will lend the money to support war efforts and rebuild the coun-tries involved afterwards.
The Bilderbergers "own" the central banks, such as the Federal Reserve in the US, and are therefore in a position to determine discount rates, money-supply levels, the price of gold and which countries should receive loans. They decide who should be allowed to run for the offices of president, prime minister, chan-cellor and other leading positions in govern-ments around the world.
The Bilderbergers, with their ownership of the major banks, know exactly what interest rates will be - and run these up and down to create billions of pounds for themselves. The Bilderbergers also directly or indirectly own all the major news media and can tell the public what they want it to hear. As the owners of major businesses and industries they can also suppress wages and salaries.
The official line is rather different. The con-ferences focus on world-wide concerns but primarily from the perspective of North America and Western Europe. In that sense they have parallels with Nato, set up just a few years before the first Bilderberg conference. Just as Nato has bound Europe and North America together militarily so the Bilderbergers appear to have bound together American and European strategic and economic interests.
The Question is: whose interests? And for what purpose? And how much power do the Bilderbergers really have? It is difficult to see how such a meeting of top people could fail to have some influence on the economic founda-tions of our world.
Former Bilderberger Jack Sheinkman, chairman of the Amalgamated Bank in the US, has admitted: "Yes, in some cases discus-sions do have an impact of world affairs, such as when the group discussed a single European currency before it was policy"
In one of the few references to the Bilderbergers in a British newspaper The Observers editor Will Hutton, who attended last year's conference, wrote earlier this year: "The Bilderberg conference is one of the key meetings of the year. The consensus established there is the backdrop against which policy is made world-wide."
Indeed, it is credited with prompting the establishment of the European Community. In 1955 the group recorded in its minutes that it was the group's "common responsibility" to
arrive in the shortest possible time at a closely knit European common market. Eighteen months later, the Treaty of Rome established the Common Market.
Not surprisingly in the circumstances, it is an organisation of which the Eurosceptics in the House of Commons are highly suspicious. Tory MP Christopher Gill has taken a keen interest in the Bilderbergers after some of his contacts made an association between what was happening in Europe and what was known to have been discussed at the meetings.
In March he asked the Prime Minister which members of the government had attended meetings of the Bilderberg group. Blair was able to answer quite truthfully "none" because when he and Gordon Brown attended the conference, Labour was in oppo-sition. Because of the Bilderberg conference's pro-Europe stance, Gill advised William Hague not to attend. But Hague's speech in Fontainebleau the week after this year's con-ference on "the potential for Europe and the limits to Union" no doubt reflected to some extent the inside knowledge he had gleaned from the conference.
Parliamentarians have also failed to declare their attendance on occasion. Under House of Commons rules, MPs must declare all free travel and accommodation they receive. Paddy Ashdown failed to declare his 1989 attendance. Both Tony Blair and Kenneth Clarke failed to declare their attendances in 1993. When the matter was taken up by Lord Nolan's Committee on Standards and Privileges, Clarke told Nolan that he and Blair considered that they had "attended the conference as rep-resentatives of the government and opposition respectively". If that is true, then one might think the electorate would be entitled to know what was discussed and agreed in private and on its behalf
As Jim Tucker packed for his flight home, he reflected: "Why do I follow these guys around? Apart from the public's right to know what they are doing, it's my idea of fun. These people think they are unanswerable to anyone and they are up to no good. The sinister nature of their meetings must be clear from the armed guard and the absolute secrecy they employ. Does this look like a harmless get-together?
"I want people to realise this is not an ordinary private meeting of some benevolent think-tank. These Bilderbergers control the whole works - and you'd do yourselves a big favour if you believed me."
The UK Press Gazette - 22May98
By Jean Morgan
A freelance journalist covering the high-powered, secretive Bilderberg conference for the Daily Mail was arrested, handcuffed, kept in custody for eight hours and charged with a breach of the peace - after knocking on a flat door.
Campbell Thomas, eight years a journalist and a special constable himself, no longer faces charges. But his experience has left him shocked and taking advice from his union, the Chartered institute of Journalists. "I was treated in an appallingly heavy-handed way, like a common criminal," said Thomas.
Like other journalists, he was kept outside a police security ring while the conference, attended by high-fliers such as Henry Kissinger, was taking place at the Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire.
He set off to get neighbours' reactions, and entered a block of flats, by an open door, about 500 yards from the hotel.
The first door he knocked on was answered by a young woman, who told him the building was staff quarters for the hotel and he should not be there. Thomas left.
Stopping in the car park to speak to a colleague, Jim McLean of Scotland on Sunday, Thomas was approached by two policemen who told him he was being detained under section 14 of the Criminal Justice act (Scotland), used when police have reason to believe a suspect has committed an offence.
Thomas showed them his special constable warrant card for Lothian and Borders Police, but he was handcuffed and driven to Ayr Police Office.
Booked in at 2.40pm, Thomas, 34, was put in a detention room for five hours before being interviewed and charged with a breach of the peace for putting the young woman in a "state of fear and alarm." He was then put into a cell and not released until 10.25pm. He was instructed to appear at Ayr Sheriff Court last Monday.
He told Press Gazette: "The holding cell I was put in was in a disgusting state, with excrement on every wall, and I was in that cell for the best part of five hours.
"I wasn't allowed to speak to my wife. They took my shoes, my belt, my glasses, even the wedding ring off my finger. The whole thing was ridiculous."
Glasgow solicitors Bannatyne, Kirkwood, France, briefed by the Mail to act for Thomas, was later told by the procurator fiscal's office the charge would not be proceeded with.
Strathclyde Police confirmed that Thomas had been detained and charged.
Chris Underwood, CIoJ secretary, said it was scandalous treatment. The institute will back Thomas in any action he takes.
The Press Gazzette - 22 May 1998
By James P. Tucker Jr. - TURNBERRY, Scotland
Although moderately distracted by the new nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, Bilderberg concentrated on its major goals on the road to world government:
The British prime minister was summoned to shuttle back and forth from the summit of the eight industrialized countries held 450 miles away in Birmingham, England, at the same timeby design.
Blair was hardly treated as a head of state. He was lectured severely for failing to bring Britain into the common currency, which is to be phased in beginning January 1. Blair assured Bilderberg that Britain would join, but he had to resolve “political problems” because “there is a surge of nationalism at home.”
“You’re a Maggie Thatcher in long pants,” a German told Blair. This was a crude reminder that Lady Thatcher had been dumped as head of state by her own Conservative Party on Bilderberg orders and replaced with trapeze artist John Major, for the precise same reason (SPOTLIGHT, May 29, 1989).
After being deposed, Lady Thatcher told The SPOTLIGHT she considered being denounced by Bilderberg a “tribute” because neither Britain nor any country should surrender sovereignty.
“Helmut Kohl (German head of state) never flinched” in pressing his country to join the common currency, the German told Blair. “He may lose this election because of this. You know Germany has a problem with nationalism. But Helmut stood firm.”
Blair turned and walked away.
There was much discussion and optimism among Bilderberg participants about a June meeting of the UN in Rome, to draft a treaty establishing a permanent International Criminal Court. Unlike the present World Court, the ICC is to have enforcement power and could impose its decisions universally.
“Will America’s nationalists (an expletive in Bilderberg dialect) give us trouble about the court treaty?” asked one.
‘I think not,” replied an American believed to be but not positively identified as Casimer Yost, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, at Georgetown University in Washington.
The American pointed out that in 1994, the U.S. Senate voted 55-45 to encourage establishment of the ICC under the UN. The Senate did so, he said, with the full knowledge that the global court, with judges from (Red) China or other rogue nations, may pass judgment on the United States and individual citizens.
“There was some objections by the American public, but not much,” the American said. “Most of them know nothing about it and probably won’t.”
“Unless one of them is sent to jail by the ICC,” interjected another.
“Yeah, then they will notice,” the American said.
The latter exchange was jocular and scornful.
On expanding NATO, Bilderberg participants were impatient.
“The shortest path to permanent peace is to bring everybody in including Russia as fast as practical,” said one speaker whose comment met with general approval.
A question was raised about costs.
“Costs, you ask?” the speaker responded. “How much did two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War cost Americans? Peace is far less expensive.”
To ensure “permanent peace throughout the world requires a strong enforcement mechanism, which means keeping the expanding NATO intact but under UN direction, for which there is a precedent to which none except rabid nationalists objected,” the speaker said.
The “precedent” referred to was UN forces in Bosnia, where American soldiers were issued the UN uniform and served under a foreign commander who reported directly to the Security Council, with the U.S. president and Congress having no role at all.
Bilderberg participants were clearly stating that the UN is to emerge into a world government with its own army patrolling the globe enforcing its will.Bilderberg luminaries expressed outrage that Congress did not approve the $18 billion for the International Monetary Fund to bail out the big banks a year ago.
“How could you let your Congress get so out of control?” asked a Frenchman of an American during informal glass-tinkling. “It was never a problem before.”
“Our Congress has a problem we call voters,” came the answer.
“That’s because we have less direct communication,” the Frenchman said.
“Leaders of your Congress no longer accept our invitations to attend Bilderberg.”
“Again, the problem is voters,” the American explained. “For years and years, we enjoyed almost total privacy. Now, right-wing extremists stir the voters up and congressmen have too many questions asked of them.”
For decades, such congressional leaders as former House Speaker Tom Foley (D- Wash.), former Senate Banking Chairman Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and others attended Bilderberg. Bentsen continued as President Clinton’s Treasury secretary, but was not listed among this year’s participants.
For the past several years, the only legislators to attend were Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and a House member but only after each had announced his retirement.
“We need them back, as the IMF problem shows,” the Frenchman said.
“But how?” asked the American. “Congressmen now consider attending Bilderberg; to be political suicide.”
Bilderberg regulars were all accounted for, including David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Evelyn de Rothschild, chairman of N.M. Rothschild & Sons of Britain and Europe.
President Clinton, himself a Bilderberg member, sent his usual assortment of administration officials: Marc Grossman, assistant secretary of state; Vernon Jordan Jr., a top unpaid advisor who will report Bilderberg demands directly to the president; Lawrence Summers, deputy secretary of Treasury; and Christine Todd Whitman (R), governor of New Jersey.
This is Mrs. Whitman’s first Bilderberg meeting, which means they have plans for her. After Clinton’s first Bilderberg meeting, in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1991, he became president.
Other old-time luminaries present included Chairman Peter Carrington, former secretary-general of NATO; Paul Allaire, chairman of Xerox Corp. and Conrad Black, chairman of the Telegraph of London and owner of a vast newspaper chain, among other global interests.
AS THE Asian crisis continues unabated, an unelected group of the world's power brokers are having a quiet weekend in the Ayrshire countryside.
At the end of the winding red tarmac drive leading up to the white-walled Turnberry Hotel - the bulk of Ailsa Craig lurking like a well-muscled minder in the Firth of Clyde beyond - the 120 members of the Bilderberg group have been discreetly conducting their business.
Membership is conditional on never speaking to the press about what goes on behind the closed doors, so detail is in short supply and conspiracy theories fill the gaps.
So it is that Bilderbergers have been deemed substantially responsible for just about everything over the last 45 years, from the collapse of Communism to the rise of the single European currency. Tony Blair has been at the annual gathering in the past, so has Bill Clinton, so has just about every aspiring leader now in the public domain.
Local boy made good George Robertson, the Defence Secretary and MP for Hamilton South, is there this weekend, as is Tory leader William Hague, among the host of millionaire business executives and faceless bankers dipping in and out of the brainstorming sessions.
An anonymous spokesman said by fax: "At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued. In short, Bilderberg is a flexible and informal international leadership forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced.
"To ensure full discussion, individuals representing a wide range of political and economic points of view are invited. Participants are solely invited for their knowledge, experience and standing and with reference to the topics on the agenda. All participants are invited to attend Bilderberg in a private and not in an official capacity."
Yesterday, the media watched from a discreet distance as a small army of yellow jacketed Strathclyde Police officers milled about Turnberry's immaculate lawns and golf courses sweating in the early summer sunshine. Every vehicle seeking access to the hotel is directed to a holding bay and thoroughly searched by an explosives sniffer dog and a squad of detectives before a red triangle with the letter B is affixed to the windscreen and a police officer escorts the vehicle onwards, riding shotgun in the passenger seat.
At the gates, Damien Mearns, an accountant who once stood as an independent MP for election in the Barking constituency, and Jim Tucker, veteran reporter of the Washington-based Spotlight magazine, disclose their version of the hidden agenda. "It is no coincidence this meeting is being held in Scotland so close to Birmingham, where the G8 conference is going on. They take their decisions here and then go and tell G8 what it is going to decide."
More sceptical observers regard the Bilderbergers - named after the Dutch Hotel where it all began following the war - as the kind of people who used to be at G8 summits and can't get out of the habit.
Hotel kitchen staff shake their heads as they leave after a change of shift. Each wears a special access pass on a chain around the neck. "There's a lot of men in suits about. That's about it," said one.
On the inside, anonymous spokesmen filter all calls, and the final impression inside Turnberry is of an elite but informal gentleman's club, even if it has granted access to the occasional woman, such as the Queen of the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, 15 miles away at Prestwick Airport, a fleet of executive jets awaits the return of their owners before tomorrow's departure to the four corners of their rarefied world.
SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 17/05/98 P11
I once produced a TV programme about the dangers of putting fluoride into public water supplies, so I was alarmed to hear that Plymouth's water may be fluoridated because a few children in the city have excessive tooth decay, without access to fluoride toothpaste or even toothbrushes. Whatever happened to their child "benefit"?
As fluoride is of no value to those older than 16, why mass-medicate a city because of a few irresponsible parents? The trouble with fluoride is that a dose of only one part per million is advised by the World Health Organisation.
Increase it minutely to just 1.2 parts and anyone can get incurable dental fluorosis, a brown mottling of the teeth.
Water companies worry about that and expect governments, whose idea it is, to compensate if thousands of people with newly-browned teeth start waving writs.
But governments want no part of that, which is why a scheme was abandoned by SWW in St Austell in 1974.
The Swiss never stoop to mass-medication: their children have fluoride in milk or tablets. Some Devon water is high in natural calcium fluoride; it is also in tea and some foods.
Once added to the water you cannot control how much you ingest. Only "people-power" can stop such schemes, and has done. Why do we tolerate such madness? A few children don't clean their teeth and 250,000 people have to drink toxic hexa-fluoro-salicylic acid - a superb rat poison.
Apathy wins in such cases and the local elections were full of it. Maybe too many British people are more bothered about "EastEnders" being five minutes late than by the break-up of their country? The new EU map of what was the UK shows Scotland, Wales, Ulster and London as separate EU "regions". Labour calls it "development", but within just a year they have nearly achieved it.
The London split is disguised as a Lord Mayor vote but even that only stirred 34% of the folk. Politics feeds on apathy and liberalism. Think about it.
Censorship is a sham, sex and dirty talk is on TV any time of day, I think the Spice Girls are to femininity what sunrise is to Count Dracula and our best movie is about a group of cursing male strippers. Let people do as they please - they can even kill someone and be back home inside nine years and who cares about politics?
Somerset-based "Portman Papers" says "A false liberalism is impairing British character and undermining our past moral certainties." One certainty is that today in Ayrshire the Bilderberg Group is meeting under its usual secrecy that makes freemasonry look like a playgroup. Founded in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel near Arnhem, with a former SS officer as its president, probably fewer than 1,000 Britons could tell you what it is.
"The Scotsman" newspaper just beat me to it and lifted the lid on Monday under the heading "Secret Society that Rules the World". Over 100 bankers, opinion-makers, politicians and the industrial giants who feed their party funds discuss world affairs and produce "policies".
They promoted the EU three years before it was set up, and planned the single currency backed by the US Rockefeller and Rothschild families. Annual meetings are said to have included many senior politicians and businessmen. Americans are very suspicious of the group, asking why it remains a secret. I can answer that.
The group's aim is world government.
In 1991, one multi-billionaire involved with the group thanked some media barons for keeping secret "our project for the world", and he went on: "The multi-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite is surely preferable to the self-determination of nations as practised in the past."
Those are chilling words to those of us who still love democracy and our country but are many of us left who care? Is the TV schedule truly more important?
The Bilderbergers are alleged to have engineered Margaret Thatcher out of Downing Street because of her opposition to a European Superstate.
As the greatest change to our country for 1,000 years is threatened, we do not want secret manipulation. But does apathy dominate us?
William Wordsworth wrote "Dear God, the very houses seem asleep and that mighty heart lies still."
WESTERN MORNING NEWS 15/05/98 P11
JIM McBETH.
THEY arrived in black limousines with smoked windows, protected by armed men and the kind of security reserved for people who rule the world.
The Bilderberg group was gathering at the palatial Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire, inside a steel ring of uniformed and undercover police officers. The 132-bedroom five-star hotel has, for the next three days, been taken over for a "private function".
Police in combat blacks with sniffer dogs searched every delivery vehicle, inside and outside, top and bottom, and then escorted it to the tradesmen's entrance. Armed officers haunted the surrounding woods and square-jawed men with secret service earphones guarded the entrances. Anyone approaching the hotel who did not have a stake in controlling the planet was turned back.
Exempt from such checks was the Bilderberg chairman for the last eight years, Lord Carrington, the former foreign secretary, who arrived first, ahead of the private jets circling Prestwick 15 miles away.
The aircraft deposited, among others, the billionaire David Rockefeller, the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, the media magnate Conrad Black and the owner of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli. The security seemed entirely appropriate.
The Conservative leader, William Hague, and the former Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, were on the guest list that read like an international who's who of the wealthy, influential and powerful.
Once a year, the 120 men and women credited with putting Bill Clinton into the Oval Office and ousting Lady Thatcher from No 10, meet to discuss world events and, some claim, manipulate them.
The group was created 44 years ago by Bernhard of the Netherlands, a Nazi princeling with a vision of "globalisation" - a one-world government controlled by conglomerates more powerful than national legislatures. The secretive group has been accused of creating the European Union and the single currency, prompting wars and engineering the fall of unfriendly governments.
Lady Thatcher once remarked that to "be denounced by Bilderberg is to receive an honour". She opposed its vision of a European super-state.
Telephone calls to the office of the organiser were rebuffed by a woman with a peremptory German accent. "No, we cannot tell you who is here. No, we cannot discuss the agenda. No, you cannot speak to the delegates."
As the delegates turned up, so did an American gentleman, announcing: "I'm Big Jim Tucker from Washington." Mr Tucker, the veteran reporter of the Spotlight, the populist Washington-based weekly newspaper which winkles out reds, and everyone else, from under the bed is the nemesis of Bilderberg.
"I've been chasing these guys ... for 15 years. They are controlling the world and making decisions that influence the world with absolutely no democratic control," said Mr Tucker. "It is no coincidence that this meeting is being held in Scotland so close to Birmingham where the G8 conference is going on. They take their decisions here and then go and tell G8 what it's going to decide."
The men behind Bilderberg claim that the reason for the "so-called secrecy" is to ensure that the powerful delegates can talk off the record. Opponents paint a more sinister picture.
Rodney Atkinson, who has studied the group for years, said: "According to the former CIA agent and academic Richard Aldrich, the group was the driving force behind the construction of European Union."
A Scots academic, Andrew Lockhart Walker, said: "They have been backroom boys for a long time, laying the groundwork for the Round Table, the powerful cartel of European businessmen who run the EC from behind the scenes."
Damien Mearns, a British colleague of Mr Tucker, said: "They create wars, currency crashes, put up the interest rates on our mortgages. They do it from the five-star luxury of the world's top hotels."
A source close to the conference said: "There is a lot of frothing at the mouth by the conspiracy theorists, but they are wrong." He admitted, however, that the group never makes statements.
One former Bilderberger was prepared to break ranks. Jack Sheinkman, the chairman of the Amalgamated Bank in the US, said: "Yes, in some cases, discussions do have an impact, such as when the group discussed a single European currency before it was policy, and the establishment of diplomatic links with China before Nixon started them."
It is claimed the group makes billions from insider knowledge of such events. Vince Ryan, the publisher of the Spotlight, said: "If they have nothing to fear why do they hide? They do the world no good, which is the reason for the secrecy. The security also costs the taxpayers a great deal of money."
That is one thing the Scots do not need to worry about. The conference source said: "We certainly do not expect to get all this security for free."
SCOTSMAN 15/05/98 P24
MEDIA ADVISORY - PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE ACTIVITIES BY THE HONOURABLE STEPHANE DION
May 14, 1998
OTTAWA, May 14 /CNW/ - Text ACTIVITIES BY THE HONOURABLE STEPHANE DION
Turnberry / Edinburgh / London
May 15 to May 19, 1998
May 15 to 17 Minister to attend Bilderberg Conference Location: Turnberry
Sunday, May 17
2:30 p.m. - 2:55 p.m. Interview with Cameron Simpson of the Glasgow Herald
3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Meeting with Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland
Location: 1 Devonshire Gardens
Glasgow Monday, May 18
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Meeting with the Rt. Hon. Malcolm Rifkind, Leader
of the Scottish Conservative Party (former Foreign Secretary) Location: Eskgrove
House, Inveresk - East Lothian (Mr. Rifkind's home)
11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Round table discussions with academics at the University
of Edinburgh. Lunch to follow discussions Location: University of Edinburgh
Centre of Canadian Studies 21 George Square Edinburgh
2:40 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Interview with journalist Tim Lockhurst of The Scotsman
Journal Location: 20 North Bridge Edinburgh
Tuesday, May 19 - London
8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. Interview with Michael Finnerty of the BBC World Update
Location: Bush House
9:30 a.m. - 10:10 a.m. Interview with Michael Binyon of The Times (London)
Location: Palace of Westminster
10:15 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Meeting with Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor Location:
Palace of Westminster
11:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Meeting with Alex Salmond, Leader, Scottish National
Party
11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. Meeting with the Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram (Conservative
critic for Constitutional Affairs) Location: House of Commons Central Lobby
3:00 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. Interview at The Financial Times with journalist Peter
Martin Location: 1 Southwark Bridge
5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. Address to students and faculty at the London School
of Economics, followed by question and answer session
This document is available on the Intergovernmental Affairs Website at the following address: http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/aia
CONTACT: Andre Lamarre, Press Secretary, (613) 943-1838.
No 1218 Bilderberg Group
Age: 44.
Appearance: Annual, for four days.
So it's a far-off constellation? No. It is, according to some, a sinister shadow world government dedicated to seizing control of the levers of the global economy.
So why have you put Lord Carrington's picture at the top of this column? He runs it along with Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, billionaire owner of New York's Chase Manhattan Bank.
Who else? Don't know.
It meets where? A source in Turnberry, Ayrshire, says: `I can't comment officially on whether this is a conference of the Bilderberg group.' Why Turnberry? Unofficially, its members gather there for their annual shindig tomorrow.
What will they discuss? Don't know. There are no statements, no soundbites, no photocalls. You could ask Denis Healey. He went to the meetings for years.
But he's Labour. Why would he be involved? Silly question. You could also ask Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Paddy Ashdown, Bill Clinton, or even John Monks at the TUC.
So it's a capitalist conspiracy? Well, the FT once commented: `If the Bilderberg group is not a conspiracy of some sort, it is conducted in such a way as to give a remarkably good imitation of one.' What does it talk about? Its plan for a European super-state as part of a global American union, some say.
Now that is a conspiracy theory. That's nothing. US rightwing survivalists say the group's in league with the Queen and the Triads to flood the world with cheap heroin and destroy the US. Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam believes it's behind the Rwandan genocide as part of a World Bank plot to settle European Jews in Africa.
Why Bilderberg? The first meeting was in the Hotel Bilderberg in Oosterbeck. Its driving force was Joseph Retinger, head of the CIA-funded European Movement, an outgrowth of various rightwing and anti-communist organisations.
Most likely to say: zilch.
Least likely to say: Let's have a big push on the Freedom of Information bill.
Not to be confused with: the Bundesbank, the Magic Circle, the Shadow Cabinet, the Masons, S.M.E.R.S.H., S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
GUARDIAN 13/05/98 P3
Ankara - Turkish Daily News
Foreign Minister Ismail Cem will attend the politically elite Bilderberg meeting in Scotland as part of a busy May schedule. Cem may have bilateral talks with the chairman of the meeting, U.S. President Bill Clinton's Special Presidential Envoy for Cyprus Richard Holbrooke as well as European Union (EU) Commissioner Hans van den Broek and Greek Deputy Foreign Minister George Papandreu. Britain's envoy to Cyprus, Sir David Hannay, is also among those attending the meeting.
Cem told the Anatolia news agency that he would find time to talk with German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel in one of his upcoming meetings, which include the assembly of the Western European Union between May 18-20 in Paris, the NATO Foreign Ministers Council between May 28-29 in Brussels or in the Euro-Med meeting in Palermo. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sermet Atacanli said that Kinkel still intended to visit Turkey and Turkey's official invitation to the German minister still remained, but added that the tight schedule does not permit their meeting easily.
http://www.hri.org/news/cyprus/tcpr/1998/98-05-15.tcpr.html#04
According to Turkish Daily News (15.5.98, Internet Version) Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem is to participate in a special meeting organized by a think tank in Scotland on May 14-17 where prominent politicians and diplomats will debate on vital issues ranging from the Asian crisis to the Cyprus problem.
The series of conferences organized by Netherlands-based think tank Bilderberg will include guests such as Henry Kissinger, NATO Secretary- General Javier Solana, British Defence Secretary George Robertson, US special presidential envoy to Cyprus Richard Holbrooke and the UK representative to Cyprus Sir David Hannay.
The meeting is not open to the media. Cem and Hannay will participate in a panel discussion where the major issue will be the Cyprus problem.
Cem is also expected to meet Holbrooke and Sir David during the Bilderberg meeting. The Cyprus issue and Turkey in relation to the European Union (EU) will occupy the meeting between the three leaders. Cem was said to be preparing to highlight Turkey's strategic importance in Europe. Turkey has boosted its diplomatic efforts as the EU Cardiff summit nears.
The Turkish Foreign Minister was also expected to visit London on May 18 where he may meet with British Foreign Minister Robin Cook.
Although there has been no confirmation from the British Foreign Office about a Cem-Cook meeting in London, sources hinted that it was a strong possibility.
If it goes ahead, the date of the visit is significant since it also coincides with the EU-US summit where Turco-EU relations are hoped to occupy the agenda. Cook is also visiting Turkey on May 19, a day after Cem's visit to London.
http://www.hri.org/news/cyprus/tcpr/1998/98-05-15.tcpr.html#04
UPI News May. 11, 1998
(TRENTON)
Governor Whitman is in Europe for a trip that combines personal business with attending the Bilderberg Conference in Scotland. The conference gives leaders from Europe and North America a chance to discuss politics, economics and government. Whitman's trip means she will be out of the country for the annual Legislative Correspondent's Club Dinner... an event that generally ends with a speech from the governor.
The men and women behind a hugely influential and highly secretive "shadow world government" arrive in Scotland this week to discuss international events and, some would accuse, manipulate them. In its 44-year history, the Bilderberg group has been surrounded by controversy and suspicion, accused of creating business conglomerates more powerful than national governments and influencing the creation of the European super-state for its own ends.
Along the way, the group, made up of between 115 and 120 of the world's most powerful businessmen, financiers, academics and politicians, is credited with engineering Margaret Thatcher out of the prime minister's job and getting a former chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, into bother over his expenses. The group was founded in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands - it takes its name from the Oosterbeek hotel where the first meeting was held - in order to create a "think tank" of the great and good, to discuss "globalisation". The secrecy that surrounds its annual four-day meeting is legendary.
Delegates make no comment on its agenda or issue statements. There are no soundbites, photocalls or press conferences, a procedure that has fuelled conspiracy theorists who believe the group has become the puppetmaster of weak national governments. The group has been chaired since 1991 by the former Conservative foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, and steered by Henry Kissinger, the former United States secretary of state, and David Rockefeller, the billionaire owner of New York's Chase Manhattan Bank. The four-day summit will begin on Thursday at the Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire. Previous guest lists, strictly by invitation, have included Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Colin Powell, the US general who masterminded the Allied prosecution of the Gulf war. It is the second time the group has visited Scotland. The last was at Gleneagles Hotel in 1986. "Scotland is a beautiful place and has a very relaxed atmosphere," a conference insider said last night. Strathclyde Police are mounting a security operation which, it is understood, will involve armed officers, for what they describe as a "non-governmental" international conference. However, the cost will not be borne by the taxpayer. "We do not expect to get security for free," the insider added. The group's opponents accuse it of being a shadow world government, which laid the foundations for the "Round Table", a group of 45 business magnates in charge of Europe's biggest companies, which was set up in 1981 to influence events in the European Union. Andrew Lockhart Walker, a retired academic, who has studied the shadowy groups, said: "Bilderberg did all the groundwork for the group which is running Europe behind the scenes. They've had a backroom boy role for a very long time." Two thirds of the delegates are from Europe, while the rest come fromNorth America.
After last year's summit in the US, Kenneth Clarke was found to have technically breached Commons rules by not declaring the free hotel accommodation he had received as an invited guest although he had paid his own air fare.
In the past, powerful delegates have broken the summit's code of silence. Jack Sheinkman, the chairman of the Amalgamated Bank in the US, admitted that in "some cases discussions do have an impact." He added: "The idea of a common European currency was discussed before it became policy, as did the establishment of US-China diplomatic relations before Richard Nixon became involved." The group is most condemned in the US, where suspicion of it is greatest. Vince Ryan, the publisher of the weekly populist newspaper, the Spotlight, said: "It's time to end 40 years of secrecy. If Bilderberg is doing good it should enjoy the sunshine instead of seeking out dark corners. "They are eager for European currency union to further their plan for a European super-state as part of a global desire for an American union and an Asian-Pacific Union. They are a global A [?? ed.] source close to this week's conference said: "I cannot comment officially on whether this is a conference of the Bilderberg group. "This is a strictly private non-governmental conference, one of a series of such meetings. Their purpose is the discuss most informally and confidentially topics of current concern to the democracies of Europe and America. "These meetings rotate around the world and no statement or communique is issued at the end. This is for no other reason than to allow delegates to speak confidently and openly. "The purpose is to talk about things of concern in the demo cracies and Europe and North America, and to ensure they continue to work closely together.
It has been felt from the beginning that regular off-the-record discussion was the best way forward. "Some of the delegates are politicians, but everyone is here privately. It inspires frothing at the mouth of conspiracy theories, but the purpose of the privacy is to allow delegates to have a frank and constructive debate and get to the heart of things knowing that they are not going to be reported."
Daily Telegraph - 23Feb98
SIR - I have never been a Freemason and can see both sides of the argument over the new disclosure rules. But why stop with Freemasonry and law enforcement? Local and national politicians of all parties should be subject to the same standards. They are, after all, in as great a position to let their membership of any society influence activities that profoundly affect our lives.
For some time now, rumours have circulated about the influence of a secretive international society known as the Bilderbergers. It is said that prominent politicians of all parties attend its meetings, and that its activities are little reported because prominent media figures are involved. There seems to be as strong a case for disclosure in this instance as there is for that of Freemasonry.
GERALD KELLEY
Appleton, Ches.
DAILY TELEGRAPH 23/02/98 P21
The quintessence of globalisation, writes Samuel Huntingdon, is Davos Man. [in The Clash of Civilizations and remaking of World Order] Every year in the last weekend of January there is an extraordinary tribal gathering in the Swiss Alps of the high priests of globalisation. They have their own thought system, shared rituals and even their own dress code - complete with large Armani spectacles. Davos has become a temple to the verites of free markets, inward investment, democracy and privatisation peopled by men and women in very expensive suits.
Yet it can't be mocked too much. Along with the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Conference, this is one of the key meetings of the year. No policy is made here; it is all talk, some of it banal and platitudinous. But the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide - and this is why Chancellor Gordon Brown should have come, rather than cancelling at short notice. The Left should not allow the international conversation to be dominated wholly by the Right; if there is to be any regime change worldwide - whether on the sustainability and necessity of the welfare state or the need to act over destabilising capital flows - it will only emerge if meetings like this accept that such issues are on the agenda and have powerful backers. The voices of even the pragmatic Left that Brown represents are not strong here. It was an important missed opportunity.
That is not to say that Davos ideology is uniformly conservative. The meetings became important in the second half of the 1980s when it became clear that the system in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was breaking down - and when the Asian economies joined the hunt for inward investment. Davos, founded in the early 1970s, found itself propelled to prominence - it was where political leaders, especially those from Eastern Europe, desperate for inward investment and a platform to show their attachment to the credo of economic liberalisation, could parade before international businessmen and financiers.
But the events in Asia over the last six months have shaken the Davos view to its core. Nobody foresaw that those apparent paragons of the world it sought to build, the Asian tigers, would prove to have such clay feet. But like priests of any religion, Davos is suffering only a temporary loss of faith - and in ways which show its better side. Asia went wrong because too many of its governments were non-democratic, corrupt and authoritarian, running a system of crony capitalism; in Britain only writers such as Paul Foot match the contempt in which Davos holds, for example, Indonesia's President Suharto.
Davos's globalisers want democratic government, the rule of law, transparent rules, fair play for all and, in Asia, extraordinarily strong social-security nets. Nor does their prescription stop there. For example, Davos deplores the US trade embargo of Cuba, declaring it absurd; it believes Cuba should be opened up to the world system and to the liberalising impact of inward investment. And even the welfare state attracts defenders. As the South Korean delegation has repeatedly explained, the price that must be paid for labour-market flexibility and volatile exchange rates is a powerful safety net underwriting the fall-out from such economic rigour and large-scale industrial restructuring. They intend to build a European-style social security system.
But in the round, Davos is unflaggingly committed to capitalism, yet not that is paralleled by its commitment to democracy and human rights. Some businessmen can surprise you by their liberalism and social concern. They are developing a new value system around their capitalist beliefs that is much more attractive than the slash-and-burn, short-termist approach of the Anglo American Right, and you can see how intriguingly it connects with New Labour. Blair and Brown are onto something.
Closer to home even critics of the personal journalism inquiring into the dynamics of relationships should be aware that Davos has never laid on so many sessions about the personal. Like Western culture generally, it is being de-masculinised. There is also the beginning of a new argument about how to refashion the international financial system, although on Friday the organisers laid it on two miles from the conference centre. It's still not quite pukka.
But the core of Davos remains its attachment to what it sees as hard economics. It is axiomatic, for example, that privatisation is always good, and stories abound of newly privatised companies that have increased output with a fraction of their old workforce. A group of French and German business leaders argued the European economic and social system has broken down. The French want a more 'flexible' labour market; the Germans more investor activism to shake up sleepy companies. But New Labour should note, it is not so much a strong social security system that is criticised but its interaction with sclerotic companies and powerful unions. This has Thatcherite overtones, but is not quite Thatcherism. Social values count, even for self-styled business 'revolutionaries'; the aim is to create more employment in Europe.
In sum, Davos is groping towards championing a more humane capitalism -a development it knows it must make if the market system it believes in is not to be de-legitimised by violent international oscillation and sudden, unnecessary, brutal economic restructuring. Globalisation is moving on, and Davos with it.
He is a presidential adviser without title or salary.
He is a lawyer who rarely steps into a courtroom, who seldom writes a brief or motion.
He is a lobbyist who does not lobby, at least not in the official sense of the term.
He is a civil rights leader who some say has forsaken his early ideals in a successful quest for a place at the seat of national power. He is a black man who has achieved an unprecedented, unparalleled stature as a Washington power broker, reaching the pinnacle of one of the most obstinately white workplaces in the nation, the K Street megafirm. He is an apparently devoted husband whose reputation as a ladies' man crosses generational, racial and social boundaries.
Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr., grandson of a sharecropper, is a multimillionaire who lives in a Washington mansion and hobnobs with Cabinet members, CEOs of the world's largest corporations, and TV anchors.
Once, he risked shouts of wrath and even bodily harm to help make a revolution against racism. Then, following a decade running the National Urban League, he joined one of Washington's most powerful law firms. Now, he sits on the boards of 11 major companies and spurns an opportunity to become the first black attorney general of the United States because he says he'd rather not open his accounts to public view and because being the first black is "no reason for me to take a job."
But Jordan, 62, needs no title to wield the same kind of influence in the public sector that he has in corporate America. Jordan is, by all accounts, not only a master fixer, but President Clinton's closest confidant, a man with whom the leader of the Free World spends time on the links, on vacation on Martha's Vineyard, in workaday conversation, at Christmas Eve dinners with just the two men and their wives, and most of all, at moments of crisis. While Clinton is, as president, the visible leader in the relationship, the two men's friendship is as close to equal as can be in a bond involving the chief executive, friends of both men say. After all, it was Jordan who first introduced then-Gov. Clinton to world leaders at their annual Bilderberg gathering in Germany in 1991. Plenty of governors try to make that scene; only Clinton got taken seriously at that meeting, because Vernon Jordan said he was okay.
Now, the two friends face the gravest crisis they have met together. Yet just when Clinton would seem to need Jordan most, they are in touch, aides say, only by phone, and it is not even clear whether that much contact has happened. Appearing together in public would only aggravate the popular suspicion that Clinton and Jordan have done something untoward to hide the president's alleged relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
And so both men must appear to be conducting business as usual. The president, largely staying out of public view until tonight's State of the Union address, has made only brief, if forceful, statements about the storm raging around him. And but for a clipped statement to the press last week in which he denied any wrongdoing, Jordan has been seen only as a smiling, carefree pedestrian, entering or leaving work as if nothing had happened. That is Jordan's strength. His cool, his command of himself and his surroundings even under the most relentless pressure, is one of the primary sources of his authority.
Even in a fateful hour, Jordan need not speak out. He has people who will do that for him -- or who will remain silent, whatever he wishes. More than 20 of Jordan's closest friends and associates declined to speak for this story. "Vernon would not want me to add to the noise on this," says one of the city's most prominent lawyers. Even Dick Morris -- once a presidential confidant, now a radio commentator willing to discuss virtually anything -- offers only apologies this time.
What Jordan possesses most of all, as he has often said, is his connections. His job, more than anything else, is to know people, and to know just what it takes to motivate them, whether to do a favor, complete a task or simply be there for a client or friend.
"Vernon attracts clients and he handles their business with integrity and effectiveness," says Robert Strauss, the longtime Washington power broker who brought Jordan to Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in 1982. "He offers judgment and integrity and confidence in himself. He has a manner about him that is warm and attentive."
"Vernon might ask a friend to see someone, and if that person says no, so be it," says Carolyn Peachey, a Washington event planner who frequently socializes with Vernon and Ann Jordan. "There's no pressure, just a warm friendliness."
When Jordan explained his attempt to find a job for Lewinsky at two New York corporations by saying that "I believe to whom much is given, much is required," the remark was ridiculed as a smoke screen for a coverup. Whatever the facts in the Lewinsky mess, the remark is a perfect statement of what it is Jordan does.
"I have seen Vernon -- too many times to count -- help not just young people, but any people," Strauss says. "There are individuals in this country leading corporations and financial institutions, and laboring in the vineyards because Vernon has been there to help and to make a few phone calls for them.
That's why people respect him." Executives at companies Jordan serves as a director say he routinely calls looking for work for recent graduates of Howard University, where Jordan attended law school, or for young interns he's come across at the firm, in the government or elsewhere around town.
"It would not surprise me at all that a young intern would be referred to Vernon for some help in a very innocent way, and that that may have resulted in him making some calls for that person," Peachey says. "I've heard about that hundreds of times."
Boardrooms and Back Rooms Jordan's playing field is extraordinarily broad -- from the NFL, which once considered him for commissioner; to IBM, which turned to him for advice on picking a new CEO; to the president, who used Jordan to probe whether Colin Powell would accept an appointment as secretary of state. Jordan ran Clinton's 1992 transition team, just as he had handled then-D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly's entrance into office two years earlier (even if Jordan hadn't voted in several District elections). Jordan plays a role nearly every president has found necessary in one form or another. Some presidents turned to party sages for a blueprint to the capital; others just want a pal who will keep confidences and keep them sane.
For decades, Clark Clifford and Robert Strauss served Democratic presidents, just as Eisenhower adviser Bryce Harlow and Nixon playmate Bebe Rebozo have helped Republicans. "Presidents need to have somebody they can relax with," says former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler. "He is a good, loyal friend."
Presidents also need friends with whom they can escape from the formalities of office and just be themselves. Jordan, friends say, fulfills that role. Like the president, Jordan is given to eyebrow-raising remarks on the looks of pretty women. At a 1995 state dinner, Clinton joked to Jordan that he ought to keep his hands off the comely blonde seated next to the president. "I saw her first, Vernon," the president said, according to an account in Washington Monthly.
"Nothing wrong with a little locker room talk," Jordan once told a reporter.
One woman in a mid-level federal position describes Jordan as the man who made her career. He picked her, enticed her into standing for the position, and paved her path through confirmation, the woman has told friends. It all happened as smoothly as cognac slipping into a glass, she says -- but for one thing.
"When you're a woman, an attractive woman, and Vernon Jordan does something for you, there is an expectation that there will be some extracurricular activities," the woman says, adding that those activities could be as simple as attending a party with him.
"He's flirtatious; that's just his style," says a Washington woman who has known him for years. "I don't remember anybody hostilely saying, `Vernon hit on me.' I just can't think of a time people were angry about it. People roll their eyes and say, `Oh, that's Vernon.' "
Jordan's eye for women is a regular topic of conversation among reporters, lawyers and others who have been on the receiving end of his comments. Over the years, Jordan has declined to address the subject, saying only that "I like people."
His second wife, Ann -- first wife Shirley died in 1985 after a battle with multiple sclerosis -- told The Post in 1992 that "I'm sure women find him attractive. I do." (Ann Jordan, an active partner in the couple's busy social and political life, was co-chairman of the 1996 Clinton inauguration.) In 1980, Vernon Jordan was shot in the back by a white supremacist who said he was out to kill "race-mixers." The Jordan shooting occurred at 2 a.m. as he was returning to his motel with a white woman. The shooter was acquitted at trial but later admitted the act.
Although Jordan is not talking these days, his response to criticisms of his personal or professional behavior -- whether his attitude toward women, his work on behalf of black America, or questions about how hard he works on behalf of companies he serves as a director -- has always been direct and concise: "I am the custodian of my morality and ethics," he told The Post a few years ago.
If such tactics might seem arrogant in another man, Jordan easily gets away with them, in good measure, friends and critics agree, because of his charm. The components of that charm are supremely simple, friends say: A huge handshake that stays with you just long enough to show that you are something beyond the ordinary acquaintance, yet not too long to make you suspect artifice. A startling and immediate informality of the kind that might cause you to hang up on a telemarketer, but gives even powerful lawyers a sense of being in a circle so inside, most folks don't even know it exists. There's his height (6 feet 4), his glowing smile, his smooth voice and the way he can make it soar, particularly when he is citing Scripture, or the way he can lower it to a confidential stage-whisper, particularly when he is passing comment on the physical assets of a young woman.
Friends -- and especially his longtime black friends -- say Jordan has another asset as well: his race. They say Jordan's business acumen and negotiating skills propelled him up the ladder and over the hurdles of race, but they add that Jordan has proven masterly at using his race to add a certain mystique to his work.
Some say Jordan's chocolaty skin, and particularly its juxtaposition with his white Turnbull & Asser shirts, gives white executives a feeling of achievement, an unspoken sense that they, too, have overcome the nation's racial hangups to become friends with an accomplished black man. And friends say Jordan judiciously uses tools his white colleagues lack -- a comfort with quoting the Bible in business discussions, a rich oratory, and an easy back-and-forth between boardroom formality and back-room back-slapping. Jordan is the ultimate symbol of black privilege, says Randall Robinson, president of TransAfrica, an advocacy group for African issues and a veteran of the civil rights era. In a new book, Robinson calls the pinnacle of Washington power a place he names "Privilege." He says successful blacks in the capital "fear Vernon Jordan disease, a degenerative condition among blacks in Privilege that results in a loss of any memory of what they came to Privilege to accomplish. . . . It afflicts only those blacks who both wish feverishly and after careful screening are allowed to be close to the president socially."
Jordan refuses to discuss such criticism. His friends say he toils constantly on behalf of young black job-seekers. And Jordan has his own way of making statements on race: The first time he dined at the formerly all-white Century Club in New York City, Jordan made a point of ordering watermelon. No Silver Spoons
Jordan, who has rebuffed all interview requests since the Lewinsky matter became public last week, has often cited his mother as his primary influence. In a 1993 interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Jordan's brother, Windsor, quoted his mother, Mary, saying that color was never the driving force in her world. "It was about money," the brother said. "It was about business and money. She'd say, `If you got some money, you can do most anything you want.' "
Jordan's early career was not about money, but about the ability of blacks to gain access to it and every other good thing in American society. After attending segregated schools in Atlanta, he spent the 1960s at the NAACP and other civil rights groups, working to open the electoral process to blacks, and build bridges between the black and white institutions of a segregated nation. If some blacks who spent that decade getting themselves thrown in jail later resented Jordan's quieter approach, others say the street revolts would have been futile without the legal and political work of the likes of Jordan.
And his role was not without danger: In 1961, as a 25-year-old law clerk, he launched his civil rights work by leading a young black student named Charlayne Hunter through a screaming white mob that was out to halt her from integrating the University of Georgia.
It was his mother's work as a caterer -- his father was a mail clerk for the Army -- that gave the young Jordan a peek into the world of wealthy white power. He was smitten with the notion that he, too, could travel in such circles, and he honed the personal skills that would take him there. Peering in at the lawyers dining at an all-white Atlanta club, Jordan once said, "I admired their bearing, the way they articulated the issues, if not the substance of their positions."
"There's very little I've ever seen that would make Vernon Jordan ill at ease," says Peachey. "He knows who he is, and what he set out a long time ago to make into his role in life. This is someone who is supremely comfortable with himself."
That comfort -- and the ease powerful people feel around Jordan -- is an important factor in his appointment to more corporate boards than all but a handful of Americans.
But his posts as director of companies such as American Express, Xerox, J.C. Penney, Dow Jones and Sara Lee have led to criticism from the Teamsters and other large institutional investors that Jordan misses too many meetings and faces a potential conflict because his law firm also represents six companies on whose boards he sits.
Corporations want Jordan on their boards because he is the ultimate Washington insider, because he is wise, because "having an African American on your board may also prove helpful," and because "Jordan is so busy that having him on your board suggests that at least one director will not be in a position to cause you any trouble," says Graef Crystal, a business school professor and frequent critic of overpaid corporate executives and directors.
Crystal has written that Jordan "cannot dodge at least some of the blame" for the poor performance of some CEOs who run companies he serves as a director.
But Jordan has said attendance records at board meetings do not fairly reflect a director's contribution to a company.
Between Jordan and his wife, 17 directorships give the couple an annual income of more than $800,000, in addition to the reported $1 million he makes at his law firm.
Money, he knows, is a double-edged sword for a successful veteran of the civil rights movement. It is a sign of success that can also be thrown back at him as a symbol of selling out.
The late Ron Brown, who felt the brunt of similar accusations, once said that successful black businessmen are "expected to limit our horizons, to be pigeonholed . . . and not break out and accept responsibility and leadership beyond the traditional civil rights movement." Brown defended his friend Jordan as "an incredible achiever."
Jordan's approach is simpler: "I know who I am," he has said in speeches.
Others may criticize, but Vernon Jordan is, he says, "answerable to myself." And he says it with such charm.
Staff writer Ann Gerhart contributed to this report.
Sources inform me that the Bilderberg meeting will be held in the Turnberry resort, Scotland from May 14-16 (this week folks!). The Bilderberg group is an organisation with a steering group of rich and powerful people from Europe and America. Every year they meet in secret to discuss world events.
Very little is reported in the media about the meeting: those Bilderbergers who own the media see to this. See the main Bilderberg page more info.
This year the meeting is being held at more or less the same time as the G8 summit in Birmingham (May 15-17). Immediately afterwards, from May 18-20 in Geneva, the World Trade Organisation will be hosting its 50th anniversary celebrations. No doubt many Bilderbergers and G8 delegates will be converging on Geneva for this event.
Surely the timing of these three events is no coincidence, and confirm the "Hot Spring" theory of a concerted push towards globalisation through a series of co-ordinated meetings in Spring 1998.
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My sources agree on date and venue.
Tony Gosling http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/bilder.htm
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dears,
(whatever i write here is only my personal opinion and has nothing to do with the PGA)
having lived in germany for over 6 years, i have come accross some interesting analyses of the political effect of conspiration theories and similar simplistic explanations of complex systems. this kind of analysis is especially developed in this country due to the role that conspiration theories and similar crap (sorry for the expression) played in the build-up towards the Nazi regime.
sadly, the late 90s are witnessing very similar things than the 30s, when some well-meaning revolutionaries, for the sake of simplicity, actually supported the ascension of an autoritarian regime because the message that they were conveying was actually almost the same one that the nazis were spreading, a message that blaimed a few obscure powerful (and mostly jew) transnational capitalists for the damage created by a complex of the web of economic, political, social and cultural relations (of which these capitalists are no doubt a significant part, but by no means the most important part).
you can ask juergen the kind of response that he got when he showed the hot spring poster at the yearly meeting of BUKO (the Federal Congress of Action Groups on Development Policy, a group of very critical and well informed activists) - they basically saw the poster as very close (to say the least) to extreme-right representations of reality, at the edge of fascist propaganda. i of course do not completely agree with that, but maybe it would be good to revise the kind of positions and thesis that are defended in the "corporate rule" discourse in general. maybe we are unintentionedly supporting the appeal of authoritarian solutions to the problems created by globalisation by the way in which we convey our messages. and this is *NOT* a problem of germany only, just like defending nationalism as a reaction to globalisation is crap everywhere, not just in germany.
i would even go as far (after reading stuff like the book on the MAI) as revising very much with whom we work, or at least posing very strong and direct challenges to the nationalist wing of the anti-globalisation folks (like most of the IFG).
as for Bilderberg, working on this issue is in the best of the cases a waste of time, in my opinion. and there is so much, but really so much to do about visible bearers of power like the WTO, the ERT, the G8 etc that dealing with ghosts seems a bit irresponsible for me.
love,
sergio
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Dear Sergio
The Bilderbergers are just as visible - and mortal - as you or I if you care to wangle your way in to the conference... When the press barons ignore them does that make them ghosts?
Amongst those in the know, Foreign Office types - newspaper editors etc. it is understood that Bilderberg - and several of the other banking and multinational/media lobby groups set the agenda - and Bilderberg, they say, is the big one.
Was the MAI drawn up at the OECD? We find it was prepared by the International Chamber of Commerce, are you suggesting we should not tackle the ICC who had the idea in the first place... they will now be doing their best to pull strings behind the scenes to make sure we do not scupper it. ref: http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/wdm.htm
Public organisations like the OECD do not set the agenda. They are a forum to legitimize tyrannical initiatives, they deflect public debate and criticism, and are a poodle's proving ground. Don't waste time with them!
I know the problem of capitalism is structural but the structure does propel powerful 'ideas people' to the top. These people organize think-tanks that spell out policy. As Observer editor Will Hutton says, who attended last years Bilderberg conference:
"No policy is made here; it is all talk, some of it banal and platitudinous. But the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide" (...../reports.htm)
Come on - let's expose and take on the real decision makers not their political poodles.
Nationalism is certainly not an alternative but it is only one of the voices that criticise the world elites. Nationalism is equally narrow minded as globalization- international solidarity around a charter of human and environmental rights - such as access to culture - through radio & TV and the right to land - seems like a common sense way forward.
Let's look at how sucessful - in terms of creating the kind of world we want - groups like the Brazilian Landless movement (MST) have been in demanding resources and setting up their own schools and hospitals etc. Bottom up and brilliant!
Just as with the TV news, it's the stuff that gets missed out, the Bilderbergers and the MST, that matters.
respect
Tony Gosling
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------------------------------------------
Dear Sergio, I believe the main problems with conspiracy theories is that they provide a distraction to the real issues and that they lead to paranoia in people with ego problems. However they can have entertainment value, as the X Files has shown. Aliens and ghosts can be fun for some people. Others get paranoid, however, because their ego makes them think they're so important that the authorities could be bothered to spy on them.
Bilderberg has nothing to do with aliens or ghosts. The participants are all human and the attendance list of a previous year's meeting can be found on the web site I quoted. One reason it is secret was that the founders thought people in large corporations, trade unions and politics can't say what they really think in case it affects the share price, the membership or the opinion polls. The theory was that if the media was kept away these people could talk frankly together to tackle some of the world's problems that had only been made worse by excessive publicity. However from what I've read it has failed, since many of the corporations whose leaders attend are involved in takeover battles and their leaders would never talk frankly in each others' presence, not even in secret. Perhaps the scheduling of Bilderberg at the same time as the G8 is evidence of the failure of Bilderberg to get the politicians interested in them. If so, perhaps we should be pleased about its failure.
I have no dilemmas about opposing secret societies. I do, on the other hand, have dilemmas about opposing things like the MAI which though bad in themselves could, in passing, help to remove the discrimination against co-operatives in raising investment internationally.
With regard to the timing of the G8 just before the WTO meeting, I think that there is a significance in this. Eight of the richest countries are talking about common interests immediately before going to the world organisation promoting free trade. If these eight countries manage to agree a common negotiating position, the rest of the WTO countries would have a difficult task opposing them.
As for attitudes to the left on corporate rule: we must be aware that trade unionists generally prefer transnational corporations (TNCs) to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs). There are several reasons for this:
1. Workers in TNCs in rich countries often have better conditions than in SMEs: more flexible hours, better chances of promotion, better deals for workers with disabilities etc.
2. It can be easier to organise and fight for workers' rights within TNCs, since they have a high public profile and stand to lose more from a consumer boycott than smaller companies.
3. Because of past protests about TNCs, the trade unions have won legal protection for some of their rights within TNCs. In the EU for example they must by law have works councils, whereas SMEs are exempted from this requirement at present.
4. TNC shares are mostly held by institutional investors - pensions funds etc - who invest money on behalf of large numbers of ordinary people. SMEs on the other hand are usually owned by rich individuals. Therefore TNCs have more "stakeholders" and more people have a share of their profits.
We need to be aware of these arguments and the counter-arguments to them when talking to people from a trade union background.
There are also, of course, many right-wing groups that oppose TNCs, and it is easy for people who just see a poster to mix up the left-wing and right-wing groups opposing TNCs.
Incidentally, if you don't think that TNCs and their leaders are the most important component in the push for global free trade, then who is?
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dear tony
the whole point of my message (reproduced at the end) was just that IF we "expose and take on the real decision makers" that give birth to "tyrannical initiatives" (as you say in your message) WITHOUT making the whole analysis of the structural problems of capitalism and all what comes with it (as happens most of the times), THEN our efforts, if successful, are likely to have the effect of promoting "easy" solutions to complex problems that might end up being worse than what we are fighting against.
if the MAI was there only because of some groups like the ICC, all what we had to do would be getting rid of the ICC. if international capitalism would exist only because of the Trilateral Commission, all what you would need would be applying the "final solution" to the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and similar capitalists (funny enough, many of them jew or mason) and that would be all. unfortunaltely things are not so easy, as we know, but anti-corporate rule activisim often seems to convey this message (e.g. "Hot Spring" poster).
besides that (and this is not my main point anyhow), it is neither Bilderberg nor the Trilaterals that can impose patents on life almost all over the world - it is a "poodle's proving ground" like the WTO that can do it, mainly because it is completely unknown by 95% of the population (also those with access to TV, or I would even say particularly by those with access to TV).
However, I was not trying to convince anyone about doing or not doing any kind of campaigning. if you think that targetting bilderbergs and similar folks makes sense, that's fine. i was trying to call attention about the fact that sometimes simple representations of reality can help advancing agendas that have nothing, but really NOTHING to do with bottom-up solutions like practised by the MST and similar movements.
i will not continue this discussion at this point because i'm quite busy helping out with all the mobilisations against the WTO in Geneva. if you want, we can continue it in june. looking forward to meeting you one of these days, sergio hernandez p.s. again all what i wrote here is only my personal opinion.
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That's all I want is to get some discussion on these guys going...... what do you think?!?! --
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Dear Sergio,
- whatever I write here is also my personal opinion and should not be seen as a reaction from A SEED Europe as a network-
How are you? It has been a long time since we actually had a good discussion about the way forward with social movements against globalization and corporate rule. It's a pity, but you know that I was too busy with becoming a father to attend the different meetings PGA organised in the last months.
Yesterday I came across your correspondence with Stuart and Tony, triggered off because of Stuarts' message about the Bilderberg group meeting. I noticed that you have decided to finish that discussion, as understandibly you are too busy with the preparations for the PGA activities in Geneva next month.
Still, I think that your letter needs a response, as several things in it I consider too serious to let go unchallenged, especially if these are shared with a larger group of people who might get a very strange impression from what this 'Hot Spring' campaign is all about.
So, a few words from me - I have left the original message for people who might have missed the earlier correspondence- :
(See Stuart's first note above) - ed.
Let me start by saying that I am very surprised that Stuarts note on the Bilderberg meeting triggered of such a hugely violent response from you. I think your reaction is way over the top; I personally see nothing in Stuarts rather factual message that justifies the kind of comparisons you make.
I can only conclude that the one thing that got you upset was his remark about the 'Hot Spring Theory' about the concerted push etc. (For those who didn't get it, this refers to the Hot Spring campaign -what's in a name?- that A SEED Europe started last January.)You seem to translate this immediately as a simplistic conspiration theory, but that is not what he writes.
I also don't like simplistic conspiracy theories that suggest that nothing is what it appears and that the whole world is actually run by a small elite who are firmly at the steering wheel. I agree completely with you that such theories do not reflect the complexity of what is going on.
But nobody mentions a 'conspiracy theory' here, and the Hot Spring campaign is not about this either. Yes, it IS about educating people about the 'concerted push' of institutions, TNCs, think tanks, media etc etc towards economic globalisation, but that is not a conspiracy. You don't have to believe in a conspiracy to notice that many of these actors have the same -but sometimes also conflicting!- agenda and that this is no coincidence. You know better than anybody that World Bank / IMF/ WTO policies work in the same direction and that there is a lot of mutual consultation going on, etc. no conspiracy, but for sure a concerted push!
What A SEEDs' Hot spring campaign tries to do is to make people see these links between institutions and events, that these are not separate and isolated, but mutually strengthen eachother. We urge people to take this into account when they campaign against one of the events or institutions.
> having lived in germany for over 6 years, i have come accross some
> interesting analyses of the political effect of conspiration theories
and
> similar simplistic explanations of complex systems. this kind of
analysis
> is especially developed in this country due to the role that
conspiration
> theories and similar crap (sorry for the expression) played in the
build-up
> towards the Nazi regime.
> sadly, the late 90s are witnessing very similar things than the 30s,
when
> some well-meaning revolutionaries, for the sake of simplicity,
actually
> supported the ascension of an autoritarian regime because the message
that
> they were conveying was actually almost the same one that the nazis
were
> spreading, a message that blaimed a few obscure powerful (and mostly
jew)
> transnational capitalists for the damage created by a complex of the
web of
> economic, political, social and cultural relations (of which these
> capitalists are no doubt a significant part, but by no means the most
> important part).
>
> you can ask juergen the kind of response that he got when he showed
the hot
> spring poster at the yearly meeting of BUKO (the Federal Congress of
Action
> Groups on Development Policy, a group of very critical and well
informed
> activists) - they basically saw the poster as very close (to say the
least)
> to extreme-right representations of reality, at the edge of fascist
> propaganda.
Now, here you take a few huge steps: somebody writes about the Bilderberg group and the 'Hot spring theory', you respond with a comparison of simplistic theories that allowed the Nazis get to power and then suddenly you are discussing the poster that A SEED produced for the Hot Spring campaign. Not as an example of how simplistic reasoning allows nazism to rule but even as being "very close -to say the least" (what do you mean, 'the perfect example of'?) "extreme right representations of reality, at the edge of fascist propaganda".
Somebody who has never seen this poster and reads your letter probably gets the impression that it is full of blonde people, claiming Lebensraum for their race, against a backdrop of swastika flags... It is not like that; it is certainly not the best poster we ever made and we have received more comments on it but the image is of a globe that is ruled by corporate interests, in the form of a man riding it like a horse and whipping it with papers (trade agreements). It is simple, but it lays no claim to being the all encompassing analysis of the world in all its aspects. I would say that a poster is by definition a simplification of reality.
(Having traveled for months in Brazil, where I visited several MST locations, and having lived in the Philippines for six months, where I worked with the anti IMF/WB coalition of which the KMP was a member, I could provide you with numerous pictures and slides of murals, flags and lealfets of PGA members like MST and the KMP where the 'social reality' of the world is simplified in a way that makes every A SEED poster look like a sophisticated website. This is NOT AT ALL to discredit the work of these coalitions, I only want to point out that in the political work they/we are involved in, a poster is not the way to judge an organisation.)
Your comparison I find therefore extremely unpleasant, to the point of being an insult to those who made this poster. I also wonder in all earnest why you feel such a need to portray A SEED in this way as a dangerous, almost cryptofascist organisation. I feel that such an attack is way beyond the 'Play Fair Europe' attitude you once promoted.
One more remark about simplistic representations of reality and the use of symbols that might give rise to such comparisons; We do not disagree about this at all I think, but maybe you should also be critical towards PGA; I personally find the idea of a public burning of documents in front of the WTO building a much more distasteful idea than any image of a man riding a globe on a poster; if there is any image that reminds me of nazis it is people burning books!
> i of course do not completely agree with that, but maybe it
This I find very strange; first you make a very strong mal-intentious remark and in the next line you refuse to take responsability for it. It is either .. or; if you do not agree then you should not write this in the first place.
> would be good to revise the kind of positions and thesis that are
defended
> in the "corporate rule" discourse in general. maybe we are
unintentionedly
> supporting the appeal of authoritarian solutions to the problems created
by
> globalisation by the way in which we convey our messages and this is
*NOT*
> a problem of germany only, just like defending nationalism as a reaction
to
> globalisation is crap everywhere, not just in germany.
>
> i would even go as far (after reading stuff like the book on the MAI)
as
> revising very much with whom we work, or at least posing very strong
and
> direct challenges to the nationalist wing of the anti-globalisation
folks
> (like most of the IFG).
>
> as for Bilderberg, working on this issue is in the best of the cases
a
> waste of time, in my opinion. and there is so much, but really so much
to
> do about visible bearers of power like the WTO, the ERT, the G8 etc
that
> dealing with ghosts seems a bit irresponsible for me.
Well, I could remark a lot about the rest of your letter, some of which I agree with and others not, but I think I leave that to the time when we do have the chance for a beer. I sincerely hope that instead of this kind of exchanges, which in my eyes are intended to discredit people and organisations, we can concentrate in the future on building closer links between the very few allies that we have.
I wish you all the best with the PGA work in Geneva -which I unfortunately also have to give a miss, as I will be changing diapers ;-)
greetings, Johan Frijns
(A SEED Europe office member)
>
> A SEED Europe
> PO Box 92066
> 1090 AB Amsterdam
> Netherlands
> tel: 31-20-668-2236
> fax: 31-20-665-0166
> email: aseedeur@antenna.nl
> WWW: http://www.antenna.nl/aseed/
>P.O.Box 92066
>1090 AB Amsterdam - The Netherlands
>tel. +31 20 6682236
> fax +31 20 6650166
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Responding to Stuart (2)
I am not sure about your reading of TNCs. They are huge, authoritarian structures who have no ideology except growth and and accumulation. I disagree that they necessarily are more susceptible to union pressure, after all they are international and can make medium to long term decisions about moving their power bases to areas where labour is cheaper or more compliant. It has been the British experience of destroying trade union power/organisation that has succeeded in attracting TNCs here. The only sectors of British industry in which TUs survive is in the public sector. If anything the logic os that TUs prefer STATE OWNERSHIP to TNCs!
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Did anybody see the Guardian Passnotes yesterday (Wednesday 13)?
A coy little critique of Bilderberg if ever I saw one. If anybody asks me I am willing to type it in and send it round. [yes please sent - ed.]
I must say Sergio I also disagree with you. If the work was done to pull together information on the activities of these groups and to find a way to force them into the public consciousness, people would be at least as concerned about them as about the World Bank and the IMF, which after all hardly sends the average citizen into a frenzy each time they are mentioned.
Though I do think that conspiratorial presentations have the wrong effect - turning off everyone except the hard core and therby having the opposite effect to the one we want
Jamie
Jamie Hartzell
Centres for Change
Archway Resource Centre
1B Waterlow Road
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Dear Tony - saw some of your stuff on the net and heard yesterday of the Bilderberg meeting today at Turnberry. I am a complete novice at all this but I "know" that the world wouldn't be in the state it was if there weren't some pretty nasty people in charge at the top.
I won't bore you with my opinions but wanted to tell you that I raised the topic of today's Bilderberg meeting on Radio Scotland about 10 minutes ago (10.50am). They were discussing ethical foreign policy and Robin Cook.
My point was that Robin Cook is just a small pawn in a big game and I mentioned the Bilderberg meeting in Ayr and how ironic I thought the timing of today's discussion was. Ian Black (a professional "loudmouth" - you know, the sort who makes opinionated statements and loves to defend them) was taking calls and I wanted to hear his opinion on the Bilderberg group.
Granted he listened (I did not expect Radio Scotland to call back to have me on air!) but I have never heard him so quiet! He asked whether I felt the UK Govt knew of the BB group and I pointed out that Lord Carrington was Chair, that Malcolm Rifkind attended 1996 meeting (he was Foreign Sec then I believe) and that Tony Blair attended 4 years ago (before he was Labour leader, I believe. I'm not to hot on politics!) I am involved in local environmental campaigning and read Hansard on occasion, but I think of myself as very naive.
I have seen questions on BB in Hansard (by the same MP) but they just get a negative answer.
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No one is saying CORPORATE LOBBY GROUPS should not be tackled, investigated, exposed for the position they occupy within the structures of global capitalism, and their role in directing global capitalism. Articles MAIGALOMANIA are essential. However, is Bilderburg such a corporate lobby group, or is it doing other things, is there enough evidence, or is it mere conspiracy theories? As far as the Guardian Pass notes were concerned , they didn't imply more than conspiracy theories- had it been a john Vidal article with a lot of hard evidence that would be different.
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I hold the official Press Release for the 1998 meeting in my Hand. I think it is up to you to inform people, while the meeting takes place, more or less next door to you.
The address is: Turnberry Hotel Ayrshire, Scotland
Date of meeting 14-17 May 1998
Topics are: -Asia Crisis - Japan -Turkey - NATO - EMU
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Just to let you know that I got the Toronto office of Reuters to service their London office with information on the Bilderberg meeting in Ayrshire, with full background information from our own Bilderberg report.
You may want to check the British Reuter's feed [How? ed.] over the next
day or so to see if they follow up on this, or to perhaps even call and encourage
them!
Reuter's is the only agency, with some help and encouragement, which has
even mentioned the Bilderberg meetings over the last two years - not a bad
thing to remind them of, either, since everyone loves an exclusive...!
With best wishes,
John Whitley
The Bilderberg mob. They are a group of high financiers. The story is that no one will succeed politically and in government unless they have the support of the Bilderberg's and without which their economy can be put into turmoil.
The New Unhappy Lords by A K Chesterton (founded Candour magazine and the League of Empire Loyalists and he was one of the founders of the National Front.) There is a similar group called Council of Foreign Relations (C.F.R.) and also the Federal Reserve (which I assume you know is a private bank which lends to the US government and may have resulted in the death of Kennedy for printing his own dollar bills - an activity that ceased after his timely demise. "There is no difficulty in recognising in this secret gathering the mysterious Bilderberg group of which Prince Bernhard is the official sponsor. As the author surmised after the Saint Simons Island Meeting, the purpose was to speed up the cause of internationalism and it is interesting to have confirmed the fact that these agents of the Money Power were directly concerned with the European Free Trade area. Am I write in thinking that the work undertaken by the Bilderberg group was once undertaken by such bodies as Chatham House." This is part of a chapter headed Prince Bernhard's Secret Society.
"In 1961 an article in the Toronto Star read as follows 'The tenth Bilderberg conference attended by seventy delegates from Europe and North America wound up yesterday after three days of discussion of common problems. Participants, whose names were not disclosed, included leaders of the political industrial labour and professional fields of both continents, an official statement said. Chairman of the meeting was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who left Quebec yesterday for home after making private visits to cities in Mexico the US and Canada. The statement said although the conference "followed the original Bilderberg concept of not attempting to reach conclusions or to reccomend policies, there was substantial agreement on the need to promote better understanding and more effective co-ordination among the Western nations. Points of particle concern included the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in world policy, the strengthening of both the Nuclear and non Nuclear deterrent power of the alliance and the responsibility for control of atomic weapons inside NATO.", the statement said. "The implications for Western Unity of the change in the relative economic strength of the UN and Western Europe were also discussed at some length.
In the Londoners Diary section of the London Evening Standard about ten years ago there was a lead story article with photos of Gordon Brown and John Smith who found it essential to start meeting the Bilderberg group. They were the first Labour people in many years to be invited to meet the Bilderberg group and attend their meetings which appeared to indicate that they were beginning to be considered acceptable for government.
-- The Avengers
Just to let you know that we've now posted the 1998 Bilderberg Conference summary to our Web site. It's at: http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/bild98.htm
We've also posted and linked it to our detailed series of 1996 Press Releases on the Toronto Bilderberg meeting. They're at: http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/bildpres.htm
Dear Tony - thanks for your message re. Radio Scotland. You may like to know that the early evening news that day did a "spoof" cover of the BB meeting (you know, James Bond theme tune in the background) but better than nothing. The name 'Bilderberg' wasn't mentioned but there were a couple of demonstrators [wow! ed.] with placards bearing the name. I think it was Scotland Today (ITV) not BBC's Reporting Scotland. Am about to look up your web site for the latest. Cheers - Angela
Yes, I do think the Bilderberg group is extremely dangerous and alarming, and it's great that you're keeping tabs on it. What I just can't buy is John Whitley's extraordinary theory that it is causing its opponents to align themselves with anti-semitism so that they can then be prosecuted. It's one of the stupidest conspiracy theories I've ever heard, and that's saying quite a bit!
There's a long and ignoble tradition in the far right of conflating shadowy and powerful financial interests with a global Jewish conspiracy. The tradition pre-dated Hitler, but was used by him to great effect, just as it is now being used by David Icke, the BNP and militia-based movements in the States. As a Jew, I find the resurgence of this tradition terrifying. I think it's essential to distance ourselves from it, and to recognise that some of the anti-Bilderbergers are using the legitimate issue of the BB's horrifying degree of control for their own, extremely dodgy ends. Please don't fall into this trap: it's really important to separate the issue from its exponents, and to condemn the aims of some of those exponents as forcefully as we condemn the Bilderberg Group.
Tony:
Thanks for forwarding this piece of arrant nonsense.
I really have to shake my head when I read this kind of response. Even a cursory knowledge of Wall Street's support of, and financing of Hitler [including finance provided by American Jewish finance houses] shows that these people pursue the great game at least in part by policies of discord and division which they can then amplify, utilize and manipulate. I would recommend that your correspondent do some hard academic study on this matter, including the solid works of Professors Anthony Sutton and Carroll Quigley. I note with wry amusement that the phrase "this is the stupidest thing I ever heard" is usually a guarantee of utter, uniformed ignorance on the topic under discussion.
Does your incensed correspondent think, for example, that the "elite" members scattered throughout the Israeli government have any more loyalty to their nation and people than the "elite" members of the British or American governments have? Not a bit - they'd sell [and are selling] their country out just as readily as Bilderbergers Blair and Clinton.
That raw, uninformed anti-Semitism exists is undeniable and regrettable. That it is then stoked and used by the elite to "divide and conquer", as well as to restrict all kinds of other lawful activities, is equally true.
For example, a Customs regulation was brought in to effect in Canada denying importation of books or materials "attributing the world's problems to any identifiable group." Within a short time it was being used to stop importation of Professor Carroll Quigley's "TRAGEDY AND HOPE", a work of impeccable and towering scholarship, which attributed [with proof] many of them to the schemes of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, and other such elitist groups!
I never once stated that "it is causing its opponents to align themselves with anti-semitism so that they can then be prosecuted." I stated CLEARLY that the elite *encourage* and finance anti-Semitism [as they did in pre-Nazi Germany and are once again doing in that country] for their own purposes and ALSO so that they could then label or prosecute as *inferred anti-Semites* anyone who said that ANY global group was behind such activities. This fool can't even read a clear posting, and makes up his own argument to rebut as he goes along! I don't have time for that kind of intellectual dishonesty.
You may, however, cheerfully post this response of mine if you wish. You may also make it clear that I have no sympathy of any kind with any form of anti-Semitism and even less sympathy for idiots who attempt to put false arguments in my mouth.
As for saying that the US militia is anti-Semitic, your correspondent is a paramount ignoramus! That there are some anti-Semitic groups who've cloaked themselves with the "militia" label is true, but they form a mere fraction of the movement. The real rebuttal to this type of hysterical credulity is the FACT that Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership [a highly-respected US-wide organization] enjoys extraordinarily warm and cordial relations with the US militia movement as a whole, many of its members are active members also of their local militia units, and it is held in wide affection and earned respect because of its impeccable research and fearless outspokenness in defence of the individual American's constitutional freedoms.
Your correspondent, in the crowning ignominy, has thus fallen exactly into the trap that the elite intended, for does not he himself argue that "There's a long and ignoble tradition in the far right of conflating shadowy and powerful financial interests with a global Jewish conspiracy." Exactly what the global elite, who have a long tradition of financing groups who make such statement, want him and everone else to believe. Now I suppose he'd like them to take the next step and whittle away at everybody's freedoms a little more in order to reign in these groups.... How clueless!
with best wishes,
John