I saw that a few other people have been mentioning conspiracies. And I know that one of the reasons I used to read Boo back 184 years ago on Kos was some of his forays into these subjects. So this morning I thought it might be interesting to talk about this stuff a bit.
Before I begin though let me just add a word of caution. Knowing some of this stuff can be really scary. I know it used to scare me quite a lot. I also know those feelings of being afraid can be very overwhelming. So if you think that might be the case for you, please don’t read any further. This isn’t a horror movie where the fear is real but the cause for it is just imaginary threats and once the lights go on the fear disappears. This stuff is real so we all need to take our mental health seriously and not overindulge in scaring ourselves. Ok? Super.
Now, back to my fear. It seems like a million years ago but I’m thinking it was actually about 10. The internet existed but it was a small and growing phenomenon and certainly not what it is today. I mostly remember using it for trading music (in that “new” format MP3 back when it was still copyrighted) and reading overseas newspapers. A lot of information that’s online didn’t exist then too much and one was “alternative” news sources or, in the current parlance, “conspiracy” websites.
So one day I was perusing through a very large university library when I saw a small newspaper lying next to a chair. The name of that newspaper was the “Spotlight” which is no longer being printed these days but they do have a website. It was full of a lot of really scary information (and some of it utter b-s) but I was completely shocked at what I read there. I remember actually looking around to see if anyone was watching me read that thing. I actually felt like a KGB spy or something and I felt more guilty than if I was reading a pornographic magazine.
One subject that I had never heard of was the meeting of the Bilderberg Group. The story sounded so fantastic I assumed it belonged in newspapers which covered alien surgeries and Elvis sightings but alas this one is real.
There’s not a whole lot that’s known about the Bilderberg Group but here is what is known factually. Every year at a very posh and exclusive resort or hotel, a lot of world leaders and powerful business chiefs get together for a meeting. What is discussed there is unknown because it is never publicized. Not even the topics discussed are ever released.
The original purpose of the meetings (first held in 1954) seems fairly innocuous. It was a way for western leaders (political and business) to get together just to create ties and get some face time and get to know one another to promote better communication, especially between Canada/USA and Europe. Since it was held behind closed doors, all the politicians wouldn’t have to pose for the cameras and have to report on what was said.
Now here is where it starts to get a little weird. I can conceivably see current and former political leaders and business people getting together to hang out and talk about stuff without the media being present and reporting on every word. Except that the media IS in attendance. I know for a fact Peter Jennings was a regular attendee. Other high-level reporters (and owners of media companies) regularly attend.
The location and dates of the meetings are not kept secret. The list of those attending is usually either released or discovered by people who watch the front gates of whatever the resort is that year and reporting it. What makes the whole thing odd is that the fact that this meeting being held at all is almost never reported in the “mainstream” media.
I am willing to bet a few BooTribbers have never even heard of this meeting. I didn’t even believe it could be true until I started looking and found tiny little blurbs buried in the back pages of “real” newspapers about it.
Now if you’ve got a meeting where Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger are all getting together behind closed doors, I think that’s something people might want to know about. Add in there several British Prime Ministers (both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, likely to be the next PM), cabinet members and European leaders including the King of Spain, the Italian Prime Minister, leaders of Canada including both Stephen Harper (current PM) and Paul Martin (PM until 2006) it gets even more newsworthy. Then throw into the mix a lot of CEOs and chairmen of big banking and oil companies. Then add in there both high-status journalists as well as guys like Andrew Knight, who is the director of a major media group (News Corp) and it becomes positively absolutely newsworthy.
But it isn’t newsworthy. It isn’t reported on in any big way. George Bush or Tony Blair going on vacation is regularly reported on. Almost everything these high profile people do is at least mentioned, especially those who are ostensibly “public servants”.
At the 2006 meeting, Vernon Jordan was there. A lot of people know him for his role in the Clinton administration. He is current a member of the board for a lot of corporations including American Express, Xerox and JC Penney. He was also one of the people in the “Iraq Study Group” who came up with the “wise old men” advice that Bush is currently ignoring.
At the 2006 meeting, George Pataki was there and there is (or was) talk of him being the favorite for the 2008 Republican nomination. Richard Perle was there at the 2006 meeting. So was Dennis Ross a guy who has had and still has a lot of influence on American policy towards Israel. He’s also a regular guest on the Fox News channel and on the advisory committee for Scooter Libby’s defense.
Guys who are less known like Paul Desmarais were there too. Desmarais is a businessman and not a politician but he openly counts a number of politicians as his close friends including the current Bush. Desmarais also owns a large stake in the oil company Total which had extensive oil dealings with Saddam Hussein. And Desmarais is on the advisory board for the Carlyle Group.
A leading Iranian-born guy who publishes books and gives lectures on the Middle East was there (this guy). He also writes a lot of stuff about Iran including about Iran’s nuclear program. His main theory is that the nuclear enrichment program is solely a project of the ruling “elite” and not supported by the masses.
Phillip Zelikow was there too. Not only is he Condi Rice’s right-hand man but he also was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission.
And on and on. Are you getting the picture yet? A lot of very influential and powerful people are meeting behind closed doors. The media is invited but only the media which absolutely promises not to report on the event. The media that doesn’t attend barely mentions it. And yet by anyone’s account this is totally a newsworthy event.
Do I know that these people are discussing? I have no idea. Do I think they are the secret world government that coordinates their domination of the world? Again I don’t have any idea what they talk about because I don’t get invited and transcripts do not exist. But I do have to wonder why the very subject of the meeting behind held is given such a scant amount of attention.
The full list of the 2006 attendees is here (about 130 people). Google those you don’t know and please tell me what you think.
Pax
this is truly a strange occurence. No wonder so many conspiracies crop up about it.
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Sorry no frog in this fairy tale …
After a 1952 trip with Queen Juliana to the United States, Prince Bernhard was heralded by the media as a business ambassador extraordinaire for the Netherlands. With his global contacts, in May of 1954 he was a key figure in organizing a meeting at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands for the male-only business elite and intellectuals of the Western World to discuss the economic problems in the face of the then growing threat from communism.
Hotel Bilderberg in OosterbeekAs a result of the success of this first meeting, it would become an annual affair known as the Bilderberg Group. The idea for the European Union, first proposed by Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950, was encouraged at Bilderberg.
Queen Wihelmina, London and the Prince
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."If or not the meeting represents some sort of conspiracy, any such gathering without real media coverage seems to me to be reason for worry. Secrecy and behind-the-door congregations are not usually for the benefit of more than the attenders. Since I am not an attender, the meeting makes me worry what is being decided in my absence.
The most important point, I think, is how much is decided without the knowledge or will of the voters playing any role.
Can we really claim to live in a Democracy if back-door arrangements can be made without our input?
I would argue we’ve not lived in a Democracy for a very long time, that we live in a somewhat covert oligarchy, verging these days on a near covert dictatorship. THAT is what keeps me up late at night.
That the Iraq war was planned an executed in advance, despite the fact that there was no evidence of WMD, was really frightening. That we’re about to see the same thing again in Iran is even more frightening.
That people like Rush Limbaugh are allowed to call fellow citizens of this country cockroaches and traitors, either of whom the punishment for is death, is frightening.
We live in very dark times, amid all the sun and pre-Oscar blabbery.
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if you would connect the dots to the Gladio group.
… secret stay-behind army.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."He writes about what he calls “deep politics”
Here’s the cliff notes version…
“Since World War Two, the United States has had in effect two conflicting styles of conducting foreign policy, one for other developed states, and a quite different style for regions of little economic interest apart from their mineral resources — above all oil and natural gas.
As a general rule, the US has worked through the established governments of developed states. But in Third World areas and regions with oil or other minerals, the US has done whatever it thought necessary to secure access when it wished to do so. As Michael Tanzer observed some years ago, a number of CIA-engineered coups in the 1950s and 1960s, starting with Iran in 1953, can be related to the intentions of those countries to nationalize their oil companies.
The US has also embarked on at least three major military campaigns — in Vietnam, Colombia, and now Afghanistan, where oil has been one of the factors in the US commitment, and oil lobbies among the groups urging engagement. Other campaigns which seemed unrelated to this concern — notably Kosovo — have also been interpreted by strategic realists as important to America’s oil “needs.”
Whether by coincidence or not, these three major campaigns (as well as others) have all aligned the US on the same side as powerful local drug traffickers. Partly this has been from realpolitik — in recognition of the local power realities represented by the drug traffic. Partly it has been from the need to escape domestic political restraints: the traffickers have supplied additional financial resources needed because of US budgetary limitations, and they have also provided assets not bound (as the US is) by the rules of war. And partly (I believe) it has been from a concern to manage the drug traffic itself, and ensure that it will never fall under the control of another hostile power.
These facts, however coincidental in origin, have led to enduring intelligence networks involving both oil and drugs, or more specifically both petrodollars and narcodollars. These networks, particularly in the Middle East, have become so important that they affect, not just the conduct of US foreign policy, but the health and behavior of the US government, US banks and corporations, and indeed the whole of US society.
It has become customary for US intelligence agencies (or what I call cryptocracies) to draw on the assets of the illicit drug economy (or what I call the cryptonomy) in pursuit of various goals, from negotiation to corruption. This has been a major factor in the failure of our government to address the problem of drugs and the cryptonomy reasonably, and the concomitant growth of the cryptonomy to a point where the US economy has become dependent on it. (For another example of this, click here.)
We see proof of this in the appalling US government handling of BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a bank controlled by the petrodollars of Sheikh Zayed al-Nahayan the Enir of Abu Dhabi, and a bank which became a major global channel for the laundering of narcodollars and other illicit funds….”
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/qov.html
PETER DALE SCOTT: CURRICULUM VITAE
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/cv.html
I don’t believe in any “theories” that lead to a conclusion that anyone really has any control of what direction the world is headed. The world is in too much chaos to believe there any ‘New World Order” out there. I do believe these various competing interests control a whole lot more that they claim to control, though, and I think the line between what is defined as “government” and what is defined as “organized crime” has a whole less separation than most would believe.
I would assume it to be no coincidence that the “War on Drugs” started under Reagan-Bush I and the “War on Terror” started under Bush II-Cheney?
From what little I know of the Bilderberg group and judging by the list of participants in the 2006 meeting I, for one, is not that worried. From what I can see, most of the Scandinavian participants, and even most non-Scandinavian participant, were not holding any government position at the time of the meeting, which I suspect seems to be a precondition.
Counting the Norwegian participants I see people of very different political standings, from the far right to left-of-center social democrats, which, in my book, excludes a unified political platform. This seems to be more of a world think tank on political and social issues, where the participants want to be able to think freely without them being scrutinized by the press.
Even so, what is a bit puzzling is how conform the world press seems to be in their opinion on what is important news and not. They know where and when the meetings are to take place and many of these people are still people with power even if they don’t seem to hold government positions. In general where there is power the press ought to follow.
As Arthur Gilroy has suggested, I recommend Rigorous Intuition (rigint.blogspot.com), currently my favorite site of the weird and the conspiratorial.
Thank you very, very much.
Thanks for the opening disclosures, soj – I’ve spent many a sleepless night after reading rigorous intuition. (which…ahem…I think I may have been referencing long before AG, but it was mostly in an effort to maneuver Ghostdancer back into conspiracy theory sites…against his wife’s pleadings.) 😉
Much like your feeling of viewing pornography, I get that “ewww” feeling inside about clicking on any of your links. Maybe I’ll feel differently in the morning. 🙂
g’night and thanks again for your great story and sourcing, m’dear. Always a pleasure, even if it’s an “icky” one. 🙂
-a
What is so scary about CEOs, academics, politicians, intellectuals… meeting to discuss informally about world issues?
There is plenty of events like this which bring together the “élites”: The Aspen Institute, The Helsinki Process, The World Economic Forum… the only one that gets a wide media coverage is the WEF’s yearly conference in Davos (but the WEF holds many more meetings).
If you look at the attendees, as Gjermun E Jansen points it, they are from very diverse political, cultural or ideological origin. Depending on the meeting, you could also find NGOs and Trade Unions leaders. Thinking decisions are made during these meeting just shows a very poor knowledge of the economic and political decision-making processes.
I sometimes attend some of them (not the Bilderberg), and I know a few of this one’s attendees. That doesn’t make me a member of an underground world government…
I dont know if it’s a “so what” or a “time to be scared” event. I don’t. But I do know that the difference between WEF and Helsinki and G8 and all the rest are that they are covered by the media (including bloggers now). Bilderberg isn’t.
That’s all I know.
Pax
I’m astounded. I’ve been speculating and writing about the “powers behind the government” for years, suggesting to people that they were not even American, and I’ve been ridiculed more than once. I’m well-read and constantly digging…but ignored this organization until now. That’s why I read this site. Thanks for sending me on another Google hunt.
But any thoughtful observer can see that the long term motives that are impelling the short term actions of neo-cons are not necessarily in the best interest of Americans. You have made a great contribution with your diary–food for a lot of thought.
I’ve always relegated this group to the “Illuminati-type” theories, never really bothering to take a moment and see who attends this. I’m quite shocked actually. It’s undeniably important to know what is discussed at these meetings–after all, with such concentrated power all at one location, doesn’t that make it all the more important to We the People?
I need to ask those of you reading this how in the world this diary has stayed in the top 1-3 reco list for two days now.
Do you want to hear more “conspiracy” stuff? Was it just some kind of lack of other quality diaries (which I sincerely doubt)? Or what? Without a large number of comments there’s no way for me to know why this diary stayed up so long.
Pax