Bilderberg 2004 - What's going on?

[Capulet]

Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory

By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Online


The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever.
Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organisation in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn't go a bundle on its switchboard operations.

Telephone inquiries are met with an impersonal female voice - the Dutch equivalent of the BT Callminder woman - reciting back the number and inviting callers to "leave a message after the tone".

Anyone who accidentally dialled the number would probably think they had stumbled on just another residential answer machine.


Leiden in Holland, the inauspicious base of the Bilderberg group
But behind this ultra-modest façade lies one of the most controversial and hotly-debated alliances of our times.

On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting.

For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.

What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.

Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.

The shadowy aura extends further - the anonymous answerphone message, for example; the fact that conference venues are kept secret. The group, which includes luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and former UK chancellor Kenneth Clarke, does not even have a website.

DISCREET AND ELITE
This year Bilderberg has announced a list of attendees
They include BP chief John Browne, US Senator John Edwards, World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Mrs Bill Gates

In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg.

In Yugoslavia, leading Serbs have blamed Bilderberg for triggering the war which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the London nail-bomber David Copeland and Osama Bin Laden are all said to have bought into the theory that Bilderberg pulls the strings with which national governments dance.

And while hardline right-wingers and libertarians accuse Bilderberg of being a liberal Zionist plot, leftists such as activist Tony Gosling are equally critical.

A former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK.

"My main problem is the secrecy. When so many people with so much power get together in one place I think we are owed an explanation of what is going on.


Timothy McVeigh was among those who believed the conspiracy theory
Mr Gosling seizes on a quote from Will Hutton, the British economist and a former Bilderberg delegate, who likened it to the annual WEF gathering where "the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide".

"One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting," says Mr Gosling.

But "privacy, rather than secrecy", is key to such a meeting says Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, who has been invited several times in a non-reporting role.

"The idea that such meetings cannot be held in private is fundamentally totalitarian," he says. "It's not an executive body; no decisions are taken there."

As an up-and-coming statesmen in the 1950s, Denis Healey, who went on to become a Labour chancellor, was one of the four founding members of Bilderberg (which was named after the hotel in Holland where the first meeting was held in 1954).


The alternative - the WEF welcomes journalists
His response to claims that Bilderberg exerts a shadowy hand on the global tiller is met with characteristic bluntness. "Crap!"

"There's absolutely nothing in it. We never sought to reach a consensus on the big issues at Bilderberg. It's simply a place for discussion," says Lord Healey.

Formed in the spirit of post-war trans-Atlantic co-operation, the idea behind Bilderberg was that future wars could be prevented by bringing power-brokers together in an informal setting away from prying eyes.

"Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended. The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions.

"In my experience the most useful meetings are those when one is free to speak openly and honestly. It's not unusual at all. Cabinet meetings in all countries are held behind closed doors and the minutes are not published."

That activists have seized on Bilderberg is no surprise to Alasdair Spark, an expert in conspiracy theories.

"The idea that a shadowy clique is running the world is nothing new. For hundreds of years people have believed the world is governed by a cabal of Jews.

"Shouldn't we expect that the rich and powerful organise things in their own interests. It's called capitalism." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3773019.stm

Why are SO MANY influential and important people meeting in one place? I don't see anything on the news about the security over there? Shouldn't the world have the right to know what is going on behind those doors? My belief is that this is no consipiracy theory, something secretive is going on behind those doors.

 

[test_specimen]

Wow, they haven't even got a website? Conspiracy, I say. Strange that BBC thinks this is worth a story.

 

[marioh]

Shouldn't the world have the right to know what is going on behind those doors?

No. Unless their is some law that states that meetings like this are either illegal, or need to be fully accountable to the public, these people deserve privacy, no more, no less, than you and I. And if they choose to not let you in on what was going on in those meetings, then that is their right.

 

[newfangle]

@Marioh

Though there power is great, I don't think they have a great deal of malicious intent. Especially if they invite Mrs. Gates in!

 

[Capulet]

No. Unless their is some law that states that meetings like this are either illegal, or need to be fully accountable to the public, these people deserve privacy, no more, no less, than you and I. And if they choose to not let you in on what was going on in those meetings, then that is their right.

But the idea of so many influential people in the same place sparks curiousity, doesn't it?

 

[Bozo Erectus]

The only bimbo on the list isnt Mrs Gates, its John Edwards.

 

[Capulet]

BBC Report on Bilderberg

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/bbc_radio_4_bilderberg.mp3

 

[marioh]

But the idea of so many influential people in the same place sparks curiousity, doesn't it?

Indeed, it does.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

They are probably all just partying and getting drunk anyways.

 

[stormbind]

What happens if we colaborate and start a website pretending to be them? Who is gonna know it isn't...

 

[RoddyVR]

everyone will know we're not realy them when Mrs. Gates gets her husband to shut down all our computers at once and for ever. and any computers we buy will not turn on either.
oh, and then there's the hired assasins.

 

[stormbind]

It's OK, I'll protect you...

Maybe I should do it alone. I think it would make a neat science projects

 

[Mr Black]

BBC Report on Bilderberg

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/bbc_radio_4_bilderberg.mp3

What song is that in the background, I really like it!

Anyway, this site has everything you need to know on the creators of the European Union. This is not their official website Obviously! They have none!

http://www.bilderberg.org/

 

[Double Barrel]

Of course a person has to be completely crazy to actually think that the world's most powerful and influential men could get together behind closed doors and have an agenda.

And a person would be certifiably insane to ever think that current events are the outcome of government officials and big business interests ever deciding what course of action the world needs to be a "better place".

Why, even the thought that multinational corporations have any influence in government actions is the very seed that causes psychotic episodes of paranoid delusional tin-foil hat wearing lunatics! It is unreasonable to ever even mention that the U.S. invaded Iraq at the behest of oil interests and Halliburton...wait...

 

[JohnRM]

Until there is some concrete evidence that there is something foul going on; I don't have an opinion.

 

[stormbind]

And a person would be certifiably insane to ever think that current events are the outcome of government officials and big business interests ever deciding what course of action the world needs to be a "better place".

Similarly, it requires serious dilusion to think that any of the governments or big businesses know how to make the world "better"

How do you know they didn't plan it, and just happen to have screwed up?

 

[Double Barrel]

"Better" is always a matter of perception, my friend.

 

[Double Barrel]

Until there is some concrete evidence that there is something foul going on; I don't have an opinion.

The problem with this logic, John, is that once you have concrete evidence of something foul, it will be too late...not that I'm advocating a position either way.

 

[JohnRM]

I am not saying we should wait for something bad to happen. Some form of investigation needs to be conducted. I realize some have tried this, but until you have proof of wrong, you can't act.