Honorary
Chairman
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The News in Portugal - complete Bilderberg 1999 articles http://www.the-news.net/bildeberg/index.htm
An Australian view http://homestead.dejanews.com/user.anax/files/anls19.html
June 3 1999
The 47th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sintra, Portugal, June 3-6 1999 to discuss the Atlantic Relationship in a Time of Change. Among others the Conference will discuss NATO, Genetics, Emerging Markets, The New Economy, European Politics, US Politics, International Financial Architecture, Russia. 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 Holland, where the first meeting took place in May 1954. That pioneering meeting grew out of the concern expressed by leading citizens on both sides of the Atlantic that Western Europe and North America were not working together as closely as they should on common problems of critical importance. It was felt that regular, off-the-record discussions would help create a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult postwar period.
The cold war has now ended. But in practically all respects there are more, not fewer, common problems - from trade to jobs, from monetary policy to investment, from ecological challenges to the task of promoting some kind of international security. It is hard to think of any major issue in either Europe or North America whose unilateral solution would not have repercussions for the other.
Thus the concept of a European - American forum has not been overtaken by time. The dialogue between these two regions is still - even increasingly - critical.
What is unique about Bilderberg as a forum is the broad cross-section of leading citizens [Peter Mandelson, fiddler of the House of Commons register of members interests; who was kicked out of the government for obtaining a loan fraudulently is now a leading citizen! ed.] that are assembled for nearly three days of informal and off-the-record discussions about topics of current concern especially in the fields of foreign affairs and the international economy; the strong feeling among the participants that in view of the differing attitudes and experiences of the Western nations, there remains a clear need to further develop an understanding in which these concerns can be accommodated; the privacy of the meetings, which has no purpose other than to allow participants to speak their minds openly and freely. [<grammatical error in the original release] In short, Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced.
Bilderberg’s only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued. Since 1954, forty-six conferences have been held. The names of the participants as well as the agenda are made available to the press. Participants are chosen for their experience, their knowledge, and their standing; all participants attend Bilderberg in a private and not an official capacity.
There usually are about 120 participants of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labor, education, communications.
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 at the meeting.
There will be no press conference. A list of participants is appended.
Hotel Caesar Park Penha Longa, Sintra, Portugal
June 3-6, 1999
Halberstadt, Victor - Professor of Economics, Leiden University
Honorary
Chairman
Davignon, Etienne - Chairman, Societe Generale de Belgique
I - Agnelli, Umberto - Chairman, IFIL - Fianziaria di Partecipazioni S.p.A.
E - Aguirre y Gil de Biedma, Esperanza - President of the Spanish Senate
USA - Allaire, Paul A. - Chairman, Xerox Corporation.
P - Amaral, Joaquim Freitas do Amaral - Member of Parliament.
S - Aslund, Anders - Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
P - Balsemão, Francisco Pinto - Professor os Communication Science, New University; Chairman, Impresa, S.G.P.S.
S - Barnevik, Percy - Chairman, Investor AB.
USA - Bayh, Evan - Senator (D. Indiana).
I - Bernabé Franco - Managing Director and CEO, Telecom Italia.
S - Bildt, Carl - Member of Parliament.
CDN - Black, Conrad M. Chairman, Telegraph Group Limited.
F - Boucher, Eric Le - Chief Editor, International, Le Monde.
USA - Boyd, Charles G. - Executive Director, National Security Study Group.
CDN - Chastelain, John A.D. de - Chairman, Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.
GB - Clarke, Kenneth - Member of Parliament.
N - Clemet, Kristin - Deputy Director General, Confederation of Business and Industry.
F - Collom, Bertrand - Chairman and CEO, Lafarge.
USA - Corzine, Jon S. - retired Senior Partner, Goldman Sachs & Co.
P - Cravinho, João Cardona G. - Minister for Infrastructure, Planning and Territorial Administration.
GR - David, George A. - Chairman of the Board, Hellenic Bottling Company S.A.
USA - Dodd, Chistopher J. - Senator (D. Connecticut).
USA - Donilon, Thomas E. - Attorney-at-Law, O'Melveney & Meyers.
TR - Erçel, Gazi - Governor, Central Bank of Turkey.
TR - Ergin, Sedat - Ankara Bureau Chief, Hürriyet.
USA - Feldstein, Martin S. - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research.
INT - Fischer, Stanley - First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund.
I - Fresco, Paolo - Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
I - Giavazzi, Francesco - Professor of Economics, Bocconi University, Milan.
CDN - Godsoe, Peter C. - Chairman and CEO, Bank of Nova Scotia.
USA - Graham, Donald E. - Publisher, The Washington Post.
NL - Grave, Frank H.G. de - Minister of Defense.
P - Grilo, Eduardo C. Marçal - Miniter of Education.
USA - Hagel, Chuck - Senator (R. Nebraska)
S - Hedelius, Tom C. - Chairman, Svenska Handelsbanken.
N - Hegge, Per Egil - Editor, Aftenposten.
CDN - Herrndorf, Peter A. - Former Chairman and CEO, TV Ontario; Senior Visiting Fellow, University of Toronto.
USA - Hoagland, Jim - Associate Editor, The Washington Post.
N - Höegh, Westye - Chairman of the Board, Leif Höegh & Co. SAS; Former President, Norwegian Shipowners' Association.
USA - Holbrooke, Richard C. - Ambassador to the UN designate.
B - Huyghebaert, Jan - Chairman, Almanij N.V.
D - Ischinger, Wolfgand - State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
INT - Issing, Otmar - Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank.
USA - Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. - Senior Partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP (Attorneys-at-Law).
BG - Kamov, Nikolai - Member of Parliament.
TR - Kiraç, Suna - Vice-Chairman of the Board, Koç Holding A.S.
USA - Kissinger, Henry A. - Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
D - Kopper, Hilmar - Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank A.G.
GR - Kranidiotis, Yannos . Alternate Minister for Foreign Affairs.
USA - Kravis, Marie-Josée - Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
USA - Leschly, Jan - CEO, Smith Kline Beecham p.l.c.
INT - Liikanen, Erkki - Member of the EC.
CDN - MacLaren, Roy - High Commissioner for Canada in Britain.
CDN - MacMillan, Margaret O. - Editor, International Journal.
GB - Mandelson, Peter - Member of Parliament.
USA - Mathews Jessica T. - President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
USA - McDonough, William J. - President Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
USA - McGinn, Richard A. - Chairman and CEO, Lucent Technologies.
P - Mello, Vasco de - Vice Chairman and CEO, Grupo José de Mello.
F - Mestrallet, Gérard - Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux
UKR - Mityukov, Ihor - Minister of Finance.
F - Moïsi, Dominique - Deputy Director, IFRI.
INT - Monti, Mario - Commissioner of the EC.
P - Nabo, Francisco Murteira - President and CEO, Portugal Telecom.
D - Nass, Mathias - Deputy Editor, Die Zeit.
NL - Netherlands, Her Majesty the Queen of the.
ICE - Oddsson, David - Prime Minister.
PL - Olechowski, Andrzej - Chairman Central Europe Trust.
FIN - Ollila, Jorma - Chairman of the Board and CEO, Nokia Corporation.
INT - Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso - Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank.
D - Perger, Werner A. - Political Correspondent, Die Zeit.
GB - Porrit, Jonathon - Programme Director, Forum for the Future.
I - Profumo, Alessandro - CEO, Credito Italiano.
CH - Pury, David de - Chairman, de Pury Pictet Turretini & Co. Ltd.
A - Randa, Gerhard - CEO and Chairman, Bank Austria AG.
USA - Rattner, Steven - Deputy Executive, Lazard Freres & Co., LLC
USA - Richardson, Bill - Secretary of Energy.
USA - Rockefeller, David - Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank International Advisory Committee.
E - Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias - Executive Vice Chairman, BSCH.
S - Rojas, Mauricio - Associate Professor of Economic History, Lund University; Director of Timbro's Centre for Welfare Reform.
GB - Roll, Eric - Senior Adviser, Warburg Dillon Read.
S - Rosengren, Björn - Minister for Industry, Employment and Communication.
P - Salgado, Ricardo E.S. - President and CEO, Grupo Espírito Santo.
P - Sampaio, Jorge - President of Portugal.
P - Santos, Nicolau - Editor-in-Chief, Expresso.
D - Scharping, Rudolf - Minister of Defence
NL - Scheepbouwer, Ad J. - Chairman and CEO, TNT Post Group.
A - Schenz, Richard - CEO and Chairman of the Board, OMV AG
A - Scholten, Rudolf - Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG.
D - Schrempp, Jurgen E. - Chairman of the Board of Management, Daimler Chrysler AG.
DK - Seidenfaden, Toger - Editor-in-Chief, Politiken
USA - Shapiro, Robert B. - Chairman and CEO, Monsanto Company.
RUS - Shevtsova, Lilia - Carnegie Moscow Center.
P - Silva, Artur Santos - President and CEO, BPI Group.
E - Solbes Mira, Pedro - Member of Parliament, Socialist Party.
H - Surányi, Gy+orgy - President, National Bank of Hungary.
GB - Taylor, J. Martin - Formerly Chief Executive, Barclays PLC.
USA - Thoman, G. Richard - President and CEO, Xerox Corporation.
USA - Thornton, John L. - President and co-COO, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
RUS - Trenin, Dmitri V. - Deputy Director, Carnegie Moscow Center.
F - Trichet, Jean-Claude - Governor, Banque de France.
USA - Tyson, Laura d'Andrea - Dean, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.
FIN - Vanhala, Matti - Chairman of the Board, Bank of Finland.
FIN - Vartia, Pentti - Managing Director, Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA).
CH - Vasella, Daniel L. - Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG.
GR - Veremis, Thanos M. - Professor of Political History, University of Athens; President of Eliamep.
A - Vranitzky, Franz - Former Federal Chancellor.
NL - Waal, Lodewjk J. de - Chairman, Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions (FNV).
GB - Wolf, Martin - Associate Editor and Economics Commentator, The Financial Times.
INT/US - Wolfensohn, James D. - President, The World Bank.
D - Wolff von Amerongen, Otto - Chairmand and CEO of Otto Wolff GmbH.
TR - Yücaoglu, Erkut - Chairman, Tusiad.
CZ - Zantovsky, Michael - Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Secutiry, Czech Senate.
A - Zimmermann, Norbert - Chairman, Berndorf AG.
GB - Micklethwait, R. John - Business Editor, The Economist.
GB - Wooldridge, Adrian D. - Foreign Correspondent, The Economist.
3.9.99, rev 2.3.2000
Grattan Healy
The 'global elite' have performed yet another coup. They have so far had many of their people elected to high office - Bill Clinton, Lionel Jospin, Tony Blair, as well as Jacques Santer, Wim Duisenberg (now head of the European Central Bank), and many others.
Chair of the Commission Romano Prodi was a Steering Committee Member of the Bilderberg Group in the 80s - I have a copy of their booklet from 1982, which incidentally also shows that Wim Duisenberg was the then Treasurer. What is noticeable that Prodi has limited the declarations of his Commissioners to 10 years, something not done in the previous Commission, and so has allowed himself not to declare this former highly sensitive role.
Since the head man is a member of the elite, it should be no surprise that he has nominated 7 other elite members (and incidentally 4 others suspected of involvement in fraud!). These 7 are:
Bilderberg claims to have no formal membership as such, but has a list of 120 or so invitees which changes from year to year, refelecting a sort of changing membership. It has a core group, reflected in the Steering Committee.
Either way, in the spirit of openness, and also the written answers from Commissioners like Liikanen (http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg2/hearings/pdf/com/answer/liikanen/en/default.pdf), proposing the declaration of all political roles (in answer to a Green question), I would have thought these rather important roles should be mentioned. (see the Commissioners declarations at http://europa.eu.int/comm/commissioners/interests/index_en.htm)
27Jan00 - A New Chairman for the Bilderberg
Conferences - Etienne Davignon
Etienne Davignon was closely involved in setting up the unaccountable corporate policy-making body European Round Table in the early eighties. ERT feeds policy into the EU which elected MEP's then rubber-stamp. In the early eighties he was EU Industry Commissioner. Davignon also has been one of the founders of AMUE (Association for the Monetary Union of Europe).
Please refer to the relevant chapters in Europe Inc (1997 edition) as available on the Internet. http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/eurinc/chap2_1.html and http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/eurinc/chap2_5.html.
Davignon has chaired the ERT for several years and is currently chairing AMUE.
European Round Table of Industrialists - official homepage http://www.ert.be/
ERT Critical report from ASEED http://www.itk.ntnu.no/ansatte/Andresen_Trond/finans/others/EU-ecologist-24-4
Erik Wesselius <erik225@knoware.nl>
CEO website http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/
"A clique of the richest, economically and politically most powerful and influential men in the Western world [who] meet secretly to plan events that later appear just to happen" -The Times
Heard all about the 'leaked' minutes from the last meeting of conspiracy-faves the Bilderberg Group? How Russia was given carte blanche to bomb Chechnya, and all the rest? Well you can read the leaked documents IN FULL on the SchNEWS website (Most of the 'surfers' visiting our site since we put the Bilderberg thing on it have been US security agencies and multi-national companies. True!)
Ever wondered how you get to be a Bilderberger? Well, there's a kindergarten where you'll learn all you need to know. The British American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP) [see page on this website] was set up by Ronnie Reagan, Rupert Murdoch and Sir James Goldsmith in 1985 for the elite of up 'n' coming thirtysomethings from both sides of the Atlantic to be nurtured in the 'special relationship' existing between the two nations. Past members Peter Mandelson and George Robertson have both recently spoken at Bilderberg. BAP has just held its 14th annual shindig (described by ex-member Jeremy Paxman as 'four days of beer') in Harrogate, with this years' theme 'Making Culture Count'. No Tracy Emin here, of course, just Saatchi & Saatchi execs and the like discussing art's role in the global marketplace and in the words of Alison Holmes, chair of the executive committee: "It's all been quite mad, sorting out the world's problems and drinking too much". Quite. BAP emerged in response to worries about the anti-nuke, anti-American drift of the Labour Party in the early '80's and the current co-ordinator is all-round bad egg Lord Carrington, ex-NATO chief and chair of the Bilderbergers for 9 years. Sounds dodgy? Never! As Alison Holmes told a Big Issue journalist: "Bilderwhat? I've never heard of that in all my life."
In the first of a two-part series, Gibby Zobel uncovers how the global power elite decides our future at the shadowy Bilderberg Summit each year. Documents from the secret summit - leaked to The Big Issue - reveal what they said about money and war
For nearly 50 years an elite group of the West's most powerful men and women, a shadow world government, have met in secret. Tony Blair is in the club. Every US president since Ike Eisenhower has been too. So are top members of the British Government. So are the people who control what you watch and read - the media barons. Which is why you may never have heard of Bilderberg.
"Lines of black limousines, unmarked except for a 'B' on the windscreen, swept in, sometimes accompanied by police escorts, sometimes not," says an eyewitness of this year's meeting in Portugal. "A helicopter was overhead, and other security officers were prudently patrolling the hillsides. The policy on duty at the gates made it crystal clear that they were only the tip of the security iceberg."
For two-and-a-half days, relaxing in exclusive luxury amid vast armed security, the powerful leaders discussed past and future wars, a European superstate, a global currency, genetics, and the dismantling of the welfare state. Unaccountable, untroubled and unreported, the Bilderberg meetings have formed the basis of international policy for decades. Last year freelance journalist Campbell Thomas was arrested just for knocking on doors near the clandestine gathering in Turnberry, Scotland. He remained in custody for eight hours. Other journalists were told that even the Bilderberg menu was confidential (a move they named 'Kippergate'). A serving police officer told 'The Big Issue': "Special Branch and CIA were everywhere - they were calling the shots."
Never in its 47-year history has the content of these discussions been made public. Until now. 'The Big Issue' has uncovered the Bilderberg Papers - the secret minutes of this year's meeting in Portugal. Some of it is banal, some of it sensational. It blows the lid off the thoughts of presidents, chairmen of multinational companies, world bankers, Nato chiefs and defence ministers.
The meetings are shrouded in such secrecy that Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked last year in the House of Commons, failed to disclosed his own attendance at Bilderberg in Athens in 1993.
- Nato gave Russia carte blanche to bomb Chechnya
- 'Dollarisation' could be the the next step after the single European currency
- A senior British politician thinks New Labour is "consolidating the victories of the Right". On welfare cuts he adds: "It might be easier for somebody who claimed to be a socialist to impose change."
- After Kosovo Nato is in danger of mimicking a colonial power
Although 14 media chiefs and journalists from across eight countries attended this year, none of them chose to tell their readers of the meeting. It would not serve their interests to be cut out of the elite loop. With an invite-only guest-list, covert operations and such deafening silence, it is little surprise that conspiracy theories have thrived, from the anti-semites who believe in a Jewish global elite, to the paranoid delusions of the radical left. The effect has been to leave the importance of the meetings tainted by association. It suits the Bilderbergers perfectly.
The Bilderberg meetings began in a Dutch hotel on May 29 1954, from where it gets its name. 'The Economist', in a rare reference to it in 1987, said that the importance of the meetings was overplayed but admitted: "When you have scaled the Bilderberg, you have arrived."
At last year's meeting, former defence minister George Robertson, who is now Nato secretary-general, planned strategies with the Bilderberg chair and ex-Nato chief Lord Carrington. 'Observer' editor-in-chief Will Hutton attended Bilderberg in 1997. He believes that it is the home of the "high priests of globalisation". "No policy is made here," he says, "it is all talk. But the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide."
The 64-page leaked document - The Bilderberg Papers - is dated August 1999. The powerful transatlantic clique at the private hideaway included new Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson MP, environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, Kenneth Clarke MP, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, billionaire oil and banking tycoon David Rockefeller, Monsanto chief Robert B Shapiro, and the head of the World Bank, James D Wolfensohn.
Although Asian and African politics and economics were discussed the continents' countries had no seats at this summit. The official eight-strong UK delegation included bankers Martin Taylor, former chief executive of Barclay's and Eric Roll, a banker for Warburgs. They were joined by Martin Wolf of The Financial Times and two journalists from The Economist, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, who, the minutes indicate, prepared this document.
The papers are marked 'Not for Quotation'. It states: "There were 111 participants from 24 countries. All participants spoke in their personal capacity, not as representatives of their national governments or employers. As is usual at Bilderberg meetings, in order to permit frank and open discussion, no public reporting of the conference took place." None of the quotes in each of the 10 sections are directly attributable to any named individual, but the moderator and panellists in each discussion are listed. It is made perfectly clear, however, who is saying what. It is not known who else is in the audience, but their comments are identified by their country and profession.
Over two weeks, we report on the central themes of this year's meeting. This week: money and war. Next week: genetics - what the head of Monsanto and a leading British environmentalist discussed behind closed doors.
Giants of the global banking world, in a debate titled 'Redesigning the International Financial Architecture', discussed the concept of 'dollarisation' which is sure to send euro-sceptics into a frenzy. Around the table were Kenneth Clarke MP, Martin S Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanley Fisher, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ottmar Issing, board member of the European Central Bank and Jean Claude Trichet, governor of the Bank of France.
Bilderberg is understood to have been the birthplace of the single european currency. The deputy director of the IMF opens by remarking: "It is worth noting that this is the first Bilderberg meeting where the euro is fact rather than a topic for discussion."
During the discussion, "One of the panellists was sure that if the euro worked, more regional currencies would emerge. Others raised the question of dollarisation as a possible cure."
"The only possible reason for surrendering control of your monetary policy to Washington (where nobody would make decisions on the basis of what mattered in Buenos Aires [or London]) is the fairly rotten financial records of the governments concerned."
Despite Tony Blair's presidential stance over Kosovo, Nato's historic war was pilloried at Bilderberg. "The mood at the meeting was surprisingly subdued... most of the speakers concentrated on the downside of the conflict," begins the discussion on Kosovo.
Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, weighs in, saying Kosovo "could be this generation's Vietnam". Nato is in danger of replacing the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires in a series of permanent protectorates, he said. Another panellist warned that troops could be there for 25 years. Kissinger felt that this left Nato open to accusations of colonialism. "How did one persuade countries like China, Russia and India that Nato's new mandate was not just a new version of 'the white man's burden' - colonialism?" asked Kissinger.
Charles D Boyd, executive director of the US National Study Group, said Kosovo is now a wasteland, a humanitarian disaster comparable with Cambodia. "Nato used force as a substitute for diplomacy rather than as a support for it... it used force in a way that minimised danger to itself but maximised danger to the people it was trying to protect."
An unnamed British politician "wondered whether the [Nato] alliance could hang together after the end of the war. He warned that "there would be little popular enthusiasm for putting lots of resources into solving the region's gigantic problems."
Peter Mandelson told the group that "two roads stretch in front of Nato. One leads to a new division of Europe, where the continent returns to its ethnocentric ways. Under this scenario, the UN is fairly powerless, Russia and China are excluded, and Nato is little more than an enforcer. The second road is a little closer to the nineteenth century Europe, with all the great powers - not just America and the EU, but Russia, China and Japan co-operating."
Office of the Press Secretary (Hartford, Connecticut) ________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release November 4, 1999
As Prepared for Delivery
November 4, 1999
Two weeks ago, I gave a speech in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations about the unique and paradoxical position in which America finds itself today. Some of you may have read a few articles about it in the op-ed pages. Come to think of it, some of you may have written a few of those articles!
In the speech, I pointed out that we are at the height of our power and prosperity. We face no single, overriding threat to our existence. The ideals of democracy and free markets which we embrace are ascendant through much of the world. After 50 years of building alliances for collective defense, common prosperity, and wider freedom, we now have an unparalleled opportunity to shape, with others, a better, safer, more democratic world.
Most Americans are ready to seize that opportunity, though we sometimes differ about how. Yet there are also some who question whether we need to seize it at all. They believe America can and should go it alone -- either by withdrawing from the world and relying primarily on our military strength to protect us from its dangers . . . or by imposing our will on the world, even if it means alienating our closest allies. There are elements of isolationism in that view; for whatever its intent, its effect is to isolate America from its friends and to define America's interests in the narrowest of terms. There are clearly elements of unilateralism in it as well.
I made these arguments in my speech to stimulate a discussion about America's appropriate role in the world. It appears that I've succeeded. This is a discussion Americans need to be having -- before decisions are made that do real harm to our capacity to lead. And I'm pleased to have the opportunity to move that dialogue forward this evening with you.
First, let me make one crucial point. I have made it explicitly clear that the view with which I take issue is rejected by serious people in both political parties. Over the last six and a half years, the Administration has worked with Republicans and Democrats in the Congress to enlarge NATO and bolster democracy in central Europe, to approve aid to dismantle former Soviet weapons, to extend NAFTA to Mexico and create the WTO, to ratify START II and the Chemical Weapons Convention, to support our troops in engagements from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf, and to launch a host of other international initiatives. This week, we are working with a bipartisan coalition in the Congress to pass trade bills for Africa and the Caribbean Basin. Along the way, most of our critics have disagreed with the means we have used to pursue America's goals in the world; they have not questioned the need to pursue the goals themselves.
In some respects, the debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was no different. Many opponents of the Treaty were motivated by serious and legitimate concerns. Most also understood that an outright rejection of the Treaty would hurt America. They urged the Senate to delay the vote, seeking time and a process that might address their questions. Yet they were thwarted by a small group of Senators who showed little concern for the will of most of their colleagues or the consequences to America of voting the Treaty down.
That same small but increasingly powerful group is responsible for the steady decline in our international affairs budget -- to the point where the gulf between America's aspirations in the world and our ability to realize them is growing.
Eight years ago, led by Senators Nunn and Lugar, the Congress initiated our effort to help safeguard nuclear weapons and expertise in the former Soviet Union. Now Congress is forcing us to choose between cutting back that effort, which is vital to our security, or slashing our support for programs to help Russians, Ukrainians, and others build more democratic societies, which is just as critical to our long term interests. For years, Congress has recognized our interest in spurring growth in poor countries that are committed to economic reform. Now it is refusing to fund a historic debt relief initiative that will do just that, an initiative we and all our G-7 partners embraced because it is morally right and economically smart. For years, Congress has supported America's partners in the Middle East peace process. Yet this year, as that process enters a critical and hopefully final stage, it has so far refused to fund the commitments we made to the Israelis and Palestinians at the Wye negotiations. Now, there are indications they may restore those funds. That is good. But not good enough. America's global leadership is not divisible.
What is more, Congress is still not meeting our obligations to the World Bank and IMF, and still conditioning the payment of our UN arrears on unrelated issues. It has cut by 60% our request for peacekeeping. Right now, from Kosovo to East Timor to Sierra Leone, the welcome advent of peace has produced the need for peacekeeping to secure it. In each place, the UN is launching missions that will save lives and prevent future crises, missions to implement agreements we in many cases helped broker and for which others will provide most of the troops. We must support these missions, not only with our UN vote, but by bearing our share of their costs. That's the only acceptable position for the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation.
I have argued that these Congressional actions do not result from simple differences over policy, or from partisanship. They reflect the coherent philosophy of a dominant minority -- which sees international spending as inherently disconnected to America?s interests, views most multilateral enterprises with suspicion and considers most difficult international endeavors -- from supporting democracy in Russia to peace in the Balkans to growth in poor countries -- as likely to fail and therefore not worth trying.
That way of thinking has been with us in the United States for a long time. In recent times, we faced it in the 1950's when Senator Robert Taft challenged the internationalist wing of the Republican party, arguing that we should rely less on our allies and more on our own defenses. We saw it in the 1970's, when Congressional Democrats voted to bring our troops home from Europe, twisting legitimate concerns about Vietnam into a call to pull America out of the world.
But it is even more dangerous today -- because the need for American leadership has only grown with the end of the Cold War. America and its allies still face many dangers: some as old as ethnic conflict, some as new as cyberterrorism, some as fundamental as the risk that the democratic transitions which made this new era possible will not survive the strains of economic turmoil and political strife. That is why it is urgent that internationalists find common ground around a common agenda of our own. We must learn to recognize when our beliefs are being threatened. And we must defend them together.
What does it mean to be an internationalist in America at the turn of this century? It is to study the lessons of this century and reach the conclusion Franklin Roosevelt did in 1945: that America "cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away." We believe that our way of life cannot thrive in a world dominated by violence, misery, tyranny and corruption. We believe Americans benefit when nations coalesce to deter aggression, to resolve conflicts, to promote democracy, to open markets, to raise living standards, to prevent the spread of dangerous weapons, and to meet other dangers no nation can meet alone. And we believe that one key to forging such coalitions is American leadership.
The bipartisan center that believes America must play an active role has often disagreed about how we ought to play our role -- from Central America in the 1980s to Bosnia in the 1990s. But even when we differ over policy, we do not differ over purpose. And we share a conviction that America must have the means and the will to lead.
With that in mind, and to advance the critical discussion of America's role, let me suggest some of the principles that internationalists should be able to agree upon. Every one of them is being challenged today.
First, we should agree that America must have the strongest, best trained, best equipped military in the world, to deter potential adversaries and if need be defeat them. That's why the President has worked with Congress to reverse the decline in military spending over the last decade.
But we should also agree that it is just as vital to reverse the decline in spending on international affairs that began more than a decade ago. We need to invest in the programs that keep our soldiers out of war -- that prevent conflicts, promote freedom, boost prosperity, fight terrorism and drugs, meet our share of global responsibilities, and bring friends and allies to our side. We not only need a Defense Department that has the resources to respond to more than one major crisis at the same time; we need a State Department with that ability as well. Otherwise, our military will no longer be our last resort in times of crisis. It will be our only resort.
Second, we should agree that while America cannot and should not respond to every outbreak of violence and injustice around the world, neither can it afford never to respond. For local conflicts can affect our national interests and have global consequences.
Americans have long recognized this would be true of a renewed conflict in the weapon-rich and tolerance-poor Middle East, or in Korea. It could be true of a war in South Asia between nuclear-armed states. It was true of the war in the Balkans, which would have spread beyond Bosnia and Kosovo had we let it boil. It can be true when mass killing and displacement threaten to throw whole regions into chronic turmoil. Internationalists can question whether our national interests in each case justifies a particular kind of involvement -- unilateral or multilateral; military, economic, or humanitarian. But they should not question whether these interests exist.
After all, virtually every big war started as a small war that the world did not care enough to do something about. Sometimes, not acting is the right choice. But not acting must be a conclusion, not a conviction.
That puts an extra premium on a third principle we should be able to agree upon: America must be willing to act alone when our interests demand it, as we have many times in the last six and a half years. But we should also support the institutions and arrangements through which other countries help us bear the burdens of leadership. That's why we must pay our dues and our debts to the UN, and do our part when others take responsibility for making peace: whether Europeans in the Balkans or Asians in East Timor or Africans in Sierra Leone. Otherwise we will be left with a choice in future crises between doing everything ourselves and doing nothing at all.
Fourth, all internationalists agree that it was imperative for America to fight the Cold War against stifling, expansive oppression and that we always will be ready to resist threats to our freedom and way of life and that of our allies. At the same time, we should agree that America doesn't need a great enemy to be a great country. And if the end of the Cold War has given us a chance to weave our former adversaries Russia and China into the global community as stable, peaceful, open, law abiding states, we should do everything in our power to seize it.
To do that, we need to see both Russia and China with a sense of realism.
The question we face about Russia is no longer whether we will be threatened by its strength, but whether it will become too weak. Will it become unable to maintain stability and achieve prosperity at home, or to control the flow of people, weapons and technology across its borders? Will it become trapped, as it seems to be now, in cruel, unending cycles of violence in the North Caucasus that claim innocent lives and undermine the confidence of its friends? Realism tells us the road ahead is full of such obstacles for Russia and that only Russians can travel it. But it also tells us Russia has overcome enormous obstacles in ten years -- from an empire to a nation-state, from totalitarianism to democracy, from communism to a flawed but free market economy.
Internationalists can differ about the best strategies for encouraging that transformation. But we should not lose faith in our capacity, despite all the difficulties, to help achieve it, nor can we abdicate our responsibility to try. In fifty years, I seriously doubt anyone will say we did too much to support the emergence of a stable, democratic Russia. They are more likely to say we did too little.
As for China, realism cautions us to be prepared for a future in which this emerging power emerges as a threat. But we should not presuppose that outcome, or make it more likely by acting as if it has already happened. Realism also tells us to see China in all its complexity: As a country that has lifted hundreds of millions of its citizens from poverty and expanded personal freedoms, but whose progress is constrained by resistance to political reforms vital to its long-term growth and stability. The best way to promote the right outcome is to protect our security, while continuing a policy of principled, purposeful engagement with China's leaders and its people.
A fifth principle internationalists ought to agree upon is that while we should not rely on treaties alone to protect our security, it is in America's interest to establish standards of international conduct that reflect our values and play to our strengths.
More than 30 years ago, when we signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, pessimists were sure that despite its provisions, there would be dozens of nuclear-armed nations by the year 2000. That hasn't happened, in part because of the restraint and deterrence that comes from global rules with global backing. In 1975, we signed the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union, a country we couldn't trust that was in violation of every article in the treaty. Yet the U.S.S.R.'s embrace of human rights, however disingenuous at the time, gave its people a powerful tool in their struggle for change.
In particular, we do not tie our hands by getting others to accept standards we already have chosen to live by ourselves. That is part of our argument for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would help freeze the development of nuclear weapons around the world at a time when we have an overwhelming military advantage. Now, one of the great challenges for internationalists in both parties is to find the common ground on this treaty that the truncated debate in the Senate prevented. I hope we can have a process of quiet consultation in the months ahead. We must also find a way in the coming year to move forward with defenses against missile attack, while working to preserve the ABM treaty. A missile defense can be part of a sound national security strategy. But it cannot be the sum total of a strategy.
Many other ambitious tasks demand American leadership and engagement in the coming year. Most reflect the opportunities of the post-Cold War peace: forging a comprehensive peace in the Middle East and securing the peace in the Balkans; helping Russia stabilize its economy as it conducts its first democratic transfer of power; bringing China into the WTO while speaking plainly about human rights; building on hopeful developments between Greece and Turkey to make progress in the Aegean, particularly on Cyprus; securing new energy routes from the Caspian Sea that will allow newly independent states in the Caucasus to prosper; supporting extraordinarily hopeful and important democratic transitions from Nigeria to Indonesia; launching a new global trade round; enacting the African and Caribbean trade bills; pressing ahead with debt relief for countries finally embracing good government.
Others reflect new dangers and new challenges: easing tensions between India and Pakistan; helping Colombia defeat the narcotraffickers who threaten its democracy; fighting proliferation, terrorism and the nexus between them; restraining North Korea's missile program and Iran's; containing Iraq; reversing global climate change.
That is an agenda which reflects America's interests and deserves bipartisan support. The President will work hard with the Congress to make it our common agenda. And he will make the case once again that we can seize the challenges ahead only if we have the resources to match our interests, only if America remains a builder of coalitions, only if we remember that few of our hopes will be realized if we cannot convince others to embrace them as well.
Perhaps the most important principle every internationalist should agree upon is that there is a difference between power and authority. Power is the ability to compel by force and sanctions; there are times we must use it, but as a final, not a first resort. Authority is the ability to lead, and we depend on it for virtually everything we try to achieve. Our authority is built on very different qualities than our power: on the attractiveness of our values, on the force of example, the credibility of our commitments and our willingness to work with and stand by others.
Historians tell us that this moment of predominance for America may be fleeting. That's hard for many people to imagine, in part because there is no threat to our power in the world today. But there is a threat to our authority. It lies in the impulse of some to stand alone in the world in a way that would squander our advantages, alienate our friends, diminish our credibility, betray our values, and discredit our example. We cannot let that happen.
The Administration has an obligation to reach out to critics who share our belief that America must lead and not stand alone. I hope they, too, will defend the common ground we share, so that the bipartisan center will hold, and America's tradition of leadership will be preserved for generations to come. I will dedicate my very best efforts to that task in the months ahead.
When Peter Mandelson shared a flight to Brazil earlier this month with Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds (who was on his way to Ronnie Biggs' 70th), it must have been one of the few recent foreign jollies Mandy has funded from his own pocket.
As the latest Commons register of members' interests reveals he has been a busy boy since his fall from grace last December, with an itinerary most cabinet ministers would envy.
14-16th January - He started the year in style with a weekend break in Paris to attend the yearly British-French Colloque travel and expenses paid for by BP. This special relationship between the former Trade and Industry secretary and the petrochemical giant has no bearing on the approval of a controversial collaboration between BP and US oil company Amoco at Baglan Bay near Port Talbot shortly after Mandelson announced the end of a moratorium on gas-fired power stations.
29-31st January - Peter took off on another European city break, this time to Cologne, sponsored by the Foreign Policy Centre-New Policy Network.
7-15th February - The Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union paid for him to fly to Johannesburg and Cape Town.
26-27th February - The Institute for Public Policy Research paid for his flight and board to Milan to speak at a conference on the Dilemmas of Globalisation, a subject upon which such a well-travelled chap must have plenty to say.
8th March - An all expenses paid trip to Madrid to speak at The Economist Agenda 2000 conference.
18-20th April - Across the Atlantic to speak at a conference at the Hudson Institute, a rightwing American think tank which promotes intensive farming and pesticide use.
In April - "Have Suitcase, Will Travel" also managed a trip to Corfu and Albania courtesy of Lord Rothschild to visit the Butrint Foundation, around his Washington jaunt.
23-24th May - Back to Madrid to speak at a conference on Mexico paid for by the Euroamerica Foundation.
28-31st May - Return to the States and the Howard Gilman Symposium in Georgia, travel and accommodation provided by the Progressive Foundation and Firstmark Communications.
In June Peter flew to Portugal for the secretive and influential Bilderberg conference.
Apparently reluctant ever to pay his own way, Peter has also borrowed a jazzy new iMac computer from 'new' Labour's favourite public relations guru Matthew Freud - he of the millennium dome PR contract.
The News in Portugal - complete Bilderberg 1999 articles http://www.the-news.net/bildeberg/index.htm
Following five weeks of incessant pressure from this newspaper, some of our colleagues in the Portuguese media put pen to paper last week and ran reports of differing prominence on the arrival of what we termed 'the world's most secret society' for their meeting in Sintra.
Even so, it was only four nationals that ran the story, Jornal de Noticias, Público, O Independente and 24 horas, two of them acknowledging The News reports. Conspicuous by its absence is the prestigious Expresso, owned by Francisco Pinto Balsemão, who is also a leading member of the Bilderbergs for Portugal. Coincidence? As far as we can establish, SIC TV, also part of the Balsemão empire also gave the story a miss. Our reporters at Sintra met with reporters from Visão, again part of the Balsemão empire, and will wait with eager anticipation to see if this respected investigative magazine will run the story.
Yet again, the trend over the years in the media, particularly media owned by Bilderberg members, is to remain tight lipped on the subject of the Bilderberg meetings. This in itself does not mean that the activities of this organisation are sinister, but it surely adds fuel to the fire for the conspiracy theorists.
Writing in Jornal de Notícias, Antonio Garcia acknowledged that The News had scooped the world's press by publishing the details of the meeting on May 1st. Unlike other commentaries, he tackled the issue of our comments regarding the 'wall of silence' that continued in the Portuguese media until only days before the meeting. Garcia wrote that The News had received enormous feedback via the internet, stating that many of the sites are linked with the far right and conspiracy sites, who might be kindly described as a bit 'extreme'. Dig a little deeper however, and you find many other sites, many of them credible organisations, who are more balanced in their information.
There is clearly a genuine concern about the activities of this group, and it must be said that they seem to be their own worst enemies. Since The News started reporting on the Bilderbergs in May, we have had over 1,1 million hits on our site, which indicates the level of world wide interest.
If, as they say, The Bilderbergs are simply an influential group discussing world affairs, why the need for such secrecy?
Do these people simply meet for a few days, discuss global matters, and then shred the results on the way out of the conference room, and forget about the whole weekend? I think not. If they are discussing world affairs, they will then feel the need to act on their findings. Otherwise, the whole meeting would have been a complete waste of time, energy and money. According to 24 Horas, amongst other things the Bilderbergers brought over 200 of their own armed guards to keep their meeting secret.
Having established that this group will feel the need to act on their findings, or at least to seek to influence those elected to govern, you have to ask how much influence they are able, should they wish, to exert on the politicians.
It is no secret that most political parties are supported to a greater or lesser extent by big business. Without their donations, financial influence and media clout, they would find it more difficult to gain, or stay in, power. Our readers may recall a recent article in The News by Gwynne Dyer 'Trust me, I'm a Genetic Engineer' in which he outlined how Monsanto wielded such influence over the US government over GM foods, even getting them to block attempts by the EU to label GM products. It went as far as getting Clinton to threaten a trade war if the EU persisted in this plan. Coincidentally, Monsanto CEO Bob Shapiro became one of the biggest contributors of 'soft money' to Clinton's 1996 election campaign, and then, guess what, became a special trade advisor to the President.
According to the only Bildergberg press release, sent to The News, one of the items on the agenda was Genetics, and who was at the meeting last weekend? Monsanto CEO Bob Shapiro.
This is but one example of the close links between big business and politics. There are so many that there can be little or no doubt how closely the two work together in many countries.
The Bilderberg group comprises the very top echelon of the worlds business, media and finance groups.
The others who attend could well be seen as representing politicians who would rather not be seen at the meetings. Why was Peter Mandleson there last weekend?
I for one would be perfectly happy to consider that these top business and financial people, with years of experience and success behind them, may have some excellent ideas and suggestions for world affairs. If they published even an outline of their findings, we might well feel moved to support their views. Our confidence in politicians varies, but there are few of us who don't think they could learn a thing or two from top commercial leaders.
The problem with the Bilderbergs remains their uncanny need for total secrecy in what they do and decide. If they feel unhappy about the attention they get from the conspiracy theorists and the far right, they have only themselves to blame.
As far as the media is concerned, we all have a responsibility to ensure that the public knows what politicians, financial power brokers and big business, amongst others, would like to keep secret. It is not usually in the public interest that the elected, let alone the unelected, can act in secret. They may claim they do it in our best interests, that's what Nixon would have said about Watergate; Clinton about his 'affairs'; the British Government about the Iraqi super gun; Oliver North on Iran Contra, all brought to the public attention by the media.
What is stranger than fiction is that it should fall to a relatively unknown newspaper like The News, to do what our larger and more influential colleagues failed to do. That in itself is even more suspicious.
Paul Luckman
[From THE NEWS, 12th June, 1999] http://www.the-news.net
BILDERBERGERS GO HOME
The 47th Bilderberg Conference has come to an end. Members and one-off participants have departed as discreetly as they arrived. Lines of black limousines, unmarked except for a "B" on the windscreen, swept into Penha Longa, sometimes accompanied by police escorts, and sometimes not. Even the Bilderbergers have a pecking order. Britain's Peter Mandelson arrived in a bus
Outside the lightly guarded gates of Penha Longa, those members of the press who were prepared to brave the famed Bilderberg security gathered to glean what information was available. The police on duty at the gates made it crystal clear that they were only the tip of the security iceberg. Apart from the Portuguese police contingent, the Bilderbergers had reportedly brought over 200 of their own armed security guards. A helicopter swept overhead, and other security officers were prudently patrolling the hillsides which mystically envelope the Japanese-owned hotel.
Amongst the journalists present, were reporters from several of the Portuguese national newspapers, a British Channel 4 film crew and the "notorious" Bilderberg pursuer Jim Tucker from the Washington Spotlight. The Channel 4 crew were understandably disturbed by the experience of being trailed by security men in a green Lancia K throughout Wednesday. According to reporter, Jon Ronson, the British Embassy had told his crew not to provoke any incidents and that their fate was in their own hands. The exuberant and almost mischievous Jim Tucker was thriving in his long established role as Bilderberg enemy number one, audaciously blowing kisses at grim-faced officials "employed" to provide a safe passage for the Bilderbergers into the resort.
Along with other members of the press, The News requested, and was refused, permission to enter the hotel grounds. However on Saturday, the golf club was open, due to the American Barbecue event. Despite the fact that the golf course is located some distance from the hotel, the guard at the gate said he had information that The News reporters had been seen working with Jim Tucker, an apparently inadvisable association, and that we could pose a possible security risk. It would seem that the so-called right-wing Spotlight for whom Jim writes regularly, is treated with caution resembling paranoia.
We described our interest in the meeting and that we worked for The News, which the guard acknowledged, and ordered us to park and wait for confirmation from within the resort, eventually given after lingering in "no-man's land" for a few minutes. At the "19th hole", an attempt to take a photograph was stopped immediately, "as it might prejudice security operations". It was apparent that Penha Longa had been transformed into a fort, a safe haven, with sombre-looking, "sun glass wearers in the rain" watching every movement.
It is unlikely that Portugal has ever witnessed such a strict security blanket, or welcomed so many high profile people at any one time. O Independente described them as "The masters of the world". Disagreeing with that title would be difficult.
The sole question remains. What were the so called "masters of the world" discussing here in Portugal?
For some reason, they would prefer we don't know.
The News in Portugal - complete Bilderberg 1999 articles http://www.the-news.net/bildeberg/index.htm
SchNEWS http://www.schnews.org.uk/
There were a few interesting names on the guestlist at the recent meeting of international baddies, the Bilderberg Group (see SchNEWS 213). The 120 delegates met in Portugal to discuss in "NATO, Genetics, Emerging Markets, and International Financial Architecture" and how great they all are. If that doesn't get your paranoia flowing, two of the guests were none other that the prince of darkness himself Peter Mandelson, and housewive's favourite environmentalist Jonathon Porrit.
Mandelson is due to make a comeback soon, and with the backing of SPECTRE we're sure that all those nasty rumours about him will be dealt with, and that bodies of rebellious MPs will start turning up in the Thames. Equally worrying was the presence of Porrit's name (see SchNEWS 212 on greenwash and co-opting ecologists). What was Porrit doing there? We shall never know, 'cos of course the Bilderbergers never reveal what was said, and anyway Porrit's PA reckons he hasn't been to Portugal for years. The plot thickens...
http://athensnews.dolnet.gr/athnews.dat/99-06-09/grknews/grpr.htm
Deadly chickens from Belgium and roaring speeches from Thessaloniki combined to drive Nato's intervention in Yugoslavia out of all but a few headlines. Five days to go till the Euro-elections, and the Greek readership is much more concerned with whom they will (or will not) vote for, and with what they will fill their stomachs.
The right-wing segment of the press was ecstatic about New Democracy leader Costas Karamanlis' mass rally in Thessaloniki on Monday night. Costas Mitsis' Adesmeftos Typos declared that the "great crowd turnout" was a Real popularity survey, while Apoyevmatini spoke of a Victory omen. The rest of the conservative press would have fielded similar headlines had they not been obliged to cover the Belgian food scandal story.
Vradini carried Karamanlis' Thessaloniki statements about a "sick and corrupt state" and called Prime Minister Costas Simitis a Political conman who is deceiving the Greek people. Athinaiki was also in an anti-Simitis mood, albeit for a different reason: it reported that Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan is Suing Simitis, apparently accusing the Greek ÑÌ of being involved in his capture by Turkish agents in Kenya.
The left-wing press furthered their respective Euro-election causes, with Communist Rizospastis exhorting its readers to Flock to Pedion tou Areos on Alexandras Avenue for a big rally, and pro-Left Coalition Avyi announcing that their own candidates will provide the Left-wing solution. Conservative Estia, in the meantime, took a more general view and talked about Campaign expenditure running out of control.
Yesterday's dioxin portion was ample, as usual, with Eleftheros Typos reporting that Fears are now being voiced about Dutch foods. Ethnos said that Greek consumers Vote Greek as far as food purchases are concerned. To Vima maintained that Fear is on our plate, and Ta Nea added that The food market is emptying for fear of dioxin consumption. Dimitris Rizos' Adesmeftos Typos marked a change from "What should we eat? " headlines with its What we should eat lead.
Coverage of events in Kosovo was limited to Eleftherotypia's hopeful talk of The last night of the war, "despite the negotiation deadlock", and Kathimerini's Open the gates banner, referring to Nato's request for northern Greek ports to be used for the disembarkation of "peacekeeping" troops.
Exousia's exclusive regarded the 47th meeting and Top secret machinations of the "all-powerful" Bilderberg think-tank, which met in Portugal and reportedly decided that the Kosovo and Vojvodina provinces should be broken away from Yugoslavia.
http://athensnews.dolnet.gr/athnews.dat/99-06-09/grknews/grpr.htm
A massive security operation was launched in Sintra on Wednesday, in preparation for the arrival of some of the world's most powerful people. A special unit from the PJ (Judicial Police) was reported to be sweeping Penha Longa for listening devices late Wednesday. A film crew from the UK's Channel 4 were being trailed by a team of plain clothes police and security men after they attempted to film inside the hotel on Tuesday afternoon. Veteran Washington reporter and Bilderberg specialist Jim Tucker, a regular and unwelcome visitor at Bilderberg conferences since 1980, is also under constant surveillance. He told The News that he was spotted near the hotel by the Bilderberg security team. Since the Bilderberg meeting was first revealed by The News on May 1, scooping the world's media, the internet site of The News has been experiencing unprecedented international interest. In the last four days the site has accumulated over 368,000 hits, being linked to some of the largest media sites on the net. Only on Wednesday did the Portuguese media start to comment on the upcoming 'summit' in Sintra, despite the fact that the Portuguese press agency LUSA had alerted them to the story in The News four weeks ago. Much of the information now being published is relying heavily on The News reporting of this event over its last five issues.
Guests confirmed by the Bilderberg Meeting to The News on Thursday morning included in alphabetical order; Pinto Balsemão, Conrad Black, Kenneth Clarke, João Cravinho, Paulo Fresco, Marçal Grilo, Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Peter Mandelson, Vasco de Mello, Murteira Nabo, Her Majesty Queen of the Netherlands, David Oddsson, David Rockefeller, Richardo Salgado, President Jorge Sampaio, Rudolf Scharping.
The Bilderberg wall of silence suffered substantial damage this week. The Edinburgh based Sunday Herald, WorldNetDaily and the famous Drudge Report all commented on the rendezvous of world leaders currently taking place in Sintra.
The Scottish Sunday Herald published the story (May 30) and the internationally-respected WorldNetDaily led with the agenda linking directly to The News site. The Portuguese national radio station, RFM, reported on Wednesday the expected presence of Bill Clinton who, they reported, would be unaccounted for over this weekend.
The Sunday Herald said in its article: ‘Every year the international media competes to be the first to reveal the location and agenda for the conference’. The Herald continued by saying: ‘The winner of the Bilderberg scoop this year was a Portuguese newspaper, The News, which boasts that it is the country's largest-circulation English language newspaper. It has published the location and the detailed agenda of the conference’.
Público refers to a ‘Lusa News Agency alert’ quoting a newspaper, 'The News'.
The BBC Worldwide Monitoring Service this week printed a text of a report by the Yugoslav News Agency, Tanjug, which said the plan to bring about a Balkan Vietnam was drawn up secretly back in 1996 and reactivated at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group held in Scotland last year, citing the May 27 edition of the Yugoslav newspaper
The News in Portugal - complete Bilderberg 1999 articles http://www.the-news.net/bildeberg/index.htm
The week of June 3 1999, saw the town of Former Defense Secretary Sintra, William Perry attended Portugal, Bilderberg in 1996. flooded with media, security personnel, and police forces in preparation for the arrival of the world’s most powerful people. The annual Bilderberg Conference, named after the hotel where it was first convened, was being held in a nearby hotel. The security teams were already sweeping the building for listening devices by the time the media got word of the event.
News reports of a clandestine group of powerful and influential men began appearing on news wires and on the pages of Portuguese newspapers, fueling rumors of a global cabal. The conspiracy theorists were having a field day.
Due to scarce reliable information and a general press black-out, few know of the group, and many of those who know doubt that the group exists, claiming it to be a fantasy of paranoid extremists. However, its existence was proved when spokesmen for the group issued the following press release to the Portuguese media:
“The 47th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sintra Portugal June 3 to 6 to discuss the Atlantic Relationship in a Time of Change. Among others the conference will discuss NATO, Genetics, Emerging Markets, The New Economy, European Politics, US Politics, International Financial Architecture, and Russia. Approximately 120 participants from North America and Europe will attend the discussions. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion.”
Other parts of the press release described how the group was a flexible means to encourage change and growth, and how participants were influential members of the public and private sectors. Appended to the end of the release was a list of participants in the 1999 conference.
Prominent U.S. citizens attended the 1999 meeting. Government officials who attended include Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut; Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana; UN ambassador designate Richard Holbrooke; and Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. Private citizens attended include Paul Allaire, chairman of Xerox; Richard Thoman, president and CEO of Xerox; Charles G. Boyd, executive director of the National Security Study Group; Jon S. Corzine, senior partner at Goldman Sachs; Donald Graham, publisher of the Washington Post; Vernon Jordan, Bill Clinton’s friend and practicing attorney; and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Dozens of high U.S. government officials have attended the Bilderberg Conferences since their inception. Former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower attended in 1954, and the trip was recorded in his official diary, now located in his presidential library. It is believed all U.S. presidents have attended since.
Most recently, former Defense Secretary William J. Perry attended the 1996 meeting in Canada, as evidenced by this Department of Defense press release dated May 29, 1996:
Secretary of Defense William J. Perry will depart Washington D.C. tomorrow, May 30, 1996 for Toronto, Ontario. While there, the Secretary is scheduled to meet with Canadian Minister of Defense David Collenette. The following morning, he will address the Bilderberg Conference, a group composed of individuals both in and out of government who meet to discuss such topics as foreign affairs and international economy.
Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton attended in 1997, as did Richard Holbrooke, currently a nominee for United Nations ambassador, and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State. Also attending in 1997 was former presidential advisor George Stephanopolous, now a commentator for ABC News.
Criticism of the group is widespread. With very little public record of the meetings, the group is the subject of conspiracy fantasies and paranoid delusions. The difficult part is separating the fact from the fantasy. The scant information we have comes mainly from the few press releases of the group and from independent investigative reporters. From this information, we can gather that the ideas discussed in unofficial capacities at the annual conferences often become official policy.
One of those “unofficial” policy decisions may be the current Serbian crisis. According to the Yugoslavian news agency Tanjug, the Serbian military believes that NATO’s mission in Serbia was planned at the 1996, 1997, and 1998 meetings, and that the Bilderberg Group planned for a “third Balkan war” this century. To provoke the Serbs into military action the Hague war crimes tribunal would indict and arrest “war criminals from among the Serbs.” However, when conditions changed, those plans were temporarily abandoned in favor of “saving Kosovo” from Serbia. This would justify military intervention, according to Tanjug, and would allow NATO to extend its sphere of influence.
Besides planning wars for their own profit, Bilderberg members are also accused of pulling the strings of powerful political figures, figures as high up as the president of the United States. According to a 1998 Washington Times article, presidential confidante and Bilderberg member Vernon Jordan introduced Bill Clinton to the other members at the 1991 conference. At that meeting, then-Governor Clinton met those who would become his staunchest supporters and biggest contributors. Thanks to the efforts of Jordan, who sits on the boards of eleven U.S. corporations, Clinton gained the status and the allies that helped him win the presidency.
First Lady Hillary Clinton jumped on the elitist bandwagon in 1997. She was at the Pine Isle Resort near Atlanta to welcome members to that year’s meeting, according to a Reuters wire report. Security for that meeting came at the expense of the public — Georgia State Patrol troopers and National Guard helicopters policed nearby Interstate I-985 and set up check points to repel party crashers. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents controlled traffic leading to the resort, making sure nobody but the invited attended.
Despite the haze of mystery and myths surrounding this collection of global elites, much of the truth has emerged. We know world leaders attend each year. We know discussions at the meetings often lead to official policies. We know government officials attend the meetings, often using tax dollars to jet around the globe on “official business.”
What we don’t know still outweighs the known facts, though. This needs to change. Our government officials discuss national policy with world leaders with no oversight at all. Ideas become policy without public input. As long as the Bilderberg members continue to spend treasury funds to hobnob with the plutocracy and the policy makers, the group should be in the public eye.
www.bilderberg.org - [shucks..]
Eisenhower's Official Diary
The News
The Washington Times
This article posted at http://www.quest-web.com/aa/july99/power_brokers.html
Nic Outterside, twice Scottish journalist of the year and winner of seven other journalism awards had this article severely doctored by his editors and resigned from the paper as a result. Here is Nic's original version:
THE world's most powerful secret society is to meet in Portugal next week on the eve of the European elections to carry forward its plans for a globalised world government.
Top of their agenda is a strategy to allow the UN to directly tax global electronic commerce to further internal reforms and strengthen its world-wide power base.
There are also proposals for the replacement of NATO forces in Kosovo with a "European Army".
But their meeting has been damned by a Tory MP as a collection of "very powerful forces" whose intention is "to undermine and destroy the nation state".
He says the time has come to expose their agenda and Awake political leaders to their threat.
Bilderberg, one of the most secret organisations in the world, comprising politicians, top industrialists and financial leaders, will meet on Thursday at a heavily guarded holiday complex at Sintra in the Estoril region of Portugal, the Sunday Herald has discovered.
Their high-powered conference takes place at a crucial time, just days before the European Parliament elections and G7 and G8 summits.
The Bilderbergers are strong supporters of the European Union and have spent years lobbying hard for a single European currency. Their wider agenda is to create a "one world" government.
The 120 Bilderberg delegates, under the Chairmanship of former NATO Secretary General Lord Peter Carrington and led by US billionaire David Rockefeller and media magnate Conrad Black will meet to discuss a range of global issues.
According to a Bilderberg source top of this year's "massive agenda" is a plan to tax global E-Commerce with a slice going directly to the United Nations. This strategy will strengthen the current reforms of the UN and "assist the process of world governance".
Other topics at this year's meeting include:
* addressing the deepening crisis in Kosovo, the "dismemberment of Yugoslavia" and the replacement of NATO with a European Army.
* the Asian economic crisis and plans to create an Asian economic and political block under the leadership of Japan.
* preparations for a middle East Peace settlement and the creation of a Palestinian state
* the creation of an Americas Economic Union - a follow-up meeting has been timetabled for early next year in Quebec. This claims the Bilderberg source will be the first step to "full hemispheric union".
* the US stock market speculative bubble. An abrupt collapse could have devastating world-wide consequences
* the development of a new "transatlantic marketplace" - stage two in the Bilderbergers’ plans to begin incrementally knitting together the three global regional blocks into one global trading, monetary and political union.
* the extension of the EMU to Eastern Europe, and the early entry of Britain into this second common European currency system.
The Observer editor-in-chief and political commentator Will Hutton who attended the 1997 conference said: "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.
“It is, in essence, a collection of people who are either up-coming or former top politicians and the cream of the world’s business leaders - the conference is a well-argued talk fest,” he said.
Hutton believes that the Bilderberg conference along with Davos [World Economic Forum] and IMF meetings provides the “common-sense background against which G7 takes its position.”
He said the issue of ‘globalisation’ would almost certainly top this year’s Bilderberg agenda.
“Following the US led fuck-up in Kosovo we need better social protection and more military common-sense if the globalisation aspired to by Bilderberg is to continue,” he said.
The Bilderberg conference is credited with selecting and nurturing political talent. Tony Blair first attended in 1993 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.
The Bilderbergs control 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.
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.
But their meetings and discussions are bound in the strictest secrecy.
According to the official Bilderberg line the publicity black-out surrounding their meetings: “makes discussion more intimate and candid. There are no massive indiscretions, but exchanges can be quite heated. “Bilderberg is just a flexible and informal international leadership forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced.”
Critics claim the secrecy enables “this shadow world government” to plot their agenda which is then foisted upon the political movers and shakers of the western world.
"Their power and influence must not be underestimated,” said Bilderberg watcher and Scottish TV producer Sara Brown.
“These men live and work in the shadows and they don’t want it any other way.”
Bilderberg meetings are only held when and where the hosts can provide the highest levels of security for their guests. Last year Mail on Sunday reporter Campbell Thomas was arrested and held for eight hours by Strathclyde police for daring to ask a hotel chambermaid about the Bilderberg conference being held at the Turnberry Hotel.
According to US journalist and Bilderberg specialist Jim Tucker any intruders to Bilderberg conferences are manhandled, cuffed and jailed, and if they resist arrest or attempt to flee, they will be shot.
After 45 years on annual secret get-togethers the Bilderbergers are now facing some penetrating observation and questioning about their activities. Former BBC reporter Tony Gosling has spent the last two years campaigning for greater disclosure of the Bilderbergers’ activities.
Along with Tucker and Canadian John Whitley he has compiled a massive dossier on their membership, organisational structure and political agendas.
He believes it is no coincidence that this year's conference falls on the eve of the European elections and G7 and G8 summits.
"With this roll-call of the richest and most powerful men in the world it is quite clear that their determination is to control the outcome of other political forums," he said.
"And when you consider the inclusion of senior representatives from the IMF and all the major central banks that power can be used and abused at will to control global decision making.
“It is all done in secret and is completely unaccountable,” he added.
Washington reporter Tucker, who has followed the activities of the Bilderbergs for more than 15 years, says: “They want you to believe they are simply improving international relations. But they are controlling the world and making decisions that affect all of us with absolutely no democratic control on what they do.
Leading Tory Euro sceptic and Ludlow MP Christopher Gill has led a personal crusade to expose the workings of the Bilderberg group.
“I believe there are some very powerful forces at work and their intention appears to be to undermine and destroy the nation state,” he said.
“It is all the more sinister that when I ask questions about their activities I run into sand and don’t get answers.
"Their agenda seems to be to promote world government. It is a difficult enough job fighting against a European super state but how, as an individual, one can counteract the activities of a group which seems determined to create one-world government is a major task of our times.
“I believe the only course is to try to convince one or other of the main political parties and their leaders to recognise the enormity of this threat to our democratic rights and to fight to defend them.”
Gill has been supported in his quest to “out the Bilderbergs” by fellow Tory Nicholas Winterton MP.
Winterton has tabled numerous parliamentary questions asking government ministers for assessments of the power and influence of the Bilderbergers on world trade. Each time he has received either blank or “holding replies.”
However, Euro sceptic and close political ally Theresa Gorman is less conspiratorial, claiming Bilderberg is little more than a rich club for superannuated freemasons”.
These conferences are just a gigantic boomdoggle,” she said.
I don’t think any group like this can mould the world to one set of ideals - I think their importance is completely overplayed.”
Last night Scottish academics also doubted the real power wielded by the Bilderberg conferences.
Anton Muscatelli, economics professor at the University of Glasgow said: “An off-the-record forum makes sense for this type of gathering. The last thing large companies want is to be seen to have opinions that are politically loaded. Powerful companies are anyway going to have powerful influence”.
Muscatelli said he was sceptical about the Bilderberg group’s proposals for a global tax on E-commerce.
“Unless you ensured that every country went along with this, it would be extremely difficult to police. It really would require world collaboration.”
It seems a trifle ambitious,” said David Bell, professor of economics at Stirling University. “I just don’t see how you could make it workable.”
Two pro-European British Tories who have attended Bilderberg conferences in the past were both “out of the country for the next week” when the Sunday Herald tried to contact them.
A spokes woman for former chancellor Ken Clarke - a UK representative on Bilderberg, who attended their 1993 and 1998 conferences - said he would return a telephone call to the Sunday Herald.
When told it was to discuss Bilderberg, the spokeswoman said Mr Clarke was unavailable.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind - who attended Bilderberg in 1996 - was similarly unavailable and “out of the country”.
Scottish Conservative leader David McLetchie refused to discuss the issue of the Bilderberg conference.
When Nic became aware his story had been re-written in London and published under his name he called George Rosey, deputy editor at the Herald. After disagreements about the necessity of changing Nic's story George slammed the phone down on him. Nic resigned as a result. Nic's original story is published above.
The blatant and, in Nic's own word, sinister, abuse of his journalistic integrity is more evidence of the extent of the Bilderbergers' tentacles.
The most mysterious - and possibly the most powerful - organisation in the world will meet later this week in a resort in Portugal, which has been emptied of holidaymakers, to debate the great issues facing mankind.
The delegates attending the Bilderberg conference in Sintra, on the Estoril coast, will reportedly be protected by Portuguese army and police - with helicopters - while they discuss the shape of the next millennium.
Every year the international media competes to be the first to reveal the location and agenda of the conference, which brings together politicians - up-and-coming as well as established - business leaders, financiers, royalty and intellectuals.
Some people believe Bilderberg is a sinister conspiracy, a super-freemasonry which has planned such momentous events as the accession of Margaret Thatcher - while others say it is just an international chat-fest. It is only interesting, they say, because the organisers are so absurdly secretive and because they manage to invite so many influential guests.
This year's conference, however, is given an added piquancy because it comes days before the European Parliament elections and G7 and G8 summits. Given that many of the 120 delegates will be major participants in these events, it might well shape them.
The winner of the Bilderberg scoop this year was a Portuguese newspaper, The News, which boasts that it is the country's largest-circulation English language newspaper. It has published the location and the detailed agenda of the conference - although it admits with laudable candour that it was actually given this information by a publication called Spotlight, based in Washington, which believes Bilderberg is sinister and dangerous.
The News claimed, rather breathlessly, that the conference would open with "a review of the progress being made in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership of Japan. Free trade, a single currency and a political union similar to the European Union is planned for the region."
Then delegates would turn to "the installation of an American Union, similar to the EU, with a quick review of the scheduled splintering of Canada."
Next, continued The News, would be Kosovo: "They will discuss the formation of a greater Albanian state following 'trusteeship' of an 'independent' Kosovo, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia (by the return of its northern province, which has 350,000 ethnic Hungarians, to Hungary) as part of a general re-drawing of borders in the region (calculated to continue regional instability and conflict), and the reconstruction worth billions of dollars of the destroyed regional infrastructure at western taxpayers' expense."
Another item, the paper said, would be the "ultimate replacement of Nato with a Western European Union army, probably sooner than later due to the bad press Nato has endured over this current campaign."
It continued: "Efforts will be made to speed up the transformation of the Western European Union into a credible European military force initially relying on American back-up. This will complete American military disengagement from Western Europe and leave US forces available for wider global policing, if necessary with WEU backup in return."
The News also claimed that delegates would debate a grand scheme of "global taxation" to finance the UN, though it is vague about the details of this extraordinary idea.
According to The News: "Bilderberg will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to reimburse the Portuguese government for deploying military forces to guard their privacy and for helicopters to seek out intruders. Bilderberg have ordered the resort to be shut down for a full 48 hours before the conference. The Bilderberg delegates, comprising some of the world's most powerful decision-makers, will be here to discuss highly classified issues which are not supposed to be disclosed to the public by the press before or after the meeting.
"The News contacted the Caesar Park Penha Longa resort in Sintra to verify the information that the secret meeting will be held [there]. The only confirmation we received was that an organisation 'wishing for the utmost privacy' would be in Sintra and that the hotel was fully and exclusively booked by this organisation from June 2 to June 7."
The newspaper continued: "Bilderberg meetings are only held when and where the hosts can provide the highest levels of security for their guests. All Bilderberg participants, their staff members and resort employees will wear photo identification tags. They will have separate colours to identify the wearer as participant, staff member or employee. A computer chip 'fingerprint' will assure the identity of the card's wearer."
The conference, which takes place annually, has been chaired for the past 10 years by Lord Peter Carrington, the former British Foreign Secretary and Secretary General of Nato.
The Bilderbergers are credited with selecting and nurturing 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 announcing that he was running for US President.
The attendance register always includes high-powered men such as Henry Kissinger; James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank; David Rockefeller, the billionaire chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank; William Perry, the US secretary of defence; Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank; Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister of Canada; Stanley Fischer, managing director of the IMF; and several royal heads of state.
Former guests are divided over the conference's importance. The Observer's editor-in-chief and political commentator Will Hutton, who attended in 1997, said: "The Bilderberg conference is one of the key meetings of the year. The consensus established there is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide.
"It is in essence a collection of people who are either upcoming or are former world business leaders, and the conference is a well-argued talk fest," he added. He said the issue of "globalisation" would almost certainly top this year's Bilderberg agenda.
"Following the US-led fiasco in Kosovo, we need better social protection and more military common sense if the globalisation aspired to by Bilderberg is to continue," he said.
But some journalists believe that it does more than provide an opportunity to debate policy and swap ideas. Tony Gosling, a former BBC reporter, has spent the last two years campaigning for greater disclosure of the Bilderbergers' activities.
"With this roll call of the richest and most powerful men in the world it is quite clear that their determination is to control the outcome of other ostensibly political forums," he said. "And when you consider the inclusion of senior representatives from the IMF and all the major central banks, that power can be used and abused at will to control any global political decision-making.
"It is all done in secret and is completely unaccountable," he added.
Leading Tory Eurosceptic and Ludlow MP Christopher Gill is also suspicious. "I do not for one moment discount the possibility of there being some very powerful forces at work and that their intention is to undermine and destroy the nation state," he said.
Gill has been supported in his quest to "out the Bilderbergers" by fellow Tory MP Nicholas Winterton, who has tabled numerous parliamentary questions asking for assessments of the power and influence they have on world trade. Each time he has received either "blank" or "holding" replies.
But others dismiss these fears as conspiracy nonsense. Anton Muscatelli, an economics professor at the University of Glasgow, said: "An off-the-record forum makes sense for this type of gathering. The last thing large companies want is to be seen to have opinions that are politically loaded."
He added: "Powerful companies are going to have powerful influence anyway." Conrad Black, the media magnate and a permanent Bilderberg member, was also dismissive. He has said in the past that secrecy ensures "intimacy and candour."
But although Bilderbergers might scoff at the conspiracy theorists, they only have themselves to blame for attracting such hostility. For example, at last year's Bilderberg meeting at the Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire, the second time they had gathered in Scotland, they turned he 132-room, five-star hotel into a fortress.
The hotel was patrolled by police sniffer dogs, every vehicle was searched and armed police were stationed around the grounds. Meanwhile, journalists were told that the agenda, guest list and indeed even the menu were "confidential".
See criticism of this article from John Whitley http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/HERALD.HTM
Belgrade, 29th May: The plan to bring about a Balkan Vietnam was drawn up secretly back in 1996 and reactivated in 1998 at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group held in Scotland between 14th and 17th May, the Yugoslav Army newspaper `Vojska' said in its latest issue, the 27th since NATO aggression on Yugoslavia was launched on 24th March [1999].
Vojska said that a thorough investigation conducted by independent US journalists had disclosed that the group members included David Rockefeller, Giovanni Agnelli, Helmut Kohl, Lord Peter Carrington, Queen Sophia of Spain, Valery Giscard D' Estaing, Baron Rotschild, Margaret Thatcher, Lord Robert Owen and Henry Kissinger.
The newspaper set out that US journalists had disclosed that the Bilderberg Group had in fact made plans for the "third Balkan war" in this century. Under the plan, drawn up at a session chaired by Lord Carrington, the first move was to be to try and arrest "war criminals from among the Serbs" with extensive help of the Hague tribunal, set up for that very purpose. The move was to provoke a stormy reaction by Serbs, which was to be used as a pretext for a military intervention, according to `Vojska'. However, the developments prevented the idea from being translated into practice, which required a reserve variant - the fanning of interethnic conflicts in Kosovo-Metohija.
All indications are that the group are now going back to the original variant, the outcome of which is the indicting of Yugoslav officials by the Hague tribunal, `Vojska' set out. According to the same scenario, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Russia and Turkey are to be drawn into the war, in addition to Yugoslavia, with NATO adding fuel to the fire.
The Bilderberg Group is obviously a self-styled world supra-government which is earning billions of dollars thanks to crises and wars it, itself, is provoking, the newspaper said. The group, according to independent press investigators, also have control of the press and TV on a world scale, `Vojska' pointed out in the commentary.
Source: Tanjug news agency, Belgrade, in English 0838 gmt 29 May 99.
BBC Worldwide Monitoring (a) 1999.
Source: BBC MONITORING INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
BBC MONITORING EUROPEAN - POLITICAL 29/05/1999
Source: REUTERS Business Briefing - a pay service of Reuters
"Bilderberg, reputedly the most secretive organisation in the world." - The News, Portugal
The Famous Five. The Brady Bunch. The Red Hand Gang. The Bilderberg Group. What is it about these collectives of spirited youths that make them prone to so many thrilling adventures? But - hang on a minute - that last one doesn't sound so familiar.
Apparently the Bilderberg Group, rather than enriching our cultural lives through the world of children's literature and television, is actually a sinister, and all-too-real, global power elite. One moment you're being entertained by the exploits of another group of intrepid youngsters; the next, you're witnessing the continued onset of world corporate dominance.
What's going on?
Why not ask staff at the Caesar Park Penha Longa resort in Sintra, Portugal, who from June 2nd to 7th will be playing host to this shadowy group, for its annual meeting. A Portuguese newspaper reporter did, but that all they got from the resort was that an organisation 'wishing for the utmost privacy' would be staying.. And you won't learn much more from the Portuguese authorities, whose military forces are reportedly being deployed to safeguard privacy at the hotel, fully and exclusively booked by the Bilderberg Group for that time.
Another hotel, this time in Osterbeek, Holland, gave the group its name after the latter met there for the first time in 1954. The Bilderberg Group is said to have been established as a secret support wing of NATO as part of its Marshall plan, launched in the 1940s. Since then, its membership has comprised some fairly high-powered figures; not only government ministers, but industrial leaders, royals, press barons and presidents. In 1977 the Times described Bilderberg thus; "a clique of the richest, economically and politically most powerful and influential men in the Western world."
Their mission? Strategic planning to hasten the pace of globalisation; not only economic, but political - 'the principal feature of Bilderberg is that it seeks one global government', reports Portugal's main English language newspaper.
Yet they meet entirely in secret, shun all publicity, and don't disclose their agenda to the public. The Famous Five have just found themselves in the middle of a plot by Orwell.
"If the Bilderbergers seem more publicity shy than ever, that is, among other reasons, because their proposals, implemented by subservient agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, have caused more mass devastation in recent years than World War II ever did." - Michael Thomas Wall Street investment banker and author
"The Bilderbergers have been removed from our assignment list years ago by executive order… Our policy seems to be that if the Bilderbergers want to parley in private, leave them alone." - Anthony Holder former UN correspondent for the Economist, now working for the European
"We are barely aware of the [Bilderbergers'] existence, and we don't report on their activities." - William Glasgow, 'Business Week'
"The Bilderbergers are too powerful and omnipresent to be exposed." - French broadcaster Thierry de Segonzac
No wonder David Rockefeller congratulated the world's press for keeping "their project" secret for so long!
* 'Bilderberg Group - The Global Manipulators' by Robert Eringer (Pentacle Books 1980) http://www.bilderberg.org/
People who've attended previous Bilderberg parties include: Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown (chancellor), David Rockerfeller, Edward Heath (former Conservative PM), Kenneth Clark (former Tory Chancellor), Niall Fitgerald (Executive Unilever), George Soros (international financier), William Hague (charisma-bypass tory boy), Peter Carrington (former chairman of the Board, Christies International PLC) Former Secretary General, NATO), Leon Brittan - Vice President of the European Commission , John Browne (Group Chief Executive, British Petroleum Company plc), George Robertson Minister for Defence, D.Sutherland - (Chairman, Goldman Sachs International).
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The tentative agenda for the Bilderberg meeting scheduled for June 3 to June 6 at the Penha Longa resort in Sintra has been revealed to The News by an internationally respected and long-serving Canadian researcher on the activities of this group. Amongst matters on the agenda are: Global governance, including a review on the progress in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership of Japan; The Kosovo war, including the formation of an "independent" Kosovo; The ultimate replacement of NATO with a Western European Army and the appointment of a Y2K (Year 2000) Czar (Mikhail Gorbachev could be a front runner for this post) to oversee global passage through the Y2K Emergency which they feel will be much worse than expected. Meanwhile, the only official "comment" The News could manage to obtain, was from the Bilderberg European Press Office in Amsterdam, confirming that just one press release will be issued on the first day of the "summit" The News is today publishing, for the first time anywhere in the world, reliable indications of the agenda items for this year's meeting. The items on the agenda should however be treated as "tentative" and "flexible", and confirmation from the group itself is not possible due to its secretive nature.
John K. Whitley, an internationally respected researcher into the Bilderberg movement, has sent us what is reliably believed to be the Sintra agenda. The items are as credible as they can be at this late stage and, bearing in mind the secrecy of this group, it could have been already altered somewhat since the last contact was made with a Bilderberger insider. The entire agenda will be printed in the Toronto-based New World Order Intelligence Update later this week at
http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/bild98.htm
The first point open for discussion in Sintra will be the review of the progress being made in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership of Japan. Free trade, a single currency and a political union similar to the European Union is planned for the region. The installation of an American Union is up for discussion, this being similar to the E.U, with a quick review of the scheduled splintering of Canada. This theme was originally scheduled for discussion in 1997, though the proposed break-up of Canada has been reportedly facilitated by the presence of a Canadian media magnate and alleged Bilderberger.
Next on the agenda, and more contemporary, is the Kosovo war. The Bilderberg meeting will include discussions on the formation of a greater Albanian state following "trusteeship" of an "independent" Kosovo, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia (by the return of its northern province, which has 350,000 ethnic Hungarians, to Hungary) as part of a general re-drawing of borders in the region (calculated to continue regional instability and conflict), and the reconstruction worth billions of dollars of the destroyed regional infrastructure at western tax payers' expense.
Another item is the ultimate replacement of NATO with a Western European Army, probably sooner than later due to the bad press NATO has endured over this current campaign. Efforts will be made to speed up the transformation of the W.E.U into a credible European military force initially relying on American back up. This will complete American military disengagement from Western Europe and leave US forces available for wider global policing, if necessary, with W.E.U. backup in return (first reported on the Bilderberg plan in the 1996 Bilderberg report). The key point here is that the Bilderbergers win no matter what happens to NATO - if it survives a little longer, they can use it as an emergency global police force; if it loses credibility over the Kosovo affair, then they just accelerate its replacement in Europe with the W.E.U. which they planned on doing anyway.
Bilderbergers are said to be extremely concerned about the global impact of, and opportunities offered by, the Y2K problem (which the Bilderbergers believe to be far worse than many people have realised). The alleged presence of Bill Gates at the Sintra meeting may substantiate this claim. On the possible appointment of a Y2K Czar to oversee global passage through the "Y2K Emergency" (one name repeatedly coming up as the most likely candidate here is Mikhail Gorbachev, whose international standing would win him ready acceptance).
Other key topics so far are said to be some oil items and financial affairs (IMF, U.S. economy and stock market, gold market manipulation).
With the meeting now only a few days away, nothing has appeared in the Portuguese, European or international media, though the internet is 'alive' with speculation. One international press agency in Lisbon is reported to have said that it has been waiting for the international press to request stories or photos, yet so far not one single request has been received from anywhere.
The wall of silence remains impregnable - almost!
As The News went to press on Thursday we received two additional agenda items from John Whitley.
1. Preparation for a "mid-East peace settlement" (ie - the declaration of a Palestinian State and the final disposition of Jerusalem - quote: "The results for Israel will not be good.") This explains the heavy emphasis on Israeli and international Jewish representation, plus the attendance of key representatives of Arab regimes which are implacably opposed to Israel - quote: "The deal on Jerusalem has already been done, and the Golan issue is being ironed out right now."
2. Global taxation in support of the UN, as the emerging "global governance" centre, to begin with a world-wide tax on e-commerce (this may be why the CEO's of so many key computer companies, including Bill Gates, are in attendance) and to be followed by an individual direct tax collected on the UN's behalf by national governments. END
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Dear friends,
I am writing to you urgently to warn you about material being circulated on this list (however innocently) about a 'Bilderberg Conference' . The material appears to be an attack on global power elite, but is in fact material whose source is nazis and far right politicians with very close links to big business.
The purpose of the material appears to be to make people imagine there is a sinister Jewish conspiracy that is trying to dominate the world, a false idea but a dangerous one which contributed very much to Adolf Hitler's genocide of the Jewish people.
I am NOT implying in any way that the people on J18 list who sent the material to the list are antisemitic or fascist themselves. It is more than possible that they have become victims of this nazi hoax. I am only warning them and the list in general about the original source of much of this material:
A member of this list, Javier, (email f.diaz@ucl.ac.uk) posted on 26 May 1999 a message (title - Fw: <.nettime Bilderberger (fwd)) warning us about an apparent meeting of some of the most powerful people in the world, due to take place on June in Portugal, called the Bilderberg Conference. His post consisted of a long forwarded document and his comment that perhaps we have chosen the wrong occasion to protest, and that we should in fact be protesting this Conference, rather than the G8 summit.
Early in the forwarded document the Washington-based journal Spotlight is quoted as a source of information on the Bilderberg Conference. Spotlight is published by the fascist Liberty Lobby, who for years had as key figure Willis Carto. You may find much information on them by contacting any major anti-fascist organisation.
Later the forwarded document presents a 'BILDERBERG '99: Partial Guest List' While the list includes many individuals who are certainly part of the world's top power elite such as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tony Blair, etc, it also includes a fantastic proportion of Israelis and Jews. It is clear that the 'Guest List' cannot be an official document from the organisers of such a Conference - (there are many spelling and other errors, billiionaire Warren Buffet has his personal name and his company name listed the wrong way round, one company entry has the comment 'of blessed memory' written next to it and King Hussein of Jordan appears as an invited guest with the comment in brackets that he is dead(!) However, even if we were to believe that this is an accurate 'partial guest list' of a conference for world domination drawn up by a good anti-capitalist, who happened to have inside information, then we need to ask several questions.
Is it likely that enormously powerful members of the ruling elite like Warren Buffet and Bill Clinton would sit round a table with popular left- of -centre Israeli authors like AB Yehoshua and Amos Oz to discuss how to rule the world?
Why is there a long list of academics from Israeli universities on this list, and virtually no academics from any other countries?
Why are so many of the 'guests' representatives from top multinationals who are Jewish or who have Jewish-sounding names, rather than the non-Jewish heads of these businesses?
Andreas Rockstein of the J18 list answered my call for more info by directing me to the website www.bilderberg.org. When you go there you will see it is part of a large site run by Tony Gosling, who is apparently a former British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) man now into alternative Christianity. He has much material re the 'Bilderberg Conference' on his site. At a quick glance I noticed he states himself that many of the sources of his list of info links on 'Bilderberg' are nazi sources, but warns us not to dismiss their authenticity of their information for that reason. He refers to questions being raised in the British Parliament demanding the truth re this Conference. In fact the MP who raised the question, according to his own quoted material, is Nicholas Winterton, a far-right Tory MP, well-known for his extremely racist attitude to Black people.
Other material there is from Norris McWhirter, a far-right political figure with very extensive links to big business. There is also a link to 'information' on this Conference by Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Russian Communist Party (CPRF), well-known for his openly antisemitic stand, who publicly blamed Jews for Russia's economic crisis last Christmas..
Gosling's site also includes a poem by the English fascist Chesterton. I am not accusing Gosling of being a fascist himself. He has also put a famous anti-fascist poem (by Pastor Niemoller) on his site. I think he is an extremely confused man who has been taken in by antisemitic fascist propaganda.
I beg all J18 activists to be extremely wary of any information now being put over the Internet re this 'Bilderberg Conference' . Demand to know the original sources of all the information. It would be nice if the two subscribers who offered this material to the list could do a very thorough research of all the documents or websites they have referred us to and then tell us what they discover. I will post more information on this as soon as I have time.
Against fascism and against capitalism,
Lisa Taylor
International Solidarity with Workers in Russia -
ISWoR (personal capacity)
U.S. President Bill Clinton and the aging Pope John Paul II are found on a "Partial Guest List" of individuals expected to attend the 1999 Bilderberg meeting that will be taking place in Portugal June 3rd - June 6th. The meeting is expected to include a globilization summit wherein nations that cling to their sovereign identities will be denounced by its leadership.
Ackerman, Duane - CEO Bell South
Ahern, Bertie - Prime Minister of Ireland
Alberthal, Les - CEO of Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
Albright, Madeleine - US Secretary of State
Al Saud, Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz - Saudi Prince
Amichai, Yehuda - Israeli poet
Annan, Kofi - UN Secretary General
Arafat, Yasser - Chairman Palestinian Authority
Armstrong, Michael - CEO of AT&T Corrporation
Arison, Ted - Israeli Financier
Assad, Hafez - President of Syria
Aznar, Jose Maria - President of Spain
Belluzzo, Richard - CEO - Silicon Graphics-SGI
Berkshire Hathaway - Warren Buffet
Bolkiah, Hassanal - The Sultan of Brunei
Byers, Brook - Partner KPCB
Beyster, J. R. - Founder and CEO of SAIC
Bialkin, Ken - Skadden Arps
bin-Mohamad, Mahathir - PM of Malaysia
Blair, Tony - Prime Minister of UK
Bondevik, Kjell Magne - Prime Minister of Norway
Bonsignore, Michael - CEO Honeywell
Braverman, Avishai - President of Ben-Gurion University
Bronfman, Charles - Canadian businessman
Buffet, Warren, CEO Berkshire Hathaway
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique - President of Brazil
Case, Daniel - Chairman & CEO of H& Q
Case, Stephen - CEO of America On-Line-AOL
Caufield, Frank - AOL Board & Partner KPCB
Cayne, James - CEO of Bear Stearn
Chalsty, John - CEO of DLJ
Chambers, John - CEO of Cisco Systems
Chirac, Jacques - President of Franc
Chrétien, Jean - Prime Minister of Canada
Clinton, Bill - President of the United States
Cohen, Abby - Market Strategist, Goldman Sachs
Corzine, Jon - CEO of Goldman Sachs
Coulter, David - Former CEO of Bank of America
Cresson Edith - EC Commissioner
Daschle, Thomas - Senator, Minority Leader, US Senate
DeGier, Hans - CEO of Warburg Dillon Read
Dehaene, Jean-Luc - Prime Minister of Belgium
Dell, Michael - Dell Computers
Denham, Bob - Salomon Smith Barney
Dinstein, Yoram - President of Tel Aviv University-TAU
Disney, Roy - Vice Chairman & Nephew - Walt Disney
Ebtekar, Massoomeh - Vice President of Iran
Eisenberg, Erwin - Heir to Eisenberg Group
Ellison, Larry - CEO of Oracle
Engibous, Tom - Texas Instruments-TI
Esrey, Bill - CEO of Sprint
Estrada, Joseph - President of the Phillipines
Fahd, King - Leader of Saudi Arabia
Fan, Rita - Chairwoman Provincial Legislature China
Fisher, Max - Chairman, Republican National Jewish Coalition-NJC
Fisher, Richard - CEO of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
Fortune 1000 - Group Focus Letter
Frankel, Jacob - Bank of Israel
Friedlander, Yehuda - Rector of Bar Ilan University
Fuld, Fichard - CEO of Lehman Brothers
Gates, Bill - CEO of Microsoft
Gerstner, Lou - CEO of IBM
Glavin, Christopher - Motorola - Strategy Focus
Goh Chok Tong - Prime Minister of Singapore
Goldberg, Ed - Merrill Lynch - Strategy Focus
Grafton, Bob - CEO of Arthur Andersen Worldwide
Grasso, Richard - CEO, New York Stock Exchange-NYSE
Greer, Phil - Weiss Peck & Greer
Grove, Andy - Former CEO of Intel
Gujral, I.K. - Former Prime Minister of India
Habibie, B. J. - Indonesia's Prime Minister
Hammerman, Stephen - Vice Chairman Merrill Lynch
Harari, Chaim - President of Weizmann Institute
Hariri, Rafik - Prime Minister of Lebanon
Hashimoto, Ryutaro - Former Prime Minister of Japan
Hastert, Dennis - GOP - Speaker of the US House of Representatives
Hayuth, Yehuda - President of Haifa University
Honeycutt, Van - CEO Computer Sciences Corporation-CSC
Horovitz, Avraham - GM - UMI Israel Chief Scientist
Howard, John - Prime Minister of Australia
Hussein, King - of Jordan and The Crown Prince Hassan (HK: Deceased)
Ichan, Carl - Wall Street Financier
Jackson, Judge Thomas Penfield - US District Court - Washington D. C.
Jiang Zemin - President of China
Jobs, Steven - Apple Computers
Jospin, Lionel - Prime Minister of France
Kangas, Edward - CEO Deloitte, Touche, Tohmatsu - International-DTTI
Kaveh, Moshe - President of Bar Ilan University
Khatami, Mohammed - President of Iran
Kim, Dea.jung - President of South Korea
Kim Young-sam - Former President of South Korea
Kissinger, Kissinger - former US Secretary of State
Kok, Wim - Prime Minister of the Netherlands
Koller, Arnold - President of Switzerland
Komansky, David - CEO of Merrill Lynch
Kohl, Helmut - Former Chancellor of Germany
Lane, Neal - Former Director of the NSF
Laskawy, Phil - CEO of Ernst & Young-EY
Lavie, Arie - Former Chief Scientist - Israel
Lee Kuan-Yew - President of Singapore
Lee Teng-hui - President of Taiwan
Leon, Moshe - Director General, PM's Office Israel
Lerner, Alex - Israeli Scientist
Levin, Gerald - CEO Time Warner, Inc.
Li Peng - Prime Minister of China
Livingston, Robert - GOP Nominee as - US Speaker of the House
Lott, Senator Trent - GOP Senate Majority Leader - US Senate
Magidor, Menachem - President of Hebrew University
Mahathir Mohamad - Malaysian Prime Minister
Mandella, Nelson - President of South Africa
Marron, Donald - CEO of Paine Webber Group - Enterprise Strategy
McGinn Richard - CEO of Lucent- Enterprise Strategy
McNealy, Scott - CEO of Sun Microsystems
Middelhoff, Thomas - CEO Bertelsmann & AOL Director
Mitchell, George - Former GOP Senate Majority Leader
Moore, Nicholas - Chairman of PriceWaterhouse Coopers-PWC L.L.P.
Mubarak, Hosni - President of Egypt
Murdoch, Rupert - Austrialian Media Owner
Narayanan, K.R. - Former President of India
Ne'eman, Yaacov - Former Israeli Finance Minister
Ne'eman, Yuval- Israeli Physicist
Obuchi, Keizo - Prime Minister of Japan
Oz, Amos - Israeli writer
Palmer, Robert - CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation-DEC
Paulson, Henry - Co-Chairman Goldman Sachs
Persson, Goran - Prime Minister of Sweden
Pfeiffer, Eckhard - CEO of Compaq
Phelan, John - Former CEO NYSE & Director of ML and the BCG
Phypers, Dean - Former CFO of IBM
Platt, Lewis - CEO Hewlitt Packard-HP
Pope John Paul II - Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church-RCC
Pottruck, David - Charles A. Schwab & Company
Primakov, Yevgeny - Russian Prime Minister
Prodi, Romano - Former Prime Minister of Italy
Purcell, Philip - CEO of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
Ramos, Fidel - Former President of Philippines
Raymond, Lee - CEO Exxon
Redstone, Sumner - CEO of Viacom - HBO
Reichman, Uriel - President of the Inter Disciplinary Center- IDC Israel
Reichmann, Paul - Canadian Businessman
Rodin, Judith - President of the University of Pennsylvania
Roosa, Robert - Former Chairman Brown Brothers Harriman (of blessed memory)
Samuelson, Paul - MIT Economics Nobel Laureate
Santer, Jacques - President of the European Commission-EC
Schiro, James - CEO PriceWaterhouse Coopers-PWC
Schroeder, Gerhard - German Chancellor
Schwab, Charles - Charles A. Schwab & Company
Sharman, Colin - Chairman KPMG
Shipley, Walter - CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank
Spielberg, Stephen - Hollywood Film Producer
Slahor, Paul - Founding Investor in IPC
Slavin, Shmuel - Director General of Israel's Finance Ministry
Smith, Jack - CEO of General Motors-GM
Soros, George - President of the Soros Fund
Spector, Norman - Publisher Jerusalem Post
Tadmor, Zeev - President of Technion
Trotman, Alexander - CEO of Ford Motor Company
Tung Chee-hwa - Hong Kong Chief Executive
Turner, Ted - CEO Turner Broadcasting Systems-TBS - CNN
Vajpayee, Atal Behari - Prime Minister of India
Wang Changyi - China's Ambassador to Israel
Wang, Charles - CEO of Computer Associates International-CAI
Weill, Sandy - CEO Travelers-Citigroup
Weinbach, Arthur - CEO of Automatic Data Procesing-ADP
Weinbach, Lawrence - CEO of Unisys
Yair, Yoram - Former Israel Defense Forces
Yehoshua, A.B. - Israeli writer
Yeltsin, Boris - President of Russia
Zedillo, Ernesto - President of Mexico
Zeroual, Liamine - President of Algeria
--
The Bilderbergers meet once or twice a year. Those in attendance include leading political and financial figures from the United States and Western Europe. One of the main purposes of the meetings are to influence powerful people. Among the attendees are "experts" on various subjects, often financial, or political. These "experts" present a draft statement to a group of fellow experts and non-experts, including influential policy makers who are permitted to join in a discussion of the "issue." The discussion is recorded and latter reviewed. The material is used to determine how various powerful people feel about the "issues" so they can be used to further Bilderberg goals. Those in line with Bilderberg "policy" will receive support. Those whose views would interfere with Bilderberg plans are identified and have roadblocks put in their way.
The Council on Foreign Relations and Bilderberg Group are closely related. Americans that belong to the Bilderberg Group also belong to the Council on Foreign Relations. It is my guess that Western Europeans that belong to the Bilderberg group belong to CFR sister organizations, such as Britain's Royal Institute Of International Affairs. However, I have never seen a RIIA membership roster and have not been able to verify if this is true.
Hastert doesn't appear to be a CFR member. I haven't found him on any CFR roster. Hastert may have been invited to attend a Bilderberg meeting because he is the type of influential person, the Bilderberg group wants to find out about and try and influence. It is not clear whether or not all the people on the Bilderberg participant lists are members of the Bilderberg group, or whether participants consist of Bilderberg members and invited guests.
Tony Gosling, has a website that contains a great deal of information on the Bilderberg Group [http://www.bilderberg.org/]. The 46th Bilderberg Meeting was held in Turnberry Scotland, May 14-17, 1998. About 120 participants from North America and Europe attended the discussions. Tony published a list of attendees. I checked the Americans on the list against various CFR lists and found that almost all of them belong to the CFR. The Americans on the list were:
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Allaire, Paul A - Chairman, Xerox Corporation
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Deutch, John M. - Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry. Former Director General, Central Intelligence Agency; Former Deputy Secretary of Defense
USA - Donilon, Thomas - Partner, O'Melveny & Myers; Former Assistant Secretary of State, and Chief of Staff, U.S. Department of State.
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Feldstein, Martin S. - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research Inc.
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Forester, Lynn - President and CEO, FirstMark Holdings Inc.
USA - Gadiesh, Orit - Chairman of the Board, Bain and Company Inc.
USA - Grossman, Marc - Assistant Secretary, US Department of State
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Hoagland, Jim - Associate Editor, The Washington Post
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Hoge, Jr., James F. - Editor, Foreign Affairs
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Holbrooke, Richard C. - Former Assistant Secretary for European Affairs; Vice Chairman, CS First Boston
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Johnson, James A. - Chairman and CEO, FannieMae
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. - Senior Partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP (Attorneys-at-Law)
USA -Council on Foreign Relations member Kissinger, Henry A. - Former Secretary of State; Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc.
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member 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.
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Matthews, Jessica Tuchman - President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member McDonough, William J. - President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
USA - Prestowitz, Clyde V. - President, Economic Strategy Institute
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Rhodes, William R. - Vice Chairman, CitiBank, N.A.
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Rockefeller, David - Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank International Advisory Committee
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Summers, Lawrence H. - Deputy Secretary for International Affairs, US Department of the Treasury
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Thoman, G. Richard - President and CEO, Xerox Corporation
USA - Vink, Lodewijk J.R. de - President and CEO, Warner Lambert Company
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Whitman, Christine Todd - Governor of New Jersey
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Wolfowitz, Paul - Dean, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
USA - Council on Foreign Relations member Yost, Casimir A. - Director, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington
Hardly one American in 1000 have heard of the CFR. Far fewer have heard of the Bilderberg group. This is no accident. The CFR controls the media in the United States. "Ligitimate" news sources don't publish Bilderberg "participant lists."
The Spotlight is a weekly tabloid serving as a central "bulletin board" for the extreme right-wing Liberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby's 28 page Spotlight, which claims an estimated readership of over 100,000, and the radio broadcasts "Radio Free America" and "Editor's Roundtable," bring the voices of extremists and conspiracy theorists to dozens of media markets across the country.
Liberty Lobby was founded in 1955 by Willis Carto.Carto is the driving force behind many racist organizations and publications. In the past, he wrote "The defeat of Hitler was the defeat of America and Europe". In addition to sponsoring the particularly repulsive form of antisemitism known as "Holocaust revisionism", the publishing house he founded (Noontidepress) distributes the following:
"The Biology of the Race Problem"
"Our Nordic race"
"The Testing of Negro Intelligence"
"The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion"
Correspondence by Carto published in 1966 stated that "Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe. And of America... The blame, it seems, must be laid at the door of the international Jews.... If Satan himself....had tried to create a permanent disintegration and force for the destruction of the nations, he could have done no better than to invent the Jews." In addition, Liberty Lobby has expressed support for the apartheid governments of South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Carto himself wrote in 1955 that "only a few Americans are concerned about the inevitable niggerfication [sic] of America."
Carto was closely linked to the far-right Populist Party, established in 1983, which ran the former neo-Nazi and Klan leader, David Duke, as its candidate in 1988 for U.S. president.
In 1978, when he was 67, Carto founded and shaped the obscure Costa Mesa-based Institute for Historical Review into a right-wing think tank critics call the "spine of the international Holocaust denial movement." From an unassuming suburban headquarters in Orange County, the institute has emerged over the last decade as an international forum for right-wing ideologues from Europe and the United States who have used the pages of the institute's glossy Journal of Historical Review to debate arcane themes such as whether the diary of Anne Frank was a fraud or the concentration camp gas chambers possessed the actual capacity to execute 6 million Jews.
In October 1994, a civil war broke out between Carto and staff of six longtime Institute for Historical Review editorial employees, all of who were handpicked or approved by Carto, and who shared his theories that the Holocaust killings had been greatly exaggerated for WWII propaganda. At stake was not only the 16-year-old institute, but a bequest of more than $10 million in stock share certificates from the late granddaughter of inventor Thomas Edison.
Carto was ousted from the institute. The bitter power struggle is outlined in court documents in three lawsuits filed in Orange County Superior Court. The lawsuits resulted in a $2.6 million dollar judgment against Liberty Lobby, which went into receivership and filed for bankruptcy in May of 1998.
Spotlight contains important material its critics on the left ignore. Spotlight is anti-elitist, opposed to the Gulf War, want the JFK assassination reinvestigated, and point out that the Council on Foreign Relations is part of a conspiratorial underground to establish a one-world government, that can be traced back to 1776 when Adam Weishaupt founded the Order of Illuminati. Spotlight goes beyond the usual right-wing conspiracy theories concerning the Rockefellers, Kissinger, the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateralism, and Bilderberg -- they also target George Bush, the CIA, and "one world" foreign policy. Spotlight promotes nationalism and non-interference in the affairs of others.
Despite all this Liberty Lobby's Spotlight has remained without question the leading ideological influence on the hate movement today. Unfortunately antisemitism, racism, and neo-Nazi arguments are often woven into Spotlight articles making Liberty Lobby a foil of Council on Foreign Relations member Bill Buckley Jr., who took the moral high ground battling radical right wing bigotry, while usurping the leadership of the legitimate right and subverting the conservative movement. Buckley silenced men like John T. Flynn ( author of The Roosevelt Myth and As We Go Marching), and Bruce Porter (author of War and the Rise of the State) who doubted the merits of the warfare state, favored limiting government, and promoted non-interference in the affairs of others.
Liberty Lobby has a most unusual way to lobby congress. Carto's Liberty Lobby asks its supporters to send the organization money for its lobbying activities, even though it is an inactive lobby, then encourages its supporters to call their Congressmen and tell them to vote a certain way. In other words Liberty Lobby collects lobbying money and then asks the people who donated to lobby for it! Pretty slick -- just as slick as a covert operation the CFR/CIA would think up or support!
Is Carto's Liberty Lobby being used, knowingly or unknowingly, as part of a carefully crafted psycho-political operation promoted by a Council on Foreign Relations controlled Executive office, State Department and Central Intelligence Agency? Groups which guided by CFR members like Gordon Gray, Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, Walter Lippmann and others, turned the Soviet Union into an enemy the American public could loath and hate? Is Carto's Liberty Lobby being used by CFR member William Buckley to rationalize the expansion of government at home and abroad due to the need for massive peace-time military budgets needed to combat Russia? Did the CFR support Liberty Lobby because Liberty Lobby's bigotry could be used to help achieve Council on Foreign Relations goals by subverting and usurping the right wing movement and while helping to increase tension between the "liberal right" and "conservative left?"
In 1993 the Anti-Defamation League, who are occasionally right, revealed Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh, using the alias "T. Tuttle" - advertised for sale in The Spotlight a military-style anti-tank launcher. Has Spotlight been infiltrated by CFR/CIA/FBI agents on the lookout for "urban terrorists" who can be used to stir up trouble to advance CFR/CIA/FBI goals; and urban terrorists who might target the CFR or Trilateral Commission Headquarters? Are "urban terrorists" that can be used to destroy the patriot movement secretly helped by CFR/CIA/FBI insiders to create situations that rationalize increased CIA/FBI budget? Are "urban terrorists" that plan to attack CFR or Trilateral headquarters or CFR/TC members neutralized and taken out of the game?
In 1991, despite the secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Group, Spotlight managed to obtain a list of participants from the June 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden-Baden, a copy of the agenda, and a description of some of the position papers. In September of 1991 Spotlight published this information as a "Special Report on the Bilderberg Group." Among the participants is Bill Clinton, virtually unknown at the time.
The name "Bilderberg" came from the group's first meeting place, the Hotel de Bilderberg of Oosterbeek, Holland, in May 1954. Over the next 38 years the secret meetings have included most of the top ruling-class players from Western Europe and America. Until he was implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal in 1976, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands served as chairman. By now Bilderberg is a symbol of world management by Atlanticist elites. Some observers, particularly those on the Right, feel that it borders on the conspiratorial, while the Left is primarily interested in its implications for what they call "power structure research." The Bilderberg participants from the U.S are almost always members of the Council on Foreign Relations, and since 1973 Japanese elites have been brought into the fold through a third overlapping group, the Trilateral Commission.
There were 125 people on the 1991 Bilderberg meeting participant list published in Spotlight.. Eighty-nine attendees were from twenty Western European Countries, thirty-six attendees were from the United States. At least twenty-Five Americans belonged to the CFR, nine of these twenty-five also belonged to the Trilateral Commission. Of the Eighty-nine Europeans, nineteen belonged to the Trilateral Commission.
Did the Council on Foreign Relations feed the Bilderberger meeting information to Spotlight, so an extreme right-wing organization would take the lead in exposing the Bilderberger's, hurt legitimate right wing organizations, and alienate the left and the right?
regards
======================================
The world's most secret society is to meet in Portugal in June. Bilderberg, one of the most secretive organisation in the world, comprising presidents, royal families, ministers, top industrialists and financial leaders are set to meet in Sintra, Portugal at the beginning of June. Francisco Pinto Balsamão, former Portuguese PM, media baron and frequent attendee of the meetings is listed as themember for Portugal. The security for the Bilderberg meetings, which are held at irregular intervals and prompted by the state of world affairs, is the responsibility of the host country. According to sources in Washington, Bilderberg will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to reimburse the Portuguese government for deploying military forces to guard their privacy and for helicopters to seek out intruders. Bilderberg have ordered the resort to be shut down for a full 48 hours before the conference. The Bilderberg delegates, comprising some of the world's most powerful decision makers, will be here to discuss highly classified issues which are not supposed to be disclosed to the public by the press, before or after the meeting.
Initially alerted to this meeting by a New York reader who requested anonymity, The News contacted the Caesar Park Penha Longa resort in Sintra to verify the information that the secret meeting will be held at their resort. The only confirmation we received was that an organization 'wishing for the utmost privacy' would be in Sintra and that the hotel was fully and exclusively booked by this organisation from June 2 to June 7.
The agenda for the meeting is said to include a "globilaztion summit", during which nations which cling tenaciously to their sovereign identities will be denounced by its leadership.
The principal feature of Bilderberg is that it seeks one global government, (a structure similar to the European Union), while counteracting nationalist sentiment is supposedly its greatest battle. Renewed calls for the United Nations to be able to directly tax all people of the world is said to be another major topic to be tabled for discussion in Sintra. Bilderberg meetings are only held when and where the hosts can provide the highest levels of security for their guests. All Bilderberg participants, their staff members and resort employees will wear photo identification tags. They will have separate colours to identify the wearer as participant, staff member or employee. A computer chip "fingerprint" will assure the identity of the card's wearer.
According to the Washington based investigative newsletter, Spotlight, who claims to have a contact inside Bilderberg, any intruders are to be manhandled, cuffed and jailed and if the intruders resist arrest or attempt to flee, they will be shot. International and national media are said to be welcome only when an oath of silence has been taken, news editors are held responsible if any of their journalists 'inadvertently' report on what takes place.
Bilderberg members are immune to all forms of bureaucracy that face ordinary citizens on a daily basis. No visas are required and a free and safe passage is provided by the government providing the Bilderberg rendezvous. They travel to and from the airport to the resort in armoured vehicles with a police escort. Meetings are held annually but rarely at the same locations for obvious security reasons. The first Bilderberg conference was held at the Bilderberg Hotel in Osterbeek Holland in May 1954, and the organization is said to have been established as a secret and supportive wing of NATO and the Marshall plan which was launched in the 1940s.
The News having researched various sources on the Bilderberg meetings, discovered that PSD co-founder, Francisco Pinto Balsemão, allegedly attended at least the previous two Bilderberg meetings held in Scotland (1998) and Georgia in the United States (1997). Balsemão is said to be the only Portuguese representative on the Bilderberg steering committee. Other prominent figures listed to have attended previous meetings are Ricardo Salgado chief executive officer at Banco Espirito Santo, Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair (who attended the meeting held in 1995) and Giovanni Agnelli who is the owner of the Fiat Motor Corporation.
The News is Portugal's largest circulation English language newspaper. Established for over 20 years, it is the only Portuguese newspaper on the net that covers all the major news about Portugal in the English language.
By Maggie O'Kane in Pancevo
At about the same time as Madeleine Albright was rallying the 19 members of Nato yesterday morning to continue the bombing, a couple were sitting in the sun outside the highest apartment block of the most bombed town in northern Serbia.
Pancevo is the kind of town that will probably never make it into the guide book. Twelve miles north of Belgrade, past the green triple-spanned bridge over the Danube, Pancevo has its own little river complete with clapped-out cruise boats and overhung with budding willow trees. It also has a huge oil production plant. So, for almost three weeks, the skies over Pancevo's pretty streets have been busy.
The couple on the bench, Bijlena and Vladimir Korski, live on National Army Street and have been there for most of their 30 years.
She is a pharmacist, and when she tries hard she resurrects schoolgirl English to say about the war: "It's not so bad, really. We could live this way for a long time for all Nato's power this is not really a big deal.
"Hopefully after a while they'll just get bored and leave us alone."
Does she blame President Milosevic for the conflict? Would she like to see him gone?
"Right now," says Bijlena, "I have only one enemy and that's the people who are bombing me and my children."
The Korskis have two children, Milan, aged eight, and Marco, aged three. When the bombing started they bought each of them a white rabbit, to "try and distract them and make things nice".
At night when they are waiting for the air raid sirens, they replay videos: Aladdin, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.
"I am," Bijlena says, "full of rage. I want the best for my children. I want them to play with computers. I don't want them to be scared."
Her neighbour Sonya, a 38-year-old lawyer, wanders by: "In the last two weeks of this bombing started I've got to know people I've seen around for years. Now we're speaking to each other, we're all in the cellars together.
"The bombing has brought us closer together."
Next to Pancevo's old church two plump altar boys sit in Father Milovic's presbytery drinking orange juice and finishing off the last of the painted hard-boiled eggs from Easter, each delicately coloured in shades of purple, orange and yellow.
After 50 years of being 'crucified' by communism, and now finally, being able to practise their faith freely, the priests of the Serb Orthodox Church are not known for their radical voice or for even mentioning Kosovo refugees. But Father Milovic understands his flock well. "The West expects us to behave the way people behave in a modern Western democracy and have the same intolerance towards bad leadership," he says.
"But here, we never really left the communist mind behind, and he who controls the television controls everything. The people are without power."
So, on the day that Ms Albright rallied Nato and President Clinton addressed the United States, insisting that the fight would go on, few Serbs blame Mr Milosevic for the crisis.
As an information black-out remains in force on state television, the explanation for their country's tragedy is left to such people as Aradunik Mihailovic, an academic writing in yesterday's state-controlled Politika.
According to Mr Mihailovic, the crisis was triggered by the 'Bilderberg group', a secret organisation of companies, politicians and businessmen who want to control Serbia.
He goes on to reveal, in Serbia's most popular newspaper, that the shadowy group is chaired by Lord Carrington, that Bill Clinton is on the board and that the US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, and Sadako Ogato of the United Nations are also secret members.
And so it goes on: a passenger train hit by Nato killing nine people, and children in Pancevo watching Cinderella in a cellar.
Despite Nato's claims that oil supplies have been hit and the army will soon be paralysed, owners of private cars in Belgrade are still buying petrol. In the city's expensive restaurants on Skandarija Street, elegant women in black, with round sunglasses and shining hair, are taking lunch.
The couple sitting in the sun in one of Serbia's most damaged towns see the conflict as most people do: "We're in the shelters together, we're on the bridges together and I suppose if it comes to it, people will have to fight together. You can't break us that easily."
The pressure from Nato may aim to make Mr Milosevic back down, but it is not echoed by his own people.
While the Serbian political elite watches the struggling factions of Western democracy grapple with dissent on CNN as they are forced to justify every action, every deadly missile on live television Serbia speaks with one voice. That of the victim of a Western conspiracy.The dissenters have been silenced. Independent radio has been shut down and on Sunday the most vocal critic of the government, Slavko Curuvija, was shot down returning from a walk on Belgrade's Knez Mihailovic Street, killed with a single bullet to the spine.
Driving over the Danube from Pancevo, over rusting barges that have lain there for nine years since the West first imposed sanctions, a old man brings out a copy of Politika, which has, as usual, scoured the Internet for any criticism of the Nato campaign.
Yesterday it quoted from Spanish media and reported on a motion condemning the bombing from the far left of the Mexican parliament: "Look," says the man, "they are all with us. They are protesting against Nato in Spain and Germany, everyone is lining up against the bombing.
"We're very brave people. We've been through the Turks, the Balkan wars and the second world war, and God knows what this is going to turn into."
Located just southeast of Sintra which is 45 km northwest of Lisbon - Portugal
See http://the-news.net/archives/bilburg01-5.htm http://the-news.net/archives/bilburg01-5.htm
Cæsar Park Penha Longa Golf Resort
Estrada da Lagoa Azul, 2710 Sintra, Portugal
Tel: 351-1-9249011
Fax 351-1-9249007
Hotel Palacio
2765 Estoril, Portugal.
Tel +351-1-4680400
Fax +351-1-4684867
Golf do Estoril,
Av. da Republica,
2765 Estoril, Portugal.
Tel +351-1-4680176/4680054/4660367
Fax +351-1-4682796
E-Mail:
palacioestoril@mail.telepac.pt
http://x6.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=qs]/getdoc.xp?AN=455693870&search=thread&threaded=1&CONTEXT=922044855.2061631488&HIT_CONTEXT=922035388.1825308792&hitnum=0