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BIG ISSUE - BIG SPLASH ON BILDERBERG
from the cyberhome of: www.bilderberg.org
Bilderberg meetings were started by ex-SS Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1954. It is THE main international lobbying and 'consensus setting' forum for globalisation, hardly suprising then that it is so secretive.
The Bilderbergers met this year near Lisbon, Portugal back in June. The minutes from that meeting have just been leaked in The Big Issue, Britain's best-seling street newspaper. It is appropriate that someone should have chosen to leak the minutes of this secret sabbat at the altar of Capitalism through a network of their most sorry victims, the homeless.
As Tony Blair's 'New Labour' government continues to implement budget-led policies that fulfil the internationalist wishes of the City of London his mask is wearing thin... It will be interesting to see if broadsheet columnists can see through it too. Or are our newspapers, as Bilderberg critics would have us believe, merely there to convey an illusion of choice? I faxed all the details of this year's Bilderberg summit direct to Hugo Young at the Guardian back in June - not a pip-squeak of a mention, nor even a reply. Still, not all media are quite so blind to the facts.
http://www.bigissue.com
The Big Issue - on sale on the street all over Britain - price £1.00 (55p goes to homeless vendor).
It is crucial that we all break the taboo on this elite cabal. They offer many answers to what seems a confounding inability of present-day politicians to either stick to manifesto pledges or show any substantive differences in policy from the other major political parties.
The fact is the government is in ever-increasing debt to the money masters (see http://www.themoneymasters.com) and as we all know 'the borrower is servant to the lender' Proverbs 22:7
If there were the political will to subvert the private bankers by cancelling debt and returning the issuance of currency to the treasury, where it rightfully belongs, our public-spending problems would be solved. Unfortunately our mainstream media and political parties seem unable to consider the one solution which could relieve poverty right across the world. If you want to find out more about who controls money and how it is rooted in a fraud do check out 'The Money Masters' video/audio tapes and book.
cheers,
Tony
www.bilderberg.org
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The following article is posted at
http://www.bilderberg.org/1999.htm
HIDDEN AGENDA
The Big Issue - 15th November 1999
> 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.
> So, what have they been hiding?
> - 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.
> what they said about... money
> 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."
> There is a dissenting voice:
> "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."
> what they said about... war
> 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."
> >From The Big Issue, November 15-21 1999. More details from the papers will be published on November 22.
http://www.bigissue.com
Peter Mandelson has returned to the British government after his resignation last year. Good time for an illuminating portrait from someone who worked very closely with him.
I have a page which contains this article and more about the British American Project for the successor generation: http://www.bilderberg.org/bap.htm
Why is BAP relevant? Members of the public don't often find out where they are meeting beforehand but this year we have: their annual jambouree is to be held 13-17 November 1999 at the Majestic Hotel in Harrogate.
Incidentally, on Tuesday 12th October 1999 on a phone-in on BBC Radio Five Live, political editor of the Scottish Herald Sarah McLoed (sp?) threw further light on the way the Prince of Darkness works, by threatening journalists: Mandelson didn't like the way she was interpreting a story (Sarah was working at the Press Association before his resignation last year) and said his friends in high places could sack her if she didn't see it his way. What a magician Mandelson is!
cheers,
Tony
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Power Elite Public Information Service - www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#pepis
This is an occasional email list (roughly one posting every two months) which
examines the undermining of free expression and democracy by power elites.
To subscribe or unsubscribe etc. send me <tony@gaia.org> an email with PEPIS in the subject header.
Power Elite Public Information Service signing off..........
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I was Mandy's first victim - by John Booth ------------------------------------------
March/April 99 - Journalist magazine - Journalist is the bi-monthly organ of the National Union of Journalists
An expression of thanks to the NUJ for its support 13 years after the event may seem to be little thanks at all. But on the twin principles that late is better than never and that solidarity remembered is solidarity reinforced, I now offer some reflections on those distant days when I was Peter Mandelson's first unsatisfactory recruit to the cause of spin-doctoring for "New Labour" back in 1986.
I won't weary union members only too familiar with the management tactics of the Thatcher years on how the newly appointed Labour director of communications headhunted me to be his deputy and then fired me a few months later with the words: "If we have to terminate your contract I will make any fabrication of the truth and stick by it faithfully".
Those with stomachs strong enough to chew on those unedifying events and the subsequent undermining of John Underwood, Joy Johnson and countless others who Mandelson took against can find it accurately recorded in Paul Routledge's new Mandy biography.
But in expressing belated gratitude to the union for its support in a difficult situation - a general election pending and Mandelson initially unwilling to permit me union representation - let me offer a few thoughts on how a man who later told Conservative MPs he would plead guilty to any accusation of "trying to create the truth", prospered for as long as he did.
Partly, of course, it was sheer hard work, the round-the-clock determination to promote Labour and himself. But what made that effort easier was the willingness of many journalists, particularly in Parliament, to follow his dumbed-down agenda.
Now I don't subscribe to an American friend's description of the Westminster Lobby as a system of synchronised self-abuse: I know enough about coverage of US politics to take lessons from Washington. But it remains true that with a few honourable exceptions, members of the Lobby are not distinguished by their willingness to leave the herd. And their world of non-attribution - the exact opposite of what every young reporter is trained to practise - is precisely the one in which Mandelson, with his stock-in-trade of whisper, smear and innuendo, flourished.
You don't have to take my word for that. In Goodbye to All That, Bryan Gould's valedictory volume, the former Labour MP tells us of how his suspicions of Mandelson, then a party employee, were confirmed when a Financial Times reporter quietly inquired why Peter Mandelson was "out to get" him. Gould concluded that Mandelson's "playing of favourites ... probably did more to undermine Shadow Cabinet unity and to distract major players from the job in hand than any other factor".
In all the publicity that followed the publication of Gould's book and the many subseqent references to the "Prince of Darkness" by many victims before his own departure, few journalists ever spelled out the mechanics of what was going on. Why?
Partly, too, because Mandelson was an important source, close first to Neil Kinnock and then Tony Blair and acting with their approval. (John Smith had more sense and kicked him into touch.) Not to be vouchsafed his briefings meant a drying up of political pap - the daily diet of those reporting the affairs of our democracy.
Undesirable as all this is in terms of truth and accountability, not all of it can be blamed on political journalists. For behind the Lobby system lies the power of the political status quo. Mandelson had powerful friends. With John Birt at the BBC, the Murdochs and senior figures at The Mirror and the broadsheets on his side, how many journalists were willing to go out on a limb?
And to have as a leading Labour spokesman someone like Mandelson who essentially wanted to adhere to establishment orthodoxy exactly fitted the wishes of the powers that be on both sides of the journalistic divide. To have him smearing trade union leaders and opponents in the Labour party - anyone like Gould, for example, who challenged the power of the City and Brussels - was not just easy copy for incurious hacks but pieces of eight for those who employed them.
But the picture is even bigger than that. For as John Pilger is regularly pointing out these days in the New Statesman, Mandelson is part of an elite transatlantic security and defence network, the British American Project for the Successor Generation. In addition to Mandelson, current senior Government members include Chris Smith, Mo Mowlam, Lyz Symons and George Robertson as well as the former diplomat turned No 10 chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.
The BAP journalistic membership includes senior BBC journalists such as Jeremy Paxman and James Naughtie and leading figures from The Independent, The Economist and, almost inevitably, News International. What better for the international status quo than a well-heeled freemasonry of politicians and journalists setting the news agenda?
This article is at
http://www.bilderberg.org/bap.htm#Mandy
The British American Project are meeting this November in Harrogate. See:
www.bilderberg.org/bap.htm
Here is the most comprehensive article I could find about them.......
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 03:01:55 +0000
Subject: BAP
From: Robin@Lobster.karoo.co.uk
To: Tony Gosling <tony@gaia.org>
Hull, Weds
Dear tony,
here is the BAP piece from Lobter 33. Missing are the footnotes which don't pick up when I do copy/cut. but they are insignificant.
Robin Ramsay
The British American Project for the
Successor Generation
Tom Easton
Let¹s start with the easiest question: what do George Robertson, Chris Smith and Marjorie ŒMo¹ Mowlam have in common? They are, of course, all strong Tony Blair supporters in the new Labour Cabinet. And what about Peter Mandelson and Elizabeth Symons? Not yet quite Cabinet members, but both are key figures in the Œmodernising project¹ in Blair¹s ŒNew Labour¹ government: Mandelson as Minister without Portfolio having a roving brief to monitor, coordinate and brief the press on all areas of government activity and Symons, the former leader of the union for top civil servants, the First Division Association, is the Foreign Office Minister in the House of Lords.
Symons shares her unelected status with two other key figures in the new Blair administration, Jonathan Powell and Michael Barber. Powell, a former British diplomat in Wash-ington, is now Blair¹s chief of staff at 10 Downing Street and Barber is special adviser to Education Secretary David Blunkett.
And what do these two and the four ministers in the new government share with Ms Symons? They are all members of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP for short) - an elite transatlantic network launched in 1985 with $425,000 from a Philadelphia-based trust with a long record in the US of supporting right-wing causes.
Its membership reaches beyond formal politics to include rising figures in finance, industry, academia, the military and the civil service. Media members include Economist political editor David Lipsey, Independent economics editor Diane Coyle, Times Educational Supplement editor Caroline St John-Brooks and BBC journalists Jeremy Paxman, Isabel Hilton, Trevor Phillips and James Naughtie.
BAP¹s Origins
The first recorded mention of the need for a Œsuccessor generation¹ came in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan spoke to a group, including Rupert Murdoch and Sir James Goldsmith, in the White House. The reason for the 21 March gathering that year was US fear of the rising opposition to the siting of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe. Reagan¹s administration took this movement so seriously that it recalled its ambassador to Ireland, Peter Dailey, to Washington. He was given the task of coordinating a strategy to defeat the broad-based opposition to Reagan¹s Œevil Empire¹ policy and with it the first major European challenge to the NATO orthodoxies of the previous 35 years. The meeting, organised by National Security Council staff with the support of USIA director Charles Wick, was intended to recruit Œprivate sector donors¹ to help in this task.
In a confidential NSC memorandum Walt Raymond, the CIA director of operations who had left Langley for the NSC shortly before, described the upcoming meeting as Œthe first session with donors and Charlie [Wick] has focused this meeting specifically on our needs in Europe ... I do not know whether the group assembled on March 21 will serve as the core for a large funding effort which could support the ³National Endowment for Democracy² or whether the group, by background and interest, will remain focused on Europe. The problems of European public opinion, however, are sufficiently great that this is enough of a task to take on at this time.¹
When Reagan stepped into the Situation Room that March afternoon his audience was not only Murdoch and Goldsmith, but also Ambassador Dailey, now restyled ŒChairman, European Public Diplomacy Committee¹, George Gallup, chairman of the polling organisation and Joachim Maitre, Œcoming as personal representative of Axel Springer, German publishing executive.¹
Reagan told them: ŒLast June I spoke to the British Parliament, proposing that we - the democracies of the world - work together to build the infrastructure of democracy. This will take time, money, and efforts by both government and the private sector. We need particularly to cement relations among the various sectors of our societies in the United States and Europe.
A special concern will be the successor generations, as these younger people are the ones who will have to work together in the future on defense and security issues.¹ (emphasis added) 1
The British-American Project¹s own account of its foundation makes no reference to the President¹s remarks, but clearly shares the same concern for an improvement in US-UK relations when, in the early Eighties, both the Labour and Liberal parties opposed the major arms spending increases - nuclear and non-nuclear - central to Reagan and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.
In the BAP version of its foundation it would appear that the institution of regular meetings of Œ24 Americans and 24 Britons aged between 28 and 40 who by virtue of their present accomplishments had given indication that, in the succeeding generation, they would be leaders in their country and perhaps internationally¹ was the idea of two old Oxford friends - Sir Charles Villiers and US Rhodes scholar Lewis Van Dusen. Villiers, an old-Etonian banker, was a wartime Special Oper-ations Executive veteran who subsequently became chairman of the British Steel Corporation. Van Dusen, senior partner in the law firm Drinker, Biddle and Reath, was deputy to the first US representative to NATO between 1950 and 1952.
The BAP account describes a dinner between the two old friends early in the Reagan presidency and observes that Villiers¹ Œrelationship between him and Lew [Van Dusen] had implications far beyond their personal friendship and in fact provided networking for personal friendships and broader relationships between Britain and the US, with countrywide benefits. He [Villiers] further observed that such relationships were not continuing as they had hoped.
ŒArrangements were made for Charles [Villiers] to see Robert I Smith, then the head of the Pew Memorial Trust. Subsequent discussions resulted in a grant underwriting the first three years of the Project. Advisory Boards were established in the US and Britain. The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC, would administer the American side. The Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London, would serve a similar function in Britain.
ŒSince that time, alternate conferences lasting approximately four days have been held annually in the US and Britain. All expenses including travel are paid for first-time delegates. Initially topics for study and discussion were proposed by Chatham House and SAIS.¹
BAP people
George Robertson
One of the Britons chosen for the delicate task of selecting participants for the Successor Generation project was George Robertson MP, the former Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland who, to the surprise of some, was made Defence Secretary in the new Blair government. Why there should have been any shock in this move is in itself surprising because Robertson has been a pillar of the Anglo-American/NATO establishment from the time he left the service of the General and Municipal Workers¹ Union (as it then was called) in 1978 to become Labour MP for Hamilton.
A former secretary of the right-wing Labour Manifesto group (most of whose members defected to the Social Democratic party in 1981), Robertson joined the government-funded British Atlantic Committee in the same year that it was publicly attacking the Labour party¹s non-nuclear defence policy. He was on the Council of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) from 1984 to 1991 and on the steering committee of the annual Konigswinter conference for much of that time. He has been a governor of the Ditchley Foundation since 1989 and was vice-chairman of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy from 1992 to 1994. A man more likely to be given the defence brief and less likely to include the possession of nuclear weapons in the Blair government¹s newly announced defence review can scarcely be imagined.
David Lipsey
Robertson was helped in the task of selecting promising transatlantic talent for the early years of the BAP by David Lipsey, a man who also started life as a researcher with the GMWU. After Oxford Lipsey got to know and admire Anthony Crosland, the Gaitskellite MP, author of The Future of Socialism and one-time consultant to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Crosland became Lipsey¹s mentor, hiring him as adviser at the Department for Environment and then at the Foreign Office. After Crosland¹s death in 1977, Lipsey moved to the office of Prime Minister James Callaghan. With the defeat of Labour in 1979 Lipsey switched to journalism, first at New Society and then the Sunday Times before returning as editor of New Society in 1986.
At the time he was helping to launch the BAP he was also involved in setting up the Sunday Correspondent, the short-lived and largely US-funded weekly. When it folded in 1990 he became associate editor of Murdoch¹s Times, quitting that for the Economist in 1992 and becoming its political editor two years later. Along the way he has been chairman of the Fabian Society, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and a non-executive director of the Personal Investment Authority.
Nick Butler
An old Streatham Labour party friend of Lipsey¹s from the Seventies, Butler is a central figure in the British-American Project. Alongside a career in British Petroleum, Butler has combined political activity in the Fabians (for many years he was its treasurer), Chatham House and Konigswinter with writing for the US Council for Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs.
The Cambridge-educated Butler jointly authored with Neil Kinnock Why Vote Labour in 1979 and through the Fabian Society was deeply involved in the former Labour leader¹s successful efforts to move the party away from unilateral nuclear disarmament in the late Eighties. His wife, a former senior BBC current affairs executive, now works for the Institute for Public Policy Research.
Butler has been deeply involved in the BAP programme from the outset. He was UK treasurer when, in 1984, the Pew Trust ‹ a big funder of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute at the time ‹ chipped in with the $425,000 launch money. After Robertson, he is the senior Labour member of the UK advisory board, which is chaired by the former conservative Foreign Secretary and NATO secretary general Lord Carrington. The two other party political mem-bers of that board are Alan Lee Williams and Lord Holme of Cheltenham. 3
Alan Lee Williams
Williams was Labour party national youth officer under Hugh Gaitskell¹s leadership before becoming an MP. He was parlia-mentary private secretary when Roy Mason was Defence Sec-retary and he followed when Mason became Northern Ireland
Secretary. Defence was a constant interest of Williams, chair-ing the Parliamentary Labour Party¹s Defence Committee and, after losing his Hornchurch seat in 1979, chairing Peace Through NATO. In addition to work for the European Movement - he was treasurer from 1972 to 1979 - he has strong US links. He is currently director of the Atlantic Council. He became one of David Rockefeller¹s Trilateral Commission members in 1976 and has chaired the European working group of the right-wing Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington since 1987. In 1981, Williams was one of the founding members of the Social Democratic party and subsequently of the Liberal Democratic alliance.
Richard Holme
Lord Holme of Cheltenham came to that alliance via the Liberal party of which he was president in the year the SDP was launched. After Oxford and Harvard, Richard Holme became active in the Liberal party and stood for them unsuccessfully on several occasions. A director of RTZ-CRA, which now helps fund the Successor Generation project, Holme is a central figure in Œcentre¹ politics. He has directed the Campaign for Electoral Reform; chaired the Constitutional Reform Centre; remains a director of Political Quarterly, as well as vice-chairman of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government and, in addition, chairs Threadneedle Publishing, a major publisher of political reference works.
He has been chairman of Brassey¹s, the defence publishers once owned by Robert Maxwell with a US subsidiary chaired by the late Senator John Tower, (President George Bush¹s unsuccessful nomination for Defence Secretary). He took over the chairmanship of the consultancy firm Prima Europe from Dick Taverne, the former Labour MP turned Social Democrat. Until his election as policy adviser to the Blair government, Prima also employed Roger Liddle, the former SDP candidate who jointly authored The Blair Revolution with Peter Mandelson.
Holme acted as treasurer of the Green Alliance for 11 years, during some of which time Tom Burke, an SDP activist turned adviser to Conservative governments, was director. Burke, a former adviser to David Owen, was one of a batch of younger SDP figures selected by the UK board for Successor Generation membership in its early days a decade ago.
SDP activists
Others SDP activists receiving early invitations to join the Successor Project were Sue Slipman, the former Communist president of the National Union of Students; Penny Cooper, an old Communist party and NUS colleague of Slipman¹s who, like her, was a founder member of the SDP; Becky Bryan, a defence analyst and later BBC reporter who was 1983 Alliance candidate for East Hampshire, and Rabbi Julia Neuburger, a member of the government-backed multilateralist Council for Arms Control in the early Eighties and a prominent member of the SDP national committee.
Chris Smith
Slipman, Bryan and Neuberger were joined at the 1986 BAP gathering in Philadelphia by George Robertson¹s fellow Cab-inet colleague, Chris Smith.
The MP for Islington South is no stranger to the United States. Between his first degree at Cambridge and his doctorate there, a Kennedy scholarship took him to Harvard for a year. A few years in local government earned him the chance of a seat and shortly after being elected became, first, secretary and then chairman of the Tribune group of Labour MPs.
Majorie Mowlam
Even more familiar with the United States is another Blair Cabinet member with a doctorate and a past involvement in the Tribune group, Northern Ireland Secretary ŒMo¹ Mowlam. After Durham University, Mowlam studied and taught in American universities for most of the Seventies. After winning Redcar in 1987 she followed Smith as secretary of the Tribune group at the time it was becoming less the voice of the radical Left in the parliamentary party and more of a support group for Neil Kinnock in his Œmodernising¹ moves, particularly on defence.
Mowlam attended the 1988 gathering of the BAP in St Louis, where she was joined by the Labour Party¹s then director of campaigns and communications, Peter Mandelson. The theme, ŒPresent Alliance, Future Challenges¹, was very relevant to a world in which the Cold War was moving into a new phase with the crumbling of the former Soviet empire. Kurt Campbell, a Harvard academic who had lectured on Soviet studies in what was then apartheid South Africa, led the first session on ŒNew Empires for Old¹.
In the subsequent discussion ‹ led, according to the confe-ence report by British participants ‹ Mowlam and Mandelson heard the contributions of Tim Gardam, the editor of the BBC TV current affairs programme, Panorama, and Michael Maclay, at that time a producer for ŒWeekend World¹, London Weekend Television¹s rival programme on which Mandelson had been working before his Labour party job.
Michael Maclay
Maclay is an interesting figure in the BAP network. A career Foreign Office official, he left the diplomatic service for a media career, first at LWT and then, with David Lipsey, as a founding figure of the Sunday Correspondent. After that paper¹s collapse Maclay was rapidly recruited to Robert Maxwell¹s new newspaper venture, The European. His latest appointment has taken him out of journalism and back into diplomacy as special adviser to the European Union¹s High Representative in the former Yugoslavia, the Swedish Conservative, Carl Bildt.
Colonel Bob Stewart
That same 1988 BAP gathering also included a soldier subsequently widely known through television for his presence in Bosnia and subsequently as a supporter of BBC war correspondent Martin¹s Bell¹s 1997 election candidature in Tatton - Colonel Bob Stewart. Less well known, perhaps, is that Stewart was a key figure on NATO¹s military committee and between 1994 and 1995 was chief of policy at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe. Since resigning from the Army in 1996 Stewart has been hired by the international public affairs consultants, Hill and Knowlton. 4 Also at the same BAP meeting were Jill Rutter, now Chancellor Gordon Brown¹s Treasury publicity chief who in 1988 was private secretary to John Major.
Her attendance in St Louis was during her Harkness Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Her fellow Treasury colleague Douglas Board was along with her, as was Colin Walters the then head of the police division at the Home Office. So, too, was Iain Elliott, associate director of the CIA-funded Radio Liberty and former editor of Soviet Analyst.
Andrew Gimson, a former Conservative Central Office researcher who was then editorial page editor of the Independent newspaper was one of two British journalists present, the other being Yasmin Alibhai Brown, then an editor of the New Statesman and now a freelance writer whose work appears widely.
The purpose of the 1988 gathering - as of all the BAP functions ‹ was summed up by Tory MP David Willetts, previously director of studies at the Centre for Policy Studies founded by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph in 1974. Willetts said: ŒThe object of the conference is to enable bright young people from the United States and the United Kingdom to get to know each other in a friendly environment. This will help reinforce Anglo-American links, especially if some members already do, or will eventually, occupy positions of influence.¹ Given the result of the 1997 general election, it is unlikely that David Willetts will have quite the same influence for Atlanticism he exercised as a Tory minister or as a pathfinder for privatisation at the Centre for Policy Studies.
Liz Symons
But there are plenty of Successor Generation members around to carry on the work. Robertson, Mowlam, Smith and Mandelson are central figures in the Blair regime. In place, too, is 1990 BAP attendee Liz Symons, the partner of Rupert Murdoch¹s labour editor at the Times, Phil Bassett. The BAP¹s 1996 newsletter welcomed her elevation to the Lords as follows: ŒBaroness Symons of Vernham Dean, aka Liz Symons, has tendered her resignation as general secretary of the FDA following the announcement of her life peerage in August. She will continue there until the end of 1996. After that she can be reached at House of Lords, London SW1A 1AA. Congratulations from all of us.¹
Symons came to trade unionism by a somewhat unusual route, being an official of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation while her father, Ernest Vize Symons, was the Board of Inland Revenue¹s director general. (He was also, coincidentally, governor of the English-Speaking Union at about the time Alan Lee Williams was successfully seeking a post-parliamentary career as director of the ESU). Alongside her as a trade unionist within the Project is Barry Reamsbottom, the former editor of the Civil Service union paper Red Tape. Since 1992 he has been general secretary of the Civil and Public Servants¹ Association - the other end of the public service spectrum represented until last year by Symons at the FDA.
A third trade unionist with long-standing US connections was an early participant in the Successor network. He is John Lloyd, then of the electricians¹ union, the EEPTU, as it was called at the time of his participation in the 1987 conference.5 Lloyd¹s successive bosses at the union, Frank Chapple and Eric Hammond, are long-standing anti-Communist, pro-NATO figures in the trade union movement. Both were active in the US-funded Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding and Alan Lee Williams¹s European Working Group at the CSIS in Washington. 6
The only other figure with a trade union connection in the BAP network would appear to be Michael Barber, the Uni-versity of London education specialist who was, for a short time, a policy official at the National Union of Teachers. Barber now has the role of principal policy adviser to the new Education Secretary, David Blunkett.
BAP in the media
Readers who have followed this catalogue of careers and connections thus far might ask why they have read and heard nothing of the Successor Generation network in the media - after all, it has been in existence since 1985 and some quite important figures have taken part in its deliberations.
One reason might be that the network contains lots of journalists, a group who are often less willing to disclose their own activities than those of others. Of the most familiar names James Naughtie, the co-presenter of Radio Four¹s daily current affairs programme Today, is probably least surprising to find on the BAP¹s list of alumni. Naughtie¹s postgraduate studies were in New York at Syracuse and in 1981 he was awarded the Laurence M Stern Fellowship to spend a summer working on the Washington Post. A review of his radio documentary out-put makes it clear that transatlantic relations are a key field of interest.
Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight interviewer was a BAP participant in 1990, along with BBC current affairs producer Margaret Hill. Christopher Cragg of the Financial Times, kept them company, as did George Brock, the foreign editor of the Times.
Before them had come Michael Elliott and Daniel Franklin of the Economist; Isabel Hilton, at the time Latin America editor of the Independent and now freelancing, among others for the BBC and the Guardian; Frederick Kempe of the Wall Street Journal; Charles Moore, then of the Spectator and now the editor of the Daily Telegraph; Trevor Phillips, an ex-National Union of Students president at the time with LWT and now, more recently with the BBC and Pepper Productions, a joint UK/USA/South Africa production company, and Hugh Raven of the Sunday Telegraph.
The journalists¹ list is completed by Diane Coyle, a Treasury economist turned economics editor of the Independent and Caroline St John-Brooks, a former colleague of David Lipsey at New Society and the Sunday Times. After a spell working with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, she has this year been appointed to edit Rupert Murdoch¹s Times Educational Supplement.
Defence and security specialists
Dotted around these annual gatherings are always a few defence and security specialists. Calum McDonald, the University of California-educated Labour MP for the Western Isles, is a stal-wart opponent of unilateralism. Raj Thamotheram founded Saferworld, a defence and foreign affairs think-tank opposed to unilateralism. Colonel Tom Thomas is a NATO adviser with expertise in counter-insurgency. James Sherr is a New Yorker based in Britain who has worked for Group Captain Bolton¹s RUSI and the Heritage-funded Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, the latter a fierce opponent of the Labour party and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the Eighties. Gloria Franklin has headed the Ministry of Defence¹s civilian think-tank and has been responsible for the annual Defence White Paper. Steve Smith of the University of East Anglia lectures on strategic issues and Gregory Treverton of Princeton and Harvard has worked closely with the Council for Foreign Relations, the US sister organisation to Britain¹s Chatham House.
Last, but by no means least, on the foreign policy and defence front, we have Jonathan Powell, the career diplomat who gave up his posting at the Washington embassy to work for Tony Blair in opposition and now runs his No 10 office as chief of staff. Powell is the youngest of the Powell brothers, of whom Charles, the eldest, was Thatcher¹s foreign policy specialist and the middle one, Chris, advertising adviser to the Labour party. Jonathan Powell was the smiling presence at the Successor Generation¹s 10th anniversary get-together at Windsor in 1995.
The British organiser of that conference was a member of a familiar, if not quite so influential, family. Matthew Taylor is the son of sociologist-cum-media personality Laurie Taylor. Taylor Jr is the Labour party¹s new policy director. His US counterpart, Nina Easton, looked back proudly on that Windsor meeting.
ŒOnce again the project demonstrated its commitment to grooming leaders for a new generation, and highlighted the leading global role that these two allies will continue to play in promoting democracy.¹
A decade after calling on his visiting White House multi-millionaires to help create a reliable Œsuccessor generation¹, a fitter Ronald Reagan might today have cause for a chuckle. The Labour administration his successor Bill Clinton came to smile upon in May seems safely in the hands of an elite well-groomed in the ways of Atlantic cooperation.
June/July 99 - How Britain is spinning above its weight
TIM RIPLEY looks at how New labour's PRs are fighting the Kosova war
Picture, Tim Ripley - George Robertson being interviewed during Kosovo conflict - Michael Howerd - Tory Home secretary described as having 'somthing of the night' about him - hovers in the background From 'Journalist' bi-monthly magazine of the National Union of Journalists
WHEN I asked a senior British intelligence officer, closely involved in the Yugoslav war, to name the generals masterminding the strategy to defeat the Serbs, he replied without hesitation: "Alastair Campbell and Oona Muirhead".
The military are increasingly frustrated at the reduction of their role to that of props in Downing Street's desperate attempts to put a good spin on Tony Blair's war against Serbia. "Commanders aren't allowed to make decisions," said one senior officer. "Everything is run by Campbell and Oona for the media".
Ministry of Defence (MOD) insiders with experience of the Falklands, Gulf and Bosnian wars are horrified at how the New Labour team is running Britain's war effort. The most important decisions are made not by the Cabinet or service chiefs but a small elite group of spin doctors, headed by Alastair Campbell and Oona Muirhead - respectively the Number 10 and MOD media chiefs. This joint Cabinet Office/MOD/Foreign Office group officially decides the "line of the day". But Whitehall warriors say it has spread its tentacles into almost every aspect of the campaign.
There are daily directives that can run to 70 pages, listing every possible response to media questioning and crucially the strategy for getting ministers seen on BBC and ITN news broadcasts. Military participants in the spin control committee are treated with suspicion and have to sign special security documents promising not to leak its deliberations.
"Our war strategy seems to consist of getting ministers on TV" said one MOD official. "Everything else is of secondary consideration. Hours in meetings are devoted to deciding who will appear on TV and what line to take." The dominant role of Alastair Campbell is well known but Oona Muirhead, MOD Director of Information Strategy and News, also plays a key role in ensuring Defence Secretary George Robertson and his ministerial team get their share of the limelight.
MOD insiders are embarrassed at the way ministers talk up the British role in the war. The daily press briefing by ministers and military top brass give the impression of "media overkill", when Britain is only contributing 20 or so aircraft to an air campaign involving more than 1,000. Britain may not be "punching above its weight" in military terms but it is certainly "spinning above its weight".
On the first weekend of the war as the refugee exodus began, NATO was planning to extend the bombing strategy by targeting the Yugoslav army in Kosovo. Downing Street needed good headlines in the Sundays and leaked the plan at 6pm on the Saturday. The papers obliged, but allied air commanders did not then have the planes in place to carry out the missions.
In early April, as the air campaign continued to fail to halt the flow of refugees, the MOD decided to divert the aircraft carrier Invincible to the Adriatic to allow ministers to talk about "piling on the pressure".
The Western Morning News in Plymouth found out about the mission from local sources but on checking was threatened with the withdrawal of all facilities on navy ships and bases if it published "secret military information". Days later Downing Street announced the story to the London media, with ministers on hand to bask in the glory.
Invincible's Harriers have flown a few patrols over Yugoslavia but they can't participate in the bombing campaign because they lack precision targeting equipment. As for its anti-submarine helicopters, their most telling contribution has been flying George Robertson to Albania for a 20 minute photo-opportunity.
Almost the same thing happened with the leaked decision to divert the new helicopter-carrying amphibious assault ship HMS Ocean to the Mediterranean. Defence journalists had for weeks been asking about the possibility of deploying it to the Adriatic but were ridiculed for making such wild suggestions when the ship had not even completed trials. But no-one has a clue what Ocean is supposed to do when it arrives.
At the end of April, in the wake of the Washington Summit, where his "land invasion" call was humiliating rebuffed, Tony Blair announced that additional Harriers were being sent to Gioia del Colle in Italy. But no one told the RAF commander at the base, who found out from the media. RAF officers in Italy admit that many of the reporting restrictions on local media access are not due to security requirements but to allow London to announce high profile developments first. "We will never be able to show good cockpit video of bombing missions here [in Italy] because the politicians considered it to be the crown jewel of their briefings".
Military logic and spin collided in public during the first week of May. Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson, the senior British officer in Macedonia, told Newsnight that the decision on a land operation had to be made within two weeks to get the Kosovar refugees home before the Balkan winter sets in. The spinners were incandescent. There was "major nausea" around the building", according to one MOD insider.
The Number 10 spinners have kept control of the policy decisions, but their "Butcher of Belgrade" rhetoric got badly out of step with the White House calling for a negotiated solution. Just how Alastair Campbell and Oona Muirhead manage to spin President Clinton's repudiation of Tony Blair will be their biggest challenge of the war.
Continued... They can't stop spinning
from 'Journalist' August/September '99 - magazine of the National Union of Journalists
Defence Journalist Tim Ripley, who analysed the Balkan War PR operations in the last issue (above), reports from Pristina on how the news is still being managed in Kosovo.
THE BRITISH Army has deployed almost a platoon's worth of what are termed "media handling officers" to Kosovo. Twenty nine captains and majors from around the Regular Army have been drafted in to escort Fleet Street's finest through the ruins of Kosovo.
Government Information Service press officers from the Ministry of Defence are also part of the British spin effort in Pristina, which has almost twice as many personnel as the NATO press centre in the Kosovo capital.
And the Downing Street spin doctors who led the war against Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic are still trying to run the show, even in the aftermath of the 79-day NATO air campaign.
The deaths of two Ghurkhas - a Nepalese engineer and officer - in an accident a week after the liberation of Kosovo plunged military relations with the Whitehall spin machine to a new low.
Number Ten's sticky fingers reached all the way to the KFOR press and information centre in Pristina's bomb-damaged sports centre to make sure the story being given out did not contradict the line from Downing Street.
Even though this line, that the soldiers had died defusing a Serb minefield, was rapidly taken over by accounts from the scene that unexploded NATO cluster bombs were to blame, British officers were instructed to refuse all comment until a very tightly worded statement had been agreed with Alistair Campbell. "We are not allowed to say anything that contradicts their statements," fumed a senior British officer, who said he felt they had no reason to keep information back.
At the following morning's daily press conference, Army spokesmen had to stonewall repeated questions about the origin of the cluster bombs, sticking to Alistair Campbell's line that they were "NATO weapons". Downing Street feared "friendly fire" headlines if the bombs were identified as British or American, particularly as President Clinton was visiting neighbouring Macedonia that day. The overriding priority was to smooth relations with the White House.
--
"Capitalism is Institutionalised Bribery" "Homelessness is the prerequisite for Economic Slavery"
Tony Gosling tony@gaia.org
http://www.bilderberg.org
http://www.oneworld.org/tlio/
http://www.ecovillages.org/uk/network/
Common origin of NATO, EU, World Bank & IMF http://www.bilderberg.org/bildhist/#The
UK/USA 'spooks' monitoring sorted chat: -- you dig?
http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm
Please link to www.bilderberg.org
Power Elite Public Information Service message www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#pepis
>From The Sacramento Bee,
http://www.sacbee.com/news/news/local11_19990802.html -
Movers, shakers from politics, business go Bohemian: Annual Sonoma fete draws Bushes, Kissinger, Powell, Gingrich By Suzanne Bohan
Bee Correspondent
(Published Aug. 2, 1999)
MONTE RIO -- The Bohemian Club's Annual Summer Encampment came to a close here Sunday, ending a two-week retreat for the rich and powerful that President Herbert Hoover once called "the greatest men's party on Earth." The club's famed annual gathering has been held for more than 100 years at the 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, about 70 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. This year's event drew in notables such as former President George Bush, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, retired Gen. Colin Powell, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Dow Chemical Chairman Frank Popoff, as well as actor Danny Glover.
The men gather to celebrate what they call "the spirit of Bohemia," said Peter Phillips, a Sonoma State University sociology professor who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Bohemian Club.
"This is a place men can go and hang out with people who are similar to them," he said.
The annual gathering near the Russian River, which was first held in 1879, starts with the "Cremation of Care" ritual, in which the club's mascot is burned in effigy, symbolizing a freedom from care. Members also perform several plays, and gourmet food and expensive wine are plentiful.
While the club was formed in 1872 by a group of San Francisco journalists, the male-only club now bars journalists from membership to protect the group's privacy. Membership is coveted, and people routinely wait 10 or 15 years before gaining admittance. There are currently about 2,700 members.
The club has drawn criticism for years because of its emphasis on privacy.
What particularly concerns Phillips and others are the "Lakeside Talks" held during the summer retreat. This year, Powell was expected to deliver a talk titled "America's Promise Leading Armies and Leading Kids," and Popoff, of Dow Chemical, was to give a speech called "Environmental Journey."
"These are often public policy speeches," said Mary Moore, with Bohemian Grove Action Network, a protest group. "And the American public is not privy to it."
No one from the club returned several calls from The Bee.
Bohemian Grove Action Network has periodically held demonstrations at the grove, although none were held this year.
The point of the protests, Moore said, has been "to let the American public know that what they've learned in civics isn't the full story on how decision-making . . . is made in this country." The Bohemian Club, she said, "is one of the most elite organizations on the planet."
When the group sponsors public policy talks that are held without public scrutiny, "the average American feels left out of the process," she said.
Phillips echoes Moore's objections to the off-the-record nature of the Lakeside Talks.
"These are extremely powerful people and private discussions on policy issues that affect us certainly go against democratic principles," he said.
"There's no reason that those speeches they're giving couldn't be transcribed and made public. They have a responsibility to be open about it."
--
dan@southeast.net
Please repost to Newsgroups etc.
- article posted on the web at:
www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#Fear
Dear All,
Fear Not the Forces of Darkness!
There has been some particularly nasty disinformation around this summer's Bilderberg Conferences including a false participant list and a message on the 'June 18th global day of action' list from a made-up organisation accusing me of being taken in by Nazis [www.bilderberg.org/1999.htm].
Please do check Bilderberg out for youself at www.bilderberg.org - the site I created free of speculation and racist claptrap to fill the knowledge gap for those on the 'left' and 'greens' about these global manipulators.
The alignment of the most powerful banking, media, and political forces at unaccountable forums must be taken seriously. Will Hutton calls them 'The High Priests of Globalisation'. Vandana Shiva, at last years People's Summit in Birmingham, called Globalisation: 'The New Totalitatianism'. We would hardly expect Bilderberg - which was started by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands - card carrying member of the SS at the beginning of World War II [www.bilderberg.org/bernhard.htm] - to be open about their activities or averse to a bit of disinformation.
Globalisation of their ownership power is the goal. 'Public opinion' and 'democracy' are competition that must be taken out of the picture. The annual meetings attempt to persuade powerful people who are critical of Globalisation to 'get on board'. This leaves the prime movers behing the pseudo-philosophy of Globalisation as a rich and powerful clutch of unaccountable 'High Priests': David Rockefeller, Evelyn De Rothschild, Henry Kissinger etc.. The Blairs and the Clintons of this world are merely their 'followers'.
Bilderberg appears to allow information to leak out to right-wing organisations like The Spotlight in the US so that information can be discredited as the rantings of extremists. Bilderberg produces official participant lists - which are on my site - but I have strong evidence [www.bilderberg.org/1998.htm] these lists are only partial and that heads of state, influential bankers and others are 'missed off' the list to make the meeting seem less important.
Anything you can do to get round the disinformation and prompt informed discussion about the Bilderbergers going amongst journalists and in the newspapers/radio/TV etc. will be a service to the public.
I think we are entering a very dangerous time in history with the prospect of Global Corporate Rule moving ever nearer. These corporations and their top-down structures are totalitarian and apparently immortal. It is important that people are informed as to the dangers. And it is worth remembering that the solution to the cloud of darkness they cast across our world may be spiritual rather than political.
Tony Gosling
tony@gaia.org
www.bilderberg.org
www.tlio.demon.co.uk
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7727
Secret summit maps our future - please repost to newsgroups etc.
This article and more research posted on the www at: http://www.bilderberg.org/1999.htm
By Nic Outterside
Publication Date: May 30 1999 - from http://www.sundayherald.com/
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".
From http://www.sundayherald.com/
--
Tony Gosling tony@gaia.org
http://www.bilderberg.org
http://www.oneworld.org/tlio/
Common origin of NATO, EU, World Bank & IMF http://www.bilderberg.org/bildhist/#The
UK/USA 'spooks' monitoring sorted chat: -- you dig?
http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm
This information posted up on the www at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7727/bilder.htm
Please forward to newsgroups etc. Thanks, TJ
1999 Bilderberg meeting - location and dates (unconfirmed) ---------------------------------------------------------
Dates:
June 3rd to 6th 1999
Location:
Caesar Park Penha LongaSierra De Sintra Located just southeast of Sintra which is 45 km northwest of Lisbon - Portugal
Hotel details:
--------------
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
Source:
http://x6.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=qs]/getdoc.xp?AN=455693870&search=thread&t hreaded=1&CONTEXT=922044855.2061631488&HIT_CONTEXT=922035388.1825308792& hitnum=0
--
Tony Gosling tony@gaia.org www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7727/ www.ecovillages.org/uk/network/index.html www.oneworld.org/tlio/ All sorted chat monitored: http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm Paranoid or complacent?
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7727/tonyhom.htm