PeakOil is You
THE Bilderberg Thread (merged)
by Ayoob » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 18:30:43
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MicroHydro', 'T')hey exist. How useful their meeting are, and how much power they really have is questionable. In one view they are the international equivalent to a group of small town businessmen who hang out at the golf club bar stroking each other's egos.
So, the richest and most powerful international businessmen in the world are the equivalent of the Des Moines Rotary club?
Nader please.
-
Ayoob - Expert
- Posts: 1520
- Joined: Thu 15 Jul 2004, 03:00:00
by MacG » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 19:20:23
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MicroHydro', 'T')hey exist. How useful their meeting are, and how much power they really have is questionable. In one view they are the international equivalent to a group of small town businessmen who hang out at the golf club bar stroking each other's egos.
So, the richest and most powerful international businessmen in the world are the equivalent of the Des Moines Rotary club?
Nader please.
Well, if it had been a REALLY powerful and secret club, do you think that you had been reading about them in the local newspaper?
Guess not.
Fret over this: You will never hear about the REALLY powerful and secret clubs, because they dont want you to hear about them so they keep their secrets to themselves and the newspapers never write about them because they dont KNOW about them.
Feel better now?
Just because paranoid, it don't mean that they are NOT out there to get you ....
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MacG - Heavy Crude
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- Joined: Sat 04 Jun 2005, 03:00:00
by Crusty_Ass » Thu 21 Jul 2005, 20:48:40
The thing about Bilderberg is, is that it's not really clear what kind of effect it really has.
When you look at the list of attendees, you will find that it's a veritable who's who in big business and politics. More specifically, it's of a pure transatlantic nature, roughly equivalent to NATO but with a few more industrials and politicians from non-NATO countries in the mix.
There are people who are invited, and there are people who do the inviting.
Some particular members of the Bilderberg group are there every single year, while others are irregularly invited, and some are only invited once.
In my studies on this subject, my preliminary conclusion is that it is a lobbying effort by those who do the inviting to single-handedly change the shape of future history by trying to influence those who are invited.
Usually, those who are invited are at that moment in a certain position of influence to achieve the long-term effects sought by the 'resident Bilderbergers'. The resident Bilderbergers include David Rockefeller, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Henry Kissinger (more or less) and until recently Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. For a more complete list go to Bilderberg.org or look it up in Wikipedia.
This particularly secretive way of lobbying is reasonably effective to say the least. Most advances in the European Union towards a single federal state have been either proposed or furthered at an earlier Bilderberg meeting. This includes the EEG, the EU, the European common market, the Euro, and the European Constitution.
I would say the Bilderberg meetings are extremely influential, but they do not always have the desired effect to say the least. The clash between the US neoconservatives and European leaders for instance, might very well have resulted in the currently more independent course the EU is running. The Euro is also a direct threat to Dollar hegemony, on which in fact US prosperity is based. It is my assumption that part of the 'push' for a European federated state has been the result of failure to reach an agreement at several Bilderberg meetings, most likely as a result from rising US nationalism. The same goes for the current situation in Iraq.
Of course we will probably never hear this confirmed because of the extreme secrecy of the meetings.
It is similar to a G8 meeting, or a meeting of foreign ministers or trade ministers at the EU, but each single Bilderberg meeting is probably more influential than any one of those G8 meetings.
Most critically, the influence of the Bilderberg group is in how succesful the persuasion has been among the peers. If an attendee is simply not persuaded by the other attendees towards a certain agreement, the lobbying effort has basically failed.
And the lobbying is multilateral in that every attendee can freely influence others, but there is a strict long-term goal being favored by the 'resident Bilderbergers' who always attend, every year, which naturally influences the outcome.
Considering the direct advancements towards a European autocratic state that have often been at least partly influenced by Bilderberg meetings, I find it not to far-fetched from the truth to say that one of the long-term goals is clearly a form of world government. One can see this in the way how the EU has been pushed ahead after the end of the Cold War. At exactly that moment, the United Nations ceased to be of any significance to particulalrly the US, and so for the US 'branch' of the Bilderbergers, the UN was no longer a possible world government.
More directly, I think that the huge propaganda campaign for the European Constitution derives from a covert understanding between European leaders that the US is no longer to be trusted, and that a much stronger EU is required to counter this. And part of this covert understanding is very likely to have come from some of these Bilderberg meetings, were princes, presidents and CEO's attend from all of NATO.
Another thing is China. I find it extremely unlikely that European leaders think of China as the enemy the US is trying to make it, for a variety of reasons. But China is useful for EU leaders for their national political agenda's.
To my knowledge the influence of the Bilderberg group is extremely real, but very complex and most certainly not absolute.
I'm curious to see how the Bilderberg group will act once Rockefeller dies. Who will take over his crucial role? Aside from Beatrix? Kissinger? He's old too.
NB: Any Bilderberger attending this forum is free to dispel any errors, although I'm personally convinced I'm certainly on the right track.
When you look at the list of attendees, you will find that it's a veritable who's who in big business and politics. More specifically, it's of a pure transatlantic nature, roughly equivalent to NATO but with a few more industrials and politicians from non-NATO countries in the mix.
There are people who are invited, and there are people who do the inviting.
Some particular members of the Bilderberg group are there every single year, while others are irregularly invited, and some are only invited once.
In my studies on this subject, my preliminary conclusion is that it is a lobbying effort by those who do the inviting to single-handedly change the shape of future history by trying to influence those who are invited.
Usually, those who are invited are at that moment in a certain position of influence to achieve the long-term effects sought by the 'resident Bilderbergers'. The resident Bilderbergers include David Rockefeller, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Henry Kissinger (more or less) and until recently Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. For a more complete list go to Bilderberg.org or look it up in Wikipedia.
This particularly secretive way of lobbying is reasonably effective to say the least. Most advances in the European Union towards a single federal state have been either proposed or furthered at an earlier Bilderberg meeting. This includes the EEG, the EU, the European common market, the Euro, and the European Constitution.
I would say the Bilderberg meetings are extremely influential, but they do not always have the desired effect to say the least. The clash between the US neoconservatives and European leaders for instance, might very well have resulted in the currently more independent course the EU is running. The Euro is also a direct threat to Dollar hegemony, on which in fact US prosperity is based. It is my assumption that part of the 'push' for a European federated state has been the result of failure to reach an agreement at several Bilderberg meetings, most likely as a result from rising US nationalism. The same goes for the current situation in Iraq.
Of course we will probably never hear this confirmed because of the extreme secrecy of the meetings.
It is similar to a G8 meeting, or a meeting of foreign ministers or trade ministers at the EU, but each single Bilderberg meeting is probably more influential than any one of those G8 meetings.
Most critically, the influence of the Bilderberg group is in how succesful the persuasion has been among the peers. If an attendee is simply not persuaded by the other attendees towards a certain agreement, the lobbying effort has basically failed.
And the lobbying is multilateral in that every attendee can freely influence others, but there is a strict long-term goal being favored by the 'resident Bilderbergers' who always attend, every year, which naturally influences the outcome.
Considering the direct advancements towards a European autocratic state that have often been at least partly influenced by Bilderberg meetings, I find it not to far-fetched from the truth to say that one of the long-term goals is clearly a form of world government. One can see this in the way how the EU has been pushed ahead after the end of the Cold War. At exactly that moment, the United Nations ceased to be of any significance to particulalrly the US, and so for the US 'branch' of the Bilderbergers, the UN was no longer a possible world government.
More directly, I think that the huge propaganda campaign for the European Constitution derives from a covert understanding between European leaders that the US is no longer to be trusted, and that a much stronger EU is required to counter this. And part of this covert understanding is very likely to have come from some of these Bilderberg meetings, were princes, presidents and CEO's attend from all of NATO.
Another thing is China. I find it extremely unlikely that European leaders think of China as the enemy the US is trying to make it, for a variety of reasons. But China is useful for EU leaders for their national political agenda's.
To my knowledge the influence of the Bilderberg group is extremely real, but very complex and most certainly not absolute.
I'm curious to see how the Bilderberg group will act once Rockefeller dies. Who will take over his crucial role? Aside from Beatrix? Kissinger? He's old too.
NB: Any Bilderberger attending this forum is free to dispel any errors, although I'm personally convinced I'm certainly on the right track.
-
Crusty_Ass - Wood
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- Joined: Mon 13 Jun 2005, 03:00:00
Bilderberg and Oil hike?
by orwell76 » Sun 18 Sep 2005, 22:46:10
THE ROVING EYE
Bilderberg strikes again
By Pepe Escobar
"It would have been quite impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries ..."
- David Rockefeller, Bilderberg club permanent member, 1991
This conversation never happened. Well, it actually did. Date: March 5 to 8, 2005. Location: the isolated, fully-booked Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Ueberfahrt in Rottach-Egern, 60 kilometers east of Munich, Germany. Essential amenities: luxury rooms, a lake, a golf course, no suits - and no wives. Participants: 120-odd Western movers and shakers - politicians, tycoons, bankers, captains of industry, so-called strategic thinkers - invited for the 2005 meeting of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg club. Security: absolutely draconian. Global media coverage: non-existent.
Talk about white man's burden: Bilderberg is strictly "Western" elite, ie American-European. Bilderberg resolutely excludes Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Bilderberg operates in strictly master of the universe territory: what we say goes. Only when events happen will corporate media report them, even though selected media people would have been aware of what has been decided weeks or even months in advance. The New York Times, the Big Three American networks, the Financial Times have all been represented at many Bilderbergs. But they are constrained by the silence of the lambs (see Asia Times Online's report on Bilderberg 2003 in Versailles The masters of the universe May 22, 2003)
Bilderberg has an address - in Leiden, Holland - and even a phone number - always on female answering-machine mode. No website though. In an annual ritual, Bilderberg meeting places and agendas have to be painstakingly uncovered by a small group of independent sleuths like Briton Tony Gosling or American James Tucker - who has been following Bilderberg for 30 years. Tucker is publishing a book on Bilderberg later this year. Historian Pierre de Villemarest and journalist William Wolf have already published Facts and Chronicles Denied to the Public, volumes 1 and 2, which include a secret history of Bilderberg. Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Geuens from the University of Liege has also included a full chapter on Bilderberg in one of his books. Although Geuens condemns Bilderberg's obsessive secrecy, he does not subscribe to conspiracy theories: he prefers to study how Bilderberg unmasks the way power works and the incestuous relations between politics, economics and the media.
Whenever corporate media approaches Bilderberg it mirrors the silence of the lambs. In 2005, the Financial Times released a classic pre-emptive story downplaying what it qualifies as conspiracy theories. In fact, anyone who questions the most powerful club in the world is derided as a conspiracy theorist. Bilderbergers like British lords or American policy-makers meekly justify it as "just a place to discuss ideas", an innocent "forum" where anyone can "speak frankly", and other assorted cliches.
Bilderberger Etienne Davignon, a former vice president of the European Commission, adamantly stresses "this is not a capitalist plot to run the world". Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations and a Bilderberg member for almost 30 years, says this is only "a club". The official Bilderberg 2002 press release, for instance, said that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken and no policy statements issued." Bilderberg is just "a small flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced". This is, in fact, what the much-lauded "trans-Atlantic relationship" is all about.
Members only
The Bilderberg group - which took its name from a Dutch hotel - was founded in 1954 by Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands. German-born Bernhard was a card-carrying Nazi and member of the SS. As it is well-known, Prescott Bush was an officer of W A Harriman & Co, which financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis with the help of Averell Harriman and German tycoon Fritz Thyssen. Alden Hatch wrote a biography of Prince Bernhard where he insists that Bilderberg was the cradle of the European Community - later rebranded European Union. He describes Bilderberg's ultimate goal as a one-world government.
Bilderberg's membership is heavily crossed with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pilgrims Society, the Trilateral Commission and the famous "Round Table" - a British, Oxford-Cambridge elite group crystallized in the homonymous journal of empire founded in 1910. The Round Table - which also denied its existence as a formal group - called for a more efficient form of global empire so that Anglo-American hegemony could be extended throughout the 20th century.
Bilderberg regulars include Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller (of JP Morgan's International Council), Nelson Rockefeller, Prince Philip of Great Britain, Robert McNamara (J F Kennedy's secretary of defense and former president of the World Bank), Margaret Thatcher, former French president (and main redactor of the EU constitution) Valery Giscard D'Estaing, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. The Rothschild family has hosted many Bilderbergs. In 1962 and 1973, on the island resort of Saltsjobaden, Sweden, the hosts were the Wallenberg banking family.
Some of these masters control more of the universe than others. They are the members of the steering committee, which includes Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank), Jorma Ollila (Nokia), Jeurgen Schrempp (DaimlerChrysler), Peter Sutherland (former North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO - general and now with Goldman Sachs), James Wolfensohn (the outgoing World Bank president) and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle. Iraq war conceptualist and incoming World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is a also a Bilderberg permanent member. George W Bush happened to be in the neighborhood - the Netherlands, for the World War II commemorations - during Bilderberg 2005. He may have dropped in. Bush did meet Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who must be present at every Bilderberg.
To whose advantage?
Bilderberg certainly is not an executive council. British economist Will Hutton may have gotten closer to the truth when he said that the consensus reached at each Bilderberg meeting "is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide". What Bilderberg decides can be expected to be later implemented by a G-8 meeting, and International Monetary Fund and World Bank decisions.
No matter what, for innumerable, serious critics in Europe as well as the US, Bilderberg is everything from a Zionist plot to a megalomaniac secret cult. Serbs, not without some reason, blamed Bilderberg for the 1999 Balkan war and the fall of Slobodan Milosevic: after all, the US needed to control vital, Balkan pipeline routes.
Bilderberg 2002 - although not without controversy - is thought to have cemented the invasion and conquest of Iraq. In his seminal A Century of War: Anglo-American oil politics and the New World War, F William Engdahl details what happened at Bilderberg 1973 in Sweden. An American outlined a scenario for an imminent 400% hike in the oil prices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Bilderberg did not prevent the oil shock; instead it planned how to manage with mega-profits - what Kissinger described as "recycling the petrodollar flows". Everyone that mattered was present at this Bilderberg: oil majors and major banks. Engdahl's conclusion:
What the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg had evidently decided that May was to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests and the dollar. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon - control of the world's oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo, in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil had by international custom been priced in dollars, since American oil companies dominated the post-war market. A sudden sharp increase in the world price of oil, therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil.
Saudi petrodollars then moved to the "right" banks in London in New York to finance US government deficits. Game, set, match to Bilderberg - where the mandarins of global finance always win.
Plutocracy international
Although not a single word uttered inside the Bilderberg vaults is allowed to reach public opinion, it's possible to take an educated guess as to what they're talking about. Last week, the ubiquitous Kissinger started the proceedings by illuminating the meaning of "freedom" - the Bush version. Natan Sharansky, Bush's democratic guru, was a participant.
Issues that would logically have interested Bilderberg 2005 include the role of NATO and the necessary approval in 2005 of the European constitution by all 25 members of the EU - the consequences of a French "no" in the upcoming May 29 referendum to approve the constitution need to be considered. Widespread job outsourcing in Europe to the Ukraine, China and India may sound the death knell to the constitution: French protesters - who have awakened the German and the Dutch - are insisting that what is good for big corporations may not be necessarily good for Western European workers. Critics say that chapter III of the constitution in fact details the way free trade may effectively kill the European welfare state.
They have their reasons to be concerned. In his book The Great Chessboard, Bilderberger Zbigniew Brzezinski hails "a Western Europe ... staying in a large measure an American protectorate". Brzezinski also insists that "Europe has to solve the problem caused by its social redistribution system", which "prevents European initiative". The father of the European constitution is none other than Bilderberger Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who happens to be very close to Kissinger.
From a geopolitical perspective, the heart of the whole matter is that the constitution legally confirms that Europe cannot have a defense force apart from NATO, ie outside the control of the US. Bilderberg beliefs would point to only one direction: an ever-expanding, US-controlled NATO, an ever-eastward-expanding EU, mass delocalization, mass corporate profits and unchallenged US military supremacy. No wonder this is the focus of a bitter debate inside EU corridors in Brussels, where scores of diplomats and commission officials openly complain of Washington's bullying and accuse their governments of selling out. Gunther Verheugen, the European commissioner in charge of expanding the EU, happens to be a Bilderberger. When members of the European Commission go to a Bilderberg, their travel expenses and their daily allowance is provided by the commission. This certainly disqualifies Bilderberg's self-presentation as a "private club".
Bilderberg 2005 has - coincidentally? - merged with Bush's tour among his Baltic friends and the tense meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The containment of Russia was likely top of the agenda for Bilderberg. Russia is very much worried about its "near abroad" and sees no reason to remove its army from bases in Georgia or its navy from Sebastopol, in Ukrainian Crimea - no matter how many color-coded revolutions happen at its doorstep.
European Commission sources assure that Brzezinski remains an extremely influential figure. The Bilderberg discussion on the control of Eurasia still refers to The Grand Chessboard. Washington is such an avid cheerleader of Turkey's accession to the EU because this means increased American influence near the Caspian and over the eastern Mediterranean. And it also works towards the containment of Iran, Russia and China - which, according to Brzezinski, may not be allowed to emerge as rival powers to the US in Eurasia.
Another contentious issue that must have occupied the minds of those at Bilderberg 2005 is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - this is just a detail: the point is how to prevent Iran from becoming a first-rate Eurasian power. Some in Brussels do not discount the possibility of a scenario of massive propaganda buildup to try to convince American and European public opinion of the necessity of a strike against Iran. How to force Beijing to appreciate the yuan must also have been a topic.
Bilderberg strikes again
By Pepe Escobar
"It would have been quite impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries ..."
- David Rockefeller, Bilderberg club permanent member, 1991
This conversation never happened. Well, it actually did. Date: March 5 to 8, 2005. Location: the isolated, fully-booked Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Ueberfahrt in Rottach-Egern, 60 kilometers east of Munich, Germany. Essential amenities: luxury rooms, a lake, a golf course, no suits - and no wives. Participants: 120-odd Western movers and shakers - politicians, tycoons, bankers, captains of industry, so-called strategic thinkers - invited for the 2005 meeting of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg club. Security: absolutely draconian. Global media coverage: non-existent.
Talk about white man's burden: Bilderberg is strictly "Western" elite, ie American-European. Bilderberg resolutely excludes Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Bilderberg operates in strictly master of the universe territory: what we say goes. Only when events happen will corporate media report them, even though selected media people would have been aware of what has been decided weeks or even months in advance. The New York Times, the Big Three American networks, the Financial Times have all been represented at many Bilderbergs. But they are constrained by the silence of the lambs (see Asia Times Online's report on Bilderberg 2003 in Versailles The masters of the universe May 22, 2003)
Bilderberg has an address - in Leiden, Holland - and even a phone number - always on female answering-machine mode. No website though. In an annual ritual, Bilderberg meeting places and agendas have to be painstakingly uncovered by a small group of independent sleuths like Briton Tony Gosling or American James Tucker - who has been following Bilderberg for 30 years. Tucker is publishing a book on Bilderberg later this year. Historian Pierre de Villemarest and journalist William Wolf have already published Facts and Chronicles Denied to the Public, volumes 1 and 2, which include a secret history of Bilderberg. Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Geuens from the University of Liege has also included a full chapter on Bilderberg in one of his books. Although Geuens condemns Bilderberg's obsessive secrecy, he does not subscribe to conspiracy theories: he prefers to study how Bilderberg unmasks the way power works and the incestuous relations between politics, economics and the media.
Whenever corporate media approaches Bilderberg it mirrors the silence of the lambs. In 2005, the Financial Times released a classic pre-emptive story downplaying what it qualifies as conspiracy theories. In fact, anyone who questions the most powerful club in the world is derided as a conspiracy theorist. Bilderbergers like British lords or American policy-makers meekly justify it as "just a place to discuss ideas", an innocent "forum" where anyone can "speak frankly", and other assorted cliches.
Bilderberger Etienne Davignon, a former vice president of the European Commission, adamantly stresses "this is not a capitalist plot to run the world". Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations and a Bilderberg member for almost 30 years, says this is only "a club". The official Bilderberg 2002 press release, for instance, said that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken and no policy statements issued." Bilderberg is just "a small flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced". This is, in fact, what the much-lauded "trans-Atlantic relationship" is all about.
Members only
The Bilderberg group - which took its name from a Dutch hotel - was founded in 1954 by Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands. German-born Bernhard was a card-carrying Nazi and member of the SS. As it is well-known, Prescott Bush was an officer of W A Harriman & Co, which financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis with the help of Averell Harriman and German tycoon Fritz Thyssen. Alden Hatch wrote a biography of Prince Bernhard where he insists that Bilderberg was the cradle of the European Community - later rebranded European Union. He describes Bilderberg's ultimate goal as a one-world government.
Bilderberg's membership is heavily crossed with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pilgrims Society, the Trilateral Commission and the famous "Round Table" - a British, Oxford-Cambridge elite group crystallized in the homonymous journal of empire founded in 1910. The Round Table - which also denied its existence as a formal group - called for a more efficient form of global empire so that Anglo-American hegemony could be extended throughout the 20th century.
Bilderberg regulars include Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller (of JP Morgan's International Council), Nelson Rockefeller, Prince Philip of Great Britain, Robert McNamara (J F Kennedy's secretary of defense and former president of the World Bank), Margaret Thatcher, former French president (and main redactor of the EU constitution) Valery Giscard D'Estaing, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. The Rothschild family has hosted many Bilderbergs. In 1962 and 1973, on the island resort of Saltsjobaden, Sweden, the hosts were the Wallenberg banking family.
Some of these masters control more of the universe than others. They are the members of the steering committee, which includes Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank), Jorma Ollila (Nokia), Jeurgen Schrempp (DaimlerChrysler), Peter Sutherland (former North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO - general and now with Goldman Sachs), James Wolfensohn (the outgoing World Bank president) and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle. Iraq war conceptualist and incoming World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is a also a Bilderberg permanent member. George W Bush happened to be in the neighborhood - the Netherlands, for the World War II commemorations - during Bilderberg 2005. He may have dropped in. Bush did meet Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who must be present at every Bilderberg.
To whose advantage?
Bilderberg certainly is not an executive council. British economist Will Hutton may have gotten closer to the truth when he said that the consensus reached at each Bilderberg meeting "is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide". What Bilderberg decides can be expected to be later implemented by a G-8 meeting, and International Monetary Fund and World Bank decisions.
No matter what, for innumerable, serious critics in Europe as well as the US, Bilderberg is everything from a Zionist plot to a megalomaniac secret cult. Serbs, not without some reason, blamed Bilderberg for the 1999 Balkan war and the fall of Slobodan Milosevic: after all, the US needed to control vital, Balkan pipeline routes.
Bilderberg 2002 - although not without controversy - is thought to have cemented the invasion and conquest of Iraq. In his seminal A Century of War: Anglo-American oil politics and the New World War, F William Engdahl details what happened at Bilderberg 1973 in Sweden. An American outlined a scenario for an imminent 400% hike in the oil prices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Bilderberg did not prevent the oil shock; instead it planned how to manage with mega-profits - what Kissinger described as "recycling the petrodollar flows". Everyone that mattered was present at this Bilderberg: oil majors and major banks. Engdahl's conclusion:
What the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg had evidently decided that May was to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests and the dollar. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon - control of the world's oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo, in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil had by international custom been priced in dollars, since American oil companies dominated the post-war market. A sudden sharp increase in the world price of oil, therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil.
Saudi petrodollars then moved to the "right" banks in London in New York to finance US government deficits. Game, set, match to Bilderberg - where the mandarins of global finance always win.
Plutocracy international
Although not a single word uttered inside the Bilderberg vaults is allowed to reach public opinion, it's possible to take an educated guess as to what they're talking about. Last week, the ubiquitous Kissinger started the proceedings by illuminating the meaning of "freedom" - the Bush version. Natan Sharansky, Bush's democratic guru, was a participant.
Issues that would logically have interested Bilderberg 2005 include the role of NATO and the necessary approval in 2005 of the European constitution by all 25 members of the EU - the consequences of a French "no" in the upcoming May 29 referendum to approve the constitution need to be considered. Widespread job outsourcing in Europe to the Ukraine, China and India may sound the death knell to the constitution: French protesters - who have awakened the German and the Dutch - are insisting that what is good for big corporations may not be necessarily good for Western European workers. Critics say that chapter III of the constitution in fact details the way free trade may effectively kill the European welfare state.
They have their reasons to be concerned. In his book The Great Chessboard, Bilderberger Zbigniew Brzezinski hails "a Western Europe ... staying in a large measure an American protectorate". Brzezinski also insists that "Europe has to solve the problem caused by its social redistribution system", which "prevents European initiative". The father of the European constitution is none other than Bilderberger Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who happens to be very close to Kissinger.
From a geopolitical perspective, the heart of the whole matter is that the constitution legally confirms that Europe cannot have a defense force apart from NATO, ie outside the control of the US. Bilderberg beliefs would point to only one direction: an ever-expanding, US-controlled NATO, an ever-eastward-expanding EU, mass delocalization, mass corporate profits and unchallenged US military supremacy. No wonder this is the focus of a bitter debate inside EU corridors in Brussels, where scores of diplomats and commission officials openly complain of Washington's bullying and accuse their governments of selling out. Gunther Verheugen, the European commissioner in charge of expanding the EU, happens to be a Bilderberger. When members of the European Commission go to a Bilderberg, their travel expenses and their daily allowance is provided by the commission. This certainly disqualifies Bilderberg's self-presentation as a "private club".
Bilderberg 2005 has - coincidentally? - merged with Bush's tour among his Baltic friends and the tense meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The containment of Russia was likely top of the agenda for Bilderberg. Russia is very much worried about its "near abroad" and sees no reason to remove its army from bases in Georgia or its navy from Sebastopol, in Ukrainian Crimea - no matter how many color-coded revolutions happen at its doorstep.
European Commission sources assure that Brzezinski remains an extremely influential figure. The Bilderberg discussion on the control of Eurasia still refers to The Grand Chessboard. Washington is such an avid cheerleader of Turkey's accession to the EU because this means increased American influence near the Caspian and over the eastern Mediterranean. And it also works towards the containment of Iran, Russia and China - which, according to Brzezinski, may not be allowed to emerge as rival powers to the US in Eurasia.
Another contentious issue that must have occupied the minds of those at Bilderberg 2005 is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - this is just a detail: the point is how to prevent Iran from becoming a first-rate Eurasian power. Some in Brussels do not discount the possibility of a scenario of massive propaganda buildup to try to convince American and European public opinion of the necessity of a strike against Iran. How to force Beijing to appreciate the yuan must also have been a topic.
-
orwell76 - Wood
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Re: Bilderberg and Oil hike?
by venky » Sun 18 Sep 2005, 23:47:11
Certainly interesting.
Is there any books or websites you can recommend that gives good information on the Bilderbergers. Reliable sources, not like Alex Jones that are riddled with disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Is there any books or websites you can recommend that gives good information on the Bilderbergers. Reliable sources, not like Alex Jones that are riddled with disinformation and conspiracy theories.
- venky
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Re: Bilderberg and Oil hike?
by orwell76 » Mon 19 Sep 2005, 00:06:34
Books on Bilderberg on are quite rare.
But here is another interesting book.
The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)
Book Review
Card catalog description
"Between 1973 and 1980, the cost of crude oil rose suddenly and dramatically, precipitating convulsions in international politics. Conventional wisdom holds that international capital markets adjusted automatically and remarkably well: Enormous amounts of money flowed into oil-rich states, and efficient markets then placed that new money in cash-poor Third World economies. This massive reallocation of wealth is labeled petrodollar recycling."--BOOK JACKET.
"David Spiro has followed the money trail, and the story he tells, based on interviews and a painstaking accumulation of fragmentary evidence, contradicts the accepted beliefs both in the particulars and in broad outline. Most of the sudden flush of new oil wealth did not go to poor oil-importing countries around the globe. Instead the United States made a deal with Saudi Arabia to sell it U.S. securities in secret, a deal resulting in a substantial portion of Saudi assets being held by the U.S. government. With this arrangement, the U.S. government violated its agreements with allies in the developed world. Spiro argues that American policy makers took this action to prop up otherwise intolerable levels of U.S. public debt. In effect, recycled OPEC wealth subsidized the debt-happy policies of the U.S. government as well as the debt-happy consumerism of its citizenry."--BOOK JACKET.
But here is another interesting book.
The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)
Book Review
Card catalog description
"Between 1973 and 1980, the cost of crude oil rose suddenly and dramatically, precipitating convulsions in international politics. Conventional wisdom holds that international capital markets adjusted automatically and remarkably well: Enormous amounts of money flowed into oil-rich states, and efficient markets then placed that new money in cash-poor Third World economies. This massive reallocation of wealth is labeled petrodollar recycling."--BOOK JACKET.
"David Spiro has followed the money trail, and the story he tells, based on interviews and a painstaking accumulation of fragmentary evidence, contradicts the accepted beliefs both in the particulars and in broad outline. Most of the sudden flush of new oil wealth did not go to poor oil-importing countries around the globe. Instead the United States made a deal with Saudi Arabia to sell it U.S. securities in secret, a deal resulting in a substantial portion of Saudi assets being held by the U.S. government. With this arrangement, the U.S. government violated its agreements with allies in the developed world. Spiro argues that American policy makers took this action to prop up otherwise intolerable levels of U.S. public debt. In effect, recycled OPEC wealth subsidized the debt-happy policies of the U.S. government as well as the debt-happy consumerism of its citizenry."--BOOK JACKET.
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orwell76 - Wood
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Re: Bilderberg and Oil hike?
by OilsNotWell » Mon 19 Sep 2005, 00:13:22
If you care to search, I think there were a few reports which detailed this year's Bilderberg...with a detailed insider description of the topic, including oil, along with photos of participants...outside...Wolfowitz, even Mark Warner of Virginia...his appearance and discussion at this year's meeting was my cue that he's going to factor into something in the future more and more...like just a few ddays ago when he figured prominently in the discussions of federal power grabs (amending Posse Comtitatus) in the wake of the Katrina response...
Just google "Bilderberg 2005"
like this:
http://www.counterpunch.org/estulin05272005.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Re ... tulin.html
http://www.bilderberg.org/2005.htm#2005
http://www.fosar-bludorf.com/bilderberger/Liste.htm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/bi ... g_2005.htm
Just google "Bilderberg 2005"
like this:
http://www.counterpunch.org/estulin05272005.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Re ... tulin.html
http://www.bilderberg.org/2005.htm#2005
http://www.fosar-bludorf.com/bilderberger/Liste.htm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/bi ... g_2005.htm
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OilsNotWell - Heavy Crude
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Re: Bilderberg and Oil hike?
by MicroHydro » Mon 19 Sep 2005, 03:48:11
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilsNotWell', 'M')ark Warner of Virginia...his appearance and discussion at this year's meeting was my cue that he's going to factor into something in the future more and more...like just a few days ago when he figured prominently in the discussions of federal power grabs (amending Posse Comtitatus) in the wake of the Katrina response...
OilsNotWell, by George, I think you've got it.
Yup, the machinations of the western world board of directors are just so. While some get excited about rumors of secret handshakes and ancient occult rituals, the drab reality is bad enough. For the past few decades, the west has been a minimum security work camp. That phase of history is ending. Senator Warner and company will make it a maximum security work camp. Don't look for any relief from Empress Hillary I in 2009, the Clintons are players too. The Clintons were partying with Rupert Murdoch and Paul Wolfowitz in NY last week. The fix is in.
"The world is changed... I feel it in the water... I feel it in the earth... I smell it in the air... Much that once was, is lost..." - Galadriel
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MicroHydro - Heavy Crude
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