thought this might be of interest to some of you.
David.
--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 18:08:04 +0000
From: News Desk <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Bilderberg: Secret minutes revealed for first time
in 50 years
Sender: News Desk <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: News Desk <[log in to unmask]>
Message-ID:
<19991115181152.SMMI11683.mta3-svc@[62.252.5.42]>
No-WTO
apologies for cross-posting
Title: 'Bilderberg': Secret Minutes Revealed for the first time in 50 years
Date: 15 NOV '99
Author: Gibby Zobel
Source: The Big Issue, London
Style: News Article
For nearly 50 years an elite group of the Westıs most powerful men and
women, including Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, has met in secret. Today The
Big Issue can reveal for the first time the confidential minutes The
Bilderberg Papers of what some commentators have called a ³shadow world
government².
The clandestine meetings do not make policy, yet directly inform the
thinking of world leaders.
This yearıs meeting took place in June under armed guard at the exclusive
Caesar Park Hotel, Penha Longa, Portugal. Northern Ireland secretary of
state Peter Mandelson, Conservative MP Kenneth Clarke, and environmentalist
Jonathon Porritt attended and mixed with presidents, chairmen of
multinational companies, world bankers, Nato chiefs and defence ministers.
The 64-page leaked document reveals the group was advised that after Kosovo,
³Russia now has carte blanche to intervene in Chechnya. Nato will not bomb
Moscow if Russia invades Chechnya.² Two hundred thousand Chechens have been
forced to flee their homes since Russia began bombing last month.
Last week the Clinton administration accused Russia of breaking
international law. But the minutes make clear that world leaders are
operating in an environment where international law has become obsolete and
where Nato is in danger of effectively becoming a colonial power
In another debate How Durable is the Current Rosy Complexion of European
Politics?ı Britainıs cuts in welfare were put into sharp context.
³The new Left,² argued one Briton, was ³consolidating the victories of the
Right. The electoral failures of the Right had largely been self-inflicted,
and the Left may well prove to be better at reforming the welfare state.
With 17 million unemployed, it might be easier for somebody who claimed to
be a socialist to impose change.² Welfare, one panellist thought, would be
the ³Red manıs burden². Governments had to ³think like business people².
But not every socialist government in Europe has bitten the bullet the
group talked of Germany, France and Italyıs lack of ³guts² for welfare cuts.
Governmentsı fear of social unrest was the major reason for lack of action.
As a British panellist noted: ³Things would only change when the cost of not
doing anything really did seem larger than that of doing something.²
Most of the group thought the new European Left was just a ³genetically
modified version² of the old one. ³It is simply a rotation of power,² said
one German. ³In many cases the real power lies with central banks.² This
idea was given greater emphasis by discussions about the introduction of
dollarisation.
The Bilderberg papers reveal:
- Nato has ³given Russia carte blanche to intervene in Chechnya²
- After the euro, a global currency dollarisationı may be the next step
- Post-Kosovo, Nato is in danger of mimicking a colonial empire
- Itıs easier to cut welfare benefits if you call yourself a socialist
HIDDEN AGENDA - FEATURE
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 Westıs 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.
³Lines of black limousines, unmarked except for a Bı on the windscreen,
swept in, sometimes accompanied by police escorts, sometimes not,² says an
eyewitness of this yearıs meeting in Portugal. ³A 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.²
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 Kippergateı). A
serving police officer told The Big Issueı: ³Special Branch and CIA were
everywhere they were calling the shots.²
Never in its 47-year history has the content of these discussions been made
public. Until now. The Big Issueı has uncovered the Bilderberg Papers the
secret minutes of this yearıs 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?
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 Economistı, in a rare reference to it in 1987, said
that the importance of the meetings was overplayed but admitted: ³When you
have scaled the Bilderberg, you have arrived.²
At last yearıs meeting, former defence minister George Robertson, who is now
Nato secretary-general, planned strategies with the Bilderberg chair and
ex-Nato chief Lord Carrington.
Observerı editor-in-chief Will Hutton attended Bilderberg in 1997. He
believes that it is the home of the ³high priests of globalisation². ³No
policy is made here,² he says, ³it is all talk. But the consensus
established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide.²
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
continentsı countries had no seats at this summit. The official eight-strong
UK delegation included bankers Martin Taylor, former chief executive of
Barclayıs 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 Quotationı. It states: ³There 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.²
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 yearıs 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 Architectureı, discussed the concept of
dollarisationı 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: ³It is worth
noting that this is the first Bilderberg meeting where the euro is fact
rather than a topic for discussion.²
During the discussion, ³One 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.²
There is a dissenting voice:
³The 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.²
what they said about war
Despite Tony Blairıs presidential stance over Kosovo, Natoıs historic war
was pilloried at Bilderberg. ³The mood at the meeting was surprisingly
subdued most of the speakers concentrated on the downside of the conflict,²
begins the discussion on Kosovo.
Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, weighs in, saying Kosovo
³could be this generationıs Vietnam². 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. ³How
did one persuade countries like China, Russia and India that Natoıs new
mandate was not just a new version of the white manıs burdenı
colonialism?² 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.
³Nato 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.²
An unnamed British politician ³wondered whether the [Nato] alliance could
hang together after the end of the war. He warned that ³there would be
little popular enthusiasm for putting lots of resources into solving the
regionıs gigantic problems.²
Peter Mandelson told the group that ³two 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.²
@nti-copyright for non-commercial use.
More next week.
______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, write to [log in to unmask]
Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/
--- End Forwarded Message ---
----------------------
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
