Posted on 11/15/2004 12:28:11 PM PST by Jack Black
Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory
By Jonathan Duffy BBC News Online Magazine
The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever. Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organisation in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn't go a bundle on its switchboard operations.
Telephone inquiries are met with an impersonal female voice - the Dutch equivalent of the BT Callminder woman - reciting back the number and inviting callers to "leave a message after the tone".
Anyone who accidentally dialled the number would probably think they had stumbled on just another residential answer machine.
Leiden in Holland, the inauspicious base of the Bilderberg group But behind this ultra-modest façade lies one of the most controversial and hotly-debated alliances of our times.
On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting.
For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.
What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.
Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.
The shadowy aura extends further - the anonymous answerphone message, for example; the fact that conference venues are kept secret. The group, which includes luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and former UK chancellor Kenneth Clarke, does not even have a website.
DISCREET AND ELITE This year Bilderberg has announced a list of attendees They include BP chief John Browne, US Senator John Edwards, World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Mrs Bill Gates
In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg.
In Yugoslavia, leading Serbs have blamed Bilderberg for triggering the war which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the London nail-bomber David Copeland and Osama Bin Laden are all said to have bought into the theory that Bilderberg pulls the strings with which national governments dance.
And while hardline right-wingers and libertarians accuse Bilderberg of being a liberal Zionist plot, leftists such as activist Tony Gosling are equally critical.
A former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK.
"My main problem is the secrecy. When so many people with so much power get together in one place I think we are owed an explanation of what is going on.
Timothy McVeigh was among those who believed the conspiracy theory Mr Gosling seizes on a quote from Will Hutton, the British economist and a former Bilderberg delegate, who likened it to the annual WEF gathering where "the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide".
"One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting," says Mr Gosling.
But "privacy, rather than secrecy", is key to such a meeting says Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, who has been invited several times in a non-reporting role.
"The idea that such meetings cannot be held in private is fundamentally totalitarian," he says. "It's not an executive body; no decisions are taken there."
As an up-and-coming statesmen in the 1950s, Denis Healey, who went on to become a Labour chancellor, was one of the four founding members of Bilderberg (which was named after the hotel in Holland where the first meeting was held in 1954).
The alternative - the WEF welcomes journalists His response to claims that Bilderberg exerts a shadowy hand on the global tiller is met with characteristic bluntness. "Crap!"
"There's absolutely nothing in it. We never sought to reach a consensus on the big issues at Bilderberg. It's simply a place for discussion," says Lord Healey.
Formed in the spirit of post-war trans-Atlantic co-operation, the idea behind Bilderberg was that future wars could be prevented by bringing power-brokers together in an informal setting away from prying eyes.
"Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended. The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions.
"In my experience the most useful meetings are those when one is free to speak openly and honestly. It's not unusual at all. Cabinet meetings in all countries are held behind closed doors and the minutes are not published."
That activists have seized on Bilderberg is no surprise to Alasdair Spark, an expert in conspiracy theories.
"The idea that a shadowy clique is running the world is nothing new. For hundreds of years people have believed the world is governed by a cabal of Jews.
"Shouldn't we expect that the rich and powerful organise things in their own interests. It's called capitalism."
Thanks. I will take your condescension into consideration.
You're welcome.
bump
Sorry that I didn't make my point clear. That is, mainline Presbyterians (PCUSA) seem to have a little bit of a problem with anti-semitism. I don't see anti-semitism or anti-zionism among the right-wing evangelicals that I run with (such as the Presbyterian Church in America family down the street). Just the opposite. Most Fundamentalists I know are very much supportive of Israel and very much opposed to those trying to throw Israel into the sea. If anything, anti-zionism and anti-Israel are diseases of the political (and "religious") left, particularly, the National Council of Churches.
I listened to Alex Jones over the internet for about a month or two earlier this year. Funny stuff. I loved how he used Imperial March for his opening bumper - real ominous stuff.
But, eventually I stopped listening. It got quite boring hearing the same BS repeated over and over again. I believe it was G.K. Chesterton (or was it C.S. Lewis? I get them confused at times) that once pointed out that even loons have a sort of "coherent logic", but that their worldviews are small and quite stuffy. That is exactly how it felt listening to Jones. Same old crap regurgitated over and over again. It really needed some air from fresh ideas let into it... the real world is much more dynamic than the world in which Jones and his crew believe.
Aliens from outerspace have been stealing your socks from your dryer for years. They eat socks for food and are stockpiling for an inevitable invasion.
Don't denigrate me for trying to come up for an explanation for why this occurs.
If you don't know the truth, how do you know I'm wrong?
Back in the stone age, considering every dark political change in history was made as a result of a conspiracy.
Do you really believe that these folks meet for decades every year about world policy and don't work to do anything about it?
Not much.
When you get ready to make a lucid point let me know.
Meet about world policy? I thought you said we didn't know what they were doing?
Actually I think they meet just to drive the nuts crazy...or is that crazier?
You'll be the first I ping. ;)
Right, they meet to play bridge. What else would such people meet about?
Yes, God forbid they just like to chill out with people they have commonalities with. How sinister and evil can that be?
You think they get together as a social club. Do you seriously think that?
Notice no plumbers invited. I suspicion most are people that like to bask in the glow of their own greatness.
To me it's far more plausible then plotting taking over the world. Even the ominous like to let down their hair and relax with their own.
Formed in the spirit of post-war trans-Atlantic co-operation, the idea behind Bilderberg was that future wars could be prevented by bringing power-brokers together in an informal setting away from prying eyes.
"Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended. The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions.
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