--- F R E N D Z of martian --- Frendz, I thought one or two on this list might be interested in the secret Bilderberg thang.... ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Bilderberg: Secret minutes revealed for first time in 50 years Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 18:08:04 +0000 From: "News Desk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- -- Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. -- Oscar Wilde -- Sent to you via the frendz list at marsbard.com The archive is at http://www.mail-archive.com/frendz@marsbard.com/
