Secret Societies, Cryptocracy and Deep Politics
Alpine Follies – Bilderberg 2015 (Part 2)
New World Order / Power Elite
11 Jan, 2016
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2016/01/11/alpine-follies-bilderberg-2015-2/
Part 2: Dissecting the Bilderberg Agenda
http://www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=20107#20107
By Will Banyan, Copyright © 10 January 2016 [Part 2 of 3]
Among the many differences between the G7 and
Bilderberg meetings, perhaps the most significant
is the levels of transparency. At last year’s G7
meeting in Schloss Elmau, for example, the German
Government not only provided the programme for
the “Meeting of Heads of State and Government”,
but also overviews of the two days of meetings,
the summit declaration, which essentially
summarised the outcomes of their discussions and
a number of press releases and other documents.
G7 participants also spoke to the media about the
meeting. The White House, for example, provided
transcripts of Obama’s speeches and press
conferences, as well as a Fact Sheet and extended
press briefing on the G7. This level of detail,
and in particular the willingness of its
participants to be cross-examined by the media,
means that the achievements or otherwise of the G7 are easier to analyse.
It is telling that, in contrast, the Bilderberg
Group’s much vaunted “efforts to be more
transparent” (The Independent, May 29, 2014) have
again been found wanting. As with previous
meetings, the official Bilderberg website
provided no more than a perfunctory press release
and a list of participants. There was no
pre-Bilderberg press conference. Questions posed
to Bilderberg’s press spokesperson were met with
the solemn recitation of information already on
the Bilderberg website. Finally attempts to
obtain information from Bilderberg participants
as they were leaving Austria, elicited either
bizarre denials about even being there (as in the
case of former World Bank chief James
Wolfensohn), or variations on “no comment.” And
contrary to the claims made by Steering Committee
member, Franco Bernabé – “there is no secret,
everything is published on the site…There will be
a statement released by Bilderberg” – nothing
else was released by the Bilderberg Group.
The Invisible Visitors…
Even more remarkable was how many politicians and
government officials failed to disclose attending
the Bilderberg meeting in their published
schedules. The detailed press release (see Figure
4) issued by the US State Department on the
forthcoming travel plans of Obama’s Special
Presidential Envoy General John Allen, for
example, forgot to mention that his trip to
Europe in June 2015 also included the Bilderberg meeting in Austria:
Figure 4: US State Department Press Release on
GEN John Allen Travel for June 2015
Source: US State Department
This omission from General Allen’s schedule
played out on his return to the US on June 16,
when he was interviewed by Judy Woodruff from PBS
who noted he had “just come back from a trip to
Iraq and a number of other countries”, including
“Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, [and] Montenegro…”
But not Austria, for some reason.
Another curious oversight was to be found on the
German Federal Ministry of Defence website, which
made no mention (see Figure 5) of the Bilderberg
participation of Germany’s Minister for Defence Ursula von der Leyen:
Figure 5: Search Results on ‘Bilderberg’ from the
German Ministry of Defence Website – Jan 2016
Source: German Federal Ministry of Defence
Nor was the Bilderberg participation of NATO
Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg disclosed on
the NATO website (see Figure 6):
Figure 6: Search Results on ‘Bilderberg’ from the NATO Website – Jan 2016
Source: NATO website
Perhaps it was just an unfortunate lapse by their
public relations officers, who were presumably
too overwhelmed with other minutiae to mention
their superiors would be participating in a
three-day conference in Austria, a major
commitment of time for any senior politician or
official. Fortunately some government
participants did manage to account for their
whereabouts. An official press release confirmed
that Finland’s Minister of Finance, Alexander
Stubb, would be attending the “Bilderberg Group
conference in Austria.” While the Government
Information Service of the Netherlands announced
that Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Princess
Beatrix would be attending (Telegraaf, Jun. 10,
2015). And there was official confirmation that
Belgium’s Prime Minister, Charles Michel, and
State Minister, Karel de Gucht were also invited.
Michel’s director of communications explained
that this invitation to Bilderberg was a “way to
put Belgium on the world map of investors”
therefore it was important to “honor the
invitation” (RTBF, Jun. 09, 2015). But they were
in the minority, for most officials and
politicians there were only gaps in their schedules.
Looking for the Answers…
A couple of months after the meeting, The
Guardian (Aug. 7, 2015) had asked Henri de
Castries, Bilderberg’s Chairman and CEO of AXA
one of world’s biggest insurance companies, if
Britain’s future in the European Union had been
discussed at Telfs-Buchen. De Castries’ response
was as obscure as it was enigmatic: “Look at the
Bilderberg agenda and you will have the answer.”
The Guardian, though, noted that the “Bilderberg
agenda is not available publicly.” This is not
strictly true; the press release published on the
Bilderberg Meetings website included a list of
fifteen “key topics for discussion” (see Figure
7). But compared to topic information provided
for previous meetings, which comprised a series
of themes and questions, the 2015 agenda was an
uncharacteristically bland laundry list that gave
little away as to what the specific themes of each session might be.
Nevertheless, through a number of sources,
including a few leaks by meeting participants and
what appears to be a summary of the meeting’s key
themes by Aftenposten’s strikingly naïve
political editor Trine Eilertsen (Aftenposten,
Jun. 18, 2015), it is possible to reconstruct
some fragments of what was discussed and to find
the answers that De Castries would not give:
Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity: The
presence of Regina Dugan, Google’s Vice President
for Engineering, Advanced Technology Projects and
Demis Hassabis, Vice President of Engineering for
Google DeepMind, attracted a great deal of
attention, with some observers speculating on
Bilderberg’s interest in Google’s projects.
Dugan, formerly of US Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), was of intense interest
given her previous advocacy of an ingestible
identification chip and her work on encryption.
While Hassabis at DeepMind was on record
advocating “AG [artificial general intelligence]
as a solution” to world’s problems. Or as
DeepMind’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman (who was
not at Telfs-Buchen) put it, “AGI is a tool to
massively amplify our ability to control the
world” (Guardian, Jun. 9, 2015). Almost nothing
has leaked from these sessions, save for a
curious comment made on Agence Info Libre, by
former French Prime Minister and Mayor of
Bordeaux, Alain Juppe, that “robots with
emotions” [robots avec des émotions] were
discussed at Telfs-Buchen. Since this meeting two
Bilderberg participants, tech billionaires Peter
Thiel and Reid Hoffman, have reportedly joined
forces with their PayPal co-founder Elon Musk to
finance a Silicon Valley research centre, Open
AI, which will focus on artificial intelligence
(Contra Costa Times, Dec. 15, 2015 ). And in Time
magazine’s special “The Year Ahead” issue for
2016 (Jan. 4, 2016), Bilderberg Steering
Committee member Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman
of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, and
Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, introduced
three principles they believed AI makers should
adhere to “based on the work of DeepMind.” These
were that: (1) AI should “always aim for the
common good”; (2) AI research and development
should be “open responsible and socially
engaged”; and (3) AI designers need to “establish
best practices to avoid undesirable outcomes.”
Schmidt and Cohen are optimists, believing firmly
they are “building tools that humans control”,
ones that could “help bring about solutions to
the world’s most complex problems.”
European Strategy: According to a letter from the
German Federal Ministry of Defence, published on
the Alles Schall and Rauch website, German
Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen had, at the
request of the Steering Committee, “held a
lecture on European Security Strategy and
participated in a panel discussion on the topic.”
While exactly what the Minister said at
Telfs-Buchen is unknown, it seems reasonable to
assume she took the opportunity to discuss more
candidly her support (previously given at the
10th Brussels German Marshall Fund, in March
2015) for European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposal for a “European
Army” through the integration of all of Europe’s
armed forces and the establishing of multinational units.
Greece: Naturally the Greek debt crisis was
particularly topical; according to Eilertsen, the
discussions about how to resolve the Greek crisis
“were among the most intense.” In fact the “full
range of solutions were represented” and
Eilertsen wrote that she was “surprised by the
temperature of the debate.” Spiegel Online ( 17,
2015), citing an anonymous conference
participant, noted some Bilderberg participants
believed that a Greek exit from the Euro would be
“manageable”, while others feared the
“unpredictable reactions of the financial
markets.” There was a surprising consensus,
though, that the Greek crisis was receiving “far
too much attention”, given the other problems in
the world. Perhaps influenced in some way by the
debates at Telfs-Buchen, Ryanair CEO Michael
O’Leary later expressed his view the Greeks had
“elected a bunch of lunatics” and made the
prediction that “ultimately [Greece’s government]
will have to bend the knee – and they should”
(Newstalk, Jul. 8, 2015). And they did.
Russia: In what seemed to be its only leak from
the discussions, the American Free Press ( 22 &
29, 2015) Bilderberg special issue reported that
the Bilderbergers had “pondered waging economic
warfare against Russia.” The Bilderbergers had
“debated how to wean Europe off Russian gas, arm
the Western-backed government of Ukraine and
generate fat energy contracts for
Bilderberg-connected companies…” The AFP’s
reporting fails to identify who the speakers
were, but it seems likely that it was two
first-time participants: Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist Anne Applebaum, Director of the
Transitions Forum at the London-based Legatum
Institute; and self-exiled Russian economist
Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics at the
Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences
Po). Neither defended Putin’s Russia. Writing in
the Financial Times (Jun. 26, 2015), shortly
after Bilderberg, Applebaum accused Russia of
“pursuing an ambitious grand strategy: divide the
EU, undermine NATO, reverse the European
transitions and the post-cold war settlement.”
She also warned that if enough “obstreperous
central European populists come to power” they
could persuade Germany to side with Russia rather
than Europe. Writing in Foreign Affairs (Sep/Oct
2015), house journal of the CFR, Applebaum again
warned of US and NATO weakness in the face of
growing “Russian aggression”, including a
disinformation campaign and Russian support for
“anti-NATO, anti-EU, far-right and far-left
political parties in Europe.” While Guriev, in a
paper released by the Carnegie Moscow Center in
December 2015, had predicted that economic
sanctions against Russia would, over the
long-term, lead to economic stagnation, a drop in
Russia’s living standards, and increased corruption.
Middle East: Clearly an important topic,
Eilersten’s indiscreet snippet suggests an
obvious theme: “is there any hope for progress in
Iraq and Syria, which in terms of terrorism and
migration casts a shadow over the rest of the
world, or should we plan for decades of turmoil
and war?” While we have no reliable insights into
the substance of that debate, we do know what a
few of the key participants on this issue
actually think. We know, for example, that after
Bilderberg, Peter Sutherland, then Chairman of
Goldman Sachs, International and the UN Special
Representative for Migration, argued publicly
that Europe must accept more refugees from a
number of places, prime among them being Syria.
While former CIA Director General David Petraeus,
in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services
Committee in September 2015, had argued for a
larger US role in overthrowing Assad, including
direct attacks on the Syrian Air Force. But it is
the full range of public statements by key
Bilderberg participants after the event on how to
deal with Syria (detailed below), which suggest
the true direction and intent of that particular session.
Terrorism: Eilertsen informs us there was a
debate on “how we handle foreign fighters who
return to their home country” between first-time
participants Shiraz Maher, Senior Research Fellow
at the International Center for the Study of
Radicalization at Kings College in London and
Professor Gilles Kepel, from the Paris Institute
of Political Studies. Maher had long been an
advocate of early intervention to stop
radicalised Muslim youth from joining jihadi
groups in Syria, and of deradicalisation
programs, rather than imprisonment for returning
foreign fighters. Kepel believes that ISIS is
trying to provoke a religious war between Muslims
and non-Muslims in Europe and supports “efficient
police operations and education” to reduce youth
radicalisation in Muslim neighbourhoods. Also
contributing to the debate was Patrick Calvar,
Director-General of France’s internal security
agency, the DGSI. We know this because just after
the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq & Syria) attacks
occurred in Paris, Eilertsen disclosed that she
had previously “heard French Intelligence speak
on the topic”; she did not say where she had
heard this, but Calvar was present at
Telfs-Buchen. According to Eilertsen, in regards
to the Paris attack, French intelligence was
“hardly surprised that it happened”, and she
revealed that “French intelligence” – presumably
Calvar at Bilderberg – had previously admitted
that they “take for granted that [an] attack will
happen” (Aftenposten, Nov. 14, 2015). And it did.
United Kingdom: Eilertsen’s account suggests
that, not surprisingly, the referendum on Britain
staying in the EU proposed by UK Prime Minister
David Cameron was discussed: “should the UK get
out of the EU, or is it madness to discuss the
option?” Nothing of note has leaked from the
discussions themselves, although The Economist
newspaper, represented at Telfs-Buchen by its
Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes has come out
strongly against the so-called “Brexit” option.
This could be taken as an indicator of the tenor
of the discussion, at least according to
Bilderberg People (2011) co-author Ian Richardson
who claims that the “headlines of journals such
as The Economist” can give a “sense of the
discussions that have taken place” at Bilderberg
(Huffington Post, Jul. 13, 2011).
US Elections: This key topic attracted a lot of
attention from the alternative media, even though
no presidential contenders attended this year’s
event. Infowars ( 20, 2015) had speculated that
former Florida Governor Jeb Bush might include a
diversion to Bilderberg for his forthcoming trip
to Europe; but Bush’s communications director,
Tim Miller, flatly denied this (see Figure 8).
Speculation then turned to presence of Democrat
fixer Joseph Johnson and Jim Messina, CEO of the
Messina Group and head of Super Political Action
Committee (PAC), Priorities USA, which has
declared itself “all in for Hillary Clinton.”
Infowars (Jun. 08, 2015) wondered if
Messina—described by Bloomberg (Mar. 20, 2015) as
“Silicon Valley’s go-to-government fixer” due to
his advisory work for Uber, Airbnb, Beepi, Sherpa
Ventures and as a board member for cybersecurity
firm Vectra Ventures—was at Bilderberg to ensure
“none of Hillary’s potential challengers get the
big bucks from the innumerable transnational
banks and corporations that will also be
represented at Bilderberg.” Perhaps there was
some truth to this. But Hillary Clinton’s
campaign has confirmed support from only a couple
of the rich Americans at Telfs-Buchen,
specifically: Google’s Eric Schmidt and
Evercore’s Roger Altman. Vin Weber, from Mercury
LLC, and Kenneth Griffin CEO of Citadel
Investment Group remain firmly in the Republican
camp; while Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder and
Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, has reportedly
baulked at donating to Priorities USA, despite
confirming that he expects to eventually support
Hillary Clinton. Finally Bilderberg Steering
Committee member Peter Thiel, President of Thiel
Capital and previously a generous supporter of
Ron Paul, has yet to commit himself (or his
money) to any presidential candidate.
Figure 8: Jeb Bush Won’t Be Going to Bilderberg
Source: BloombergPolitics
With fifteen topics for discussion over two and a
half days, the 2015 Bilderberg was hardly a
relaxing get-together. Belgium’s Prime Minister
Charles Michel seemed to find it hard going,
later telling the Belgian press that Bilderberg
was “very intense, there were six sessions a day”
[“très intense, il y avait six sessions par
jour”] (Le Vif, Jul. 08, 2015). Other first-time
participants did not seem to mind the pace.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary thought Bilderberg
was a “great experience”; while Eilertsen praised
it as “very useful…because participants spoke so
freely.” Even more remarkable is that despite
having entered an age where pocket-sized devices
that are able to record and transmit sound and
vision are both cheap and ubiquitous, Bilderberg
is still able to keep its secrets.
The Bilderberg Consensus: “Destroy ISIS” with Ground Troops
Following last November’s ISIS-led terrorist
attacks in Paris (note that this “official”
narrative of ISIS culpability has been challenged
in many quarters), a consensus quickly emerged
across Europe at both the popular and the
political level that ISIS must be “destroyed.”
Leading the charge was France’s President Francis
Hollande, who announced days after the attacks,
that France was “at war” with ISIS and was now
determined to “destroy them.” Other countries
quickly followed suit, including Germany and
Britain, both of which pledged forces to join the
effort to “destroy” ISIS. There have been some
dissenting voices; most notably Britain’s Leader
of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn who dismissed
Prime Minister Cameron’s apparent eagerness to
commit to force as “bomb first, talk later”, but
most European countries supported the effort.
While the Paris attacks may have acted as a
catalyst for an intensification of European and
US attacks on ISIS, this actually seemed to
follow an earlier shift in elite opinion,
traceable to the Bilderberg meeting at Telfs-Buchen.
Bilderberg’s public approach is, of course, to
deny that it takes a position on these issues and
is merely a forum for the candid exchange of
ideas between people of influence and standing in
their own countries and beyond. But this only
contradicts clear evidence that each conference
is intricately planned to achieve political
outcomes. The Bilderberg Steering Committee
selects the topics, vets the speakers and the
list of invitees with the express aim of
promoting a particular point of view. As
Bilderberg People (2011) co-author Ian Richardson
recently observed, “exclusive policy networks” such as Bilderberg,
?
perform a considerable function in the
development of narratives that provide
legitimacy, as a basis for action, in world
affairs. It’s in forums like this that policy
consensuses are formed, shaped and disseminated –
and although the process is often unconscious,
the outcomes are in no way random or accidental
(Huffington Post, Sep. 12, 2011; emphasis added).
Historically, Bilderberg’s efforts to reshape the
transatlantic political consensus can be seen in
the case of its handling of US relations with
Communist China. Through four meetings – 1956,
1958, 1959, and 1964 – a succession of mostly
European speakers criticised and challenged the
US refusal to restore relations with Peking.
Numerous US Bilderberg members, including the US
Bilderberg Secretary-General, then played a role
in various initiatives in the US devoted to
overturning that policy. Similarly, the day long
energy session at the 1973 Bilderberg meeting in
Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, was also tightly organised
with two highly-regarded presenters, promoting
broadly similar solutions, presenting before an
audience of participants selected for their
expertise and authority in the energy sector.
This helped lay the groundwork for the developed
world’s response to the 1973 Oil Shock.
Arguably, a similar pattern can be seen at work
for the “Middle East” session at Telfs-Buchen.
Although we do not actually know who was selected
to speak, there are important clues in the
backgrounds of some of the first-time
participants who attended. This included retired
General John Allen, the US Special Presidential
Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.
Allen had been appointed Special Envoy in
September 2014, reportedly on the strength of his
public call for the US and its allies to “destroy
I[slamic] S[tate]” as it represented in his
words, a “clear and present danger” to the US.
“IS must be destroyed” Allen had argued, “and we
must move quickly to pressure its entire ‘nervous
system,’ break it up, and destroy its pieces.”
But in his role at the time (he has since
resigned), General Allen would have been charged
with explaining and defending the Obama
Administration’s approach to ISIS. It would have
probably followed the lines of his comments to
the Aspen Security Forum on July 23, 2015, where
he claimed that “ISIS is losing”: the “surface
area” and population under its control had
“shrunk significantly” and its military momentum
had been “checked strategically, operationally and by and large tactically.”
He was joined by another Bilderberg first-time
participant, retired US Marine General James
Mattis, the Davies Family Distinguished Visiting
Fellow at the Hoover Institution (at Stanford
University). Mattis would have been noteworthy
for his far more pessimistic appraisal of the
ISIS threat and his criticisms of the Obama
Administration’s response. For example, on
September 18, 2014, Mattis had told the US House
Intelligence Committee that ISIS was “gaining
strength” and represented a “threat to governance
across the Middle East.” ISIS, he averred, was on
track to launch “transnational operations”, and
had thus “grown into a strategic threat.” Mattis
argued ground troops might be needed to challenge
ISIS in Iraq, and he warned that “without firm
action this poison will spread.” Appearing as an
expert witness before the Senate Armed Services
Committee on January 27, 2015 Mattis had agreed
“One-hundred per cent” with one Senator’s
assessment that “America’s going to be attacked
if we don’t deal with the threat in Iraq and
Syria” (SASC Transcript, Jan. 27, 2015,
pp.72-73). Mattis had also rejected the option of containing ISIS:
?
Senator, I think that, in a globalized world
today, where there — we’re perhaps one airline
seat away from somebody exporting this right into
Paris or wherever else — we have to be very, very
careful thinking that we can contain this
without having ramifications on our economy, on
our friends (SASC Transcript, Jan. 27, 2015, p.100; emphasis added).
And again in March last year Mattis described
ISIS as a “malignant and growing threat” that
could only be countered by a willingness to
“deploy all our military capabilities.”
Also present with strong views on how to deal
with ISIS were more regular Bilderberg
participants such as the ever-present Henry
Kissinger. In September 2014, in an interview
with the Sunday Times to promote his new book,
World Order (2014), Kissinger called for an
“all-out attack” on ISIS, mainly as “punitive
measure” of “limited duration” in response to the
recent execution of a US hostage. Characterising
ISIS as an “insult to our values and to our
society” that demanded a “very significant
retaliation”; Kissinger advocated hitting ISIS
targets throughout Syria and Iraq. “In my view
this should have happened already”, he said,
“There can’t be any debate any more about fighting them.”
Another influential participant on this issue, in
his third Bilderberg meeting, was former CIA
Director and retired US Army General David
Petraeus. According to a “White House source”
quoted by Newsweek (Mar. 14, 2015), Petraeus had
been providing “good advice” to the National
Security Council on how to deal with ISIS. Only a
week or so out from the Bilderberg meeting,
however, Petraeus told Charlie Rose on CBS News
(Jun. 3, 2015), the situation in Iraq and Syria
was “worrisome” with ISIS clearly consolidating
into a “threat to the United States, to our
allies and partners around the world…” He called
on the Obama Administration to re-evaluate its
anti-ISIS strategy, advocating sending more
military advisers, because there was a “risk of losing this fight.”
The audience for this debate was also the right
one, comprising numerous senior European
politicians and officials with a stake in the
debate. This included the Prime Ministers of
Belgium and the Netherlands, Germany’s Minister
and Deputy Minister for Defence, Britain’s
Chancellor of the Exchequer, various government
ministers from Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium and
Finland, and the heads of the French and Danish
intelligence services. They were also joined by a
number of journalists, academics and former
officials who operated in the public sphere as
national security experts. It was an audience
both well-primed for a debate on the
effectiveness or otherwise of the anti-ISIS
campaign at that stage and also to effect a shift
in the transatlantic consensus on what to do about Syria.
It is also worth noting that by the time of the
Bilderberg meeting, the G7 had basically
reaffirmed its policy of containing ISIS in the
hope that ISIS would in time destroy itself,.
This was reflected in the language of the G7
Leader’s Declaration that restated their
collective commitment to merely “counter” and “defeat” ISIS:
?
we welcome the continued efforts of the Global
Coalition to counter ISIL/Da’esh. We reaffirm our
commitment to defeating this terrorist group and
combatting the spread of its hateful ideology.
Britain had committed to expanding its training
mission in Iraq, but there was no appetite to
dramatically escalate the direct military effort
beyond airstrikes. In fact some of the G7 leaders
seemed confident the current strategy was
sufficient. US President Obama, for example, on
the second day of the G7, in a joint press
conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Abadi,
predicted ISIS would be “drive[n] out of Iraq,
and ultimately it is going to be defeated.” In
his press conference at the end of the G7 Obama
claimed they had made “significant progress in
pushing back” ISIS in parts of Iraq, but later
also admitted that “we don’t yet have a complete
strategy” for assisting Iraq. For some
commentators this prevarication was too much.
Obama’s admission coupled with the G7’s vague
commitment to do something about ISIS, would only
“reinforce the perception of irrelevance that has
hung over [the G7] for years” (The National, Jun. 11, 2015).
That Bilderberg took a different angle on the
issue is not only suggested by the presence of
retired Generals Mattis, Allen, and Petraeus, but
in the approaches advocated by some key
Bilderberg participants in the months after the
meeting. Instead of reiterating Obama’s vague
goal of “defeating” ISIS without committing any
“boots on the ground” (which Obama claimed
actually meant no “Iraq-style invasion of Iraq or
Syria” rather than no troops at all); these
influential individuals proposed escalating
military involvement, including ground troops,
with the aim of ultimately destroying or
liquidating ISIS. Moreover, much of this advocacy
took place well before the Paris attacks suddenly made it urgent:
In August 2015 the Daily Beast reported that
Petraeus had been “quietly urging U.S. officials
to consider using so-called moderate members of
al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria.”
Then in September he was telling the Senate Armed
Services Committee that progress against ISIS in
Iraq had been “inadequate” and the US needed to
increase its support to those forces opposing ISIS.
The military option also appealed to The
Economist newspaper, represented at Bilderberg by
its Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes.
“[F]ighting the group may be the best option”,
The Economist (Aug. 15, 2015) argued, suggesting
that ISIS propaganda would be neutralised by a “sound military defeat.”
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and regular
Bilderberg participant George Osborne used a G20
meeting in early September to allude to the need
for stronger military action in Syria. Osborne
told journalists that Europe’s migration crisis
could be solved by dealing with the problem “at
the source, which is this evil Assad regime and
the ISIL (Islamic State) terrorists…” (Reuters, Sep. 5, 2015).
In September the Editorial Board of Bloomberg LP,
represented at Telfs-Buchen by its
Editor-in-Chief and long-time Bilderberg
participant John Micklethwait, recommended the
partitioning of Syria, both to bring the war to
an end and to facilitate “a U.S. policy that seeks to destroy Islamic State…”
Also in mid-September, former German diplomat and
two-time Bilderberg participant Wolfgang
Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security
Conference, called for German military engagement
in Syria, arguing that its strategy “can only be
credible if it is backed by credible military options for action.”
A month before the attacks, Kissinger had created
considerable controversy by arguing in the Wall
Street Journal (Oct. 16, 2015) that defeating
ISIS, a self-declared “unrelenting foe of
established world order”, and ensuring Syria did
not become a “permanent terrorist haven” was
“more urgent” than overthrowing Syrian President
Bashar Al-Assad. He also criticised the
“inconclusive” US-led military effort as a
potential “recruitment vehicle for ISIS as having stood up to American might.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 5, 2015)
about a week before the attacks, the
well-connected former World Bank President,
former Bush Jr Administration official, and
Bilderberg Steering Committee member Robert
Zoellick proposed a comprehensive strategy to
stymie the “expansion of Islamic State.” Noting
that the conflict in the region was for the
“control of this crossroads of Asia, Europe and
Africa”, Zoellick supported the establishment of
“safe zones” for Sunni in Syria with US support
that would in time undermine ISIS and its “barbaric army.”
Following the attacks in Paris in November 2015,
there was renewed focus on what was seen as the
failure of the US-led attempt to merely contain
ISIS. President Obama’s comments, the day before
the attacks, that due to US efforts ISIS had “not
gained ground in Iraq”, and had been successfully
“contained”, appeared to many to have been
swiftly repudiated. Naturally, a number of
Bilderberg participants joined the chorus calling for the destruction of ISIS:
Speaking at Westchester Community College a few
days after the attacks, Kissinger had argued that
the “first thing” to be done is to “destroy
ISIS”. In December, speaking to Fox Business
News, Kissinger was more adamant, linking the
destruction of ISIS with building a viable world order:
?
“We have to find a means of destroying [ISIS]. It
isn’t simply a matter of containing them — it’s
an issue of destroying them… It cannot be dealt
with purely as a police issue in the United
States… There needs to be an outcome of the
Syrian civil war… And then we can have an
international order in which we identify the key
elements of people that are supporting us and the
elements that are opposing us” (Fox Business, Dec. 18, 2015; emphasis added).
Speaking at a Brooking Institution event in
November 2015, Petraeus argued that if the
objective was to “degrade and defeat” ISIS
“you’re going to have to have a ground force.”
Petraeus stopped short of advocating the bulk of
the ground troops should be US forces, he would
prefer “Sunni Arab forces”; but he also wanted to
see more US Special Forces conducting operations against ISIS.
The Economist ( 21, 2015) again insisted that
“the world needs to fight IS in its territory in
Iraq and Syria.” “To destroy IS means taking
Raqqa and Mosul”, The Economist argued, making a
pitch for ground-troops, “That requires an army.”
Calling ISIS a “stateless band of terrorists”,
the BloombergView Editorial Board advocated
applying “financial pressure as well as military
might” to defeat ISIS (BloombergView, Nov. 17, 2015).
Anne Applebaum called for Europe to adopt a
“consistent strategy designed not to control
ISIS, but to destroy it” (Slate, Nov. 14, 2015).
Third-time participant Thomas Donilon, former
National Security Adviser to President Obama,
speaking at Duke University in November 2015
called on the US to increase the scale of its
response. This appeared to include ground troops.
It was “important to have some victories on the
ground”, he argued, so they could disrupt the
ISIS “narrative of success” by “show[ing] them losing.”
Back in 2012, an illuminating article by The
Guardian newspaper’s roving Bilderberg
correspondent Charlie Skelton mused at length
about the connections between the “most quoted
members of the Syrian opposition and their
connection to the Anglo-American opposition
creation business.” Although he delved only
briefly into the Bilderberg angle, it was
remarkable how many key Bilderberg members were
also connected to the leading spokespeople in
Europe and the US, calling for the military
support of the west to overthrow the Baathist
regime of Bashar Al Assad. Of particular interest
was that Bassami Kodmani, who was in 2011-2012
the spokesperson for the Syrian National Council
and Executive Director of the Arab Reform
Initiative (ARI), had attended the 2008 and 2012
Bilderberg conferences. The ARI had been
initiated by the Council on Foreign Relations’
US/Middle East Project, which was headed by a
number of regular Bilderberg participants,
including Peter Sutherland and Henry Kissinger.
Providing “financial oversight” to the ARI was
the Centre for European Reform; its Advisory
Board is chaired by (now former) Bilderberg
Steering Committee member and Vice-Chair of Scottish Power, Lord John Kerr.
Skelton’s analysis certainly implied that
Bilderberg was involved in trying to shape
transatlantic opinions on the Syrian conflict.
The involvement of so many Bilderberg
participants in the push to “destroy ISIS” after
Telfs-Buchen, suggests that this subtle shaping
and influencing role persists. By giving a
platform to well-connected and highly experienced
critics of the US-led approach to ISIS,
Bilderberg clearly hoped to shift the
consensus—that the current effort was
sufficient—in another direction. To be sure, the
actual catalyst for most of the government
participants at Telfs-Buchen to offer similar
rhetoric was the Paris attacks, but the tone had
already been set by Kissinger, Zoellick,
Petraeus, The Economist and Bloomberg, among others.
Bilderberg’s deliberate lack of transparency
ensures that it is difficult to track and to
document what it is actually up to. So,
inevitably, this means this account should not be
seen as a complete exposure, but rather as a
glimpse. And this raises the question as to
whether either the mainstream media or their
alternative competitors are really up to taking
on this seemingly insurmountable task of
penetrating Bilderberg’s veil of secrecy.
[To be continued in Part 3]
--
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<http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf>http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic
poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
<https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/>https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered
that shall not be revealed; and nothing hid that
shall not be made known. What I tell you in
darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27
Die Pride and Envie; Flesh, take the poor's advice.
Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
Then England sit in rest; Thy sorrows will have end;
Thy Sons will live in peace, and each will be a friend.
http://tinyurl.com/6ct7zh6
--
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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