Alpine Follies – Bilderberg 2015 (Part 3) Power Elite 4 Feb, 2016
Part 3 of 3: Bilderberg and the Media
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2016/02/04/alpine-follies-bilderberg-2015-part-3/
By Will Banyan, Copyright © 04 February 2016 [See Part 1 and 2]
The sparseness of mainstream media coverage of
Bilderberg’s meetings has long been a topic of
concern for those who are wary of the annual
gathering. This suspicion has evolved into a
mythology that the mainstream media has conspired
with Bilderberg’s leadership to suppress mention
of its very existence. One key proponent of this
mythology was the late Jim Tucker, who chased the
Bilderbergers for many years for Spotlight and
later American Free Press. In his Bilderberg
Diary (2005), Tucker claimed there was a
“virtually complete” media “blackout” on
Bilderberg in the United States (p.4), with the
major newspapers and TV networks having
“participated in vows of secrecy” (p.5). Tucker
claimed the Washington Post had only mentioned
Bilderberg “four times” and the New York Times
had just mentioned it once when “one of the
luminaries died at a meeting and the obituary
writer, and his editors, innocently let the world
slip through” (p.7). More recently, Mark Dice’s
book The Bilderberg Group Facts and Fiction
(2015) sought to reinforce this mythology by
making the questionable assertion that “for over
half a century there wasn’t more than a peep
about the meeting in the American mainstream
media” (p.1), which he attributed to some
mysterious “arrangement” between Bilderberg and the press (p.5).
As I have detailed elsewhere, none of these
claims withstand close scrutiny. Major media
outlets on both sides of the Atlantic have used
the word “Bilderberg” with seeming impunity for
decades, mentioning the location of the meetings,
some of the people connected to it, and even
leaked some details from the meetings. [this is
simply ot true - ed. (Tony)] Tucker’s claims, for
example, are easily refuted: a search on the New
York Times archive finds 59 articles mentioning
Bilderberg rather than just one and a search on
the Washington Post archive finds 37 articles
about Bilderberg (pre-1995) instead of only four.
[not sure about that but in the UK Press the
Observer only mentioned it once in 1998,
documeted censorship in the Financial Times is
legendary
http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#banned] The
issue is not the frequency of the reporting about
Bilderberg, or even mentioning that it exists,
but the quality. [No!] Despite all the reporting
on the fact the meetings are happening, [all what
reporting - there was virtually none] detailed
reporting about what was actually said is and
remains rare. [Only Tucker has reported genuine
documented leaks by properly cultivating inside
sources] The 2015 Telfs-Buchen meeting was no
exception, with both the mainstream and the
alternative media largely failing to penetrate Bilderberg’s veil.
Ignoring the Elephant in the Room: The Mainstream Media
As with previous years, the doyens of the
alternative media initially accused their
mainstream counterparts of largely ignoring the
2015 Bilderberg meeting. Infowars (Jun. 11,
2015), for example, charged that the “typical
domestic media blackout” was in “full force”, and
cited as evidence the failure of a slew of
British, American and Canadian publications – the
New York Times, Washington Post, National Post,
Globe & Mail, The Economist, and the Financial
Times – to report on the Telfs-Buchen meeting.
Writing from Austria on the eve of the meeting,
the American Free Press’ intrepid and permanently
behatted reporter, Mark Anderson, focused on the
“virtual European media failure” to cover it:
?
Still, what’s unsettling here is that while
European media still report on Bilderberg more
than the smug, careless and often-times
handcuffed United States media, European
coverage—developed through painstaking years of
collaborative coverage by late Bilderberg hound
James P. Tucker, Jr.—seems to be declining (AFP, 10 Jun. 2015).
The Guardian’s Charlie Skelton, who seemed to
bridge both mainstream and alternative media,
also had low expectations, making the sarcastic
observation that the Telfs-Buchen conclave “is
sure to be covered in depth by the world’s press.
And by ‘sure to be’, I mean it probably won’t.
For reasons that, as ever, escape me” (Guardian, 08 Jun. 2015).
But, as the alternative media representatives
would later concede, this was not the whole
picture as the mainstream media outlets did
report on the Bilderberg meeting. Thus in his
final wrap-up article, Anderson claimed due to
the combined efforts of both the mainstream
newspapers in Austria and alternative media
outlets, “considerable pressure was applied
against the Bilderbergers…” (AFP, 22 & 29 Jun.
2015, p.1). Even Skelton, interviewed after the
meeting by Tony Gosling admitted that Bilderberg
was being “taken seriously” by the mainstream
media, citing as an example a BBC article that
“did a good crunch of the numbers”, although he
noted that the “British press didn’t bother to send anybody there.”
A review of some of the highlights shows that
while the 2015 Bilderberg meeting was not
entirely ignored by the mainstream media, that
coverage still had its limitations:
Despite being represented by their respective
editor-in-chiefs, the level of reporting by The
Economist and Bloomberg on the 2015 Bilderberg
meeting was negligible. The Economist had nothing
to report. Bloomberg offered a short slide
presentation ( 11, 2015) naming some of the
participants (including Bloomberg’s
Editor-in-Chief) and discussion topics. It
described Bilderberg as “the world’s most
secretive summit” and noted “the talks will stay
a secret.” Earlier, in April on
BloombergPolitics, David Weigel tested Alex
Jones’ claims that Jeb Bush was a potential
Bilderberg participant. Weigel was sceptical,
dismissing Jones’ for his “ever-spurting founts
of Bilderberger panic.” After securing a denial
from Jeb Bush’s communications director, Weigel
ended on a note of cautionary sarcasm: “The idea
of presidential candidates being anointed by
secretive elites remains completely derangedand
fictional.” But he linked to two mainstream media
articles on the power of rich donors over US presidential candidates.
Of particular interest was the reporting by
Austrian newspaper, Der Standard, given that its
publisher and editor Oscar Bronner had been a
regular Bilderberg participant since 2009. In a
2013 interview in his own paper, Bronner had
claimed there was “no conspiracy” at Bilderberg,
it was merely a place for “[h]ighly interesting
discussions on various topics from politics and
business” (Der Standard, Oct. 18, 2013). Not
surprisingly Der Standard opted to present
Bilderberg in a positive light, while avoiding
probing too deeply into what was discussed.
Bilderberg’s benign purpose, claimed one report
(Der Standard, Jun. 7, 2015), was to “strengthen
the relations” between Europe and the US. In an
attempt to refute activist claims the meeting was
“undemocratic and untransparent”, another report
insisted the meeting participants were of “the
highest calibre” (Der Standard, Jun. 14, 2015).
Bilderberg watchers, however, were subject to the
usual ritual denunciation; a task performed with
gusto by Der Standard opinion columnist Hans
Rausche, who derided Bilderberg as the “mother of
all conspiracy theories.” He added how
Bilderberg’s supposed “perfidy” extended to
having “public meetings in a hotel…publish[ing] a
list of participants on the web” and allowing
journalists to “reproduce content of the
discussions, but without attribution to a
particular person.” Bilderberg, Rauscher argued,
might be a “halfway useful exchange of ideas”,
but dismissed outright as “hard to believe” the
claim that Bilderberg sought to “take over the
world…” (Der Standard, Jun. 10, 2015).
A number of Portuguese newspapers – Público,
Obersvador, and RTP Noticías – all reported on
the impending retirement of former Portuguese
Prime Minister and Chairman of the Portuguese
media conglomerate Impresa SGPS Francisco Pinto
Balsemão from the Bilderberg Steering Committee,
and the hand over to his nominated successor,
former European Commission President José Manuel
Barroso. Público had the exclusive, with Balsemão
confirming his departure; the report also
provided details of the Bilderberg structure,
including the roles of the Steering Committee and
Advisory Group. More intriguing was the report in
Visão, one of Impresa’s publications, that not
only quoted the opinions of Daniel Estulin, but
declared the “truth” was that “all those who have
been, are, or have prospects of becoming someone
important in Portugal have participated in a
Bilderberg meeting” [“…que todos os que, em
Portugal, foram, são ou têm perspetivas para
virem a ser alguém relevante passaram por uma reunião do Clube Bilderberg”].
BBC Trust Chairman, Rona Fairchild was a
participant at Telfs-Buchen, although she
apparently did this in “a personal capacity” and
was not representing the BBC Trust, according to
the BBC response to a Freedom of Information
request. BBC reporting on the 2015 event was
sparse, amounting to one short article on
participants (BBC, Jun. 12, 2015) and a 60-second
video ( 11, 2015). More informative was a BBC
News Magazine (Jun. 10, 2015) report that
analysed the participant list, providing a
breakdown of the nationality, gender and
profession of those at Telfs-Buchen. The report
sought to steer between conspiratorial and
official interpretations, but acknowledged being
invited to Bilderberg was “a sign that someone
has arrived as a politician, business leader, administrator or influencer.”
Another British paper, The Independent, described
Bilderberg as a “weird elite group” (The
Independent, Jun. 11, 2015), and suggested the
“bosses” of US and European companies would use
the meeting to “lobby politicians on the
direction they believe Europe should take” (The
Independent, Jun. 09, 2015). It also ran a useful
piece analysing who had been invited (Jun. 08,
2015) and another article that highlighted that
while the public might know where the meetings
were held, who was attending, the broad topics,
and that they “take security very seriously”;
what was actually said remained unknown ( 09,
2015). Columnist Matthew Norman, however, was
truer to form, arguing that once Ryanair CEO
Michael O’Leary—crudely disparaged in a classic
display of anti-Irish prejudice, as that “eejit
from Ryanair” —accepted the invitation to
Telfs-Buchen, the Bilderberg group “mutated from
SPECTRE into Dr Evil’s hapless outfit of goons in
Austin Powers” (The Independent, Jun. 09, 2015).
Perhaps the most interesting accounts came from
Trine Eilertsen, political editor of Norway’s
Aftenposten, who in addition to defending her
participation at Telfs-Buchen, provided a range
of albeit limited insights into the topics of
deliberation and how she intended to use what she
had learned. Bilderberg was “one of the best
conferences I’ve ever been to”, Eilertsen told
Journalisten (Jul. 29, 2015), the journal of
Norwegian Union of Journalists, adding that she
was “glad” she had participated.
Germany’s Deutsche-Welle presented two reports,
both of which provided some detail on the agenda
and how Bilderberg meetings were organised. It
noted that participants “give explanations and
argue with each other, in 90-minute intervals”,
and that the food at Watford, back in 2013 was
“nothing special: typical buffet catering”, with
participants forced to pay for the own wine (the
horror!). Perhaps of greater value was that
instead of a lengthy survey of every odd
conspiracy theory, the DW reports mentioned the
views of a number of academics including:
sociologists Rudolf Stumberger and Hans-Jürgen
Krysmanski; political scientists Kees van der
Pijl, Ian Richardson (Bilderberg People) and
Bjorn Wendt (Die Bilderberg-Gruppe); and
historian Bernd Greiner. A few days after the
conference, in one of the few leaks, Spiegel
Online ( 17, 2015) cited the observations of one
anonymous participant about the debate on Greece’s debt problem.
Coverage by the US media was also quite meagre.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles
Times, and some news networks ignored it, but
there were a few notable exceptions. CNBC ( 11,
2015), for example, had a brief report on the
“world’s most secretive meeting”, quoting the
opinions of Professor of Organization Business,
Andre Spicer, that Bilderberg was responsible for
creating “an ‘ideological groundwork’” for major
policy decisions “across the world.” CNN Money
(Jun. 11, 2015) also reported on the event,
described being invited to Bilderberg as the
“ultimate confirmation of VIP status.” Pando
(Jun. 12, 2015), a US-based blog which focuses on
the IT industry, ran a piece noting how Silicon
Valley had managed to establish its own “clique”
within the Bilderberg Group. Noting Google’s
strong representation at Bilderberg, Pando opined
this was consistent not only with “Big Tech’s
continued takeover of older established
institutions of power”, but also with “Google’s
new role as the biggest lobbyist spender in Washington.”
The Washington Times ran two reports, the first
being two paragraphs in the gossipy “Inside The
Beltway” column (Jun. 9, 2015) noting that David
Petraeus would be there along with Kissinger,
James Wolfensohn and Richard Perle; and that
climate change was not on the agenda. The second
article (Jun. 11, 2015) was more sceptical of
Bilderberg’s importance quoting at length the
soothing denials from Bilderberg’s official
spokesperson and the supposedly expert opinion of
Gary Schmitt a Resident Scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute. Schmitt, who had never
attended a Bilderberg meeting, dismissed the
exclusive conclave as a “gabfest with nothing
much done”, insisting that “nothing much comes
out of it” and that Bilderberg has “had no impact
for years and years, if its ever had much of
any.” Bilderberg’s official spokesperson offered
the official line and his comments on
Bilderberg’s goals were generously reinterpreted
by the Times as nothing more than “upscale schmoozing.”
So while claims of a total “media blackout” about
Bilderberg are clearly untrue and inaccurate, in
terms of both the volume and quality of the
reporting, mainstream media coverage was sparse.
This is particularly evident when the reporting
on Bilderberg is compared to that devoted to
other elite meetings, such as last month’s World
Economic Forum (WEF). As shown in the charts
below (see Figure 9) drawing on the Factiva data
base and Google News, reporting on the
closed-door Bilderberg meeting was meagre
compared to the flood of reports devoted to the
WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Figure 9: Factiva & Google News Search Results
for Bilderberg (2015) and World Economic Forum (2016)
Sources: Factiva & Google News
Another particularly unhelpful feature of the
mainstream media’s coverage of Bilderberg was
also very much in evidence: references to
reptilian shapeshifters. This fits a now familiar
pattern of mainstream journalists using David
Icke’s reptilian shape-shifting theory not only
to denigrate those who think the Bilderberg Group
is more than just a conference, but as an excuse
not to look further. James Tapfield, writing in
the UK Mirror (Jun. 10, 2015), for example, found
it necessary to refer to the “outlandish
theories” that the Bilderberg Group was “run by a
race of humanoid creatures descended from
lizards.” By referring to the “humanoid
lizardmen” in his summary of “all you need to
know about Bilderberg”, Tapfield managed to taint the topic of his article.
In fact, it seems that no survey of the
Bilderberg conspiracy theories was complete
without mentioning Icke’s reptilians. Various
wits had great sport noting that some Bilderberg
conspiracists believed it was a venue for: “world
domination by lizards” (Spectator); “interstellar
reptilian humanoids” (TheJournal.ie); “lizard
people” (AFP); “Lizardmen” (Spiegel);
“shape-shifting reptilians” (Moscow Times); and
“giant shape-shifting lizards” (The Week). This
tactic did not pass entirely without comment.
When Newstalk.com, the website of an Irish radio
station, made mention of “lizard overlords” in
its report on Bilderberg, a number of readers
took issue with this transparent smear. As
Disquis commenter noted, the intent behind making such a reference was obvious:
This embodies the paradox at the heart of
mainstream media coverage of Bilderberg. On the
one hand, as we have seen there was some useful
factual, even slightly critical reporting being
done about the Bilderberg Group; but on the other
hand, the mainstream media was clearly more
focused on ridiculing those who think Bilderberg
warrants closer scrutiny, vilifying them as
mentally defective conspiracists with a reptilian
fixation. It seems that Bilderberg-watchers are
considered a better and more important story than
the meeting itself, as well as a perfect alibi
for failing to probe Bilderberg any further. This
conscious trivialization of Bilderberg by the
mainstream media provides an opportunity for the
alternative media to fill the void, but the results are not reassuring.
Pointing, But Not Touching: The Alternative Media
Gathered outside the Interalpen Hotel, or to be
more precise, languishing several miles down the
road in Telfs, were the usual suspects, members
of the “alternative media”: the Infowars’ team of
Paul Joseph Watson, Paul Drew and Josh Owens;
Press for Truth’s Dan Dicks; Luke Rudkowski of We
Are Change.org; and the American Free Press’s
intrepid Mark Anderson. This group was
accompanied by a number of other alternative
media representatives from the US and Europe
including: reporters from We Are Change Rotterdam
and We Are Change Switzerland; Jeff Berwick from
The Dollar Vigilante; “Volksreporters” from the
German website Alles Schall und Rauch (ASR); and
self-styled German “citizen journalist” Tilman
Knechtel. These additions made up for the absence
of some alternative media who had kept watch
outside the Bilderberg meeting in Copenhagen last
year, such as David K. Eggers, the “Mad
Scandinavian Vlogger”, Age of Truth TV, and
Whistleblower TV. Also missing were reporters
from the John Birch Society’s flagship periodical The New American.
Charlie Skelton, as one the mainstream media’s
few remaining correspondents in the area, viewed
the performance of this band favourably; in fact,
he contended, their very existence represented a
strong challenge to Bilderberg’s media strategy:
?
It’s not the 1950s any more: you can’t just “have
a quiet word” with half a dozen editors and keep
a story out of the papers. You’ve got to deal
with reporters like Dan Dicks and Luke Rudkowski,
with their instant uploads and cameras hanging
off every rucksack strap. You’ve got bloggers and
citizen journalists, activists with Instagram
accounts. News articles with comments sections
and buttons to share them on social media. The
news just doesn’t work the way it used to (Guardian, Jun. 15, 2015).
Skelton is right that the media environment has
changed dramatically as the well-established
print media in particular has been overtaken by
the explosion in internet-based independent
journalism. But Skelton also overestimates the
ability of this new journalism to actually
investigate Bilderberg effectively. The
limitations of the alternative media had already
been quite evident in their coverage of the
Bilderberg meetings in Watford (2013) and
Copenhagen (2014) where activism rather than
investigation carried the day. Telfs-Buchen
continued this trend. Granted, the alternative
media worked hard to draw attention to the
Bilderberg meeting they were locked out of, and
to counter the shallow, uncritical and
stenographic nature of most mainstream media
coverage. But, when it came to actually delving
into what occurred at the Interalpen Hotel, the
alternative media performed as poorly as they had in 2014.
This was obvious well before the meeting even
started, with the alternative media promoting a
range of speculation on Bilderberg’s agenda that
reflected their own concerns rather than any
special insights. The claims of free-lance
financial journalist Heiko Schrang provide a good
example of this. A few weeks before Telfs-Buchen,
and before Bilderberg issued its press release, Schrang claimed:
?
The abolition of the cash, in addition to the
issues such as the Ukraine-conflict and the
promotion of refugee flows to Europe, will be
high on the agenda at this year’s Bilderberg
meeting […] as one of its main objectives, the
total control of every individual, comes
frighteningly close. [Die Abschaffung des
Bargelds wird neben den Themen Ukraine-Konflikt
und die Förderung der Flüchtlingsströme nach
Europa ganz oben auf der Agenda beim diesjährigen
Bilderberger Treffen stehen. Sie würden so einem
ihrer Hauptziele, der totalen Kontrolle jedes
Einzelnen erschreckend nah kommen.]
Schrang’s claims, which did not seem to have a
source and were caveated with his admission that
this represented his “subjective point of view”,
were picked up by Extrem News (May. 30, 2015) and
by Alex Jones’ Prison Planet (Jun. 4, 2015). On
June 5, Jones and one of his star reporters, Paul
Joseph Watson, had an extended discussion that
addressed Bilderberg’s supposed “agenda to ban
cash.” Watson stayed with this theme, even after
Bilderberg had released its key topics that did
not mention a “cashless society” asserting in his
expose of the “real agenda” that Bilderberg would
be discussing “the abolition of cash.” His
discourse also overlooked the fact neither of the
leading proponents, of the “cashless society”
model, Kenneth Rogoff from Harvard University and
Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup
(Infowars, May 27, 2015), were at Telfs-Buchen.
At Copenhagen the alternative media spent most of
their time interviewing each other, while
carrying out various stunts, as opposed to making
any serious attempts at investigative journalism.
Exactly the same behaviour—a focus on activism
rather than journalism—was in evidence at
Telfs-Buchen. The AFP’s Mark Anderson, for
example, remained as committed as ever to talking
to other activists, fronting up for numerous
interviews including with: ASR Volksreporter; the
Pete Santilli Show; We Are Change Rotterdam;
Alexander Benesech from Recentr TV; Luke
Rudkowski; and UK Column News. His dispatches
from Telfs-Buchen were notable for providing
updates on the activism and progress reports on
mainstream media reporting rather than obtaining
any insights from or access to the Bilderberg meeting itself.
In one of his dispatches, Anderson took a
triumphant pose, declaring that the American Free
Press “appeared to be the only established
American national newspaper on hand to cover this
ultra-exclusive, collusive, networking and
planning session….” (AFP, Jun. 12, 2015). Yet
when it came to revealing what was discussed,
Anderson had little to offer. The AFP’s special
Bilderberg issue produced just one unsourced
claim that the Bilderbergers “debated” how to
wage “economic warfare against Russia” (AFP, 22 & 29 Jun. 2015, p.1).
The quality of reporting from Infowars was little
better. Despite over twenty articles about the
meeting, and sending its three-person team of
Watson, Drew and Owens to Telfs-Buchen, Infowars
proved just as incapable as every other
self-styled “investigative journalist” when it
came to piercing Bilderberg’s veil. Ahead of the
meeting they put out a number of pieces
speculating on the Bilderberg agenda, including
that Bilderberg were backing Hillary Clinton’s
presidential candidacy, capital controls on
consumers, mass surveillance and ingestible ID
chips. During the meeting, however, the output of
the Infowars team in Austria, on Twitter and in
their Infowars dispatches focused almost entirely
on the excesses of the security forces. This
included five reports dealing with police
harassment of reporters, the “Chernobyl style”
exclusion zone, police harassment of a local boy,
police use of hi-tech jamming, and police efforts to exclude the press.
More telling, was that Infowars interest in
Bilderberg barely lasted as long as the meeting
itself. When the meeting “key topics” list was
released, for example, Watson prepared an article
and video (Infowars, Jun. 10, 2015) that
purported to reveal the “real agenda” at
Telfs-Buchen, including a summation (see Figure
10) of what he believed would actually be
discussed. Watson had clearly established some
guidelines for assessing the outcomes of the
Bilderberg meeting. Yet, once the meeting was over, there was no follow up.
Figure 10: Bilderberg’s ‘Real Agenda’ – As Explained by Paul Joseph Watson
Source: Infowars (Jun. 10, 2015)
The closest the Infowars team came to actually
interacting with Bilderberg participants was the
tabloidish chasing of the departing Bilderbergers
at Innsbruck Airport. They confronted Bilderberg
Steering Committee member and Vice Chair of
Rothschild Europe Franco Bernabè, and Der
Standard publisher Oscar Bronner. But this
approach actually yielded very little information
about the meeting itself. The failure of their
reporting was most obvious in one of their final
products, a five minute compilation video of
Interalpen Hotel and the Bilderberg security
measures, with a series of voice-overs from Alex
Jones and a number of other unnamed contributors
(Infowars, Jun. 14, 2015). Despite the theatrics,
the video provided absolutely no revelations
about the meeting itself, as a couple of
disgruntled viewers on Youtube noted (see Figure
11). This was, unfortunately, consistent with
most of the alternative media’s reporting.
Figure 11: Some Discouraging Words: What was the
Infowars Team doing in Austria?
Source: Youtube
Other mainstays of Bilderberg reporting were also
conspicuous by their absence or limited
appearances. Daniel Estulin, author of The True
Story of the Bilderberg Group (2007, 2009), fresh
from being fired from Russia Today told Alex
Jones that he had bunkered down some 40 km away
in Innsbruck for the duration of the conference,
but had sent a “cameraman incognito” to the
police perimeter to obtain imagery for his
forthcoming Bilderberg documentary. His
post-meeting interviews with Jones and Sean Stone
on Buzzsaw were strange rambling affairs, filled
with obvious speculation and weird revelations;
Estulin was also less emphatic about his
Bilderberg “sources”. At one stage, Estulin told
Stone he was “certain” Bilderberg’s alleged plans
to deindustrialise the world and extract natural
resources from the Moon would have been
discussed; but he also admitted to having “no
information” about whether the Iran nuclear deal
was raised, even though Iran was listed as a topic.
Estulin also told Jones that the absence of IMF
Managing Director Christine Lagarde was surely a
sign of forthcoming “changes in the IMF.” Except
that, according to the Wall Street Journal (Jan.
22, 2016), Lagarde has now confirmed her intent
to stand for a second term, telling French
television that she had “receive[d] support from
France, Germany, Great Britain, China, Korea,
[and] Mexico.” Indeed, the UK Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and frequent Bilderberg participant,
George Osborne, declared he was “delighted” to
support her nomination (BBC, Jan. 22, 2016),
citing his belief Lagarde had the “vision, energy
and acumen to help steer the global economy
through the years ahead” (Guardian, Jun. 21, 2016).
In other interviews before and after the meeting,
Estulin also seemed to walk back from his
previous claims the Bilderberg Group “has the
power and influence to impose its policies on any
nation in the world” (ibid, p.43). On March 2,
2015, Estulin told Richie Allen that Bilderberg
was but one of a number of elite “conveyor belts”
for decisions actually made at a “much higher
level.” Estulin suggested all secret meetings
involving members of the elite were suspect, not
just Bilderberg, mentioning the G7’s closed
sessions and the confidential weekly meeting
between the UK Prime Minister and the Queen
Elizabeth II. Speaking to Sheila Zilinsky on
WeekendVigilante (Jun. 17, 2015) Estulin
suggested Bilderberg lacked its previous
“gravitas” and was less powerful than it was in
the 1950s and 1960s. He again mocked suggestions
Bilderberg was a “one-eyed monster that controls
world politics”, claimed that the “real decision
making” occurred at “much higher levels.” He also
dismissed long-time Bilderberger David
Rockefeller as “ga-ga” (although the now 100-year
old plutocrat, who has not attended a Bilderberg
meeting since 2011, though clearly frail, seems
lucid here – from 4:15) and claimed that the
92-year old Henry Kissinger was “not there, [his]
brain doesn’t work well”, an assertion belied by
Kissinger’s recent media appearances, including
this “fireside chat” with fellow Bilderberger, Eric Schmidt.
This collective failure to actually discover the
substance of the conversations inside the
Interalpen Hotel highlighted the independent
media’s real priority: political activism. This
was also reflected in the priority afforded to
sensational imagery as opposed to actual
investigation. During his live chat with Paul
Joseph Watson, for example, Alex Jones seemed
more anxious to get Watson over to Austria “to
get shots inside the hotel.” The sort of stunt
that Jones had in mind was later achieved by
Rudkowski, Dicks and Berwick, who managed to stay
for one night at the Interalpen Hotel ahead of
the arrival of the Bilderberg participants.
Berwick presented a breathless account on TDV of how Dicks and Rudkowski,
?
went to take a look around the hotel and actually
found the room where the conference was to be
held. As far as we know it is the only time
independent media has ever seen the actual
room. Unfortunately just as they pulled out
their cameras security guards started running
towards them telling them they had to leave immediately.
This led to their expulsion from the Interalpen;
but they were amply compensated with their stay
unbilled and they were encouraged to raid their
mini-bars. Viewing this tabloid excursion—which
was well-covered by their admirers on the web—one
is struck by the silence around the failure of
this intrepid posse, especially self-styled
“investigative journalists” Rudkowski and Dicks
(see Figure 12), to develop any sources at the
Interalpen Hotel, let alone amongst any of the participants.
Figure 12: Luke Rudkowski and Dan Dicks – ‘Investigative Journalists’
Sources: We Are Change website; and Press for Truth website
But this only highlights the dilemma and the
problem behind this activism. Without more
credible insights into what actually Bilderberg
does, how it shapes and influences transatlantic
policy-making, and why its activities are a
morally questionable enterprise, the
anti-Bilderberg activism will continue to be
marginalised and denigrated. In short, protesting
is not enough; a stronger case must be built for
opposing Bilderberg and that can only be done
through a real commitment to investigative reporting.
More Beanbags and Wurst Please
The absence of any incisive reporting on what
actually transpired at the meeting would suggest
that Bilderberg’s now decades old
media-strategy—of using each annual gathering to
feed ideas into to the public sphere anonymously
while excluding reporters who will not abide by
its secrecy requirements—remains intact. Over the
years many journalists have taken issue with this
approach, usually to no avail; and often without
understanding the logic behind it. 2015 was no
exception with The Guardian newspaper’s sole and
persistently frustrated Bilderberg correspondent
Charlie Skelton mounting an impassioned, if at
times incoherent criticism of Bilderberg press relations.
At the heart of his critique was the superiority
of the G7’s media strategy to that of Bilderberg.
Skelton noted how at the G7 in Germany he had
been “treated like a prince”, but now at
Telfs-Buchen, the Bilderberg conference received
“state security, but there’s no quid pro quo. No
state-run press centre.” Arguing that Bilderberg
was “an event worthy of attention” Skelton argued
for a “press hut” and other courtesies, so he and
his colleagues could be “treated like
journalists” (Guardian, 10 Jun. 2015). In further
dispatches Skelton complained about the police
“treating a journalist like a criminal”
(Guardian, 11 Jun. 2015); and the “cavernous lack
of press co-operation” from Bilderberg. Skelton
claimed it would be “wiser” and “more respectful”
towards journalists if Bilderberg at least held a
press conference like “what they used to do” (Guardian, 12 Jun. 2015).
In his final dispatch Skelton bemoaned the
Austrian police’s heavy-handed tactics, including
their unwillingness to fund a “much-needed press
accreditation centre here.” Skelton claimed to
“worry for the future of Bilderberg”, as he took
issue with its “obstinate refusal to engage in
proper press relations”, arguing the Bilderberg
Group needed to “deal with reporters.” Coming
across former Bilderberg Steering Committee
member Francisco Pinto Balsemão at the Interalpen
just after the meeting had finished, Skelton made
his case for a better relationship with the
media, asking if the Bilderberg could hold a
press conference again. “Talvez”, Balsemão had
replied. “Perhaps.” (Guardian, 15 Jun. 2015).
Yet it was hard to take Skelton’s arguments
seriously – that the G7’s media strategy was
somehow preferable to that of Bilderberg – given
that Skelton had previously been critical of the
G7’s lavish press centre with its beanbags,
“steaming heaps of wurst”, and “lots of lovely
footage and photos from the summit.” It was, he
reflected, “unsettling”, the “conditions are too
good”; the whole set-up was just “live theatre,
orchestrated within an inch of its life”, making
the G7 “just a giant press release.” Skelton then made this astute observation:
?
It’s all been made too easy for the journalists.
I suspect that if a story is this easy to get,
it’s not worth getting (Guardian, 08 Jun. 2015; emphasis added).
When it came to Bilderberg, however, it seemed
the story was just too hard to get and Skelton
begged Bilderberg to coddle him, to make his life
easier by giving him a press centre and a press
conference; and perhaps, secretly, he craved the
comforts of the beanbags and wurst. Indeed
Skelton was strangely repelled by the
requirements of investigative journalism, evident
in his description of his attempt to question
Balsemão as “grubby”, as though bailing up a
former Bilderberg Steering Committee member in a
bar was somehow improper. Skelton was also
clearly exhausted by Bilderberg’s wall of secrecy:
?
We’ll take anything. We’re tired of watching
diplomatic passports being slid above tinted
windows. Tired of politicians hiding their faces,
and ministers refusing to talk about what they
talked about. Tired of police officers who, when
they aren’t hassling journalists, are lining up
in ranks in front of limousines to obscure the view (Guardian, 12 Jun. 2015).
Demanding that the Bilderberg Group resume its
press conferences is not without merit, it would
at least provide some avenue for asking pointed
questions about the meeting; but it should also
be seen as giving up the chase. Skelton may feel
nostalgic for the press conferences, and may even
be as genuinely concerned for Bilderberg’s future
as he claims, but in expressing such sentiments,
he displays a misunderstanding about the logic
behind Bilderberg’s media strategy. Essentially,
the Bilderberg approach has been to use its
deliberations to shape and influence public
debate, but at the same time, it has consciously
sought to tightly control, if not actively
discourage, media coverage of the conference itself.
It is also important not to overstate the value
of the press conferences that did happen, or to
overlook the well-entrenched Bilderberg disdain
for press reporting on what transpires at each
meeting. Back in 1974, for example, according to
an Associated Press report, Bilderberg Chairman
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, visited the
press centre for that year’s meeting in Megève in France, where he,
?
announced who had been invited to the meeting and
what the topics would be. He then declared there
would be no more information on the three-day
session and according to one French newsman
aroused the wrath of assembled journalists by
adding: “In fact, we just don’t want you around”
(Amarillo Globe-Times, 21 Jun. 1974; emphasis added).
The 1975 meeting in Ceseme, Turkey, was also
noteworthy for being preceded by a brief
statement from Prince Bernhard covering some of
the topics discussed, but at the conclusion of
the conference the assembled journalists were snubbed, as a UPI report noted:
?
The bankers, politicians and businessmen taking
part left by car and bus…immediately after the conference ended.
They gave nothing but a wave to newsmen who had
waited to speak with them since Friday at the
gate of the luxurious Altin Yunus Hotel on the shores of the Agean Sea.
Appointments promised to newsmen were not kept,
and in accordance with the Bilderberg tradition,
no statements were made to the press (San Bernardino County Sun, 28 Apr. 1975).
Possibly the only exception to this was when
Bernhard’s successor, former British Prime
Minister Lord Home, gave a press conference
following the 1978 Bilderberg meeting in
Princeton. As noted by an Associated Press
report, Lord Home “spoke to reporters about the
substance of the three days of meetings” (The
Odessa American, Apr. 24, 1978). Though not noted
at the time, this post-meeting press conference
was a rare event; but it would mark a minor
digression from Bilderberg’s standard press
policy. In his Bilderberg Diary, Tucker implied
that the post-meeting press conferences were
discontinued, partially because the line of
questioning from alternative media journalists
such as himself made Bilderberg’s nominated spokesman uncomfortable (pp.21-25).
Bilderberg’s current line is that the pre-meeting
press conferences were “held for several decades
up until the nineties” but were “stopped due to a
lack of interest.” For the 2015 conference,
Bilderberg’s media spokesperson reaffirmed that
Bilderberg had no intention of engaging with the media openly:
?
“While we understand and generally welcome the
general interest in the conference, we simply
cannot provide the levels of access or
transparency that certain individuals or groups
would like to see,” the spokesman said in an
email. “To encourage the highest level of
openness and dialogue among the participants, and
to keep the private character of the meetings,
all participants respect the Chatham House Rule”
(Washington Times, Jun. 11, 2015; emphasis added).
In short, a press conference is unlikely to do
much to increase the transparency of the
Bilderberg Group because it has absolutely no
interest in being transparent. Unfortunately for
Skelton, obviously spoilt by the G7 press
centre’s luxuries and German culinary delicacies,
he must recognise the truth in his own words:
that if a story is too easy to get it is “not
worth getting.” If Skelton really believes that
an interesting story lies behind Bilderberg’s
closed doors, he must make the effort to get
through them. That would require more imaginative
approaches, including such tried and trusted
methods such as cultivating contacts amongst
hotel staff or even some of the first-time
participants. Demanding a press hut from the
sidelines is not going to work and could be taken
as a sign after years of chasing Bilderberg that
Skelton is perhaps thinking of throwing in the towel.
And that would be a shame.
Bilderberg and the Future
According to various unnamed officials, the 2015
G7 Leaders’ Summit was “a success” (Politico,
Jun. 08, 2015); the German newspaper Die Welt
also described it as a “complete and utter
success.” At the post-meeting press conference
German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly
claimed the meeting had “showed once again that
the G7 countries had more than just prosperity
and economic power in common”, they also shared
“common values” that made the G7 a “community of
responsibility.” President Obama was also full
of praise, hailing the G7 for demonstrating that
“on the most pressing global challenges America
and our allies stand united.” Not everyone was
convinced the highly choreographed event had any
value. A columnist in Die Zeit (Jun. 9, 2015)
dismissed the G7 meeting as being “as political
as a church convention” and argued that its
“non-binding declarations of understanding” could
have just as easily been agreed to in a telephone call.
The 2015 Bilderberg meeting, in contrast, with
its leadership and participants all so
conspicuously silent about what they discussed or
achieved, could only be celebrated by its
Austrian hosts as a successful police operation.
Thus Tirol’s Police Director Helmet Tolmac told
Der Standard (Jun. 15, 2015), reflecting on the
G7-Biderberg operation, opined there had been a
“happy balance” with: “No images of violence and
escalation – there are positive images that we
have sent out from Tyrol in the world.” Indeed,
the Austrian authorities managed to conduct 7000
identity checks, made one arrest, applied
coercive force five times, and charged one person
with resisting the police. There was much to be proud of.
Perhaps the key lesson from the 2015 Bilderberg
meeting is the resilience and effectiveness of
the Group’s institutions and procedures. Despite
Daniel Estulin’s repeated claims that Bilderberg
Group is “losing its lustre” because of the
passing of the older generation of transatlantic
elitists, it is clear that it remains a credible
and venerated fixture on the annual calendar of
the so-called “Superclass.” Although Estulin is
right that David Rockefeller no longer attends,
and other long-term regulars, such as Henry
Kissinger (he also mentions Zbigniew Brzezinski
although he has not attended a Bilderberg meeting
since 1985!) are quite elderly, generational
change has not robbed Bilderberg of its relevance.
As we have already seen in Part 1, Bilderberg
continues to attract the influential and powerful
from both sides of the Atlantic. A close study of
its participant lists reveals a host of
individuals whose political and economic power is
considerable and current, rather than merely of
historical interest. Bilderberg survived the
death of its founder Joseph Retinger in 1960. It
also survived the resignation of its first
Chairman, Prince Bernhard over the Lockheed
bribery scandal in 1976 (though the 1976
Bilderberg meeting was cancelled). So it can
certainly survive without the presence of David
Rockefeller and, in due course, that of Henry
Kissinger. New faces are already making their mark.
We can gain some insight into Bidlerberg’s
resilience through reference to recent commentary
on the persistence of the World Economic Forum.
Despite finding some its speakers and themes
“tired” and overfamiliar, David Rothkopf, the CEO
and editor of Foreign Policy magazine,
acknowledged the WEF remains popular for
corporate leaders because “it is still the place
they can get the most done in the shortest period
of time. And frankly, if they are not there, they
are likely to miss their best chance at getting a
concentrated glimpse of the world ahead they are
going to get anywhere.” Russ Alan Prince, writing
in Forbes (Jan. 25, 2016), noted executives and
representatives of the very wealthy, arranged in
so-called single family offices, found the benefits of the WEF to be threefold:
It was an “astounding opportunity to connect with key decision makers…”
It provided access to “meetings outside the
presentations…where more actionable insights are provided.”
They also observed a “very identifiable hierarchy
of influence” ranging from the “unmistakably
powerful” down through their advisers, the merely
“powerful” and then the “solely moneyed.”
All these observations also clearly apply to the
Bilderberg Group, though with the added element
of Bilderberg having a much smaller group of
participants and being an entirely closed-door
meeting with almost no overt public footprint.
Prince also confirmed that Bilderberg remained an
important part of this very exclusive networking
milieu, noting that a “small but growing
percentage” of the senior executives and family
members of single-family offices were now focusing on those,
?
conferences and events geared for an
international, diverse assembly of decision
makers such as Bilderberg Meetings, the Milken
Institute Global Conference, and Clinton Global
Initiative Annual Meeting [emphasis added].
In commentary published just after the
Telfs-Buchen meeting, Andrew Kakabadse, a
Professor of Governance and Strategic Leadership
at Henley Business School and a co-author of
Bilderberg People (2011), argued that for all its
flaws Bilderberg remains important:
?
Bilderberg is clearly influencing and
establishing how wealth is thought about on a
global basis. What we see and accept as normal
and never question doesn’t occur by accident.
We call this smart power’ or ‘shaping.’ It is not
about having a definite plan to make a specific
investment or conspire against somebody or
something. It’s more about arriving at a
consensus around a position, which then infiltrates its way into society.
Consequentially, Bilderberg remains attractive
for many in the Superclass because of its actual
reputation as a key venue for elite networking
and the mystique associated with the name and its secretive practices:
?
The lure of being invited, and seduction of being
invited back again, shapes a mindset where
attendees see themselves as being welcomed into
the inner circle of the transnational elites.
Thus for now, Bilderberg’s future seems secure,
so long as the transatlantic “Superclass” needs
to meet confidentially to discuss issues of
emerging importance, to try and reach a common
understanding, to conduct informal diplomacy, and
to shape and influence public debates. That it
persists is also due to the ability of the
Steering Committee to continue to: attract the
powerful and influential; prepare a relevant and
topical agenda; co-opt the mainstream media;
marginalise its critics in the independent media,
trivialising them and their concerns; and, above
all, ensure that its walls of secrecy will not be
breached. It is for these reasons that an end to
Bilderberg seems a long way off and the 2015 meeting far from being the last…
--
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Twitter: @TonyGosling http://twitter.com/tonygosling
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Diggers350/
http://cryptome.org/2014/06/video-report-axed-2.htm
http://www.reinvestigate911.org/
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"Capitalism is institutionalised bribery."
_________________
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www.mediafor911truth.org
www.pilotsfor911truth.org
www.mp911truth.org
www.ae911truth.org
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www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1407615751783.2051663.1274106225&l=90330c0ba5&type=1
<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
--
--
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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