Tony Gosling
Oxford, 06JUL97 120 of the world's most powerful men have been meeting in four-day secret session to discuss the future shape of the western world. With the Amsterdam EUROTOP meeting of the heads of government commencing straight after this elite meeting, last minute tactics to force through EMU will have been top of the agenda.
Observer Editor Will Hutton <reports.htm> and Viscount Cranborne, Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords were amongst other top politicians and the heads of banks, industry and the media attending the AGM of the clandestine Bilderberg Group. Tony Blair, now British Prime minister, attended four years ago.
Many doubt the existence of the group, but ex-participants unhappy with initiatives that undermine democracy and human dignity have spoken out. Evidence of news wire service reports, including Reuters news agency each year, proves it to be no fiction. The meeting took place 12th - 15th June 1997 at the Renaissance Pine Isle Resort, Lake Lanier Island in the Appalachian mountains. The island is near the town of Gainesville, Georgia, 50 miles from Atlanta.
The US/European group has been meeting since 1954 <bildhist.htm> but it is only in the last couple of years that its existence has become more widely known outside the inner circle. Notice of the date and location of the meeting was revealed beforehand last year. Sadly though media self-censorship still led to only scant and localised news coverage in 1996.
Advance warning of the 1997 AGM location was leaked in the April edition of 'The Portman Papers' journal under the headline 'Bilderberg treason first decided it, single currency means the end of Britain'. In the article 'Bilderberg Revealed', Chairman of the US Amalgamated Bank and Bilderberg Steering Committee member Jack Scheinkman testifies to Bilderberg's influence: "The idea of a single currency was discussed several years back before it became policy." In the same article George McGhee, former US Ambassador to West Germany states: "The Treaty of Rome, which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at Bilderberg meetings." Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands maintains that Bilderberg was where the idea of the EEC was first mooted.
What the group should have been discussing at their island retreat was a strategy for putting an end to the major ills of today's world: the bloody global weapons trade and poverty caused by crippling debt. These burdens together systematically bring death and despair to countless millions every year around the planet.
With such an array of the wealthy and powerful in the same place, these issues could be dealt with and decisions made that would bring hope and life to millions of poverty-stricken and dying people the world over. But instead this time they were believed to be discussing ways to increase the groups secrecy, possibly by changing its name; fast tracking austerity measures and EMU; and extending the influence of the Transnational Corporations and Banks over Western politicians.
The unhappy result is a picture of western democracy subverted, with decision makers getting together not for reasons important to ordinary people: social justice; common interest; and quality of life, but to strengthen economic austerity and bring even more private gain for the worlds political and corporate elite. Bilderbergers talk openly of centralising power in their own interests, which leaves the man in the street ever further away from controlling his own destiny.
The 1996 Bilderberg AGM took place at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce 'Leadership Centre' in Montreal and was hosted by Canadian press baron Conrad Black. In the chair was Britain's Lord Carrington and the attendance register of 120 included an impressive collection of high-powered men: Henry Kissinger; U.K. defence secretary, Malcolm Rifkind; James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank; David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank; William J Perry, U.S. secretary of defense; Andrew Knight, director of News Corporation; Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank; Jean Chretien, prime minister of Canada; Ulrich Cartellieri, director of Deutche Bank; Stanley Fischer, managing director of the IMF; Morris Tabaksnlat, chairman of Unilever; Alexander Trotman, chairman of the Ford Motor Company and several royal heads of state.
With so many of the world's élite in attendance security at the venue will have been extremely tight. European and US secret services co-operate in enforcing a strict no-go area round venues helping to ensure a media black-out.
One of the reasons that the media have been so slow to investigate and report on the Bilderbergers is that many of the global press bosses, including Peter Job, Chief Executive of Reuters, are part of the group. Other mainstream media barons have corporate agendas themselves while many independent media, for legal reasons, are wary of revealing secrets of the rich and powerful without evidence, which in the past has been difficult to find.
So what vision, if any, is being pursued. We all have a right, indeed in an age of mass-starvation and with the continued threat of global destruction, a need to know.
One cannot help but be a little suspicious when priorities for the future of mankind are being considered, by those who have real influence over that future, in total secret.
The official version - 1997
The following UNS release appeared on Reuters international news wire service. This service is for newsrooms around the world. So it's not as if the papers and TV don't know, there's simply a friendly understanding that it will not be reported. Self-censorship.
The media barons employ only obedient editors. I bet there were a few, "...hey, look at this boss, we gotta run this one!" Good luck with your job mate!
Incidentally, if you want it you can buy Reuters Business Briefing article access for about £400.00 per month which includes access to the wire service archive.
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