Top leaders in talks - all very private
The chief organisers of the latest
Bildeberg meeting will be circulating a report on it. Frustratingly, no one
other than those affiliated with the group will see the report or gain any
knowledge of its content.
More than 120 highly influential leaders
attended the exclusive meeting in Lisbon, prompting the usual howls from
conspiracy theorists amid silence from the participants.
Among the guests who gathered on
Thursday for the start of the three-day meeting were top officials from
companies such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. The political titans included
former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba. Portugal’s president
and prime minister were there to greet them in the Pestana Palace Hotel.
The Bildebergers are named after the
Dutch hotel where their first private meeting was initiated by Prince Bernhard
of the Netherlands in 1954. They have been holding very private meetings
annually in different countries ever since.
According to their severest critics on
both the political left and right, the Bilderbergers are planning a new world
order, a global take-over by the super-elite.
Where does the truth lie? The
Bilderberger organisation says it was originally set up to prevent a third
world war. Its focus has moved on to bolster free market Western capitalism. A
third of attendees at their meetings are politicians and the rest experts from
business, finance and academia. Two-thirds are from Europe, one third
from North America. They provide “a forum for informal discussions to foster
dialogue between Europe and North America.”
The official rules of the meetings
state that participants are free to use any of the information they receive
provided they do not divulge either the identity or affiliation of any of the
individuals they received information from. Participants do not take part in
any official capacity and are not bound by the conventions of their office. As
individuals they are open to “take time to listen, reflect and gather
insights.”
Furthermore, according to the
Bildebergers, “ there is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no
votes are taken and no policy statements are issued.” A private report after
each meeting is circulated only to former as well as the most recent
participants. Even in this report, speakers are quoted only by the country they
are from.
The broad subjects under discussion in
Lisbon were believed to be similar to those at last year’s meeting in
Washington DC. They included AI, NATO, Ukraine, China, India, energy transition
and fiscal challenges.
Prince Bernhard (1911-2004) was an
enigmatic character. A formidable armed forces commander during World War II,
he helped create the World Wildlife Fund, but was deeply implicated in a
bribery scandal involving the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.
The many other prominent people
who have attended one or more Bilderberg meetings include royalty such as the
Duke of Edinburgh, King Charles III (formerly Prince Charles), Juan Carlos I
and Queen Sofia of Spain, the American banker David Rockefeller, British
prime ministers Edward Heath, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Canadian Prime minister
Pierre Elliott Trudeau.... the list goes on and on. Needless-to-say, each
meeting demands a heavy security presence.
Most if not all attendees seem
perfectly respectable, so what’s all the fuss about? Even the most moderate
sceptics call the meetings “secretive”. Others regard them as “sinister”. Many
critics worldwide believe the Bildebergers represent “a shadow world
government” that is seeking total domination. But is it likely that after 69
years of private or even “secretive” meetings, leading university academics
would remain silent if some dreadful overall plot was being formulated?
Could it be that by those spreading
hysterical disinformation about these meetings are a far greater danger to
normal, rational folk than the Bilderbergers themselves?
