The Bilderberg Group

Just to start off somewhere, let's start with the before-mentioned Bilderberg Group. Basically, it's a group meeting of more than a hundred very influential people from the business world, international banking, politics, royalty and also some media. They meet once a year and have done so every year since its establishment in 1954 (with few exceptions). The meetings are held at five-star hotels that usually border on a lake and feature a 18 hole golf-course. Usually, the information about where and when these meetings are held leaks to the internet just a couple of days before the beginning of the conference, yet the name of the hotel is typically not revealed. By the way, the name of the group, "Bilderberg", is a reference to the Bilderberg Hotel, in which 1954's first meeting had taken place. There are no press-releases by the Bilderberg Group as such, yet a list of participants is made available to the public through the Secretary of their office in Leiden, Netherlands. I personally had them fax me a list of participants, once. So the group is semi-secret, I guess you could say. They go to great lengths in terms of concealing the place and the hotel in which they will meet, until they actually do. Participants are urged not to give interviews regarding what other people have said at the Bilderberg conferences. So the Bilderberg etiquette would, for example, consider the statement: "I went to Bilderberg last year and believe it is a wonderful opportunity for people that need to work together anyway to speak freely with each other without having to worry about being politically correct", to be fine, while frowning upon a statement such as: "Last year at the Bilderberg conference my dear friend Henry Kissinger made a plea for the oil price to keep rising until the bubble finally bursts, which has become miraculously true". By the way, I am making stuff up here, so don't treat these fictional examples as real, genuine quotes, please.

Anyway, participants usually only come from Europe or North America, though there have been few occasions of Japanese participants. The reason you will probably never have heard of this particular organization is definitely not that the names on the list wouldn't be big enough. Let's take a look at some of 2008's participants:

Royalty:

NLD Netherlands, H.M. the Queen of the
NLD Orange, H.R.H. the Prince of
BEL Philippe, H.R.H. Prince
ESP Spain, H.M. the Queen of


Bankers:

USA Bernanke, Ben: S. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Banking System
INT Trichet, Jean-Claude: President, European Central Bank
INT Zoellick, Robert B.: President, The World Bank
GER Ackermann, Josef: Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG
CAN Clark, Edmund: President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
ITA Draghi, Mario: Governor, Banca d’Italia
USA Ford, Jr., Harold E.: Vice Chairman, Merill Lynch & Co., Inc.
USA Geithner, Timothy F.: President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
FIN Honkapohja, Seppo: Member of the Board, Bank of Finland
USA McDonough, William J.: Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Chairman, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
CAN McKenna, Frank: Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
GBR McKillop, Tom: Chairman, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
AUT Scholten, Rudolf: Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
ESP Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias: Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander


Politicians:

CAN Adams, John: Associate Deputy Minister of National Defence and Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada
INT Almunia, Joaquín: Commissioner, European Commission
TUR Babacan, Ali: Minister of Foreign Affairs
NLD Balkenende, Jan Peter: Prime Minister
PRT Balsemão, Francisco Pinto: Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
GRC Alogoskoufis, George: Minister of Economy and Finance
SWE Bildt, Carl: Minister of Foreign Affairs
PRT Costa, António: Mayor of Lisbon
GBR Clarke, Kenneth: Member of Parliament
USA Daschle, Thomas A.: Former US Senator and Senate Majority Leader
GER Fischer, Joschka: Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
FRA Jouyet, Jean-Pierre: Minister of European Affairs
POL Kwasniewski, Aleksander: Former President
GER Klaeden, Eckart von: Foreign Policy Spokesman, CDU/CSU
SWE Olofsson, Maud: Minister of Enterprise and Energy; Deputy Prime Minister
GBR Osborne, George: Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
USA Paulson, Jr., Henry M.: Secretary of the Treasury
FRA Pérol, François: Deputy General Secretary in charge of Economic Affairs
USA Rice, Condoleezza: Secretary of State
CZE Schwarzenberg, Karel: Minister of Foreign Affairs
NLD Timmermans, Frans: Minister of European Affairs

Power Brokers:

USA Holbrooke, Richard C.: Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
INT Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de: Secretary General, NATO
USA Johnson, James A.: Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC (Obama’s man tasked with selecting his running mate)
GBR Kerr, John: Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc.
USA Kissinger, Henry A.: Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
USA Rockefeller, David: Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank


Intellectuals:

USA Ajami, Fouad: Director, Middle East Studies Program, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
USA Crocker, Chester A.: James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University
USA Farah, Martha J.: Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience; Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
USA Feldstein, Martin S.: President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research
CHE Forstmoser, Peter: Professor for Civil, Corporation and Capital Markets Law, University of Zürich
NLD Halberstadt, Victor Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
USA Kravis, Marie-Josée: Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
CAN Martin, Roger: Dean, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
HUN Martonyi, János: Professor of International Trade Law; Partner, Baker & McKenzie; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Mathews, Jessica T.: President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
USA Perle, Richard N.: Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
GER Perthes, Volker: Director, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
USA Ross, Dennis B.: Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
USA Rubin, Barnett R.: Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center for International Cooperation, New York University
USA Shultz, George P.: Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
USA Summers, Lawrence H.: Charles W. Eliot Professor, Harvard University
USA Vakil, Sanam: Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
USA Wolfowitz, Paul: Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Industry:

ITA Bernabè, Franco CEO, Telecom Italia Spa
FRA Collomb, Bertrand Honorary Chairman, Lafarge
CAN Desmarais, Jr., Paul Chairman and co-CEO, Power Corporation of Canada
AUT Ederer, Brigitte: CEO, Siemens AG Österreich
ITA Elkann, John: Vice Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
FRA Margerie, Christophe de: CEO, Total
USA Mundie, Craig J.: Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
FIN Ollila, Jorma: Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc
USA Schmidt, Eric: Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google

Now, two things should be kept in mind: a) this list is by no means comprehensive, it is just a compilation of some of the better known participants of this year's conference; b) even though there are some people that show up almost every year, there is quite a big fluctuation with regards to the invited guests - it is not a static group. So, why is it that no-one seems to want to cover these meetings? The press sure enough loves all the commotion regarding G8 summits, so why is it they hardly ever report on Bilderberg? Simple answer: They aren't supposed to. Every year, some influential media figures get invited. In return, they agree not to ruin Bilderberg's discretion. After more than fifty conferences there simply aren't any big publications left, whose top staff hasn't been to Bilderberg. Over the years, all of them went and all of them learned how to keep their mouth shut. Here are some people in the media that went to the Bilderberg conference 2008:

Media Players:

FIN Blåfield, Antti: Senior Editorial Writer, Helsingin Sanomat
AUT Bronner, Oscar: Publisher and Editor, Der Standard
USA Gigot, Paul: Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
USA Graham, Donald E.: Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company
GER Nass, Matthias: Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
GRC Papahelas, Alexis: Journalist, Kathimerini
DNK Rose, Flemming: Editor, Jyllands Posten
CHE Spillmann, Markus: Editor-in-Chief and Head Managing Board, Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG
GBR Bredow, Vendeline von Business Correspondent, The Economist
GBR Wooldridge, Adrian D. Foreign Correspondent, The Economist

Okay, so apparently there are some kinds of meetings of highly influential people going on frequently behind the scenes - that hardly can be seen as rock-solid proof of a conspiracy, right? Well, I guess not. But what it does actually prove, is that the media is - at least in this case - more than willing to 'play nice' and keep their mouth shut, as long as the big dogs let them come and play every once in a while. Especially in contrast with the insane amount of protest that the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, attracted last year, these de facto secret kind of "under the radar" meetings of top power brokers seem extremely weird. It is absolutely bizarre to me that the pseudo-leftist mob that went to target the G8-summit chose this particular target, since all that was going on there was democratically elected Finance Ministers and Heads of State doing the job they are supposed to do, while alsmost simultaneously the real power-brokers of the world met in early June in Washington behind the scenes with little press, let alone any kind of democratic control or media scrutiny. Is it just me, or does that seem a little bit strange?
So if you have never heard about this group and are curious as to what it might be about, watch the following, wonderful documentary, which takes a look at Bilderberg as well as the - for the most part - extremely weird people that cover the story:

The Bilderberg Group



Anyway, let me try to get back to the whole conspiracy ordeal and explain both what it is the nutjobs claim to be the truth about the conspiracy as well as what we all, including those who dismiss the theories, can learn from dealing with this topic, in the next post.