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THE ROVING
EYE The masters of the
universe By Pepe Escobar
It
may be instructive to learn what US Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard
Perle were doing last weekend. From May 15 to 18 they
were guests at the Trianon Palace Hotel, close to the
spectacular Versailles palace near Paris, for the annual
meeting of the Bilderberg club.
Depending on the
ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be
considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power
elite of Europe and America, capable of steering
international policy from behind closed doors; a
harmless "discussion group" of politicians, academics
and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret society
operating entirely through self interest and plotting
world domination.
The Bilderberg club is
regarded by many financial and business elites as the
high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. You
can't apply for membership of such a club. Each year, a
mysterious "steering committee" devises a selected
invitation list with a maximum 100 names. The location
of their annual meeting is not exactly secret: they even
have a headquarters in Leiden, in the Netherlands. But
the meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy.
Participants and guests rarely reveal that they are
attending. Their security is managed by military
intelligence. But what is the secretive group really up
to? Well, they talk. They lobby. They try to magnify
their already immense political clout, on both sides of
the Atlantic. And everybody pledges absolute secrecy on
what has been discussed.
The Bilderberg mingles
central bankers, defense experts, press barons,
government ministers, prime ministers, royalty,
international financiers and political leaders from
Europe and America. Guests this year, along with
Rumsfeld and Perle (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz is also a member) included banker David
Rockefeller, as well as various members of the
Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of
the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of
Spain, and high officials of assorted governments. The
Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle
Easterners, Latin Americans or Africans.
Some of
the Western world's leading financiers and foreign
policy strategists attend Bilderberg, in their view, to
polish and reinforce a virtual consensus, an illusion
that globalization, defined under their terms - what's
good for banking and big business is good for everybody
else - is inevitable and for the greater good of
mankind. If they have a hidden agenda, it is the fact
that their fabulous concentration of wealth and power is
completely dissociated from the explanation to their
guests of how globalization benefits 6.2 billion people.
Some of the club's earlier guests went on to become
crucial players. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in
1993 were invited and duly "approved" by the Bilderberg
before they took office. There are innumerable
shady, still unexplained connections between the early
Bilderberg club and the Nazis, via Prince Bernhard of
the Netherlands, the father of Queen Beatrix, who
founded the club in Bilderberg in 1954 (the name is
taken from a Dutch hotel), aiming to "increase
understanding between Europe and North America".
Bernhard was a member of Adolf Hitler's SS. One of the
founding members of the Bilderberg is Otto Wolff von
Amerongen - who actively improved business links between
Germany and the Soviet bloc and served on 26 boards of
directors, including Deutsche Bank. Few people know him
- and perhaps for some good reason: he has been linked
to the Nazi's theft of Jewish holdings before and during
World War II.
Rumsfeld is an active
Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from
Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and
chairman of Goldman Sachs and BP. Rumsfeld and
Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of Swiss
energy company ABB. And ABB happened to have sold two
light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. At the
time, of course, North Korea was not an active member of
the "axis of evil".
This year, the Bilderberg
meeting in Versailles conveniently merged into the G8
meeting of finance ministers in Paris, a 20-minute car
ride from Versailles, on May 19. The procedure is
traditional: what happens in the Bilderberg is usually a
preview of what is later discussed at the full G8
gathering, which this year will be held from June 1 to 3
at Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps.
On
Bilderberg's first full working day on May 15, French
President Jacques Chirac delivered a welcoming speech,
trying to bury the bitter divisions among the guests
over the war on Iraq by emphasizing that the US and
Western Europe are longtime allies. But Chirac's
gracious hosting may not have been enough to soothe the
hawks in the US administration still miffed at
"pacifist" France.
An influential Jewish
European banker reveals that the ruling elite in Europe
is now telling their minions that the West is on the
brink of total financial meltdown; so the only way to
save their precious investments is to bet on the new
global crisis centered around the Middle East, which
replaced the crisis evolving around the Cold War.
According to a banking source in the City of
London connected to Versailles, what has transpired from
the 2003 meeting is that American and European
Bilderbergers have not exactly managed to control their
split over the American invasion and occupation of Iraq,
as well as over Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
hardline policy against the Palestinians. As the
Bilderbergers were chattering away, Sharon all but
rejected Bush's Middle East road map, already endorsed
by the other members of the so-called quartet: the
United Nations, the European Union and Russia. This road
map, as it stands, is over: even the presence of US
Secretary of State Colin Powell - who stopped by
Versailles to brief the Bilderbergers - was not enough
to persuade Sharon to even discuss the dismantling of
Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.
American imperial adventures are usually
rehearsed at Bilderberg meetings. Europe's elite were
opposed to an American invasion of Iraq since the 2002
Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld
himself had promised them it wouldn't happen. Last week,
everybody struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the
infamous "weapons of mass destruction". Most of Europe's
elite do not believe American promises that Iraq's oil
will "benefit the Iraqi people". They know that revenues
from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what America has
bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of
contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will
"benefit" Western Europe.
Europe's elite,
according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious
that the US does not need or even want a stable,
legitimate central government in Iraq. When that
happens, there will be no reason for the US to remain in
the country. Europe's elite see the US establishing
"facts on the ground": establishing a long-term military
presence and getting the oil flowing again under
American control. This could go on for years, as long as
the Americans can guarantee enough essential services to
prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in a war of
national liberation.
It was also extremely hard
at the Versailles meeting to forge a consensus on the
necessity of a European Union army totally independent
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The US
establishment, of course, is against the EU army. But so
are some Europeans, starting with anti-army cheerleader
Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general. Europe's elite
can't stand US domination of NATO any more. Some
Europeans suggest a separate force, but controlled by
NATO. Americans argue that a separate EU force would
dissolve NATO's role as the UN's world army. And
Americans insist that NATO is no longer confined to the
defense of Europe: its troops now could go anywhere in
the world, directed or not by the UN Security Council.
The impasse remains.
All these crucial
developments were discussed behind closed doors. The
Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles was closed to the
public and all non-Bilderberg guests had to check out.
Part-time employees were sent home. The ones who
remained were told that they would be fired if caught
revealing anything about the meeting. They couldn't
speak to any Bilderberger unless spoken to. They
couldn't look anybody in the eye. Armed guards
completely isolated and cordoned off the hotel. Some
members of the American corporate press were there - but
the public will never know about it: Bilderberg news is
not fit to print - or broadcast. No journalists from any
media controlled by Bilderberg multinational tycoons
such as Rupert Murdoch were or will be allowed to report
it. Even if they somehow managed to crash the party.
There's no business like (private) elite business.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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