Jim Tucker: More post May Bilderberg info, plus unprecedented Bilderberg II next month in Israel

BILDERBERG AGENDA EXPOSED

AFP’s editor crashed the secret meeting of the global elite and uncovered some scary schemes

Jim Tucker / American Free Press

Bilderberg boys are a bunch of grumpy old men but remain fiercely dedicated to usurping sovereignty in the United States and throughout the world. Patriots can celebrate their setbacks but never let up: Bilderberg still threatens the sovereignty of all nations while fighting for world government.

Major goals remain exploiting the global recession and an imaginary “swine flu pandemic” to establish global departments of treasury and health under the United Nations. But at the May 14-17 meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, near Athens, Bilderberg took a keen interest in persuading the United States to surrender sovereignty to the International Criminal Court, or ICC.

Bilderberg is also setting up a “summit” in Israel June 8-11 so “the world’s leading regulatory experts” can “address the current economic situation in one forum,” said Zohar Goshen, chairman of a subgroup of the International Association of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). Mary Shapiro, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, will represent this country.

Bilderberg found President Obama a Willing Wilkie at its June, 2008 meeting in Chantilly, Va. near Washington. They were reassured when he chose their boy, Harold Koh, a strong advocate of the U.S. accepting the ICC, as the State Department’s top lawyer.

In the Penn State Law Review, Koh wrote sneeringly of “nationalists” who oppose surrendering sovereignty to international institutions, including the ICC. He praised the “transnationalist faction” on the Supreme Court and the wisdom of the jurists for their rejection of the “nationalist faction.”

“Generally speaking, the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists tend instead to focus more on preserving American autonomy,” Koh wrote. “The transnationalists believe in and promote the blending of international and domestic law, while nationalists continue to maintain a rigid separation of domestic from foreign law.”

The “transnationalists view domestic courts as having a critical role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law, while nationalists argue instead that only the political branches can internalize international law,”

Koh wrote. “Transnationalists believe that U.S. courts could and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system, while the nationalists tend to claim that U.S. courts should limit their attention to the development of a national system.”

Five Supreme Court justices have said, to Koh’s delight, that U.S. courts should take into consideration the rulings of foreign courts in deciding domestic cases. They are: John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

In a Bilderberg warm up, the Washington-based American Society of International Law called on the U.S to embrace the ICC. These luminaries included former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, former Rep. Mickey Edwards and a roster of educated fools.

Carl Bildt, Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, made a pitch for two other major Bilderberg goals: creating a global Department of Treasury and Department of Health, with all nations surrendering sovereignty over these issues to the UN. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to become the Treasury Department and the World Health Organization the World Health Department. But Bildt seized on an old Bilderberg issue, global warming, to make the case for WHO. Bilderberg propaganda over a “swine flu pandemic” has fallen victim to facts: On average, 300,000 Americans develop flu each year and 30,000 die. Only a few have died or even been seriously afflicted by “swine flu.”

The world economic meltdown is a “once-in-a-generation crisis while global warming is a “once-in-a-millennium challenge,” Bildt told Bilderberg. Sources inside Bilderberg said Bildt’s speech mirrored an address he gave to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Carnegie’s president, Jessica Mathews, is a long-time Bilderberg participant.

“We are at a critical time,” Bildt told Bilderberg. “The order of magnitude [of world crises] are more challenging than we are used to. The world economic recession has already reversed strong annual growth rates in many developing [poor] nations and in some parts of Europe and has the potential to bring down governments. . . . ”

“When we hit bottom, we can’t be sure where we’ll bounce back up,” Bildt said. “This is an urgent economic crisis unlike anything we have dealt with in living memory.” However, he called for a bounce-back within years, not a decade-long recession as some called for in efforts to exploit human misery.

Bildt then turned to selling global warming as the gateway to a World Health Department under the UN. Bilderberg boys, including David Rockefeller and others who inherited great wealth as the sons of smokestack industrialists, grabbed global warming as an issue more than a decade as a means of generating huge profits with investments to “save the planet.” Now, global warming has a new role.

“We know we need to take action,” Bildt said of global warming. “The global crisis is now,” he said. “The necessity to take action on climate change is now.” His calls for “global action” on these supposed “crises” were thinly disguised calls for UN control.

Bildt called for world (UN) solutions to virtually all problems. He cited the European Union as “model of integration, saying, “the EU is emerging as a global actor.” He advocates expanding NAFTA throughout the Western Hemisphere to create an “American Union.”

The International Monetary Fund sent a report to Bilderberg advocating its rise to the role of World Treasury Department. “Further actions by policymakers, particularly in the financial sector, are needed to restore market trust and confidence,” said Marek Belka, director of the IMF’s European department and former prime minister of Poland.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner enthusiastically endorsed the plan for a World Treasury Department, although he received no assurance that he would become its leader. He expressed “hope” that American and European leaders could “work together” to achieve such a “global solution” to the world economic meltdown.

The IMF’s planned new role as a world Treasury Department should be welcome news to the “little guy,” Geithner told Bilderberg. “The damage has been unfair and indiscriminant,” he said. “Ordinary Americans, small business owners and community banks who did the right thing and played by the rules are suffering from the actions of those who took on too much risk.”

But, even with a World Treasury Department, problems will not disappear overnight, Geithner warned. “These are all welcoming signs, but the process of financial recovery and repair is going to take time,” he said, lending his weight to a relative short-term recession as opposed to those who backed a long-term recovery. The people of Europe and America will have suffered enough to embrace a World Treasury Department, he said.

“Our hope is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight,” Geithner said. “We can’t allow institutions to cherry-pick among competing regulators and ship risk to where it faces the lowest standards and weakest constraints.”

Bilderberg is fervently working to persuade the Irish to accept an even stronger Lisbon Treaty, which would create an even stronger European Union, creating a permanent (instead of rotating) chairman and a more powerful Parliament. The EU Parliament can even now impose laws on member states.

Irish voters rejected this EU expansion in an earlier referendum, but Bilderberg is pressing for another vote. Citizens of France and Germany overwhelmingly opposed the measure, numerous polls showed, but their heads of state signed off. Ireland requires a referendum before approval.

A meeting is planned June 18-19 in Brussels to cross t’s and dot i’s in an effort to induce Irish voters to reverse themselves and endorse the treaty. Under EU rules, all states must back a change for it to take effect. Bilderberg leaders plan a “private meeting” in advance of the formal session to push ratification.

“They’re going to make us vote until we vote their way,” said an Irishman protesting at the gates of Bilderberg, who feared reprisals if identified. There were a large number of European journalists fighting to expose Bilderberg and much is being published in Europe. Many were seized by police, surrounded by pointed guns and had their film and notes seized.

But The Times of London had a helpful story the opening day of the Bilderberg meeting, Thursday, May 14. “What we have been able to establish from a World Bank spokesman, Alexis O’Brien, that the organization’s president, Robert Zoellick, will be in Athens on unspecified business May 14,” the paper said. “And that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s public schedule is mysteriously empty for the next two days. Jo Ackermann, head of Deutsche Bank, will be traveling “somewhere in Europe.’

Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, will not be around until the end of the week.” (This was a moment when all journalists were striving to identify Bilderberg participants.)

“Jim Tucker, veteran stalker of the Bilderberg club meetings, claims that [Margaret] Thatcher was ordered “to dismantle British sovereignty, but she said ‘no way,’ so they had her sacked,” the paper said. (Events confirmed this, as did Lady Thatcher in a later conversation with Tucker.)

Tabloid lovers come’n get it! Ok Globe and Mail article on Bilderberg Group

The rich, shadowy Bilderberg group

5.12.09 / Richard Blackwell / Globe and Mail

I hear the Bilderberg group is meeting this week. What is it?

The Bilderberg group consists of about 140 wealthy and powerful people who meet annually to discuss key global issues. Named after the Bilderberg hotel in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, where it held its first meeting in 1954, the group is highly secretive, doesn’t let journalists attend unless they agree beforehand not to report on the proceedings, and won’t even say who is a member.

It’s known that attendees include politicians, royalty, wealthy industrialists and back-room power brokers. Conspiracy theorists say the group essentially controls the world and makes key decisions on international policy.

Canadians who have gone to the meetings in the past include Heather Reisman, chief executive officer of Indigo Books & Music Inc., former Torstar Corp. CEO Robert Prichard, former prime minister Jean Chrétien and former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna. Conrad Black has attended many times and he organized the 1996 meeting that was held just north of Toronto. The last time the Bilderberg group met in Canada was in June, 2006.

When and where is it meeting this year?

This year’s session is set to start this Thursday in Vouliagmeni, Greece, just south of Athens. The global financial crisis will undoubtedly be on the agenda. Needless to say, Lord Black won’t be in attendance.

Superstar investor George Soros says Asia will lead the world out of recession. How likely is this to happen?

While China and other Asian countries have been hit hard by the recession, economies in the region are continuing to grow while the West has been shrinking. The International Monetary Fund recently forecast 6.5-per-cent growth in China in 2009 (down from 13 per cent in 2007 and 9 per cent in 2008). The advanced economies of the West are expected to shrink 3.8 per cent on average this year.

Mr. Soros said yesterday that Asia will be the first region to pull out of the crisis and that China could overtake the United States as the engine of global growth. Still, China represents only about 7 per cent of the global economy, so there needs to be a more widespread recovery for the world to pull out of its funk.

Are developing countries really improving that much faster than the West?

BMO Nesbitt Burns economist Douglas Porter noted last week that some indicators in China and India are showing solid gains relative to similar markers in the West. Retail and auto sales statistics in China, for example, are much better than in North America, and industrial purchasing in both India and China is on the rise. Stock markets in developing countries have also risen much more quickly than those in Europe and North America.

Bilderberg 2009 Location and Agenda

Leaked Agenda: Bilderberg Group Plans Economic Depression

Elitists divided on whether to quickly sink economy and replace it with new world order, or set in motion long, agonizing depression

5.6.09 / Paul Joseph Watson / PrisonPlanet.com

On the eve of the 2009 Bilderberg Group conference, which is due to be held May 14-17 at the 5 star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni, Greece, investigative reporter Daniel Estulin has uncovered shocking details of what the elitists plan to do with the economy over the course of the next year.

The Bilderberg Group meeting is an annual confab of around 150 of the world’s most influential powerbrokers in government, industry, banking, media, academia and the military-industrial complex. The secretive group operates under “Chatham House rules,” meaning that no details of what is discussed can ever be leaked to the media, despite editors of the world’s biggest newspapers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Financial Times, being present at the meeting.

According to Estulin’s sources, which have been proven highly accurate in the past, Bilderberg is divided on whether to put into motion, “Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty … or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

The information takes on added weight when one considers the fact that Estulin’s previous economic forecasts, which were based on leaks from the same sources, have proven deadly accurate. Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.

Details of the economic agenda were contained in a pre-meeting booklet being handed out to Bilderberg members. On a more specific note, Estulin warns that Bilderberg are fostering a false picture of economic recovery, suckering investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market again only to later unleash another massive downturn which will create “massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead,” according to a Canada Free Press report.

According to Estulin, Bilderberg is assuming that U.S. unemployment figures will reach around 14% by the end of the year, almost doubling the current official figure of 8.1 per cent.

Estulin’s sources also tell him that Bilderberg will again attempt to push for the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, a key centerpiece of the agenda to fully entrench a federal EU superstate, by forcing the Irish to vote again on the document in September/October despite having rejected it already, along with other European nations, in national referendums.

“One of their concerns is addressing and neutralizing the anti-Lisbon treaty movement called “Libertas” led by Declan Ganley. One of the Bilderberger planned moves is to use a whispering campaign in the US media suggested that Ganley is being funded by arms dealers in the US linked to the US military,” reports CFP.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Daniel Estulin, Jim Tucker, and other sources who have infiltrated Bilderberg meetings in the past have routinely provided information about the Bilderberg agenda that later plays out on the world stage, proving that the organization is not merely a “talking shop” as debunkers claim, but an integral planning forum for the new world order agenda.

Indeed, just last month Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s. Bilderberg’s agenda for a European federal superstate and a single currency likely goes back even further. A BBC investigation uncovered documents from the early Bilderberg meetings which confirmed that the European Union was a brainchild of Bilderberg.

In spring 2002, when war hawks in the Bush administration were pushing for a summer invasion of Iraq, Bilderbergers expressed their desire for a delay and the attack was not launched until March the following year.

In 2006, Estulin predicted that the U.S. housing market would be allowed to soar before the bubble was cruelly popped, which is exactly what transpired.

In 2008, Estulin predicted that Bilderberg were creating the conditions for a financial calamity, which is exactly what began a few months later with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Bilderberg has routinely flexed its muscles in establishing its role as kingmaker. The organization routinely selects presidential candidates as well as running mates and prime ministers.

Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were both groomed by the secretive organization in the early 1990’s before rising to prominence.

Barack Obama’s running mate Joe Biden was selected by Bilderberg luminary James A. Johnson, and John Kerry’s 2004 running mate John Edwards was also anointed by the group after he gave a glowing speech at the conference in 2004. Bilderberg attendees even broke house rules to applaud Edwards at the end of a speech he gave to the elitists about American politics. The choice of Edwards was shocking to media pundits who had fully expected Dick Gephardt to secure the position. The New York Post even reported that Gephardt had been chosen and “Kerry-Gephardt” stickers were being placed on campaign vehicles before being removed when Edwards was announced as Kerry’s number two.

A 2008 Portuguese newspaper report highlighted the fact that Pedro Santana Lopes and Jose Socrates attended the 2004 meeting in Stresa, Italy before both going on to become Prime Minster of Portugal.

Several key geopolitical decisions were made at last year’s Bilderberg meeting in Washington DC, again emphasizing the fact that the confab is far more than an informal get-together.

As we reported at the time, Bilderberg were concerned that the price of oil was accelerating too fast after it hit $150 a barrel and wanted to ensure that “oil prices would probably begin to decline”. This is exactly what happened in the latter half of 2008 as oil again sunk below $50 a barrel. We were initially able to predict the rapid rise in oil prices in 2005 when oil was at $40, because Bilderberg had called for prices to rise during that year’s meeting in Munich. During the conference in Germany, Henry Kissinger told his fellow attendees that the elite had resolved to ensure that oil prices would double over the course of the next 12-24 months, which is exactly what happened.

Also at last year’s meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice formalized plans to sign a treaty on installing a U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

Rice was joined at the meeting by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who reportedly encouraged EU globalists to get behind an attack on Iran. Low and behold, days later the EU threatened Iran with sanctions if it did not suspend its nuclear enrichment program.

There was also widespread speculation that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s “secret meeting,” which was accomplished with the aid of cloak and dagger tactics like locking journalists on an airplane to keep them from tracking the two down, took place at the Bilderberg meeting in DC.

It remains to be seen what kind of mainstream media press coverage Bilderberg 2009 will be afforded because, despite the proven track record of Bilderberg having a central role in influencing subsequent geopolitical and financial world events, and despite last year’s meeting being held in Washington DC, the U.S. corporate media oversaw an almost universal blackout of reporting on the conference, its attendees, and what was discussed.

Once again, it will be left to the alternative media to fill the vacuum and educate the people on exactly what the globalists have planned for us over the coming year.

Women’s History Month profile: Bilderberger Indra Nooyi

Women’s History Month Profile: Indra Nooyi

3.25.09 / Claire / Hyphen Magazine

The third most powerful woman in the world is Indian American? And she’s part of an international conspiracy of the rich and powerful who select politicians and broker wars?

Well first of all, the criteria for determining Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women in the World” are as follows:

Our annual ranking of the most powerful women in the world measures “power” as a composite of public profile–calculated using press mentions–and financial heft.

So on this list, “power” is skewed toward people who make a lot of money for their companies, and political leaders who run countries with a big GDP. Angela Merkel has been the most powerful for the past three years, although I wonder if she has that big of an impact outside of the EU.

I would argue that Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, technically occupying the number three spot, may well be more powerful than Merkel. Raised and educated in India, Nooyi came to the States as an adult to get a master’s at the Yale School of Management … and then to step smoothly into leadership positions at a series of American corporations, such as Motorola and ABB. She joined PepsiCo in 1994, and was named CEO in 2006. Her leadership of PepsiCo — for better or, often, for worse — puts her in the position to affect the daily economic and cultural lives of individuals and communities around the world; first world and third. (Here’s a profile of PepsiCo’s companies. Here are her compensation stats.)

But that’s not all. Nooyi is also a member of the highly secretive annual conclave of liberal and conservative political, media, and commercial leaders called the Bilderberg Group. Conspiracy theorists hold that Bilderberg constitutes a shadow government that grooms American presidents and British Prime Ministers (Clinton attended in summer 1992, Edwards in summer 2004 before he was asked to join Kerry’s campaign, and rumor has it that Obama was at the event last summer. Angela Merkel’s image was supposedly a discussion topic in 2005.) They’ve also been accused of starting wars.

Nooyi definitely attended the conference in 2004. Bilderberg attendees vary from year to year, but always represent the 120 most influential people in the first world. The attendees are selected by a 30-member steering committee, whose membership list is entirely secret. So it’s unlikely that Nooyi is a member of the steering committee. But the simple fact that she was invited to attend marks her as a member of the global power elite. And Nooyi apparently counts Henry Kissinger among her personal friends. I’ll pause while you hiss and spit.

On the other hand (and I do mean “hand”) Nooyi caused a mini-furor in 2005 when she addressed new Columbia Biz School MBAs by criticizing the US thus:

Ms. Nooyi began to compare the world and its five major continents (excl. Antarctica and Australia) to the human hand. First was Africa – the pinky finger – small and somewhat insignificant but when hurt, the entire hand hurt with it. Next was Asia – the thumb – strong and powerful, yearning to become a bigger player on the world stage. Third was Europe – the index finger – pointing the way. Fourth was South America – the ring finger – the finger which symbolizes love and sensualness. Finally, the US (not Canada mind you) – yes, you guessed it – the middle finger. She then launched into a diatribe about how the … rest of the world sees us as an overbearing, insensitive and disrespectful nation that gives the middle finger to the rest of the world. … It is our responsibility to make the other fingers rise in unison with us as we move forward. She then goes on to give a personal anecdote about some disrespectful US business women in an Asian country and how that is typical of Americans overseas.

Now, don’t you think that’s what Asian Americans in powerful positions should do: take advantage of their dual or hybrid perspective to help the mired American viewpoint get out of the quicksand?

Nooyi’s taken her (perhaps only mildly) outsider perspective in deeper as well. Under her leadership, PepsiCo has spun off their fast food assets and bought into healthier food alternatives such as Quaker Oats and Tropicana. And she’s well known in the commercial world for her lighthearted, irreverent attitude.

[She] patrol[s] the office barefoot at times and even sing[s] in the halls, perhaps a holdover from her teen days in an all-girl rock band in her hometown of Chennai, India. She gave Enrico a karaoke machine before he left in 2001 and hired a live “Jam-eoke” band to help senior executives belt out tunes at a management conference earlier this year.

“Indra can drive as deep and hard as anyone I’ve ever met,” Enrico says, “but she can do it with a sense of heart and fun.” … Nooyi wore a sari to an interview at Boston Consulting Group and was offered the job.

… As chairman and CEO, Nooyi promotes the concept of “performance with purpose,” trying to make PepsiCo a ground-breaker in areas like selling healthy food and diversifying its workforce.

Maybe I’m a cheap date, but I kind of love her, despite the Kissinger thing. She wouldn’t be either a hero or a role model for me. She’s not a hero because — whether or not she actually takes health, diversity, and American moral leadership to heart — she is clearly and pragmatically combining such values with a profit motive. To be a hero to me, a person has to do the hard work of maintaining pure motives.

She’s also not a role model for me because I’m not interested in business, prepared foods, multinational concerns, or hierarchical organization. I don’t despise her field of endeavor for its own sake, but rather because of the evil multinational corporations commit and permit. I’m uninterested in this field not because of the evil, but because I’m by nature a corporatist, not a corporate type.

But I have to point out that people with impure motives and a practical and aggressive nature often get more good done than the bleeding hearts, even while they’re making money. I’m not suggesting that Nooyi’s PepsiCo is a model of pragmatic sustainability: it’s far from that. But what we might be seeing in her example is real female leadership: not the “Iron Lady” brand of masculine mimicking that has been pressed on ambitious women for decades, and not the hyperfeminine, high-level-helpmeet service offered by conservatives like *nn C**lt*r, M*ch*ll* M*lk*n, and S*r*h P*l*n. (I disemvoweled them so as not to attract a flame war.)

For those young women who want to rule the world and still be themselves, still be women, Nooyi might be your best example.

Bilderberger: World government, NAFTA expansion talks to be on the agenda in Vouliagmeni, Greece

Borderless World the Long-held Dream of Bilderberg Group

Jim Tucker / American Free Press

Bilderberg will continue to push for world government at the May 14-19 secret meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, according to a participant. Alice Rivlin, who has represented the Brookings Institution at Bilderberg, smiled and nodded when asked if the agenda this year includes “world government, a world without borders and an American Union.”

These have been Bilderberg goals for many years but have been blocked by what participants refer to sneeringly as “nationalism.” Bilderberg intends to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement throughout the Western Hemisphere as a prelude to establishing an “American Union” similar to the European Union. The ultimate goal is a world government under the UN. Her greatest Bilderberg thrill?

“Sitting next to the queen,” she replied, referring to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

In a separate Bilderberg development, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tripped over his mouth and let the truth escape while addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The CFR is heavily represented at Bilderberg meetings.

Geithner expressed support for a proposal to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency with a basket of currencies that would be managed by the Inter – national Monetary Fund.

“We’re actually quite open to that,” he said. Publicly, both Geithner and President Obama say they are opposed to the idea.

Etienne Davignon admits Bilderbergers helped create euro

‘Jury’s out’ on future of Europe, EU doyen says

3.16.09 / Andrew Rettman / EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The financial crisis is likely to create fundamental changes in the EU. But the bloc is still at an early stage of formulating its response, Belgian industrialist and former EU commissioner Etienne Davignon told EUobserver.

“It’s clear that the world will not be the same after September 2008,” he said in an interview on 12 March, referring to events last year such as the fall of Lehman Brothers bank in the US, which first put in the public eye what has since become the global economic crisis.

“How does Europe adjust to that change is the question. There is no objective reason to say that we will fail. There is not yet a clear indication that we will succeed in that test, so the jury’s out.”

The 77-year old Mr Davignon is vice-chairman of Belgian energy firm Suez-Tractebel and president of Brussels-based NGO Friends of Europe. In the 1960s he worked under EU ‘founding father’ Paul-Henri Spaak in the Belgian foreign ministry and in the 1980s was EU commissioner for industry.

Six months into the crisis, EU governments are at the stage of studying technical measures such as greater bank regulation and galvanising political will for future change, Mr Davignon said. But it will take another 18 to 24 months before the full effects of the crunch become clear.

In the current “grey period,” Mr Davignon expects the 19 March EU summit and the 2 April G20 meeting in London to generate goodwill for co-ordinated action, but not to come out with detailed agendas.

“These two meetings are going to be important because of what [the media] will say – is it a lot of jaw-jaw and everything will get worse? Or maybe it’s the beginning of a realisation that the world will no longer be the same and we are going to do something about it.”

A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group – an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr Davignon – could also “improve understanding” on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said.

“When we were having debates on the euro, people [at Bilderberg events] could explain why it was worth taking risks and the others, for whom the formal policy was not to believe in it, were not obliged not to listen and had to stand up and come up with real arguments.”

Future horizons

Mr Davignon spoke in favour of international bank regulation and dismissed fears that the potential creation of eurobonds – a government bond guaranteed by all 16 eurozone countries – would increase the cost of borrowing for the other 11 EU members.

“National regulation of the financial sector has been a disaster. Ireland is a case. Iceland is a case,” he said. “The fact that you are making the euro countries healthier [via eurobonds] is an element that makes the situation of the less healthy less difficult to solve.”

The European Commission should relax rules on state aid and public deficits so long as it creates a clear new playbook for all EU states to follow, the Belgian businessman added. But it should not tolerate curbs on the single market as posited by French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, who in February urged French car firms not to move to the Czech Republic.

“That is totally unacceptable …Yesterday, a French car producer was a French car producer. A German car producer was a German producer. Fiat was an Italian producer. Now they have a French origin, a German origin, an Italian origin. But they are European producers and we told them to be like this.”

Mr Davignon predicted that deeper EU integration as envisaged in the Lisbon treaty will continue due to a “majority movement” that is “irresistible over a period of time,” even if an individual member state opts out.

A second negative referendum in Ireland on Lisbon “would put on the agenda the notion that if somebody says No, why do we have to care about them?” he said.

Godless and confused

The Belgian aristocrat warned that rising anti-establishment feeling in Europe will complicate attempts to implement new policy. But he indicated that the phenomenon has deeper roots than the financial crisis.

“People understand confusedly that there is a change [in the air],” he said. “But no government will satisfy the reactions of the people. They have the greatest reticence and cynicism against anybody who holds responsibility.

“Against the business community because of the financial excesses. Also, the church has disappeared. The popular reaction is also a consequence of the fact that a number of traditional references have disappeared. People are looking for what is the reference.”

Politico.com writer’s piece on Bilderberg

Bilderbergers excite conspiracists

3.15.09 / Kenneth P. Vogel / Politico

The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people.

It sounds crazy, but that’s what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.

It turns out that Sebelius – like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross – is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group.

The group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media from North America and Western Europe once a year to discuss world affairs. It doesn’t issue policy statements or resolutions, nor does it hold any events other than an annual meeting.

Past participants have included Margaret Thatcher, who attended the 1975 meeting at Turkey’s Golden Dolphin Hotel, former media mogul Conrad Black, who has been to more than a dozen conferences, and Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, King Juan Carlos of Spain and top officials of BP, IBM, Barclays and the Bank of England.

It is precisely that exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who for decades have viewed the Bilderberg conference as a devious corporate-globalist scheme.

The fulminating is aggravated by Obama’s preference for surrounding himself with well-credentialed, well-connected, and well-traveled elites. His personnel choices have touched a populist, even paranoid nerve among those who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a new world order.

Their worldview, characterized by a deep and angry suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and a collection of Internet websites.

The video sharing website YouTube alone is home to thousands of Bilderberg-related videos.

“I don’t laugh at the people who claim that they understand the connections, but I’ve never really spent much time tracing that through,” said Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former presidential candidate whose libertarian sensibilities have made him a darling of the Bilderberg conspiracists.

“The one thing that concerns me is that the people who surround Obama or Bush generally come from the same philosophic viewpoint and they have their organizations – they have the Trilateral Commission, the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and the Bilderbergers, and they’ve been around a long time. And my biggest concern is what they preach: Keynesian economics and interventionism and world planning,” he said.

While it’s easy to dismiss the Bilder-busters as cranks, these voices have a way of making themselves heard on the margins of the debate in ways that can prove to be a real, if minor, distraction to Obama’s political team. Bill Clinton had trouble shaking rumors that he was behind a shady criminal syndicate operating out of the Mena airport. George W. Bush was sometimes portrayed as the puppet of clandestine Middle Eastern oil interests.

Obama’s selection of numerous Bilderbergers for key posts “certainly would verify their suspicions,” said Paul, referring to fears of the group’s influence.

“And I don’t think it’s just Obama. Whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats – Goldman Sachs generally has somebody in treasury. And the big banks generally have somebody in the Federal Reserve. And they’re international people, too. And they’re probably working very hard this weekend, with the G20. And they get involved in the IMF. But that is their stated goal. They do believe in a powerful centralized government and we believe in the opposite.”

One popular website, “Prison Planet,” greeted Sebelius’ nomination with the headline “Obama Picks Bilderberger for Health Secretary.”

It’s obvious why Bilderberg is a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, who’ve credited it with anointing aspiring presidents, selecting their running mates, creating the European Union and instigating the war in Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, among other coups.

Bilderberg meetings are closed to the press, participants are asked not to publicly discuss the proceedings and the attendee list is only occasionally released. As a result, the group has come to be viewed as a more publicity-shy cousin to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations – other influential international think tanks that are staples of fringe group conversation.

Unlike Bilderberg, though, those organizations have opened their proceedings to public scrutiny, maintain websites and have long listed their members.

The Bilderberg group, in a rare press release last year, laid out a benign if vague mission: creating “a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations.”

“Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced,” read the press release, which noted that a list of participants would be available by phone request between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on the second and third days of the conference.

The Bilderberg conspiracists first pounced on the Obama connection during the 2008 campaign, when news leaked in May that the candidate, who at the time was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, had initially tapped former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson, a top Bilderberger, to help him select a running mate.

IRS filings show that Johnson as recently as 2006 was the treasurer of a non-profit group called American Friends of Bilderberg. The group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to pay for meetings–including $125,000 in total contributions from Bilderberg stalwarts Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller in 2005 and 2006 plus $25,000 in 2005 from the Washington Post, whose chairman Don Graham has attended in the past.

Johnson did not return a message inquiring about his role at Bilderberg.

“The news further puts to rest any delusions that Bilderberg is a mere talking shop where no decisions are made,” reported Prison Planet. “It also ridicules once again any notion that an Obama presidency would bring ‘change’ to the status quo of America being ruled by an unelected corporate and military-industrial complex elite.”

One month later, in June, Johnson was joined at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting by Geithner, Holbrooke, Summers and Ross, as well as Obama’s first choice for HHS secretary, Tom Daschle, and Sebelius, who at the time was included on some short lists of prospective Obama running mates and who also attended the 2007 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

According to the Bilderberg press release, the meeting was designed to “deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.” Approximately two-thirds of the 140 expected attendees came from Europe, according to the release, and the rest from North America.

Had the meeting been held outside the United States, that might have been the end of the Obama angle. But the conference, which took place from June 5 through 8, was held at a heavily guarded hotel in Chantilly, Va. in suburban Washington—coincidentally overlapping with an Obama campaign event in the area.

While Obama’s schedule indicated he was to fly home to Chicago for the weekend—and journalists were herded on a campaign plane under the impression they were headed there along with Obama—the future president slipped away for a private meetings and never actually boarded the flight.

As it turned out, Obama secretly met that evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, D.C., but not before raising alarms among the Bilder-busters, who were convinced something was rotten in Chantilly.

Prison Planet connected the dots and concluded Obama and Clinton met at the Bilderberg meeting, declaring that “the complete failure of the mainstream media to report on the fact, once again betrays the super-secretive nature and influential reputation that the 54-year-old organization still maintains.”

“It is now seems increasingly likely that the secret meetings with Bilderberg this weekend will herald the decision to name Hillary Clinton as Obama’s VP candidate,” predicted a sister site, Infowars.net.

Even the snarky D.C.-based Wonkette blog weighed in, half-seriously positing that “really, it sounds like” Obama and Clinton rendezvoused “at that creepy Bilderberg Group meeting, which is happening now, and which is so secret that nobody will admit they’re going, even though everybody who is anybody goes to Bilderberg.”

Curiously, though, the episode wasn’t the first time a Bilderberg meeting intersected with vice presidential selection machinations.

In 2004, both Time magazine and the New York Times noted that then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C) had impressed Bilderbergers at that year’s conference in Stresa, Italy—roughly one month prior to his selection as Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) running mate– when Edwards debated Republican Ralph Reed. Then, as in 2008, Jim Johnson led the vice presidential vetting.

Time reported that then-Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Holbrooke attended and called Kerry “with rave reviews” about Edwards’ debate skills.

In its tick-tock of the vice-presidential selection process, the New York Times also noted the Bilderberg effect.

”His performance at Bilderberg was important,” a friend of Kerry told the Times. ”He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.”

An attendee of the 2004 meeting dismissed the notion that Edwards’ Bilderberg performance helped land him on the Democratic ticket.

“It wasn’t because of his performance at the meeting – he was at the meeting because he was going to get picked” said the attendee, who did not want to be identified breaching Bilderberg’s off-the-record rule. “He was there as a surrogate for Kerry” and to boost his foreign policy bona fides, said the attendee.

Either way, the attendee contended, the Bilderberg conspiracy theories don’t make sense on their face, if only because the wide array of ideologies represented would make it difficult to reach consensus.

“There were so many different people there with so many different viewpoints that it belied the opportunity to really conspire, because obviously a Kissinger and a [prominent neoconservative Richard] Perle are going to come down in a very different place than say a Holbrooke or a Johnson,” the attendee said.

Besides, the attendee observed, it’s almost impossible to name a Bilderberger-free Cabinet.

“You’d be hard pressed to find an administration that hasn’t reached into those ranks into the last 20, 30, 40 years. “

Asia Times profile & history of Bilderberg Group

THE ROVING EYE
Bilderberg strikes again

Pepe Escobar / Asia Times

“It would have been quite impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries …”
- David Rockefeller, Bilderberg club permanent member, 1991

This conversation never happened. Well, it actually did. Date: March 5 to 8, 2005. Location: the isolated, fully-booked Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Ueberfahrt in Rottach-Egern, 60 kilometers east of Munich, Germany. Essential amenities: luxury rooms, a lake, a golf course, no suits – and no wives. Participants: 120-odd Western movers and shakers – politicians, tycoons, bankers, captains of industry, so-called strategic thinkers – invited for the 2005 meeting of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg club. Security: absolutely draconian. Global media coverage: non-existent.

Talk about white man’s burden: Bilderberg is strictly “Western” elite, ie American-European. Bilderberg resolutely excludes Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Bilderberg operates in strictly master of the universe territory: what we say goes. Only when events happen will corporate media report them, even though selected media people would have been aware of what has been decided weeks or even months in advance. The New York Times, the Big Three American networks, the Financial Times have all been represented at many Bilderbergs. But they are constrained by the silence of the lambs (see Asia Times Online’s report on Bilderberg 2003 in Versailles The masters of the universe May 22, 2003)

Bilderberg has an address – in Leiden, Holland – and even a phone number – always on female answering-machine mode. No website though. In an annual ritual, Bilderberg meeting places and agendas have to be painstakingly uncovered by a small group of independent sleuths like Briton Tony Gosling or American James Tucker – who has been following Bilderberg for 30 years. Tucker is publishing a book on Bilderberg later this year. Historian Pierre de Villemarest and journalist William Wolf have already published Facts and Chronicles Denied to the Public, volumes 1 and 2, which include a secret history of Bilderberg. Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Geuens from the University of Liege has also included a full chapter on Bilderberg in one of his books. Although Geuens condemns Bilderberg’s obsessive secrecy, he does not subscribe to conspiracy theories: he prefers to study how Bilderberg unmasks the way power works and the incestuous relations between politics, economics and the media.

Whenever corporate media approaches Bilderberg it mirrors the silence of the lambs. In 2005, the Financial Times released a classic pre-emptive story downplaying what it qualifies as conspiracy theories. In fact, anyone who questions the most powerful club in the world is derided as a conspiracy theorist. Bilderbergers like British lords or American policy-makers meekly justify it as “just a place to discuss ideas”, an innocent “forum” where anyone can “speak frankly”, and other assorted cliches.

Bilderberger Etienne Davignon, a former vice president of the European Commission, adamantly stresses “this is not a capitalist plot to run the world”. Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations and a Bilderberg member for almost 30 years, says this is only “a club”. The official Bilderberg 2002 press release, for instance, said that “Bilderberg’s only activity is its annual conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken and no policy statements issued.” Bilderberg is just “a small flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced”. This is, in fact, what the much-lauded “trans-Atlantic relationship” is all about.

Members only
The Bilderberg group – which took its name from a Dutch hotel – was founded in 1954 by Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands. German-born Bernhard was a card-carrying Nazi and member of the SS. As it is well-known, Prescott Bush was an officer of W A Harriman & Co, which financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis with the help of Averell Harriman and German tycoon Fritz Thyssen. Alden Hatch wrote a biography of Prince Bernhard where he insists that Bilderberg was the cradle of the European Community – later rebranded European Union. He describes Bilderberg’s ultimate goal as a one-world government.

Bilderberg’s membership is heavily crossed with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pilgrims Society, the Trilateral Commission and the famous “Round Table” – a British, Oxford-Cambridge elite group crystallized in the homonymous journal of empire founded in 1910. The Round Table – which also denied its existence as a formal group – called for a more efficient form of global empire so that Anglo-American hegemony could be extended throughout the 20th century.

Bilderberg regulars include Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller (of JP Morgan’s International Council), Nelson Rockefeller, Prince Philip of Great Britain, Robert McNamara (J F Kennedy’s secretary of defense and former president of the World Bank), Margaret Thatcher, former French president (and main redactor of the EU constitution) Valery Giscard D’Estaing, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. The Rothschild family has hosted many Bilderbergs. In 1962 and 1973, on the island resort of Saltsjobaden, Sweden, the hosts were the Wallenberg banking family.

Some of these masters control more of the universe than others. They are the members of the steering committee, which includes Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank), Jorma Ollila (Nokia), Jeurgen Schrempp (DaimlerChrysler), Peter Sutherland (former North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO – general and now with Goldman Sachs), James Wolfensohn (the outgoing World Bank president) and the “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle. Iraq war conceptualist and incoming World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is a also a Bilderberg permanent member. George W Bush happened to be in the neighborhood – the Netherlands, for the World War II commemorations – during Bilderberg 2005. He may have dropped in. Bush did meet Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who must be present at every Bilderberg.

To whose advantage?
Bilderberg certainly is not an executive council. British economist Will Hutton may have gotten closer to the truth when he said that the consensus reached at each Bilderberg meeting “is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide”. What Bilderberg decides can be expected to be later implemented by a G-8 meeting, and International Monetary Fund and World Bank decisions.

No matter what, for innumerable, serious critics in Europe as well as the US, Bilderberg is everything from a Zionist plot to a megalomaniac secret cult. Serbs, not without some reason, blamed Bilderberg for the 1999 Balkan war and the fall of Slobodan Milosevic: after all, the US needed to control vital, Balkan pipeline routes. Bilderberg 2002 – although not without controversy – is thought to have cemented the invasion and conquest of Iraq. In his seminal A Century of War: Anglo-American oil politics and the New World War, F William Engdahl details what happened at Bilderberg 1973 in Sweden. An American outlined a scenario for an imminent 400% hike in the oil prices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Bilderberg did not prevent the oil shock; instead it planned how to manage with mega-profits – what Kissinger described as “recycling the petrodollar flows”. Everyone that mattered was present at this Bilderberg: oil majors and major banks. Engdahl’s conclusion:

What the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg had evidently decided that May was to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests and the dollar. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon – control of the world’s oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo, in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil had by international custom been priced in dollars, since American oil companies dominated the post-war market. A sudden sharp increase in the world price of oil, therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil.

Saudi petrodollars then moved to the “right” banks in London in New York to finance US government deficits. Game, set, match to Bilderberg – where the mandarins of global finance always win.

Plutocracy international
Although not a single word uttered inside the Bilderberg vaults is allowed to reach public opinion, it’s possible to take an educated guess as to what they’re talking about. Last week, the ubiquitous Kissinger started the proceedings by illuminating the meaning of “freedom” – the Bush version. Natan Sharansky, Bush’s democratic guru, was a participant.

Issues that would logically have interested Bilderberg 2005 include the role of NATO and the necessary approval in 2005 of the European constitution by all 25 members of the EU – the consequences of a French “no” in the upcoming May 29 referendum to approve the constitution need to be considered. Widespread job outsourcing in Europe to the Ukraine, China and India may sound the death knell to the constitution: French protesters – who have awakened the German and the Dutch – are insisting that what is good for big corporations may not be necessarily good for Western European workers. Critics say that chapter III of the constitution in fact details the way free trade may effectively kill the European welfare state.

They have their reasons to be concerned. In his book The Great Chessboard, Bilderberger Zbigniew Brzezinski hails “a Western Europe … staying in a large measure an American protectorate”. Brzezinski also insists that “Europe has to solve the problem caused by its social redistribution system”, which “prevents European initiative”. The father of the European constitution is none other than Bilderberger Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who happens to be very close to Kissinger.

From a geopolitical perspective, the heart of the whole matter is that the constitution legally confirms that Europe cannot have a defense force apart from NATO, ie outside the control of the US. Bilderberg beliefs would point to only one direction: an ever-expanding, US-controlled NATO, an ever-eastward-expanding EU, mass delocalization, mass corporate profits and unchallenged US military supremacy. No wonder this is the focus of a bitter debate inside EU corridors in Brussels, where scores of diplomats and commission officials openly complain of Washington’s bullying and accuse their governments of selling out. Gunther Verheugen, the European commissioner in charge of expanding the EU, happens to be a Bilderberger. When members of the European Commission go to a Bilderberg, their travel expenses and their daily allowance is provided by the commission. This certainly disqualifies Bilderberg’s self-presentation as a “private club”.

Bilderberg 2005 has – coincidentally? – merged with Bush’s tour among his Baltic friends and the tense meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The containment of Russia was likely top of the agenda for Bilderberg. Russia is very much worried about its “near abroad” and sees no reason to remove its army from bases in Georgia or its navy from Sebastopol, in Ukrainian Crimea – no matter how many color-coded revolutions happen at its doorstep.

European Commission sources assure that Brzezinski remains an extremely influential figure. The Bilderberg discussion on the control of Eurasia still refers to The Grand Chessboard. Washington is such an avid cheerleader of Turkey’s accession to the EU because this means increased American influence near the Caspian and over the eastern Mediterranean. And it also works towards the containment of Iran, Russia and China – which, according to Brzezinski, may not be allowed to emerge as rival powers to the US in Eurasia.

Another contentious issue that must have occupied the minds of those at Bilderberg 2005 is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon – this is just a detail: the point is how to prevent Iran from becoming a first-rate Eurasian power. Some in Brussels do not discount the possibility of a scenario of massive propaganda buildup to try to convince American and European public opinion of the necessity of a strike against Iran. How to force Beijing to appreciate the yuan must also have been a topic.

EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson – Free trade is our only way forward

Free trade is our only way forward

June 7, 2008

Peter Mandelson/The Telegraph

These are not comfortable times for those committed to free trade.

In both Europe and the United States, there is increasing rhetoric about the need to protect people from change, some of it sincere but much of it populist and self-serving.

	Peter Mandelson is the EU commissioner for trade

In recent days there have been strong statements about the Doha round of World Trade Organisation negotiations. Those negotiations, which will come to a head at a ministerial meeting in the coming weeks, will decide whether the world enters a new era of freer trade, with fewer barriers between countries.

I believe that like Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy recognises that our economies are beset by global problems. I want President Sarkozy and other world leaders to accept that securing trade is an important part of the solution.

In Europe we have much to gain from a further opening of global trade. We are highly competitive, knowledge-based and innovative. We are the largest economy in the world. We are the biggest exporters. Our economies – and our living standards, which depend on our economic success – need open world markets.

But the protectionist rhetoric suggests that many do not see these benefits, and that they see global economic change in zero-sum terms: if Asia rises, we decline; what benefits are generated are captured by a small, rich clique; the openness boom that has sustained us for decades now threatens to eat us alive.

Few would disagree that globalisation has its dark side. I understand the concerns of those who feel under pressure as they face the impact of growing foreign competition.

But open markets and economic integration are still by far the best tool we have for increasing global economic welfare, including our own prosperity at home.

This is where leadership comes in. The right response from Europe’s leaders is a coherent strategy based on adaptation and reform. We must use the apparatus of the modern welfare state to give people the skills to adapt to change. We must invest in innovation, research and, above all, education.

And we cannot promote competitiveness in Europe if we shut out the stimulus of competition from abroad.

This may not be an easy pill to swallow, particularly in difficult economic times. We have means to protect ourselves from unfair trade – and we should do so. But keeping trade flowing is the condition for fighting the ills that plague us.

If a more open trade regime is agreed as a result of the Doha round, world economic activity will increase significantly. Whether that is measured in tens or hundreds of billions of euros a year will depend on the nature of the final outcome of those negotiations. But whatever the figure, it is hugely positive – and it is not growth that the world economy can afford to throw away.

Europe’s slice of this enlarged global pie would be significant: it might be as much as one quarter of the total. It would mean more demand for our products, more purchasing power for Europeans and more activity in our markets, stimulating our economies.

Again, this is not a zero-sum game. More trade means more European goods sold abroad. Freer trade also means lower-cost imports, including cheaper goods for consumers. Ask retailers what the best way is to keep prices low on the high street: not one will tell you that loading imports with high tariffs is the way to do it.

This is not just about economics. It’s also about politics. Global economic welfare is an essential component of global stability. Only stable, co-operating states can manage the growing squeeze on vital resources such as energy, food and water.

This is particularly important for vulnerable developing countries, as the food crisis has shown. They, like us, are grappling with a potentially lethal cocktail of rising commodity prices, the credit crunch and the oil price shock.

A failure by developed and developing countries to reach agreement on the future of global trade will knock confidence at a fragile time for the global economy. And it will weaken our ability to come together in other, more difficult negotiations, notably on climate change.

We in Europe have to accept that a fair and managed liberalisation of agriculture has a part to play in addressing the current food crisis.

Food protectionism will not feed the world’s hungry. No one is proposing to sacrifice European farm production on the altar of liberalism. The farming sector is important for Europe – including Britain – and we have clear comparative advantages. European agricultural production is increasingly producing what the market needs. We should not fear fair, increased competition.

But Europe cannot view the future of world trade solely through the lens of agriculture and agricultural subsidies. The prosperity of Europeans ultimately depends on the competitiveness and strength of our industrial goods and services.

The open, rules-based, non-discriminatory world trading system underpinned by the WTO is the essential platform on which our businesses trade, increasingly into very difficult markets. Those of us involved in negotiating on Europe’s behalf have been clear that there must be give and take from both sides: Europe must see genuine new market access coming from the developing economies of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the like.

This is an important moment for Europe. My job as a European Commissioner is to represent the trade interests of all 27 member states – all of which know that they can get a better deal together than each could on its own.

Frank, robust debate is the lifeblood of Europe – as the British people know better than anyone. But public disagreements at critical moments in a global negotiation come with a cost to our ability to defend our interests.

The task for our leaders is to bring Europe together to help us shape globalisation in the interests of all.

Doha is not about individual personalities. It is a global undertaking to lock in the economic openness that has guaranteed our welfare over decades, lifting hundreds of millions of people around the world out of poverty. It is also a vital insurance policy against protectionism driving the global economic machine backwards in the future.

I will continue to work in the interests of all 27 member states to get a fair outcome in the negotiations. No one with Europe’s interests genuinely at heart would thank me for doing otherwise.

Portuguese Bilderbergers Rui Rio & Antonio Costa update

Email commentary from a reader about two of the Portuguese Bilderbergers, Rui Rio and Antonio Costa.

Hello,
I just read your article on educate yourself.You wrote:

“Antonio Costa/Mayor of Lisbon & Rui Rio/Mayor of Porto – These are the two largest cities in Portugal. Something is being planned for the people of Portugal. The EU Constitution has been named the Lisbon Treaty, and a terrorist attack would help the EU treaty real well at this point, as well as a couple of reliable mayors who would help steer Europe in the”right” direction with moving speeches.”

I just wanted to add that since the bilderberg meeting, Rui Rio has been elected vice president of his party (PSD). It seems he is being positioned into a successor position to the leadership of his party and eventually be elected prime-minister.

As for Antonio Costa, who belongs to the PS party, currently in power, in these past few years, some of the mayors of lisbon have gone to become either prime-ministers or presidents of Portugal. So it seems to me that he is being groomed in case he succeeds in getting to other positions of power. In any case, I believe he will be the successor to the leadership of his party.

Curiosly, the acting prime minister was caught in a gaffe saying that the success of “the lisbon treaty is important to his political career.” He later corrected himself saying that what he meant was that “the lisbon treaty was an important part of his political career.”

Anyway I disagree with the terrorist scenario as something to motivate the ratification of the treaty. I think they are just going to try and ignore the irish. Unfortunatly for them the polish president has refused to sign the ratification of the treaty.

As for the portuguese politicians they are already in the nwo´s pocket, bought and paid for. They no longer require much attention.

This seems to correlate with the info in this article by Paul Joseph Watson of prisonplanet.com. Hmm..