Bilderberg group gather to run the world
Sat May 7, 2005 05:48
64.140.158.19
Thu May 05, 2005 10:00 pm Post subject:
The Financial Times did a fluff piece:
http://www.phpbbserver.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1209&start=5&mforum=jackblood&sid=1c27a236f560b436071357ff7cee6772
Power players gather to run the world
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7832f628-ba6e-11d9-a27b-00000e2511c8.html
Power players gather to run the world
Sunday May 1, 2:45 pm ET
By Daniel Dombey in Brussels
Behind closed doors in a Bavarian hotel, a group of powerful men and women will this week debate the future of the world.
The 120-strong gathering, known as the Bilderberg group after the Dutch hotel where it first met in 1954, has spawned countless conspiracy theories, fuelled by the gathering's off-the-record nature and the renown of its participants. The group's steering committee includes Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank; Jorma Ollila of Nokia; Richard Perle, the former Pentagon adviser; Vernon Jordan, the confidant of former US president Bill Clinton; Jürgen Schrempp of DaimlerChrysler; Peter Sutherland of Goldman Sachs International; Daniel Vasella of Novartis; and James Wolfensohn of the World Bank.
Guests speakers have included Alan Greenspan, US Federal Reserve chairman, and Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence.
The wilder corners of the world wide web have speculated that projects such as the euro and the European Union itself have been hatched by the Bilder-bergers.
But the aim of the group's organisers is more modest than the hectic cyber-chatter might suggest. They see it as a forum in which officials, academics and businessmen from both sides of the Atlantic can speak frankly and come to understand each other a little more.
They have wrestled with many of the world's biggest topics from the rise of south-east Asia in 1956, to the technological gap between the US and Europe in 1967, to corporate fraud in 2004.
"It's not a capitalist plot to run the world," says Etienne Davignon, Bilderberg's unpaid chairman and a former vice-president of the European Commission. "If we really believed we were running the world we would immediately resign in complete despair."
For business people, a big attraction is the chance to make the kind of informal contacts that can be hard to achieve at other gatherings, where aides are likely to be present. This is particularly true for European executives who tend to be less well acquainted with political figures than their US counterparts.
However, despite the insistence that Bilderberg does not set out to shape a consensus among the world's movers and shakers, Mr Davignon and his predecessors have tried to steer the group towards the broad conclusion that Europe and the US need to engage more.
The hope is that even the most recalcitrant politicians and executives often specially selected by the steering committee will embrace a more collaborative approach.
The collective meals, the traditional informality the sports jackets of 20 years ago have been replaced by open-necked shirts and the ban on spouses are all meant to boost a spirit of camaraderie.
It does not always work. In 2003, tensions over the Iraq war boiled over, although last year's meeting was a calmer affair.
This year's event will open with a discussion chaired by Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on the meaning of "freedom" a hot topic since President George W. Bush's liberal use of the word in his inauguration speech sparked off speculation about a worldwide US agenda for regime change.
Natan Sharansky, the author of Mr Bush's favourite book on democracy, will participate, as will Bernard Kouchner, the founder of the charity Medecins sans Frontières and former United Nations envoy to Kosovo.
Other panels during the long weekend that stretches from Thursday dinner to Sunday lunch will address issues such as non-proliferation, the role of Russia, Israel-Palestine, US attempts at social security reform and Europe's benighted Lisbon agenda for economic liberalisation.
"We actually met in the late 1990s to see if we should still bother to have meetings now that the Berlin wall had fallen," says Martin Taylor, Bilderberg's secretary-general and a former chief executive of Barclays. "But we decided rather presciently that the security issues had not gone away. The transatlantic relationship is not something to take for granted."
The beginning of this century also saw the group reach out to the US's newly empowered Republicans, a move that caused some mutterings about the influence of neo-conservatives.
Yet figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, the controversial incoming president of the World Bank, are long-standing members, while a broad mass of participants from both Europe and the US have more traditional Atlanticist views.
As the years have passed, Bilderberg has softened its original focus on security and encompassed more economic and business themes.
Yet Mr Davignon believes that the task of eradicating the caricatures Europeans and Americans have of each other remains as vital as it was half a century ago.
"One rediscovers things occasionally," he says, referring to the interplay of business and politics and the mutual dependence of Europe and the US. "Then when you look at them more deeply, you find out that they have always been there."
Free link:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ft/050501/7832f628_ba6e_11d9_a27b_00000e2511c8.html?.v=1
================
DEM LEADER CALLS TRAVELING BUSH A 'LOSER'
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Bush in Europe: Part celebration, part delicate diplomatic dance
Indianapolis Star - 27 minutes ago
President Bush started a four-country journey Friday to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The undercurrent will be the deteriorating relationship between Bush and Russian President Vladimir ...
In Moscow, 30,000 police mobilized for summits Seattle Times
VLAD SLAPS BUSH New York Post
Kentucky.com - Los Angeles Times (subscription) - Washington Post - New York Times -
First Lady Laura Bush and President George W. Bush wave with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, right, as they step off Air Force One at Riga Airport in Latvia Friday.
all 1,106 related »
Bush opened a fast-paced, four-country journey to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. He will meet on Saturday with the leaders of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
For these Baltic countries, the end of World War II did not bring liberation. Instead, they traded Nazi oppression for nearly five decades of Soviet occupation.
Bush said he has reminded Russian President Vladimir Putin about that history, ahead of the victory celebrations. "Frankly, it's the beginning of a difficult period, and I can understand why some leaders of countries aren't going and some others are," the president said of the anniversary events. He spoke in a series of pre-trip interviews with television outlets in countries he will visit.
Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus and Estonia's President Arnold Ruutel say they will stay home when dozens of world leaders -- Bush included -- go to Moscow for a parade Monday in Red Square honoring Russia's enormous sacrifices to defeat the Nazis.
Bush's trip has been clouded by Moscow's unhappiness about his stops in two former Soviet republics -- Latvia and Georgia, a move seen by Russia as interference in its neighborhood. The president also will visit the Netherlands. Bush said he would tell Putin he should welcome peaceful democracies on Russia's borders.
"And so I will remind him that this is not a plot by anybody or any nation," Bush said. "This is just the inevitable course of humankind because all humans want to be free."
Bush said the three Baltic countries, as new members of NATO, have a security guarantee from the United States and its allies. Bush said he speaks with Putin frequently about the Baltics.
"And my job at times is to send a message that says, look, treat your neighbors with respect," Bush said. "Free nations, democracies on your border are good for you -- whether that be, by the way, in the Baltics or in Ukraine, I've sent that same message -- or Georgia. In other words, countries that are free countries are countries that will be good neighbors."
At the same time, Bush said he would tell Baltic leaders that democracy must include respect for minority rights, a nod to Moscow's concerns about the treatment of Russian-speakers in the ex-Soviet republics.
Bush, in an interview on Russian television, acknowledged that the United States and Britain played a major role in reshaping Europe at the 1943 Yalta conference of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. "I think that the main complaint would be that the form of government that the Baltics had to live under was not of their choosing," Bush said. "But, no, there's no question three leaders made the decision."
Dan Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said on Air Force One that there are competing narratives about how World War II was won and the aftermath. "We have our dark spots too, just like the Russians, but we admit it," Fried said. He said the Russians do not.
Russia refuses to apologize for occupying the Baltics, insisting that the Baltic governments of the time had willingly invited Soviet troops into their countries and agreed to join the Soviet Union. Baltic leaders says that if Russia wants glory for defeating the Nazis, it also should take responsibility for the occupation.
Putin said Moscow already has condemned the secret Soviet-Nazi pact that led to the occupation. In an interview published Friday, he said the Soviet-era legislature, the Supreme Soviet, had issued a resolution in 1989 that criticized the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as "a personal decision by Stalin that contradicted the interests of the Soviet people."
"I want to repeat: We already did it," Putin said. "What, we have to do this every day, every year?"
Bush will lay a wreath Saturday at Latvia's towering Freedom Monument, which served as a symbol of resistance in the difficult struggle for independence.
Bush's trip to Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia was designed to meet a variety of diplomatic needs.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0505/07/natio-174331.htm
The Financial Times did a fluff piece:
http://www.phpbbserver.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1209&start=5&mforum=jackblood&sid=1c27a236f560b436071357ff7cee6772
Power players gather to run the world
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7832f628-ba6e-11d9-a27b-00000e2511c8.html
Power players gather to run the world
Sunday May 1, 2:45 pm ET
By Daniel Dombey in Brussels
Behind closed doors in a Bavarian hotel, a group of powerful men and women will this week debate the future of the world.
The 120-strong gathering, known as the Bilderberg group after the Dutch hotel where it first met in 1954, has spawned countless conspiracy theories, fuelled by the gathering's off-the-record nature and the renown of its participants. The group's steering committee includes Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank; Jorma Ollila of Nokia; Richard Perle, the former Pentagon adviser; Vernon Jordan, the confidant of former US president Bill Clinton; Jürgen Schrempp of DaimlerChrysler; Peter Sutherland of Goldman Sachs International; Daniel Vasella of Novartis; and James Wolfensohn of the World Bank.
Guests speakers have included Alan Greenspan, US Federal Reserve chairman, and Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence.
The wilder corners of the world wide web have speculated that projects such as the euro and the European Union itself have been hatched by the Bilder-bergers.
But the aim of the group's organisers is more modest than the hectic cyber-chatter might suggest. They see it as a forum in which officials, academics and businessmen from both sides of the Atlantic can speak frankly and come to understand each other a little more.
They have wrestled with many of the world's biggest topics from the rise of south-east Asia in 1956, to the technological gap between the US and Europe in 1967, to corporate fraud in 2004.
"It's not a capitalist plot to run the world," says Etienne Davignon, Bilderberg's unpaid chairman and a former vice-president of the European Commission. "If we really believed we were running the world we would immediately resign in complete despair."
For business people, a big attraction is the chance to make the kind of informal contacts that can be hard to achieve at other gatherings, where aides are likely to be present. This is particularly true for European executives who tend to be less well acquainted with political figures than their US counterparts.
However, despite the insistence that Bilderberg does not set out to shape a consensus among the world's movers and shakers, Mr Davignon and his predecessors have tried to steer the group towards the broad conclusion that Europe and the US need to engage more.
The hope is that even the most recalcitrant politicians and executives often specially selected by the steering committee will embrace a more collaborative approach.
The collective meals, the traditional informality the sports jackets of 20 years ago have been replaced by open-necked shirts and the ban on spouses are all meant to boost a spirit of camaraderie.
It does not always work. In 2003, tensions over the Iraq war boiled over, although last year's meeting was a calmer affair.
This year's event will open with a discussion chaired by Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on the meaning of "freedom" a hot topic since President George W. Bush's liberal use of the word in his inauguration speech sparked off speculation about a worldwide US agenda for regime change.
Natan Sharansky, the author of Mr Bush's favourite book on democracy, will participate, as will Bernard Kouchner, the founder of the charity Medecins sans Frontières and former United Nations envoy to Kosovo.
Other panels during the long weekend that stretches from Thursday dinner to Sunday lunch will address issues such as non-proliferation, the role of Russia, Israel-Palestine, US attempts at social security reform and Europe's benighted Lisbon agenda for economic liberalisation.
"We actually met in the late 1990s to see if we should still bother to have meetings now that the Berlin wall had fallen," says Martin Taylor, Bilderberg's secretary-general and a former chief executive of Barclays. "But we decided rather presciently that the security issues had not gone away. The transatlantic relationship is not something to take for granted."
The beginning of this century also saw the group reach out to the US's newly empowered Republicans, a move that caused some mutterings about the influence of neo-conservatives.
Yet figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, the controversial incoming president of the World Bank, are long-standing members, while a broad mass of participants from both Europe and the US have more traditional Atlanticist views.
As the years have passed, Bilderberg has softened its original focus on security and encompassed more economic and business themes.
Yet Mr Davignon believes that the task of eradicating the caricatures Europeans and Americans have of each other remains as vital as it was half a century ago.
"One rediscovers things occasionally," he says, referring to the interplay of business and politics and the mutual dependence of Europe and the US. "Then when you look at them more deeply, you find out that they have always been there."
Free link:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ft/050501/7832f628_ba6e_11d9_a27b_00000e2511c8.html?.v=1
================
DEM LEADER CALLS TRAVELING BUSH A 'LOSER'
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Bush in Europe: Part celebration, part delicate diplomatic dance
Indianapolis Star - 27 minutes ago
President Bush started a four-country journey Friday to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The undercurrent will be the deteriorating relationship between Bush and Russian President Vladimir ...
In Moscow, 30,000 police mobilized for summits Seattle Times
VLAD SLAPS BUSH New York Post
Kentucky.com - Los Angeles Times (subscription) - Washington Post - New York Times -
First Lady Laura Bush and President George W. Bush wave with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, right, as they step off Air Force One at Riga Airport in Latvia Friday.
all 1,106 related »
Bush opened a fast-paced, four-country journey to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. He will meet on Saturday with the leaders of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
For these Baltic countries, the end of World War II did not bring liberation. Instead, they traded Nazi oppression for nearly five decades of Soviet occupation.
Bush said he has reminded Russian President Vladimir Putin about that history, ahead of the victory celebrations. "Frankly, it's the beginning of a difficult period, and I can understand why some leaders of countries aren't going and some others are," the president said of the anniversary events. He spoke in a series of pre-trip interviews with television outlets in countries he will visit.
Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus and Estonia's President Arnold Ruutel say they will stay home when dozens of world leaders -- Bush included -- go to Moscow for a parade Monday in Red Square honoring Russia's enormous sacrifices to defeat the Nazis.
Bush's trip has been clouded by Moscow's unhappiness about his stops in two former Soviet republics -- Latvia and Georgia, a move seen by Russia as interference in its neighborhood. The president also will visit the Netherlands. Bush said he would tell Putin he should welcome peaceful democracies on Russia's borders.
"And so I will remind him that this is not a plot by anybody or any nation," Bush said. "This is just the inevitable course of humankind because all humans want to be free."
Bush said the three Baltic countries, as new members of NATO, have a security guarantee from the United States and its allies. Bush said he speaks with Putin frequently about the Baltics.
"And my job at times is to send a message that says, look, treat your neighbors with respect," Bush said. "Free nations, democracies on your border are good for you -- whether that be, by the way, in the Baltics or in Ukraine, I've sent that same message -- or Georgia. In other words, countries that are free countries are countries that will be good neighbors."
At the same time, Bush said he would tell Baltic leaders that democracy must include respect for minority rights, a nod to Moscow's concerns about the treatment of Russian-speakers in the ex-Soviet republics.
Bush, in an interview on Russian television, acknowledged that the United States and Britain played a major role in reshaping Europe at the 1943 Yalta conference of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. "I think that the main complaint would be that the form of government that the Baltics had to live under was not of their choosing," Bush said. "But, no, there's no question three leaders made the decision."
Dan Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said on Air Force One that there are competing narratives about how World War II was won and the aftermath. "We have our dark spots too, just like the Russians, but we admit it," Fried said. He said the Russians do not.
Russia refuses to apologize for occupying the Baltics, insisting that the Baltic governments of the time had willingly invited Soviet troops into their countries and agreed to join the Soviet Union. Baltic leaders says that if Russia wants glory for defeating the Nazis, it also should take responsibility for the occupation.
Putin said Moscow already has condemned the secret Soviet-Nazi pact that led to the occupation. In an interview published Friday, he said the Soviet-era legislature, the Supreme Soviet, had issued a resolution in 1989 that criticized the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as "a personal decision by Stalin that contradicted the interests of the Soviet people."
"I want to repeat: We already did it," Putin said. "What, we have to do this every day, every year?"
Bush will lay a wreath Saturday at Latvia's towering Freedom Monument, which served as a symbol of resistance in the difficult struggle for independence.
Bush's trip to Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia was designed to meet a variety of diplomatic needs.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0505/07/natio-174331.htm
