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On the eve of this year’s Bilderberg conference held recently in Madrid, Guardian correspondent, Charlie Skelton, spoke with Canadian activist and reporter, Dan Dicks of Press For Truth. Judged overall, Skelton says, this year’s published agenda (see below) is quite unusual in that it covers an exceptionally wide-ranging, almost universal list of topics, however, war still remains very much “front and centre”:
Further reports from Dan Dicks are embedded thoughout this post, but I especially refer readers to his final day round up when he speaks with independent Portuguese reporter Frederico Carvalho, another veteran of the event.
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With elections warming up both here in Britain and in America, the voting public is clearly underwhelmed by a lack of quality, integrity or even of a serious choice. We mostly look on in utter disbelief at the shambolic campaigns being run by each of the major parties as these two cheeks of the same backside parade themselves before us, fully and horribly exposed. They’re even wheeling out Nigel Farage again to try to cheer us up, or frighten us, or something. That’s how desperate it’s become.
Pro-austerity. Pro-corporate. Pro-war. Even pro-genocide. What are the limits to the future actions or policies of this unaparty? Seemingly there are none. So suddenly we can all see through the lies as we determine, at best, only less bleak options, forced to endure these vile and unspeakably ugly spectacles on both sides of the Atlantic: horror shows of inadequacies, ineptitude and callous indifference.
Indeed, many people tell me with uncommon conviction that Rishi Sunak is probably trying to lose this General Election. Certainly no-one doubts that when he does lose – as he must – then Green Card in hand, he will seek a new life and a new job across The Pond. Right now, Sunak is toast and he knows it, whereas Joe Biden, on the other hand, appears far too far gone to properly understand how badly he is performing.
He can barely speak, or walk (I could go on) and yet he is “running for four more years”. Running my arse! Whether or not they jail the orange man is the main question, and even if they do, he’ll probably win from his jail cell and then pardon himself. You cannot make this stuff up anymore.
GE 2024: Car crash interviews and a PM in hiding (something to lighten the mood!) Warning: Strong language, opinions and gestures from the start.
As our own debacle grinds into second gear, across the Channel, and in the aftermath of equally disastrous and shambolic European election results, President Macron has likewise felt it necessary to call a snap election, while in neighbouring Belgium, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo was effectively forced to resign. The prospects for the ruling coalition in Germany are similarly fading.
This is how The Telegraph reported on the G7 meeting as it opened in Italy yesterday. The same article begins: “Rishi Sunak will meet some of the world’s most unpopular leaders at the G7 summit – but none have such high disapproval ratings as the British Prime Minister…”:
While Politico ran with the damning headline: “6 lame ducks and Giorgia Meloni: Meet the G7 class of 2024.” Then beneath a strapline that reads “This week’s gathering of G7 leaders in Italy looks more like the last supper than a display of Western power”, the same piece begins:
With the war in Ukraine well into its third year, far-right parties storming the power centers of Europe and the Middle East in flames, the democratic world urgently needs strong leadership from the G7 this week.
Dream on.
The G7 summit in the southern Italian coastal resort of Borgo Egnazia features arguably the weakest gathering of leaders the group has mustered for years. Most of the attendees are distracted by elections or domestic crises, disillusioned by years in office, or clinging desperately to power.
Click here to read the article in full.
Meanwhile Ukrainian ally President Zelensky’s electoral term has simultaneously expired, and though the western media seldom if ever reports on that particular constitutional crisis with elections in Ukraine now suspended indefinitely, it does mean that his remaining stint in high office can go on only for so long as his increasingly beleaguered backers in Europe and America remain determined to prop him up. Autocrats are fine, of course, whenever and wherever we sanction them.
As Brazilian journalist and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar writes in his latest article:
By several metrics, Europe is about to implode/explode not with a bang but an agonizing whimper anytime within the next few months. It’s crucial to remember that the snap elections in France and Britain will also coincide with the NATO summit on July 11 – where Russophobia-fueled warmongering will reach paroxysm.
The same piece ominously titled “The Summer of Living Dangerously” published on June 12th continues:
Among possible scenarios, some kind of false flag to be squarely blamed on Russia should be expected. It could be a Franz Ferdinand moment; a Gulf of Tonkin moment; or even a USS Maine before the American-Spanish war moment.
The fact remains that the only way these “leaders” across NATOstan plus their lowly MI6 agent in a green sweaty T-shirt in Kiev will survive is by manufacturing a casus belli.
If indeed that happens, a date can be advanced: between the second week of July and the end of August; and certainly no later than the second week of September.
October will be too late: too close to the U.S. elections.
So be prepared for the Summer of Living Dangerously.
And yesterday, Pepe Escobar was invited on to Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show to explain why he believes Russia is anticipating and already preparing for such a potential war with Nato:
Meantime, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is also based in Brazil, highlights a rising trend across US media outlets that seek to promote the escalation of hostilities against a purportedly weakened Russia. Greenwald traces this latest western derangement about Russia back to the nearly decade old and long-since discredited Russiagate hoax:
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So much then for the visible part of the political iceberg, but what of the 99% that lurks perilously unseen? The machinations of MICIMATT: our ever-expanding Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank. (An acronym usefully coined by former CIA analyst-turned-whistleblower and political analyst, Ray McGovern, who says of his deliberately Mickey Mouse term, that media is the middle ‘M’ because “media is the lynchpin”.)
Well, barely a fortnight ago, the suited and booted inner circle of MICIMATT stole into downtown Madrid, its media franchise kept strictly off the record, of course, lying low for a luxury weekend of chinwagging, elbow-rubbing and back-scratching at its annual late spring Bilderberg break.
And once again, outlying investigative reporter Charlie Skelton went along to see what he could glean; one of only a handful of intrepid reporters who stood for long hours outside of the tight security cordons, making a mockery of the select stenographers of power who dined out with fellow delegates under Chatham House Rules, maintaining the required oath of silence about proceedings as they reliably do each year.
Skelton’s subsequent piece was somewhat optimistically titled “War, AI and more war: the 2024 Bilderberg agenda is sure to set off alarm bells”. Optimistic, that is, in his implied expectation that significant numbers might actually pay some attention to Bilderberg and its war-fomenting agenda.
“To set off alarm bells”, as he puts it, would mean that the public actually cares at all. But a media that rushes to inform us all about Taylor Swift’s latest gigs and revealing outfits, deliberately reinforces the opinion that Bilderberg and ‘private events’ like it are of little to no political significance or democratic concern. Notwithstanding, Skelton still manages to get a few column inches tucked away inside the Guardian, and that’s about all. MSM job done!
In this latest Guardian report, published on June 1st, Skelton tells us:
“This year’s Bilderberg is thick with senior ministers and EU commissioners, not to mention the heads of the European Investment Bank and the Bank of Spain. The event itself is being hosted by Ana Botín, the executive chair of Banco Santander, and the heads of numerous other finance giants are attending, including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Societé Générale.”
Incidentally, Ana Botín is the daughter of Paloma O’Shea, 1st Marchioness of O’Shea, and husband Emilio Botín, who Ana replaced as a chairman of Spain’s Grupo Santander after he died of a heart attack in 2014. It’s nice to keep it in the family!
Skelton continues:
“Big business tends to pick up the tab for Bilderberg, because it’s such a high-end investment opportunity. Bilderberg is the boardroom of the western alliance, so they get to participate in the shaping of the grand strategy and hopefully get a jump on the market.”
And the agenda, this year? Well, their official agenda is available on Bilderberg’s reliably incomplete and unreliable official website. Republished below is my version with related categories grouped and highlighted inside red boxes:
Also below is my screenshot of last year’s agenda (already available in my review of Lisbon 2023) which was similarly annotated for ease of comprehension. See if you can spot much difference between these latest Bilderberg to-do lists:
Meanwhile, on the final day of this year’s Bilderberg conference, Canadian activist and reporter, Dan Dicks of Press For Truth also spoke with Portuguese independent, investigative journalist Frederico Duarte Carvalho. Their discussion begins at 2:45 mins:
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Both had attended many previous meetings including last year’s conference in Lisbon and so the conversation begins with a comparison of the two events and how much more stringent security had been in Spain compared to Portugal.
Carvalho says: “For me this was Lisbon Part Two, okay. It’s very close – just 600 km distance… it’s just a six-hour drive you know from one point to the other… and some of the guests were pretty much the same in specific areas.”
He reminds us: “I was also in Bilderberg 2010, the last time it was in Spain, in Sitges, which is near Barcelona, and there were police. There were places where we could not go and so on, although it was still possible to take a few pictures with some imagination.
“Another difference is this: there were more demonstrations. We don’t see so many demonstrations here. There’s a few people here. And in the local press, I was able to read a few lines about Bilderberg, which is something that I have not yet seen in the printed papers, or even in the online papers [this time]. So it’s funny because you buy the newspapers to find out things that they are not saying!
Dan Dicks then asks him: “What can you tell us about some of the some of the things that we did discover this year?”
Carvalho replies: “You have [Dmytro] Kuleba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, again… Ukraine was never a presence in the Bilderberg, because it was not a Nato country. So this was a meeting of high-level Nato and last year we were also able to see him [Kuleba] in the VIP area. We can testify to that.
But [this year] he’s on the list so he came here. [Jens] Stoltenberg [Secretary-General of Nato] also came here after the informal meeting in Prague. He had a private meeting with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Nato countries just before he came here to have the informal meeting with the minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. So it was the extension of the informal meetings held in this hotel as a private event, and also a Nato thing.
“Most important, we got pictures Alex Karp from Palantir, and Alex Karp gave an interview very recently to Time magazine saying that he was using Ukraine as a laboratory for experiments in artificial intelligence in warfare. And warfare is one of the things that is on the list.
“So everything is public, but you don’t have the local journalists around here like we are. You came from the other side of the Atlantic. I’m just across the border, but still with some expenses and private life expenses, because we are doing this for the audience – for you directly – not for a news magazine that pays our salary, a regular salary in the end of the month. And here we are documenting a high-level Nato reunion…”
Continuing: “Look, see the list and think about the facts. Join the dots. Finland and Sweden just recently joined [Nato]. Last year, the former Prime Minister of Sweden [Magdalena Andersson] and also an assistant, Oscar Stenström [see image above]. And this year, the President of the Republic of Finland [Alexander Stubb] was here also.
“I heard the King of Spain, even though he’s not on the list, and the Prime Minister of Estonia [Kaja Kallas] are also in the same building, where you have probably the future Secretary General of Nato – because Stoltenberg is about to finish. He was supposed already to have resigned and been substituted and the word is that [his successor will be] the former Prime Minister of Netherlands, which is Mark Rutte. And Mark Rutte was also here, along with the President of the Republic of Finland and the Prime Minister of Estonia. So it’s the world here and they are not talking about peace…”
Dan Dicks adds: “… Especially when you consider that five out of the 13 topics are war-centred. You have ‘Ukraine and the world’. You have ‘Middle East’. You have ‘China’, ‘Russia’ and literally the ‘future of warfare’.”
A meeting between Kaja Kallas and Mark Rutte was indeed confirmed:
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Frederico Carvalho continues: “Yeah, the most powerful people in the world – those who said that – according to the Agenda 2030 – we should spend less on travelling and change our diets.
“We are talking here about transhumanism and making a world better – and you think you can make the world better by making a war? Well, maybe that’s in the idea. You erase half of the population, then you have less people fighting. Is that the plan?
Dan Dicks: “And not only are we talking about the potential ‘future of war’, but this is kind of co-mingling with technology, AI, and ‘AI safety’…”
Frederico Carvalho: “AI and AI safety: that’s a good way to tell you that ‘you will own nothing and you’ll be happy’. You can ask for everything to be taken to your house. You have the 15-minute cities and so on. So then they will say ‘conspiracy theorists’ to all of us who talk about these things, although it’s pretty understandable if you think that that’s the plan: to take the world to this situation, because you don’t see them talking about giving hope to the world. And they have the power to do that.
“They have the media. They have the controls. They can do better things. They can go to television and they can speak out freely about non-intrusive alternatives. AI should be for you to wash your dishes, and to take care your house, while you are busy doing the things that you want to do creatively. But you see AI doing the things creatively when you will still be a slave. Your salary does not allow you to be free.”
Dan Dicks: “Yes, that’s part of the plan really. If they truly wanted a free and open society maybe they would have a little more transparency to these important discussions with policymakers and world-shakers.”
Frederico Carvalho: “After a few discussions with [the police], we must say a dialogue with them, they allow us to be here. Because here we cannot see the people behind of us, who are hidden behind some vases and plants put in front of the hotel.
“By the way, this is the hotel where Real Madrid would stay, which is very funny because what the people of Madrid will most remember about this weekend when we were stood here at Bilderberg – we will remember Bilderberg and the dates where we were here in 2024, but do you know what the Spanish people of Madrid will most remember? Just two things: Taylor Swift on the 29th and the 30th. Bilderberg began on the 30th. And yesterday night, from the 1st to the 2nd (which are the last days of Bilderberg, when they were having the dinner) Real Madrid was playing the [European Cup] final against Borussia Dortmund in London, and Real Madrid won 2-0, and everybody went to the party, so it was a huge party, so now waking up this morning they will all have a hangover all day long; all of their life.”
Dan Dicks: “So pretty much everybody here in town is essentially clueless to what’s going on here, which is why it’s so important for us to come and document these things.”
According to Dicks, two independent Dutch journalists who went to report on the main event were taken aside by undercover police officers and intimated to leave, while another reporter from Reuters decided not to stay once he’d realised there were no protests going on this year:
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Frederico Carvalho: “You have local people passing by here asking why so many police, and I say to one of them jokily: ‘Taylor Swift is here’. And he says, ‘Gosh!’ And then he runs away, but he doesn’t know he’s not being informed about who is here. He knows what Taylor Swift is. If I say Bilderberg Group, he will ask ‘what?’ and so I did this to the man… sorry, I have to explain…”
“I told him that [little lie]. Now he will arrive home. It’s my expectation he’ll get home and he’ll say, ‘you know that Taylor Swift is over there’ and then someone will say, ‘no, she was in another hotel’, and he says, ‘so why are the police there?’ And he will go and search and then he’ll probably find a few things out, and he’ll feel stupid for asking. That’s my hope. A way to teach a few things to the world, because you learn better by investigating yourself, being curious yourself.
“We journalists. We are professionally curious. You out there are watching this because you are someone who is curious, and really wants to know and get informed, and so you will go and crosscheck information from everywhere. And you can ask us where we can also help you out to find some more information.”
And finally, if you are interested in following Frederico Carvalho’s work, you can find his Twitter page here.
wall of controversy 