I am very sorry to announce that Bilderberg is back on the globalist schedule. Following a three year time-out since its previous meet up during June 2019 in Montreux, Switzerland – an event I covered in extensive detail over a series of seven articles – and on the back of last month’s reconvened WEF Davos conference, Bilderberg gathered for a 66th year; its newest location, the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington D.C.
Encamped about a mile to the south of the White House, a short ride from CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia and a just hop across the Potomac River from The Pentagon, this more shadowy sister summit to Davos had arrived in the capital with plenty to discuss. And with so much going on around the world, Bilderberg conspicuously extended its regular list of ‘key topics’ from the usual ten to a far more impressive fourteen. Although in truth there are basically just three major issues preoccupying the transatlanticist ruling class and all involve wars of one kind or another.
The schematic above is my reinterpretation of this year’s official Bilderberg agenda in the form of a Venn diagram.
With the faltering collapse of US global hegemony, top of their published list are the interrelated concerns over what to do to halt the re-emergence of competing superpowers Russia and China. I wrote an extended article on the subject of escalation against both China and Russia last December entitled “the coming wars with Russia, China and Iran – why the stakes are raised in the last days of the unipolar order” in which I made the following concluding points:
America’s long-term geostrategic repositioning through the stealth expansion of Nato directly up to the borders of Russia and China is now combined with its ever more bellicose political posturing. Repeatedly under the threat of attack, loose defensive alliances have tightened between Russia, China and Iran, so a coordinated response becomes all the more likely. Should the West or Israel (with US consent) take the decision to declare “pre-emptive” war against any one of the three sovereign powers, the realistic expectation is wider war. Given the probable magnitude of a three-pronged retaliation and the genuine potential for a thermonuclear exchange, the prospect of wars against Russia, China and Iran is therefore absolutely unthinkable.
A century ago a detached and callous ruling class led a largely innocent and unwitting generation into the bloody technological hellhole of no-man’s land to slaughter one another for the glory of king and country and, importantly, for the sake of empire. Back then and ever since, we have rightly talked of “lions led by donkeys”. Astonishingly, the donkeys are back in charge again, except that this time around besides an imbecilic and unprincipled political class, we also have an atrophied antiwar opposition, a moribund fourth estate and an endlessly diverted populous, so the worry is that we may be dealing with donkeys virtually all the way down.
So forgive me when I hammer this point: war is in the air again, and not just any old war. WAR with Russia! WAR with Iran! WAR with China! WAR with all three simultaneously!
I make no apologies for my vulgar use of capitals. We all need to shout about this. What’s the alternative?
When Russia illegally invaded Ukraine in February, the stakes were immediately raised of course. In the months that have followed and with the imposition of tough sanctions we have also seen the schism between the West and the rest of the world widen and widen. Furthermore, as the sanctions predictably backfired, the situation for the West (and Europe especially) looks increasingly shambolic with already raging inflation and the likely prospect of fuel shortages. In fact to ameliorate the self-imposed economic damage being caused by its sanctions regime, Europe has quietly sought ways to circumvent their own blockade – this would be laughable were it not for the seriousness.
During this same period events on the ground have also been going badly for Ukraine as the mainstream media is finally starting to confirm, and in response, we are now seeing moves to switch attention and geostrategic policy away from Russia and back on to China; the White House once again stirring up tensions over its longstanding dispute with Taiwan – something I also addressed in greater depth in December’s post.
We must keep in mind that the US is the most militarised power on Earth. It spends more on “defence” than the next ten nations combined! (Far more than both Russia and China together.) Having very recently pulled an occupying force out of Afghanistan, at the present time it remains deeply embroiled in the Saudi war against Yemen, in Somalia and, by proxy, in aiding Ukraine with weapons supplies, training and intelligence. The US also illegally occupies approximately a third of the oil-rich north-eastern territory of Syria. Worldwide there are at least 750 US military bases occupying zones in over 80 countries: a network spanning the Indian and Pacific Ocean and extending into South Korea, Japan and the Philippines.
In 2016, investigative reporter and independent filmmaker John Pilger released a new documentary entitled The Coming War on China saying “The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable”:
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, ‘disappeared’, a political embarrassment.
Another shadow now looms over all of us. This film, The Coming War on China, is a warning that nuclear war is not only imaginable, but a ‘contingency’, says the Pentagon. The greatest build-up of Nato military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia. On the other side of the world, the rise of China as the world’s second economic power is viewed in Washington as another ‘threat’ to American dominance.
To counter this, in 2011, President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’, which meant that almost two-thirds of all US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific, their weapons aimed at China.
Today, some 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. They form an arc from Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. It is, says one US strategist, ‘the perfect noose’.
As the crisis in Ukraine consumes public attention, geopolitical analyst and East Asian specialist Brian Berletic highlights other events unfolding in the background that are potentially leading to a much worse crisis:
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Meantime, the ruling class has opened up its third front on the domestic populations of the West under the guise of the most open of open ‘conspiracy theories’ – a conspiracy that proudly announces itself on an official WEF website and that brazenly dares to speak its own name: “The Great Reset”.
This blueprint for a hi-tech future that ensures perpetual austerity and mass surveillance is today proselytised and peddled on the basis of ‘fairness’ and ‘sustainability’. As independent researcher and activist Alison McDowell writes:
We’re living in tumultuous times with polarizing political theater and pandemic providing ample cover for the roll out of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. From the World Economic Forum’s outpost at San Francisco’s Presidio, the tentacles of dispossession triggered by Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” are rapidly encircling the globe.
We are witnessing the culmination of a century of machinations by western social engineers. We see predatory philanthropy using such euphemistic framing as “Living Cities,” “Healthy Cities,” “Resilient Cities,” and “Build Back Better” to package the profoundly anti-human and anti-life initiatives coming out of Davos as aspirational goals for “smart” living.
The oligarch class asks us to play along and overlook the fact that all of this smartness rests on a foundation of continued growth, fossil-fuel expansion, child labor, toxic waste, and space pollution. They demand we overlook the insatiable energy requirements needed to run the augmented reality Internet of Things illusion. That we put out of our minds the existence of vast data centers cooled 24/7 with the water of a thirsty, poisoned world.
They’ve outdone themselves propagandizing youth to cheer on transnational global capital’s plans to implement a final “green” solution. Though my hope is after months of digital alienation people’s spirits will stir in time to derail the intentions of this cruel biocapitalist regime to push us away from our rightful connection to natural systems and one another and into isolated virtual realms. The spell of faux ICT sustainability must be broken.
Alison McDowell’s presentation embedded above was part of an online forum, “Politics In And Out Of Europe”, hosted by Rutgers University’s Center for European Studies on Monday October 26th 2020. There were two panels followed by an hour of discussion. Alison McDowell was the second presenter, and framing remarks and response was provided by Naomi Klein.
Click here to read the same article interspersed with slides from the full presentation and comments published on Alison Hawver McDowell’s official website Wrench in the Gears on October 27th 2020.
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At Montreux three years ago, China and Russia were already in the Bilderberg crosshairs (listed third and fourth respectively of the ten ‘key topics’), but away from the Alps this year’s backdrop has significantly darkened. From 2019’s rather optimistic tone of “A Stable Strategic Order” and “What Next for Europe?” we move instead to talk of “Geopolitical Realignments”, “Disruption of the Global Financial System” and “NATO Challenges” for which we are impelled to read more straightforwardly “sanctions and war”. This is what happens when empires fall, the Anglo-American oligarchs now desperate to prop up theirs by any means necessary.
As spectacular evidence of the rapid decline in US regional power, this week leaders across Latin America boycotted the ninth Summit of the Americas that was held in Los Angeles. Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said the move was in solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua who were not invited to attend:
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Yet arguably the most striking item in this year’s ‘key topics’ is literally tucked away at the very heart of their list: number 7: “Continuity of Government and the Economy”. For those unfamiliar with the term ‘continuity of government’ (COG) I have supplied a description below which is actually the opening paragraph to the current Wikipedia entry on the subject:
Continuity of government (COG) is the principle of establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of a catastrophic event such as nuclear war. [highlight retained]
It seems Bilderberg are surreptitiously warning that the lights are blinking red. And sooner than we might suppose, as the crises start to pile up, and people across the entire world (including the most prosperous regions in Europe and North America) are made desperate for food and energy, drastic contingency measures will need to be instituted. States of emergency. Martial law. Or worse. How else do we translate this most central item on last weekend’s Bilderberg agenda?
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A council of war
This year’s press release is characteristically terse and last minute (doubtless to keep the crowds at bay) and reliably the corporate media with so many close ties to Bilderberg have mostly failed to mention any of it. In fact this year’s British media cohort included Bilderberg stalwart Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist accompanied by colleague and defence editor, Shashank Joshi as well as Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs commentator at The Financial Times. One reliable exception to the general rule of media silence was maverick journalist Charlie Skelton, and he trotted out a brief report smuggled inside the Guardian. Writing on Saturday [June 4th] as the meeting kicked off, Skelton begins:
Bilderberg is back with a vengeance. After a pandemic gap of two years, the elite global summit is being rebooted in a security-drenched hotel in Washington DC, with a high-powered guest list that includes the heads of Nato, the CIA, GCHQ, the US national security council, two European prime ministers, a healthy sprinkle of tech billionaires, and Henry Kissinger.
Skelton’s tidy overview of this year’s list of participants is worth fleshing out a little bit more. For instance, the two aforementioned European PMs were Mark Rutte of the Netherlands (a perennial Bilderberg attendee) and, more noteworthy, Sanna Marin of Finland. Strictly off-the-record, devoid of public oversight or media scrutiny, Marin was doubtless engaged in frequent discussions with head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg about the terms and conditions for membership (generally about 3% of GDP channelled into weapons procurement). This is how open democracy functions today in Finland as in the rest of the western world.
Skelton writes:
The summit is heaving with experts in Russia and Ukraine, including the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, and ex-deputy national security adviser Nadia Schadlow, who has a seat on the elite steering committee of Bilderberg.
The conference room is rigged up with video screens for shy dignitaries to make a virtual attendance, and it’s highly likely that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will Zoom in for a T-shirted contribution to the talks. Just a few days beforehand, Zelenskiy met with a Bilderberg and US intelligence representative Alex Karp, who runs Palantir, the infamous CIA-funded surveillance and data analysis company.
Palantir, which was set up by billionaire Bilderberg insider Peter Thiel, has agreed to give “digital support” to the Ukrainian army, according to a tweet by the country’s deputy prime minister.
The participant list is rife with military advisers, one of which is a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and some hefty cogs from the Washington war machine. Among the heftiest is James Baker, head of the ominous sounding office of net assessment.
Another very high profile politician on the list is Canadian Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, a member of the WEF’s Board of Trustees and a person many see as the power behind the throne of the Trudeau government. The granddaughter of a prominent Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, Freeland was banned by Moscow in 2014. Given her background it isn’t very hard to understand Freeland’s virulent Russophobia or why she was behind the organisation of the so-called Lima Group with its goal of overthrowing Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolas Maduro. At Bilderberg she came to rub elbows with Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, and the CEO of Naftogaz, the state-owned Ukrainian oil and gas company.
The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal spoke with comedian Jimmy Dore about his own attempt to investigate last weekend’s meeting in Washington DC:
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Within the ranks of this year’s participants there were also three senior politicians from the UK. With Boris Johnson days numbered (as I predicted as far back as December 2020!), and Bilderberg’s prodigious historic record as kingmakers (something I have previously documented – a summary also provided below), could it be that Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Tom Tugendhat who marks his second appearance at Bilderberg is finally being groomed for higher office? It is also curious that Michael Gove made a Bilderberg debut. Gove memorably stabbed Boris Johnson in the back in a bid for power during the 2016 Tory leadership contest that he eventually lost to Theresa May. So are we about to see him throw his hat into the ring once again?
Less high profile was the attendance of Labour’s David Lammy. Nominally on the left of the party, his Bilderberg appearance coincides with an invitation of the no less outwardly progressive Democrat Senator, Kyrsten Sinema as well as the reappearance of Mary Kay Henry, who by day is the international president of Service Employees International Union.
We must be aware that Bilderberg (and Davos too) functions along cross-party lines, seeking constantly to straddle some kind of dreamed up political ‘centre’. The ruling class is able to do this by being reactionary and progressive at one and the same time: reactionary in promoting their special interests and protecting the status quo, yet genuinely progressive not only by adapting to the times but in quite deliberately shaping our collective future.
For this secondary reason, a burgeoning contingent go there as representatives of the ever-more powerful tech sector; this year’s roll call featured Bilderberg everpresents Eric Schmidt (chairman of Google), Reid Hoffman (co-founder of Inflection AI and partner of Greylock), and Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies), who were also joined by Yann LeCun (vice-president and chief AI scientist at Facebook); Demis Hassabis (CEO and founder of DeepMind) and Kevin Scott (chief technology officer at Microsoft Corporation)
Of course, the crises we face are a direct consequence of comparatively recent policies. The stagflation was caused by economic mismanagement that stems from the bailouts and misguided policy of QE that was used to tackle the 2008 financial collapse and then pursued more vigorously since the lockdowns and additional bailouts following the covid pandemic. However neoliberal failures can actually be traced further back to the deindustrialisation of western societies.
Meanwhile, the looming prospect of energy and (potentially) food shortages is mostly due to the geopolitical boomerang of sanctions that were intended to cause a regime change in Moscow – sanctions that have evidently failed in every regard. Leaving such details aside, however, late-stage capitalism has been in crisis for at least three decades and the plutocrats at Davos and Bilderberg are perfectly well aware of this fact. So the underlying purpose of WEF’s “Great Reset” is to manage the technologically-driven socioeconomic changes, accepting that change is unavoidable, in order to ensure maximal benefit for the corporations and the oligarchs who own them.
Reminding us of the close ties between Bilderberg and Davos, Skelton points to this matter succinctly:
Bilderberg is sometimes dismissed as a talking shop or crazed imagining of conspiracy theorists. But in reality it is a major diplomatic summit, attended this year as ever by extremely senior transatlantic politicians, from the US commerce secretary to the president of the European Council.
Many consider it an older, less flashy Davos, staged annually by the World Economic Fund. The two events have a good bit in common: namely, three WEF trustees at this year’s conference, and Klaus Schwab, the grisly head of Davos, is a former member of Bilderberg’s steering committee. His “Great Reset” looms large over the Washington conference, with “Disruption of the Global Financial System” at the heart of the agenda.
Concluding his article:
[H]olding court at the hotel bar will be Klaus Schwab’s mentor, Henry Kissinger.
Incredibly, Kissinger, 99, has been attending Bilderbergs since 1957.
The prince of realpolitik has been the ideological godfather of Bilderberg for as long as anyone can remember. And he’s recently co-authored a book, The Age of AI, with Bilderberg steering committee member Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, and this year’s Washington conference is noticeably rammed with AI luminaries, from Facebook’s Yann LeCun to DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis.
Bilderberg knows that however the global realignments play out, and whatever a reset global financial system looks like, the shape of the world will be determined by big tech. And if the endgame is “Continuity of Government”, as the agenda suggests, that continuity will be powered by AI.
Whatever billionaire ends up making the software that runs the world, Bilderberg aims to make damned sure that it has its hand on the mouse.
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article entitled “Bilderberg reconvenes in person after two-year pandemic gap: The Washington conference, a high-level council of war, will be headlined by Jen Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general” published in the Guardian on June 4th.
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As a further insight into the comings and goings at this year’s meeting, here is my categorised guide to the more mentionable delegates:
First, the three intelligence chiefs alluded to in Skelton’s article are Jake Sullivan, director of National Security Council; William Burns, director of CIA; and Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ. They were joined by the director of France’s external intelligence agency, General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), Bernard Émié; Jen Easterly, the director of US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and seasoned Bilderberger, the former chief of MI6 (2009–2014), John Sawers.
Beside the Prime Ministers of Finland and the Netherlands, the political contingent also included Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Wopke Hoekstra; Belgian minister for energy, Tinne Van der Straeten, alongside Polish MEP, Radoslaw Sikorski, the husband of fellow attendee, Anne Applebaum, member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a rabid neo-con commentator who routinely calls for war on Russia in her columns for the Washington Post and The Atlantic magazine. In addition there were two top level EU representatives: vice-president of European Commission, Margaritis Schinas and president of European Council, Charles Michel, who is Bilderberg returnee – first invited in 2018 when he was Belgian Prime Minister.
Lastly, a mention to a handful of the usual suspects in attendance: Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis and their close associate David Petraeus (chairman of KKR Global Institute); the chairman of Goldman Sachs International, José Manuel Barroso (no globalist shindig runs without top-level representation from ‘the squid’)… oh, and also just along for the craic, the one and only (presumably) King of the Netherlands!
Click here to read the reliably incomplete official list of participants as published on the Bilderberg website.
Correction:
In the original version it was incorrectly stated that the CIA HQ is at Arlington, Virginia when the correct location is a few miles north at Langley, Virginia.
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List of western leaders previously groomed by Bilderberg:
Gerald Ford attended Bilderberg 1964, 1966 appointed as US President 1974
Margaret Thatcher attended Bilderberg (at least 1975, 1977, 1986) became Prime Minister 1979
Bill Clinton attended Bilderberg 1991 became US President 1993
Tony Blair attended Bilderberg 1993 became Prime Minister 1997
Paul Martin attended Bilderberg 1996 became Prime Minister of Canada 2003
Stephen Harper attended Bilderberg 2003 became Prime Minister of Canada 2006
Angela Merkel attended Bilderberg 2005 became Chancellor of Germany (Nov) 2005
Emmanuel Macron attended Bilderberg 2014 became President 2017 *
Important note: It is well past the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, so it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website still declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
— Frank Zappa
This is the seventh and last of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to the future of humanity and including ‘The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence’:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
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The new normal
In May 2017, Forbes magazine published a piece by financial analyst and writer John Maudlin that bears the prophetic title: “Brace Yourself For ‘The Great Reset’”. Interestingly, the piece is not concerned with climate change or forthcoming pandemics, but simply addresses what Maudlin describes as “the largest twin bubbles in the history of the world”:
These promises add up to hundreds of trillions of dollars. That’s vastly larger than global GDP.
These are real problems we must face. It will mean forging a new social contract. It will also require changes to taxes and the economy. I believe that within the next 5–10 years, we have to end the debt and government promises.
The banking crisis that broke in 2008 has festered ever since; western economies today are continually propped up thanks to vast injections of cheap money: non-stop rounds of quantitative easing with interest rates maintained at levels close to zero. Maudlin was right therefore to forewarn of the ramifications of what have been systematic failures; ones that by the time of publication of his article had already generated a global debt-to-GDP of 325%.
Moreover, he was far from alone in sounding the alarm. As recently as last July, the New York Federal Reserve’s own in-house model, which predicts the probability of a US recession occurring in the next 12 months and is regarded as critical indicator, recorded its highest level since 2009: a reading of 32.9% for June. As Business Insider reported:
“That could mean tough times ahead, considering the measure has breached the 30% threshold before every recession since 1960.” 1
Then in October (still in the months before covid), former Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, went on the record to say that he believed the world was sleepwalking into another crash:
Giving a lecture in Washington at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, King said there had been no fundamental questioning of the ideas that led to the crisis of a decade ago.
“Another economic and financial crisis would be devastating to the legitimacy of a democratic market system,” he said. “By sticking to the new orthodoxy of monetary policy and pretending that we have made the banking system safe, we are sleepwalking towards that crisis.”
He added that the US would suffer a “financial armageddon” if its central bank – the Federal Reserve – lacked the necessary firepower to combat another episode similar to the sub-prime mortgage sell-off. 2
Nor is Maudlin isolated when it comes to questioning whether levels of public spending are sustainable, although here he is necessarily buttressing his own ideological stance and keen to advocate further neoliberal reforms as a matter of unavoidable necessity. Thus, he continues:
What I mean by government promises are pensions and healthcare benefits. 3
Yet beyond the title of Maudlin’s piece, so far his forecast has been rather less than impressive. Instead of policies of stringent austerity, the crisis we now face has in fact resulted in a sudden flood of government spending. It transpires that ‘magic money trees’ aren’t really so hard to find after all.
Moreover, a sizeable fraction of that money has gone directly into the pockets of ordinary people through elaborate schemes set up to compensate for the shutdown of our societies. Meanwhile, a great deal more is being siphoned off into the coffers of global corporations – in America especially, this grand theft has been brazen, whereas in Britain the transfer of public money is a stealthier affair: a prime example being the £100 million wasted on privatised track-and-trace systems run by Serco.
Peter Geoghegan of OpenDemocracy discloses how the Tory government has exploited the coronavirus crisis and handed over multiple millions of pounds of public money in the form of contracts to friends of the party:
Of course, the situation is a temporary one and so the current economic measures are stopgaps, but still this easy availability of public money puts an immediate lie to simplistic arguments that previously justified a decade of austerity. Governments are not constrained to live within their means like households. Austerity is always an ideological choice and never an inescapable inevitability – as I have argued many times before, it is in any case counterproductive because it stifles growth.
That said, historically high levels of government debt do provide a perfect and very nearly irresistible excuse for waves of future austerity and for the sell-off of public assets. This is how disaster capitalism works.
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On October 7th, economists Michael Hudson and Steve Keen were invited to discuss the current state of western economies and how the so-called ‘K-shaped recovery’ is now dividing the world into haves and have-nots with Peter Lavelle on RT’s Crosstalk.
Michael Hudson explained the ‘new normal’ as follows:
“What has become normal since 2008 has been completely different from the old normal. People have the idea that with ‘normal’ you go back to a balance. But really the economy hasn’t grown at all since the 2008 crisis. All of the growth in GDP, all of the growth in wealth, has accrued to the financial sector, to the real estate sector, and to the one percent. For the ninety-nine percent of the people, they’ve gone down and down and down.
“So the ‘new normal’ is you can’t get rich again by buying housing and joining the middle class like you used to. The ‘new normal’ is paying all of your increase in wages on debt service, in rents, and in monopoly prices. And so the ‘new normal’ is that the market is going to shrink and shrink until we look like Greece looks in the last five years. Think of the ‘new normal’ as looking like Greece: debt deflation and rent deflation.” [from 2:10 mins]
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The great reset
Today, if you visit the website of the World Economic Forum, you will come across an article by its founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab that likewise calls for “a great reset”. From the main page, there is then a link to what WEF calls its “Great Reset microsite”, where the blurb reads:
As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum’s communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.
Time for the Great Reset – screenshot of WEF website
Schwab, a former member of the Bilderberg group steering committee, writes that:
We must use it [the COVID-19 crisis] to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need. That will require stronger and more effective governments, though this does not imply an ideological push for bigger ones. And it will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way.
Dressed up as a synthesis of capitalism and socialism, here the thinly-veiled intention is to amalgamate the worst elements of both systems with an ever-tightening alliance between global corporations and governments, and the replacement of any meaningful representative democracy with greater accountability going instead to so-called “stakeholder” interests. Schwab continues:
The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination (for example, in tax, regulatory, and fiscal policy), upgrade trade arrangements, and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy.” At a time of diminishing tax bases and soaring public debt, governments have a powerful incentive to pursue such action.
Combined with these market-orientated reforms the public can also look forward to enjoying “socialism” in the form of restrictions on individual freedom for reasons of “sustainability”, “intellectual property” rights, green taxes, and, within an overarching plan for the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the growth of “smart cities”:
Moreover, governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes. Depending on the country, these may include changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.
The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. […]
[F]or example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.
The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. 4
Click here to read the full piece by Klaus Schwab entitled “Now is the time for a ‘great reset’”.
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AI is key to the NWO transformation
Meanwhile, as long ago as April 3rd – albeit with his crystal ball firmly in hand – Bilderberg’s most illustrious war criminal wrote this in an op-ed by The Wall Street Journal:
When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus.
Adding:
Global leaders have learned important lessons from the 2008 financial crisis. The current economic crisis is more complex: The contraction unleashed by the coronavirus is, in its speed and global scale, unlike anything ever known in history. 5
Kissinger’s solution to this impending crisis when boiled down (and seeing through all of the cant about “ameliorat[ing] the effects of impending chaos on the world’s most vulnerable populations” and “defend[ing] and sustain[ing] their Enlightenment values”) is this: to “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.” Where for “liberal” we must read “neo-liberal”, and for “world order” we should prefix with the adjective “new” (as Kissinger himself has done on countless past occasions).
Indeed, here is Kissinger presenting a keynote conversation just last year at the George W. Bush Presidential Center beneath the very title “The New World Order” (not that he elucidates much on what he envisions for the NWO):
Kissinger’s view of ‘the shape of things to come’ might be better gauged from an article published August last year and provocatively entitled “The Metamorphosis” that was co-authored by Bilderberg confederate, former executive chairman of Alphabet Inc and current chair of the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, Eric Schmidt, along with fellow techie and former director of Amazon, Daniel Huttenlocher. In it they write:
If AI improves constantly—and there is no reason to think it will not—the changes it will impose on human life will be transformative. Here are but two illustrations: a macro-example from the field of global and national security, and a micro-example dealing with the potential role of AI in human relationships.
The first of these examples relates to the development of new weapons and strategies, and implications for arms control and deterrence. The second is headed simply “Human Contact” and begins as follows:
Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa are digital assistants already installed in millions of homes and designed for daily conversation: They answer queries and offer advice that, especially to children, may seem intelligent, even wise. And they can become a solution to the abiding loneliness of the elderly, many of whom interact with these devices as friends.
The more data AI gathers and analyzes, the more precise it becomes, so devices such as these will learn their owners’ preferences and take them into account in shaping their answers. And as they get “smarter,” they will become more intimate companions. As a result, AI could induce humans to feel toward it emotions it is incapable of reciprocating.
Already, people rank their smartphones as their most important possession. They name their Roombas, and attribute intent to them where none exists. What happens when these devices become even more sophisticated? Will people become as attached to their digital pets as to their dogs—or perhaps even more so?
All of which tiptoes very lightly indeed around the major concern when it comes to our routine installation of hi-tech surveillance equipment inside the home; Alexa already far exceeds the intrusion of Orwell’s telescreens in his dystopian nightmare Nineteen Eighty-Four – and there is something else to worry about here (mention of it is again buried away in the middle of the text):
AI algorithms will help open new frontiers of knowledge, while at the same time narrowing information choices and enhancing the capacity to suppress new or challenging ideas.
As Eric Schmidt is perfectly well aware, of course, this is precisely what the Google algorithm already does. Social media platforms have also been installing filters to censor content, narrow opinion and condemn us to engage in ever decreasing bubbles of discussion. When one echo chamber then rubs up against another no light is shed, but only increasing levels of heat. Obviously, it isn’t AI as such that narrows and suppresses public debate, but the actions of the tech giants with their more or less unregulated control over content.
Then, finally, they get to the crux of the matter:
The technological capacity of governments to monitor the behavior and movements of tens or hundreds of millions is likewise unprecedented. Even in the West, this quest can, in the name of harmony, become a slippery slope. Balancing the risks of aberrant behavior against limits on personal freedom—or even defining aberrant—will be a crucial challenge of the AI era. 6
But once again, it isn’t AI that defines “aberrant” either, it’s whoever operates the AI and has control over the algorithms – and to understand who that is, I recommend studying the lists of Bilderberg participants throughout the past decade. Ever more prominent amongst the ranks of the great and good you will find many of the biggest names in Silicon Valley – one of whom, Reid Hoffman, also happen to sit on Eric Schimdt’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board alongside owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, “the richest man in modern history”, Jeff Bezos.
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Klaus Schwab and the fascist new deal
“We are at the threshold of a radical systemic change that requires human beings to adapt continuously. As a result, we may witness an increasing degree of polarization in the world, marked by those who embrace change versus those who resist it.
“This gives rise to an inequality that goes beyond the societal one described earlier. This ontological inequality will separate those who adapt from those who resist—the material winners and losers in all senses of the words. The winners may even benefit from some form of radical human improvement generated by certain segments of the fourth industrial revolution (such as genetic engineering) from which the losers will be deprived. This risks creating class conflicts and other clashes unlike anything we have seen before”
Those who believe the multi-billionaire class of plutocrats who gather annually at Davos and more “privately” at Bilderberg do so in pursuit of “socialism” are either delusional or else miss the point for more deliberate reasons. In fact, the primary agenda set forth by these exclusive clubs is rather more straightforward and perfectly understandable if we adjust to see the world through the jaundiced eyes of its membership. The goal is to forge an ever-tightening relationship between the corporations (which they already own and control) and governments (where political power ultimately resides) until eventually there will be no distinction.
This process of public-private convergence has been underway for many decades with groups like Bilderberg and WEF at the vanguard. If and when the merger they seek is completed, our society will be governed wholly in accordance to a political regime known as corporatism, which is a form of fascism (of the type first implemented by Mussolini).
As Winter Oak explains in a very recent article entitled “Klaus Schwab and his Great Fascist Reset”:
In other words, fascism and socialism (at least ‘state socialism’ which first emerged in the Soviet Union) are superficially similar but mainly because they are both statist, while in other ways they are diametrically opposed. That said, fascists have historically used “socialism” for left-cover, and this trend continues today.
The same article then breaks down how Schwab’s plans for a “stakeholder society” (with its leftist overtones) can be rolled out in order to achieve the kinds of fascist (or corporatist) ends desired:
[I]n 1971 [Schwab] founded the European Management Forum, which held annual meetings at Davos in Switzerland. Here he promoted his ideology of “stakeholder” capitalism in which businesses were brought into closer co-operation with government.
“Stakeholder capitalism” is described by Forbes business magazine as “the notion that a firm focuses on meeting the needs of all its stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, the community, and society as a whole”.
Even in the context of a particular business, it is invariably an empty label. As the Forbes article notes, it actually only means that “firms can go on privately shoveling money to their shareholders and executives, while maintaining a public front of exquisite social sensitivity and exemplary altruism”.
But in a general social context, the stakeholder concept is even more nefarious, discarding any idea of democracy, rule by the people, in favour of rule by corporate interests.
Society is no longer regarded as a living community but as a business, whose profitability is the sole valid aim of human activity.
Schwab set out this agenda back in 1971, in his book Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau (Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering), where his use of the term “stakeholders” (die Interessenten) effectively redefined human beings not as citizens, free individuals or members of communities, but as secondary participants in a massive commercial enterprise.
The aim of each and every person’s life was “to achieve long-term growth and prosperity” for this enterprise – in other words, to protect and increase the wealth of the capitalist elite.
Winter Oak then highlights and discusses at length admissions made by Schwab in his writings for public consumption and in particular his 2016 book The Fourth Industrial Revolution [the same term is often abbreviated to 4IR]:
Schwab waxes lyrical about the 4IR, which he insists is “unlike anything humankind has experienced before”.
He gushes: “Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people connected by mobile devices, giving rise to unprecedented processing power, storage capabilities and knowledge access. Or think about the staggering confluence of emerging technology breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing, to name a few. Many of these innovations are in their infancy, but they are already reaching an inflection point in their development as they build on and amplify each other in a fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds”.
He also looks forward to more online education, involving “the use of virtual and augmented reality” to “dramatically improve educational outcomes”, to sensors “installed in homes, clothes and accessories, cities, transport and energy networks” and to smart cities, with their all-important “data platforms”.
“All things will be smart and connected to the internet”, says Schwab, and this will extend to animals, as “sensors wired in cattle can communicate to each other through a mobile phone network”.
He loves the idea of “smart cell factories” which could enable “the accelerated generation of vaccines” and “big-data technologies”.
These, he ensures us, will “deliver new and innovative ways to service citizens and customers” and we will have to stop objecting to businesses profiting from harnessing and selling information about every aspect of our personal lives.
“Establishing trust in the data and algorithms used to make decisions will be vital,” insists Schwab. “Citizen concerns over privacy and establishing accountability in business and legal structures will require adjustments in thinking”.
At the end of the day it is clear that all this technological excitement revolves purely around profit, or “value” as Schwab prefers to term it in his 21st century corporate newspeak.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Schwab also writes with tremendous enthusiasm about the use of the blockchain (the distributed ledger behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin) and 5G technology, and then, having pronounced that “a world full of drones offers a world full of possibilities”, he spells out what the “revolution” means at a human level, saying “Already, advances in neurotechnologies and biotechnologies are forcing us to question what it means to be human”
The following passage is quoted directly from his more recent book Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018):
“Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us—they will become part of us. Indeed, some of us already feel that our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves. Today’s external devices—from wearable computers to virtual reality headsets—will almost certainly become implantable in our bodies and brains. Exoskeletons and prosthetics will increase our physical power, while advances in neurotechnology enhance our cognitive abilities. We will become better able to manipulate our own genes, and those of our children. These developments raise profound questions: Where do we draw the line between human and machine? What does it mean to be human?”
This is where Schwab turns to a favourite subject: transhumanism – and please bear in mind that he was raised in Germany (born in 1938) during the last years of The Third Reich – which as Winter Oak reminds us was “a police-state regime built on fear and violence, on brainwashing and control, on propaganda and lies, on industrialism and eugenics, on dehumanisation and ‘disinfection’, on a chilling and grandiose vision of a “new order” that would last a thousand years.”
The article continues:
A whole section of this book is devoted to the theme “Altering the Human Being”. Here he drools over “the ability of new technologies to literally become part of us” and invokes a cyborg future involving “curious mixes of digital-and-analog life that will redefine our very natures”.
He writes: “These technologies will operate within our own biology and change how we interface with the world. They are capable of crossing the boundaries of body and mind, enhancing our physical abilities, and even having a lasting impact on life itself “.
No violation seems to go too far for Schwab, who dreams of “active implantable microchips that break the skin barrier of our bodies”, “smart tattoos”, “biological computing” and “custom-designed organisms”.
He is delighted to report that “sensors, memory switches and circuits can be encoded in common human gut bacteria”, that “Smart Dust, arrays of full computers with antennas, each much smaller than a grain of sand, can now organize themselves inside the body” and that “implanted devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a ‘built-in’ smartphone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brain waves and other signals”.
“Synthetic biology” is on the horizon in Schwab’s 4IR world, giving the technocratic capitalist rulers of the world “the ability to customize organisms by writing DNA”.
The idea of neurotechnologies, in which humans will have fully artificial memories implanted in the brain, is enough to make some of us feel faintly sick, as is “the prospect of connecting our brains to VR through cortical modems, implants or nanobots”.
It is of little comfort to learn that this is all – of course! – in the greater interests of capitalist profiteering since it “heralds new industries and systems for value creation” and “represents an opportunity to create entire new systems of value in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
Click here to read the full article by Winter Oak entitled “Klaus Schwab and His Great Fascist Reset”.
And here to read an extended post about the nature of fascism and how historically it has repeatedly disguised its true intentions with recourse to ‘left cover’.
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The future of humanity
“Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.”
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher with deep scientific and technical training 9 ,who aside from being Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University is also co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (renamed Humanity+, Inc.) as well as an acknowledged inspiration for Elon Musk and Bill Gates. 10
A self-confessed utopian, Bostrom is strangely religious in that way only scientific materialists can be: so he has dreams of constructing a future heaven by wholly technological means and with ethical foundations grounded and held firm by pure reason. Inspired, he says, by a youthful acquaintance with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, his envisioned Utopia will be a brave new world that is infinitely more delightful, more pleasurable, and finally more pristine than Huxley’s arch conception – a place without death and, in all likelihood, devoid of all corporeality. Subscribing to an increasingly fashionable opinion that the physical universe is just some kind of digital simulation (it used to be clockwork), Bostrom’s Utopia, is set to be the best of all possible simulations: the matrix par excellence! 11
That said, Bostrom is amongst first to acknowledge that unavoidably the road to hell is also paved with good intentions. Indeed, lurking just beneath his sometimes optimistic and occasionally exuberant facade, it is hard not to discern a rather desperate almost pathological desire to escape the horrors of the material world.
During an interview conducted by the Guardian in 2016, he was asked about membership of Alcor, “the cryogenic initiative that promises to freeze mortal remains in the hope that, one day, minds can be reinvigorated and uploaded in digital form to live in perpetuity.” The conversation with Tim Adams then proceeded as follows:
“I have a policy of never commenting on my funeral arrangements,” he says.
But he thinks there is a value in cryogenic research?
“It seems a pretty rational thing for people to do if they can afford it,” he says. “When you think about what life in the quite near future could be like, trying to store the information in your brain seems like a conservative option as opposed to burning the brain down and throwing it away. Unless you are really confident that the information will never be useful…”12
Bostrom was one of a handful of academics and another of the new faces who made it on to the guest list at Bilderberg last year. A few months prior to his attendance, in January 2019, he had also been invited to chat with head of TED and business entrepreneur, Chris Anderson, about his “Vulnerable World Hypothesis”.
As Business Insider reported:
Philosopher Nick Bostrom is known for making scary predictions about humanity.
Over 15 years ago, he made the case that we are all living in a Matrix-like simulation run by another civilization. The idea, though difficult to swallow, is well-regarded by some philosophers, and has even been sanctioned by Elon Musk.
Many years later, Bostrom isn’t done outlining frightening scenarios.
On Wednesday, he took the stage at the TED 2019 conference in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss another radical theory. While speaking to head of the conference, Chris Anderson, Bostrom argued that mass surveillance could be one of the only ways to save humanity from ultimate doom. 13
The full discussion is embedded below:
What Bostrom goes on to outline is a world threatened by ever more sophisticated future technologies whether from advances in nuclear arms; bioweapons research; development of drone swarms; or from other applications of AI: all of which do indeed have the potential to destroy civilisation.
What he says he fears most is that one of these future technologies might become ‘democratised’, accidentally enabling rogue individuals who are without compunction to deliver a Samson-like attack that brings the world down on our heads. In preempting such an existential catastrophe Bostrom therefore presents four solutions.
The first is simply to control the development of such dangerous new technologies; an approach that Bostrom quickly dismisses (for reasons that are hard to fathom). The second, subtitled “eliminate bad actors”, is already more sinister and accompanied by a strange image of a drone sending love bombs (presumably) to dissuade some future assailant. Bostrom half jokes “I think it’s like a hybrid picture: I think ‘eliminate’ could mean incarcerate or kill, or it could persuade them to a better view of the world.”
He continues:
“Suppose you were extremely successful in this and you reduced the number of such individuals by half. And if you want to do it by persuasion I mean you’re competing against all other powerful forces that are trying to persuade people: [political?] parties, religion, education systems; but, suppose you could reduce it by half: I don’t think the risk would be reduced by half, it would maybe be reduced by five or ten percent.” [from 14:45 mins]
Response 2: Eliminate bad actors
That brings him to ‘Response 3: Mass Surveillance’ – Chris Anderson fittingly describes this as the “Minority Report option”:
“So I think there are two general methods that we could use to achieve the ability to stabilise the world against a whole spectrum of possible vulnerabilities. Probably we need both. So one is an extremely effective ability to do preventive policing, such that if anybody started to do this dangerous thing, you could intercept them in real time and stop them. This would require ubiquitous surveillance – everyone would be monitored all the time… AI algorithms, big ‘freedom centres’ that were reviewing this, you know, etc, etc. [from 15:30 mins]
Response 3: Mass Surveillance
Referring to the accompanying picture (see screenshot above), he adds:
“Yes, so this little device there – you might have a kind of necklace that you would have to wear at all times with multidirectional cameras. But to make it go down better just call it ‘the freedom tag’ or something like that.” [from 16:15 mins]
And finally we have ‘Response 4: Global governance’.
Bostrom says, “Surveillance would be kind of [plugging the] governance gap at the micro-level – preventing anyone ever doing something highly illegal – then there is a corresponding governance gap at the macro-level, at the global level. You would need the ability reliably to prevent the worst kinds of global coordination failures: to avoid wars between great powers; arms races; and cataclysmic commons problems. [from 16:55 min]
Asked in summary what the likelihood is that we’re all doomed, he replies:
“On an individual level I mean we seem to be kind of doomed anyway just with a timeline from rotting and aging and all kinds of things.” [from 20:00 mins]
As Business Insider points out:
Under Bostrom’s vision of mass surveillance, humans would be monitored at all times via artificial intelligence, which would send information to “freedom centers” that work to save us from doom. To make this possible, he said, all humans would have to wear necklaces, or “freedom tags,” with multi-directional cameras.
The idea is controversial under any circumstance, but especially at TED, which has focused this year on strategies to ensure privacy in the digital era.
Even Bostrom recognizes that the scenario could go horribly wrong.
“Obviously there are huge downsides and indeed massive risks to mass surveillance and global governance,” he told the crowd. But he still thinks the ends might justify the means.
“On an individual level, we seem to be kind of doomed anyway,” he said.
Click here to read the full article published by Business Insider entitled “An Oxford philosopher who’s inspired Elon Musk thinks mass surveillance might be the only way to save humanity from doom”.
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In this video essay Tom Nicholas contextualises Muskian futurism to ask what its appeal is and what other social, political, economic and cultural movements it might have something in common with. In the final segment he discusses the ramifications of some of Musk’s specific projects – his is not a vision of egalitarian prosperity for all, but one of gilded corridors for an elite few:
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Final, final thoughts: Ctrl-Alt-Del
“Humans will be able to evolve by harnessing the super-intelligence and extra abilities offered by the machines of the future, by joining with them. All this points to the development of a new human species, known in the science-fiction world as ‘cyborgs’. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to become a cyborg. If you are happy with your state as a human then so be it, you can remain as you are. But be warned – just as we humans split from our chimpanzee cousins years ago, so cyborgs will split from humans. Those who remain as humans are likely to become a sub-species. They will, effectively, be the chimpanzees of the future”
Some years ago I had been thinking up names for an envisaged progressive political movement, when, after realising that all of the traditional labels ‘people’s’, ‘popular’, ‘democratic’, ‘freedom’, ‘revolutionary’, etc were already irreparably sullied, it occurred to me that in our mimetic age something snappier might be more suitable. Something along the lines of ‘system reset’, although without the Maoist overtones! Briefly that led me to consider the familiar 3-fingered salute on every computer keyboard, Ctrl-Alt-Del: a consideration that altogether stopped me in my tracks.
In fact, picking apart the elements, Ctrl-Alt-Del already represents the three-pronged assault we are increasingly subjected to: the plutocrats using these precise three strategies to oppress and dominate. First through Ctrl by means of propaganda and censorship, with the steady encroachment of mass surveillance in all areas of our lives (the panopticon), and arguably too with the mental health crisis and widespread prescription of ‘chemical cosh’ opiates and more Soma-like SSRI antidepressants.
In a recent study by scientists at University of Chicago, it was found that rats given anti-anxiety medications were less inclined to free a companion in distress, presumably because they didn’t have the same ability to feel empathy:
Next is Alt (i.e., alteration) with rollout of GMO in agriculture and transhumanism which opens the door to many developments including the advent of designer babies by means of gene editing and the literal rewiring of human consciousness. Finally there is Del (delete) by virtue of ‘population control’ which is a shorthand euphemism for the desire to dramatically reduce human numbers.
Bostrom clearly stands at the forefront of methods of Ctrl and Alt being a leading proponent of total surveillance and for transhumanism, which is basically eugenics 2.0 enhanced by virtue of refined genetic manipulation and accentuated by means interfacing with machines. As Bostrom’s Humanity+ announces its own intentions:
What does it mean to be human in a technologically enhanced world? Humanity+ is a 501(c)3 international nonprofit membership organization that advocates the ethical use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, to expand human capacities. In other words, we want people to be better than well. This is the goal of transhumanism. 15
‘Better than well’ is putting it extremely mildly. If you read past the opening statements then you quickly appreciate that the final goal is nothing short of total mastery of biology in order to achieve absolute control of human life and everything in the biosphere. Advocates of such godlike dominion over Nature should perhaps attend to the writings of Mary Shelley and Johann von Goethe. For Bostrom with his outspoken desire to install mass surveillance to save the world, I also recommend a healthy dose of Orwell.
It is almost tempting to think that the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Del was meant to be a piece of subliminal predictive programming, except that the man credited with its origins is an IBM engineer called David Bradley, who says it was not intended for use by ordinary end users but helpful for software designers. Curiously, however, as Bradley also says (see interview embedded above): “I may have invented control-alt-delete, but Bill Gates made it really famous.” 16
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Additional: ‘Against Transhumanism: the Delusion of Technological Transcendence’
Richard Jones is a Professor of Materials Physics and Innovation Policy at the University of Manchester. Jones is an experimental physicist, whose research centres around the properties of polymer molecules at interfaces and ultrathin polymer films.
Between 2007 and 2009 he was the Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; he was also Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield from 2009 to 2016.
In this discussion with futurist and transhumanist enthusiast Nikola Danaylov, Jones covers a variety of topics including his own work in nanotechnology and his book and blog on the topic; technological progress and whether it is accelerating or not; Ray Kurzweil and technological determinism; Platonism and Frank J. Tipler‘s claim that “the singularity is inevitable”; the strange ideological routes of transhumanism; Eric Drexler’s vision of nanotechnology as reducing the material world to software; the over-representation of physicists on both sides of the transhumanism and AI debate; mind uploading and the importance of molecules as the most fundamental unit of biological processing; the quest for indefinite life extension and the work of Aubrey de Grey; and the importance of politics and ethics in technology.
Richard Jones’ scholarly book Against Transhumanism: the delusion of technological transcendence is available free for download: Against Transhumanism, v1.0, PDF 650 kB.
Bostrom, a 43-year-old Swedish-born philosopher, has lately acquired something of the status of prophet of doom among those currently doing most to shape our civilisation: the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley. His reputation rests primarily on his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which was a surprise New York Times bestseller last year and now arrives in paperback, trailing must-read recommendations from Bill Gates and Tesla’s Elon Musk. (In the best kind of literary review, Musk also gave Bostrom’s institute £1m to continue to pursue its inquiries.)
Important note: It is well past the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, so it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website still declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
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The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference.
This is the sixth of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to climate change, ‘sustainability’ and the future of Capitalism:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
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“Suddenly, saving our planet is within reach. We have a plan. We know what to do. Stop the damaging stuff, roll out the new green tech, stabilise the human population as low as we fairly can, keep hold of the natural wealth we have currently got and we’ll have built a stable, healthy world that we can benefit from forever. We now have the choice to create a planet that we can all be proud of, our planet, the perfect home for ourselves and the rest of life on earth.”
— narrative spoken by Sir David Attenborough on World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) promo
WWF recently released (June 5th, 2020) a short video 2 of British “national treasure” and conservation icon, Sir David Attenborough, telling us that “suddenly” saving the world is within reach. He says they know what to do and have a plan to build a stable, healthy world that we can benefit from forever. What’s not to like? Well, a lot! WWF’s plan regurgitates a 19th century racist assumption: That too many of the wrong kind of people threaten us all.
Their “plan” has four commandments: 1) “stop the damaging stuff”; 2) “new green tech”; 3) get population down, and; 4) keep hold of “natural wealth we have currently got.” Let’s begin by removing the two “no-brainer” outliers, the first and last in the plan, stopping doing damage and keeping existing advantages. Both are self-evident approaches to pretty much anything. What we’re left with then is just two answers to the planet’s problems – new green tech and reducing population.
So begins a damning critique of the ‘Big Green’ agenda and a recent WWF promotional film to “save the planet” written by Stephen Corry, an activist and campaigner who has worked since 1972 with Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights. 3
Corry continues [all footnotes retained from the original]:
[I]t’s in the other “solution” – getting the population down – where both Attenborough and WWF really plumb the depths of their elitist ideology. One can visualize the meetings of writers who struggled to express this without attracting attacks from those like me who think the 200-year old cry of “overpopulation” is ideological, fundamentally racist, certainly eugenic, and nothing to do with science.
The writers finally came up with, “stabilize the human population as low as we fairly can.” They presumably thought that using “stabilize” rather than “reduce” (which is what they mean), and that inserting “fairly,” would satisfy the critics. That only goes to show just how little they understand what the problems with their “overpopulation” dirge actually are!
The inconvenient truth, never mentioned by the ideologues, is that the Global North’s population has been dropping for generations. Overall numbers are still growing there only because they’re boosted by newcomers from the Global South. 4 The largest growth area is sub-Saharan Africa, where the population density remains extremely low and where they use very little of the world’s resources themselves. 5 That’s because the “natural wealth they have currently got” is largely stolen from them by the North. 6 Have a look at the area at night from a satellite to see just how little energy is used in Africa compared to Europe, or get the view from a plane, as Attenborough will have done hundreds of times.
In other words, if you’re worried about overpopulation threatening the environment, then you’re blind to the real menace: It’s not the growing number of “have nots” in the South, but growing overconsumption by the “haves” in the North.
Adding:
The story reminds me of WWF fundraising from 1994, which posed the very odd question: whether to send in the army or an anthropologist to stop indigenous people destroying the Amazon (its proposed answer, needless to say, was to give WWF yet more money). Yes, WWF actually suggested that indigenous people, not the industry bigwigs 7 it invites to sit on its boards are the destroyers of the world’s largest rainforest, an ecosystem which those same indigenous people are both responsible for creating and by far the best at protecting. That can now be proven from satellite pictures and data about the higher biodiversity in indigenous-controlled territories.
The real tragedy here is not what Attenborough and WWF believe – that won’t change unless and until savvier folk get a controlling hand – it’s that they are able to foist their propaganda on so large a sector of the Global North, including on many progressives. Perhaps many white environmentally-aware people really do believe that “overbreeding” will overrun the Earth and see it as a duty, even “sacred” duty, to defend the planet from the barbarian hordes. That’s been the really big lie drummed into us for over a century, it’s a key component of racism and anti-immigration. It has financial support from corporations and big foundations, and enormous backing from governments which dedicate massive amounts of our money to foment it. Worst of all, those who promulgate this lie are now planning on getting billions more dollars through their terrible “new deal for nature,” which is warming up to be the biggest land grab in history. They want control of no less than one-third of the globe for their “Protected Areas,” and yes, they are sending in the army, often private militias, to get local people out. 8
Click here to read the Stephen Corry’s full article entitled “The Big Green Lie” published by Counterpunch on June 26th, 2020.
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In the short clip embedded above, recorded in November 2014, Baka from Ndongo, a village where WWF has a regional base, call upon WWF to stop funding the anti-poaching squads that have persecuted them for years. A slighter longer report is embedded below featuring the Baka at Yenga, Cameroon:
Many Baka refer to both WWF and the anti-poaching squads it funds as “dobi-dobi” or ‘dobi-dobiyu’ (WWF). Here, they are referring to WWF itself.
Click here to learn more at Survival International.
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Big Green
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Whenever I peruse the list of participants for any forthcoming Bilderberg meeting, the names that really stand out are not those of the bankers, hedge fund bosses and major industrialists; and nor are my eyes especially drawn to the inclusion of usual suspects from journalism, academia (especially economics departments) and the major political parties, or with high ranking attachment to the military and intelligence agencies, nor even the occasional monarch; last year it happened to be His Majesty the King of the Netherlands – Funny how they include NLD after his title presumably as a token to their inherent egalitarianism!
But the names that always grab my attention are instead those I’m just not expecting to see at all. For instance last year:
Henry, Mary Kay (USA), International President, Service Employees International Union
Hers was certainly amongst the names stood apart. These are a few of the others:
Solhjell, Bård Vegar (NOR), CEO, WWF – Norway
Rockström, Johan (SWE), Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Buitenweg, Kathalijne (NLD), MP, Green Party
With sincere apologies to Oscar Wilde: to invite one environmentalist may be regarded as a misfortune; to invite three looks like a plan of action. Not that environmentalist ties to Bilderberg are as novel as they may first appear.
#BP at #Bilderberg: the chairman, Helge Lund, arrived in Montreux in his travel sneakers. I just hope he brought some headphones, so he can tune out during the session on 'Climate Change & Sustainability'. Also at #Bilderberg is BP board member & ex-MI6 boss Sir John Sawers. pic.twitter.com/BvqxBsfOAo
In fact, anyone familiar with the history of Bilderberg knows that the attendance of the King of the Netherlands is also in keeping with the origins of the meeting, which had been co-founded by Prince Bernhard, consort of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. And those familiar with the generally unspoken history of modern environmentalism will recall that Prince Bernhard is one of the co-founders of the World Wildlife Fund (as WWF was originally known); becoming its first President in 1961.
nothing to see here, just the King & Prime Minister of the Netherlands arriving at #Bilderberg to meet with the heads of #NATO, Davos, the Bank of England, HSBC, Microsoft, AXA, Total, Thales, Santander, the German defence minister, the Irish finance minister & the PM of Estonia. pic.twitter.com/Dv3JOcuhr9
Moreover, when Bernhard was forced to step down as WWF President in 1976 because his involvement in the Lockheed Bribery Scandal came to light, he was immediately succeeded by John Loudon, the former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell (called “Royal Dutch” for very good reason) And there was more to Loudon’s network of interests:
After [John Loudon] stepped down as chairman in 1965, he continued to be active in the company as chairman of the board of supervisory directors for 11 more years.
When David Rockfeller, the president of Chase Manhattan Bank, set up an advisory committee in 1965 to counsel the bank on its growing international business, Mr. Loudon was named as chairman. He retired from the group in 1977. 10
From an obituary published by The New York Times on February 9th, 1996.
What the NYT fails to mention here is that once Loudon became WWF President in 1976, his appointment also crossed over with tenure on that advisory committee of Chase Manhattan. Noteworthy too is the fact that President of Chase Manhattan, David Rockefeller, has sat alongside Prince Bernhard as a fellow member of Bilderberg since its inception in 1954. Afterwards he became co-founder of closely-allied globalist body, the Trilateral Commission.
These unseemly beginnings of WWF ought to serve as a caution, and especially to those on the left, that the environmental movement is not all it seems. That Bilderberg is back to greening itself ought to come as no surprise either.
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On 22 June 2011, German public broadcaster ARD aired a documentary by Wilfried Huismann in which WWF was directly accused of contributing to the willful destruction of habitat and species it claims to protect and of harming indigenous peoples. The documentary entitled “Silence of the Pandas – what the WWF does not tell us” [In German: Pakt mit dem Panda – was uns der WWF verschweigt] (which is embedded below) calls into question the WWF’s close associations with major corporations including Monsanto:
In it [Wilfried Huismann] complained above all about the proximity [of WWF] to the agricultural industry. One of the problems is that the WWF is sitting with so-called round tables for soybean (RTRS) and palm oil (RSPO) producers together with large agricultural groups such as Monsanto. 11
From a review of the documentary by Der Spiegel.
The excerpt below is from an earlier report by Der Spiegel that was similarly critical of the WWF’s soy and palm oil policies at this time:
SPIEGEL has traveled through South America and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to test this. In Brazil, an agro manager talked about the first shipload of sustainable soy that was certified according to the WWF standard and reached Rotterdam with a lot of PR noise last year. The manager conceded that the origin of the cargo was not exactly known. In Sumatra, members of a tribe reported how hired troops from WWF partner Wilmar [International Limited is Asia’s leading agribusiness group] had destroyed their homes. They had been in the way of undisturbed palm oil production.
Representatives of independent non-governmental organizations such as Rettet den Regenwald [trans: Rainforest Rescue] and Robin Wood no longer see the aid organization as just the trustee of the animals. To many, the WWF seems more like an accomplice of the corporations to whom it grants the license to destroy nature in exchange for large donations and small concessions. 12
Click here to read the full Der Spiegel article entitled “Kumpel der Konzerne” which translates as “Buddy of the corporations”
Huismann was subsequently sued by WWF over the documentary and the book he based on it, and in an out of court settlement agreed to remove or else revise some of the claims.
As the Der Spiegel review explains:
In fact, the “black book” was not available for a long time from providers such as Amazon or Thalia – for fear of legal disputes. “Rarely has the book trade been so intimidated after the publication and deterred by the distribution of the book,” complained Random House lawyer Rainer Dresen. The German Journalists’ Union (DJU) also criticized the environmentalists’ “legally questionable attempts at intimidation” and the “anticipatory obedience” of the dealers in a statement. 13
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‘Natural Capital’ and ‘Green Growth’
“We must adapt our ways to the carrying-capacities of this planet and distribute the resources more fairly. And the only way to achieve that is to move toward a model of economic growth where the value of natural capital is fully integrated in economic and political decision-making by governments and by businesses and citizens alike. This to me is the essence of green growth, which of course means that the dichotomy between green growth and just growth is a false one. Just as you cannot take on a larger financial debt you can handle, you cannot use natural resources, which is like taking up a loan from nature, beyond nature’s capacity to renew itself. However, done properly, green growth means prosperity and a better future.” [from 7:40 mins]
From then-Norwegian Minister of the Environment, Bård Vegar Solhjell’s keynote speech during Forests: the 8th Roundtable at Rio+20, a CIFOR-hosted event, which brought together over 550 scientists, policy makers and members of civil society to discuss the role of forests in providing the world with food, energy, income and clean water:
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“Natural capital” has become a buzzword in the sphere of environmentalism. It means literally putting a price tag on nature or as the World Forum on Natural Capital puts it:
Natural capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets which include geology, soil, air, water and all living things.
It is from this natural capital that humans derive a wide range of services, often called ecosystem services, which make human life possible.
The most obvious ecosystem services include the food we eat, the water we drink and the plant materials we use for fuel, building materials and medicines. There are also many less visible ecosystem services such as the climate regulation and natural flood defences provided by forests, the billions of tonnes of carbon stored by peatlands, or the pollination of crops by insects. Even less visible are cultural ecosystem services such as the inspiration we take from wildlife and the natural environment 14
This is the top result from a Google search on the topic. The next result brings up the Natural Capital Coalition which “was launched in January 2020 and hosts over 370 leading organizations to accelerate the use of capitals thinking”. The blurb on their website continues:
Originally established in 2012 as the TEEB For Business Coalition and hosted by ICAEW, the Natural Capital Coalition quickly became the global leader in mainstreaming natural capital approaches in the private sector, and released the internationally recognized Natural Capital Protocol in 2016.
The ICAEW for those not fully literate in contemporary acronyms is the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, which perhaps doesn’t need further comment, while TEEB is a group whose title in full is The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. The opening statement on their official website begins:
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is a global initiative focused on “making nature’s values visible”.
Interestingly, one of their listed partners is the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, another is Pricewaterhouse Coopers. I think the picture is becoming clearer, arguably all the more so when we discover the World Bank has its own entry that is again ranked on page one of any Google search. Here’s how the World Bank lists “natural capital” with commendable frankness as just another “asset”:
Long‐term development is a process of accumulation and sound management of a portfolio of assets—manufactured capital, natural capital, and human and social capital. 15
A decade ago, Forbes magazine ran an article entitled “Names You Need to Know In 2011: Natural Capital Project”. It explains:
[U]ntil recently it’s been difficult to put a truly measurable value on what are often threatened natural resources. The Natural Capital Project, a non-profit venture led in part by scientists from Stanford University, has changed that. Its software tool, called InVEST, helps to map out the value of natural land or seascapes—assets the group calls “natural capital.” 16
The same Natural Capital Project is still going strong and back in March 2019 they had teamed up with Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) in an official partnership. Prior to his invitation from Bilderberg, Professor Johan Rockström had been the Executive Director of SRC for twelve years (2004–2012) where he led a team of scientists in developing a scientifically debatable, neo-Malthusian Planetary Boundaries framework.
Alongside Rockström’s SRC, the National Capital Project also proudly lists three more “world-class academic institutions – Stanford University [its host], the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Minnesota” and amongst its six core partners, two of the world’s largest NGOs, The Nature Conservancy and Bård Solhjell’s World Wide Fund for Nature. 17 In short, last year’s Bilderberg meeting brought together two attendees who are both deeply embedded within this ‘natural capital’ matrix, which aims to set a price on everything in nature.
As Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher write in an excellent rebuttal of this new environmental accountancy:
The fact that the food we eat and the water we drink apparently need to be labeled “natural capital” only becomes meaningful in the context of capitalist growth. In this context everything should, in principle, become “capital”.
It is therefore vital to be clear on what “capital” really means. In daily conversations and some economic theory, the term is frequently defined as a “stock” or as “assets”. More accurate, however, is to see capital as a process, a dynamic. It is about investing money (or value) in order to make more money (or value). In short, capital is “value in motion”.
Capital in a capitalist economy is therefore never invested for the sake of it. The aim is to extract more money or value than had been invested. Otherwise it would not be capital.
It follows that the move from “nature” to “natural capital” is not an innocent change in terminology, another word for the same thing. Rather, it constitutes a fundamental reconceptualisation and revaluation of nature. Natural capital is about putting nature to work for capitalist growth – euphemistically referred to as green growth.
The move from nature to natural capital is problematic because it assumes that different forms of capital – human, financial, natural – can be made equivalent and exchanged. In practice – and despite proponents’s insistence to the contrary – this means that everything must potentially be expressed through a common, quantitative unit: money. But complex, qualitative, heterogeneous natures, as these same proponents acknowledge, can never adequately be represented in quantitative, homogenous money-units.
And even if we try, there is an untenable tension between the limitlessness of money (we can always generate more money) and the limits of natural capital (we cannot exchange evermore money-capital into natural capital, for all eternity).
Natural capital is therefore inherently anti-ecological and has little to do with giving value to nature, or rendering this value visible. It is the exploitation of nature to inject more value, and seeming legitimacy, into a faltering capitalist growth economy.18
Click here to read the full article published by Wrong Kind of Green in September 2016.
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It’s not the end of the world
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.
— The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome19
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On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
Michael Shellenberger, quoted above, has credentials that give weight to these contentions. He was named a Time magazine Heroes of the Environment in 2008 – the same year he won the Green Book Award – has provided expert testimony to US Congress and was invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report. Just as importantly, Shellenberger is able to draw upon his wealth of experience as an environmental activist as the next statement in this recently published mea culpa entitled “On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize For the Climate Scare” (soon afterwards retracted by Forbes magazine), goes on to add:
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
Unsurprisingly then, Shellenberger’s piece (which is still available online at other sites) has caused a bit of a stink. In response, for instance, the Guardian ran a long item which criticises some of the claims but mostly highlights Shellenberger’s close links to the nuclear trade association Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). My purpose here is not to defend or promote Shellenberger and I certainly do not share his opinions about the need to expand nuclear power (as many previous articles testify) however, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that the Guardian’s chief environmental columnist, George Monbiot, is another well-known and outspoken advocate for nuclear power (read my previous criticism here).
In any case, the most significant issue Shellenberger raises goes beyond such particular concerns as the dangers of ‘climate change’ and our best response to it (including nuclear); points which remain highly contested. The point is that we are no longer allowed to contest any of this – the constant demand being that we must “get with the programme”. As he says:
Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”
But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a life long progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.
But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”
The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”
Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.
As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct.
And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.
Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.
Click here to read Michael Shellenberger’s full article.
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Final thoughts: XR and the ‘Fourth Industrial Repression’
“I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic”
These days you will often find grown men dressed in polar bear costumes parading outside the entrances to the G20 or COP, rubbing their eyes to brush away fake tears. The TV companies flock to it. They love every kind of manipulative theatrics. Not that we are supposed to believe the polar bears are truly sad of course; that’s just for the children. No, this otherwise quite blatant appeal to sentimentality – well, polar bears are cute, let’s face it – is deliberately tempered. They are crying dry self-conscious tears that are laced with postmodern irony: crocodile tears shed for the presumed fate of the human race.
And I wonder what they really want, sweating beneath those layers of Mickey Mouse costuming. What do modern environmentalists want in general? Most of ones I know (many are friends) actually consume a great deal more than I do, and whenever I propose modest solutions of my own, the response is highly predictable.
Here is one challenge I sometimes like to set them. If you really wish to put a stop to overconsumption – as in principle I do too – then let’s begin with a straightforward ban on advertising, I will say. After all the primary purpose of such ubiquitous mass psychological manipulation is in driving our desire to consume – and I don’t even bother mentioning the unseen role advertising plays both in weakening our personal sense of self and buttressing the extant free market system (There are a whole host of good reasons to place a ban on advertising – read this for my fuller thoughts).
A ban can be rolled out in stages, I propose (maintaining the inherent modesty of my proposition and reminding them of the successful restrictions that now prohibit advertisements for cigarettes and other tobacco products), and the first step might simply introduce bans on commercials for SUVs or airlines or oil companies or something else that is considered especially polluting.
It’s then that the eye-rolling generally begins. Excuses are sought for why a ban of this kind would make no real difference and the conversation moves on. Thus, although, they say they dream of radically changing the world, my experience is that even such a simple and workable idea is likely to be rejected out of hand. This response is telling don’t you think?
Do they want to allow corporate providers to go on lying to us all on a daily basis, cajoling us to buy their unnecessary products? Or are they just afraid of the economic repercussions such a ban might have? In fact I believe both answers apply, and the reasoning is quite straightforward and understandable. The environmental movement is itself inherently consumerist: beset with ingrained market-led values of a system it claims to oppose; and all the environmentalists I know are happy consumers of eco-friendly brands.
Yet, and though modern environmentalism seeks inherently materialist solutions including, if it is deemed necessary, the final commodification of the entirety of the natural world, it habitually confuses all of this with spiritual ends. Even the word ‘ethical’ is becoming narrowly redefined in some quarters. In the future it may simply mean obeying controls on how much one consumes and observing the proper restrictions on provision and/or access to ‘natural resources’. Being a good consumer will finally equate to being a good person.
Unlike the old-style conservationism it supplanted (which had serious issues too as described in sections above), a darker side to the new environmentalism has gradually evolved as focus was shifted from preservation of our natural environment by acting primarily on a local scale to calls for the prevention of an impending global catastrophe. The threat of a terror it evokes is of such magnitude that it seems nearly impossible to surmount: an existential crisis that arguably calls for miraculous or semi-miraculous modes of intervention.
“The end of the world” is of course attractive to some, if only because of its unique power to diminish all other problems and fears by rolling them up into a single ball of quintessential evil. Old-style religious zealots, chastising sinners or else parading their own sinfulness under the burden of heavy banners that declare “The End is Nigh” are seldom seen on our high streets nowadays. Their self-inflicted mournfulness intensified all the more by the derision of the average passerby and unintentionally sanctified: “for blessed are ye, when men shall hate you” 21
But many of today’s eco-prophets of doom have picked up the same banners to parade in their stead. Enter the ‘Red Rebel Brigade’ furies (not to be confused with Mao’s Red Guards!) dressed in scarlet gowns and veils, weeping blood over funereal face-paint:
Other emblems of the new faith are the death’s head and the increasingly familiar and starkly angular XR hourglass, which always looks to me like a neatly folded swastika:
Screenshot from Guildford Extinction Rebellion website
Aspects of these performances are presumably intended to give you the creeps, at least if you take them seriously, though it’s hard to see beyond the amateur dramatics and cappuccino angst. As death cults go, this has to be one of the most convivial – most greenies I know wouldn’t hurt a fly (some literally).
And what plans do they have to save the planet, besides new bicycle lanes, shopping ‘bags for life’, bamboo toothbrushes and veganism? To judge by the literature on affiliated websites whatever this envisioned transformation involves, its goals are remarkably vague – waking people up to the ‘climate emergency’ is enough for now basically.
Meanwhile, the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (4IR) or ‘Industry 4.0’ constructed around 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) is awaiting implementation – a development I discussed in greater length in a previous article within this series. As Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, writes in his book of the same title:
“The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.” 22
And behind the overarching 4IR hi-tech rollout that combines artificial intelligence, gene editing and advanced robotics – “blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds” to quote the current UK government website 23– there are other gilded labels like ‘smart growth’ and ‘sustainable development’ that disguise more insidious intent: translated it will mean the microscopic monitoring of our personal lives and household activities with attendant regulations and social controls allied closely to an incrementally tightening regime of ‘austerity measures’. Economic hardship applied not only to our western economies, but stifling development across the third world. (Rest assured that the billionaire class with their private jets, private yachts and private islands, whose agenda is being inadvertently pushed, will not be subjected to the same privations and exclusions).
As anarchist author Paul Cudenec outlines in a short essay published by Wrong Kind of Green, “The Fourth Industrial Repression wants to replace everything true and authentic with its replicas, with a reality not so much virtual as entirely fake”:
The 4IR wants us all to be on our own, online and in line.
The 4IR empties everything of meaning, particularly words. It says “sustainable” when it means ecocidal. It says “development” when it means destruction. It says “basic universal income” when it means slavery.
When the 4IR talks about “social impact investing” it really means it wants to turn human beings into lucrative investment opportunities.
When the 4IR talks about “a new deal for nature” it really means it wants to privatise the whole living world so as to make the billionaire class even richer than it already is.
Concluding:
The 4IR employs huge armies of professional liars and gullible fools to spread its propaganda and scream abuse at all who dare challenge its fearmongering falsehoods.
The 4IR is a death cult which dreams of wiping out everything that is natural, everything that is wild, everything that is free.
Click here to read the full article entitled “Resist the Fourth Industrial Repression!”
Finally, should any of these demands require the further hollowing out of western democracies in order to put greater powers into the hands of technocratic administrators, then so be it. For what sacrifice is too great when you believe the fate of the whole planet hangs in the balance, and worse, when we are so swiftly “running out of time”?
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It is interesting to note that in 2018 Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, was invited and attended the Bilderberg Conference when it convened in Turin. What is relevance? Well, almost precisely twelve months later, in the wake of an audience with chief executives and chairs from global finance and multinational energy companies, Pope Francis officially declared a global “climate emergency”:
“Future generations stand to inherit a greatly spoiled world. Our children and grandchildren should not have to pay the cost of our generation’s irresponsibility,” he said, in his strongest and most direct intervention yet on the climate crisis. “Indeed, as is becoming increasingly clear, young people are calling for a change.”
The Pope’s impassioned plea came as he met the leaders of some of the world’s biggest multinational oil companies in the Vatican on Friday to impress upon them the urgency and scale of the challenge, and their central role in tackling the emissions crisis. It followed a similar meeting last year, but this time the Pope’s stance was tougher as he warned that time was running out and urged them to hear “the increasingly desperate cries of the earth and its poor”.
From a Guardian article published last year entitled “Pope Francis declares ‘climate emergency’ and urges action”.
The chief executives or chairs of BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, ConocoPhilips, Chevron and several major investors including BlackRock and Hermes, responded by calling on governments to put in place carbon pricing to encourage low-carbon innovation, and called for greater financial transparency to aid investors.
However, they made no pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and set no timetable for action.
But, as the article goes on to say, carbon indulgences may be offered in lieu…
In two statements, which came at the end of a two-day meeting in the Vatican that was addressed by the pope and led by senior Vatican churchmen, the signatories called for a “combination of policies and carbon pricing mechanisms … designed in a way that simultaneously delivers innovation and investment in low-carbon solutions while assisting those least able to pay”. 25
Click here to read the full Guardian report published in June 2019.
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Additional: The technocratic society
“UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL.
“Have you wondered where these terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘smart growth’ and ‘high density urban mixed-use development’ came from? Doesn’t it seem like about 10 years ago you’d never heard of them and now everything seems to include these concepts? Is that just a coincidence? That every town and county and state and nation in the world would be changing their land use/planning codes and government policies to align themselves with…what?
“Far from being a ‘conspiracy theory’ or a ‘tin-foil hat’ fantasy, this is an actual United Nations plan, signed onto in 1992 by President George HW Bush along with 178 other world leaders. The UN called it Agenda 21 because it is the Agenda for the 21st century. According to UN Secretary General Maurice Strong, the ‘affluent middle-class American lifestyle is unsustainable.’ That includes single family homes, private vehicles, appliances, air-conditioning, & meat-eating. They are a threat to the planet” — Rosa Koire 26
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Embedded below is Rosa Koire’s special presentation to the New Hampshire Legislature. It took place in the Legislative Office Building just behind the Capital in Concord on June 25, 2012. She shared with concerned legislators what she has learned about the true nature of Sustainable Development:
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1 Quote taken from Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 7, by Aldous Huxley.
4 The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “Migration and population change – drivers and impacts”. Population Facts, no 2017/8 (2017).
9 Quote from philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality” (1754) which has the formal title, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes), also commonly known as the “Second Discourse”.
Before translation, the original passage reads:
“Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s’avisa de dire: Ceci est à moi, et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la société civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres, que de misères et d’horreurs n’eût point épargnés au genre humain celui qui, arrachant les pieux ou comblant le fossé, eût crié à ses semblables: Gardez-vous d’écouter cet imposteur; vous êtes perdus, si vous oubliez que les fruits sont à tous, et que la terre n’est à personne.”
The section was translated by Google translate. The original text is below:
Darin beklagte er vor allem die Nähe zur Agrarindustrie. Problematisch sei unter anderem, dass der WWF zusammen mit großen Agrarkonzernen wie Monsanto an sogenannten Runden Tischen für Soja- (RTRS) und Palmölproduzenten (RSPO) sitzt. Auch der SPIEGEL hatte kritisch über die Soja- und Palmöl-Politik des WWF berichtet.
The section was translated by Google translate. The original text is below:
Der SPIEGEL ist durch Südamerika und auf die indonesische Insel Sumatra gereist, um das zu prüfen. In Brasilien erzählte ein Agro-Manager von der ersten Schiffsladung nachhaltigen Sojas, die nach WWF-Standard zertifiziert wurde und im vergangenen Jahr mit viel PR-Getöse Rotterdam erreichte. Die Herkunft der Ladung, räumte der Manager ein, kenne er gar nicht genau. Auf Sumatra berichteten Angehörige eines Stamms, wie angeheuerte Trupps des WWF-Partners Wilmar ihre Häuser zerstört hatten. Sie waren der ungestörten Palmöl-Produktion im Weg gewesen.
Auch Vertreter unabhängiger Nichtregierungsorganisationen wie Rettet den Regenwald und Robin Wood sehen in der Hilfsorganisation längst nicht mehr nur den Treuhänder der Tiere. Vielen kommt der WWF eher wie ein Komplize der Konzerne vor, denen er gegen große Spenden und kleine Zugeständnisse die Lizenz zur Zerstörung der Natur erteilt.
The section was translated by Google translate. The original text is below:
Tatsächlich war das “Schwarzbuch” längere Zeit über Anbieter wie Amazon oder Thalia nicht zu beziehen – aus Angst vor Rechtsstreitigkeiten. “Selten wurde der Buchhandel nach der Veröffentlichung derart flächendeckend eingeschüchtert und vom Vertrieb des Buchs abgeschreckt”, beklagte Random-House-Jusitiar Rainer Dresen. Auch die Deutsche Journalistinnen- und Journalisten-Union (DJU) kritisierte in einer Erklärung die “rechtlich zweifelhaften Einschüchterungsversuche” der Umweltschützer und den “vorauseilenden Gehorsam” der Händler.
NatCap is a partnership of four world-class academic institutions – Stanford University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Minnesota, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre – advancing new science together with, inspired by, and implemented through two of the world’s largest NGOs, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund.
19 Quote from The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome, Part I “The Problematique”, Ch 5, “The vacuum”, p 75, written by Alexander King & Bertrand Schenider, published by Pantheon Books in 1991. https://archive.org/details/TheFirstGlobalRevolution/page/n85
Here are some further extracts:
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
A few pages earlier
“The old democracies have functioned reasonably well over the last 200 years, but they appear now to be in a phase of complacent stagnation with little evidence of real leadership and innovation. It is to be hoped, with a new found enthusiasm for democracy in the liberated countries today, that people will not reproduce slavish copies of existing models that are unable to meet contemporary needs.”
Which leads us to a different subheading “The limits of democracy”, following which the text continues:
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely, sacrilegious although as this may sound. In its present form, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time. Few politicians in office are sufficiently aware of the global nature of the problems facing them and little, if any, awareness of the interactions between the problems. Generally speaking, informed discussion on the main political, economic and social issues takes place on radio and television, rather than in Parliament, to the detriment of the latter. Political party activities are so intensely focused on election deadlines and party rivalries that they end up weakening the democracy they’re supposed to serve. This confrontational approach gives an impression that party needs come before national interests. Strategies and tactics seem more important than objectives, and often a constituency is neglected as soon as it is gained. With the current mode of operation, Western democracies are seeing their former role decline and public opinion drifting away from elected representatives. However, the crisis in the contemporary democratic system must not be allowed to serve as an excuse for rejecting democracy.
Adding:
In the countries now opening up to freedom, Democracy is being introduced in a situation which demands greatly changed attitudes and patterns of behavior demands from citizens. The inevitable problems of phasing in democracy are difficult to solve. But there is another, still more serious question. Democracy does not necessarily build a bridge between a colonial or neo-colonial economy or a centralized bureaucratic economy towards a market economy based on competition and producing growth. In a transitional situation such as the present which because of sudden and unforeseen change has been neither planned nor prepared for. The necessary structures attitudes market relations and managerial styles simply do not exist. If such a situation is allowed to go on too long, it is probable that democracy will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity and uncertainties. The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power by extremists of one brand or the other.
20 From a speech delivered by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg to the World Economic Forum at Davos on January 25, 2019 [from 2:20 mins]:
21 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Luke 6:22.
Important note: It is well past the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, so it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website still declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
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This is the fifth of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to the European project:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
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Class interests and the ‘democracy deficit’
“The European Union doesn’t suffer or the Eurogroup from a democratic deficit. It’s like saying that we are on the moon and there is an oxygen deficit. There is no oxygen deficit on the moon. There is no oxygen, full stop.”
“The EU is the denial of democracy, the idea that there is a domain – the economy – that stands above popular sovereignty. This is the doctrine of ordoliberalism, as if the economy were not first and foremost a social relation, as if we – the workers’ movement and our historical traditions – had not been born by creating trade unions to change it…
“I want a Europe that proposes the language of freedom, equality and brotherhood to everyone, and which speaks a universal language to all peoples – a good wage, a good welfare system, a good education”.
here's Andrew Adonis arriving at #Bilderberg 2019 in Switzerland. #Brexit is on the agenda, and Baron Adonis of Remainia will find plenty of sympathetic ears at the Montreux Palace Hotel. pic.twitter.com/cjAgXqWkEX
Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.
In fact, these weren’t [founding father of EU, Jean] Monnet’s words at all – but those of the Conservative politician and author, Adrian Hilton, in The Principality and Power of Europe, published in 1997. Yet this is almost by the by. That so many have ascribed the quote to Monnet is because so many have been so shocked at what the European project has since become.
The ECSC [European Coal and Steel Community] morphed first into the Common Market, then the EEC. Britain joined in 1973, and its public approved membership by two to one in the 1975 referendum: where recently elected Tory leader, Mrs Thatcher, campaigned passionately for a ‘Yes’ vote. But what the public were sold then – a mutually beneficial club based on free trade and nothing more – was not remotely what would transpire; and gradually, the penny began to drop.
This is an excerpt from an extended article by political commentator Shaun Lawson that was published shortly after the 2015 General Election. Looking forward to the prospect of Cameron’s promised EU referendum, he wishes to, as he puts it, “challenge[s] my fellow travellers on the left to do what they have so often neglected: to scrutinise the EU’s very many failings, think long and hard, and ask yourselves: is staying in really worth it?”
In the piece Lawson goes into close detail about how the European project has been steadily manoeuvred from free trade area towards full political union, reminding us that consolidation has happened absent not merely democratic scrutiny but in utter disregard to overwhelming popular dissent. The British electorate was never permitted any vote on the European Constitution and when other nations rejected it, the EU simply changed the title of the treaty and proceeded:
[I]n places where referenda were held – in France, the Netherlands, or (twice) in Ireland – rejections of the Nice Treaty, European Constitution, or Lisbon Treaty were met with studied indifference on the part of EU leaders. Their project was now such a runaway express train that no mere member state could be allowed to derail it; so the Constitution was turned into the Lisbon Treaty, and when the Irish people – the only national electorate anywhere in the EU to be allowed a vote on the most far-reaching, seismic piece of legislation in its history – vetoed this, they were simply asked to vote again. Democracy? What democracy?
Why was Lisbon so important? In amending and consolidating the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht, it:
Moved the Council of Ministers from requiring unanimous agreement to qualified majority voting in at least 45 areas of policy
Brought in a ‘double majority’ system: which necessitates the support of at least 55% of European Council members, who must also represent at least 65% of EU citizens, in almost all areas of policy
Established a more powerful European Parliament, which would now forms part of a bicameral legislature along with the Council of Ministers
Granted a legal personality to the EU, enabling it to agree treaties in its own name
Created a new long term President of the European Council and a High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy
And made the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU’s bill of rights, legally binding.
Whether you agree with these changes or not is beside the point. The point is: the peoples of Europe were never given a vote on it. Instead, all this was just pushed through over the European public’s collective head. In the twenty-first century, how can such profound constitutional changes – which impact on all Europeans, whether they realise it or not – be allowed without democratic consent?
Lawson continues:
In any polity, if leaders or legislators do not accede to their position through the ballot box, this lack of accountability breeds out-of-touch, unanswerable governance about which the public can do nothing. Yet that is the reality of the European Union. The President of the Commission is approved by the Parliament; except this happens unopposed. All Commissioners – who together, comprise the executive of the EU – are nominated by member states.
The President of the European Council – that is to say, the de facto President of Europe, the EU’s principal representative on the global stage – is chosen by the heads of government of the member states. And even the European Parliament, whose members are all directly elected by the public, (1) has overseen constant falling turnout ever since the first elections in 1979 (of below 50% at each of the last four European elections, and a miserable 42.5% in 2014); (2) cannot formally initiate legislation; (3) does not contain a formal opposition.
In terms of genuine democracy, most of the above is unrecognisable. If more and more people believe that powers are shifting away from their hands and national legislatures towards a group of illegitimate, unelected bureaucrats and apparatchiks, that’s probably because they’re right. 3
Click here to read the full article written by Shaun Lawson and published in September 2015 by OpenDemocracy.
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Bilderberg and the European project
“For Bilderberg, as for Goldman Sachs, the idea that there might be any kind of push-back against globalisation is a horrific one.” — Charlie Skelton 4
In the days immediately prior to the EU referendum, Bilderberg reconvened in Dresden and topping their agenda was the discussion of potential repercussions. As Charlie Skelton reported:
The Bilderberg Group has been nurturing the EU to life since the 1950s, and now they see their creation under dire threat.
“A disaster for everyone” is how Henri de Castries [Chairman of the Bilderberg Steering Committee], the boss of AXA and a director of HSBC, describes Brexit. But in particular, it is a disaster for his banking and big business colleagues at Bilderberg. Thomas Enders, the CEO of Airbus, who [also] sits on Bilderberg’s steering committee – the group’s governing body – said, in a recent interview with CNBC, that his industry would be “lobbying” against Brexit.
Enders said: “Long-term it would not be positive certainly for the industry. This why the aerospace industry – I think amongst others – will lobby… for a [Remain] vote of the British electorate on the EU.” 5
Concluding:
An integrated EU, with the City at its centre, is a key building block in a globalised world, and its potential loss is a huge concern for “the high priests of globalisation”, as Will Hutton called the members of Bilderberg. The prospect of Brexit “frightens me”, admit Ken Jacobs, the head of Lazard, and another member of Bilderberg’s inner circle. Not much frightens these people. Only two things: sunlight and Brexit.
Click here to read his full report published by the International Business Times.
Charlie Skelton was interviewed by Jason Bermas on the eve of last year’s conference:
“I spoke a few years ago to a former very senior official at the European Commission… this was around the time of the Greece collapse, you know, I said ‘What happens if Greece leaves the EU?’ And she was like ‘It doesn’t really matter’. I said ‘Well what if Britain leaves the EU?’ And she went ‘Oh, it would be catastrophic.’” — Charlie Skelton [from 10:20 mins]
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Kingmakers of the EU
One month on following last summer’s Bilderberg confab, European leaders were required to put forward nominations for the EU’s top jobs. BBC News reported on the new appointments describing them only as ‘surprising’ before going on to highlight and praise the positive gender balance, as if this is somehow a sign of the EU’s overall tip towards greater equality:
The surprise choice of German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen to replace Jean-Claude Juncker came after the main front-runners were rejected.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde has been nominated as the first woman to head the European Central Bank (ECB). 6
What the BBC completely fails to mention is that, of the four nominees, three have been long-standing Bilderberg affiliates. Nominated as President of European Commission, Von der Leyen, the unpopular German Defence Minister (since December 2013), had been a Bilderberg regular since at least 2016 (Dresden), returning in 2018 (Turin) and also featuring in the 2019 list of participants. [please note: no reference to any attendance at Bilderberg is provided by her Wikipedia entry]
In step with predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, Von der Leyen is a vocal advocate for a future “United States of Europe”, and again like Juncker, she has been quite clear about the need for a fully-integrated European defence union:
Jean-Claude Juncker told the ‘Welt am Sonntag’ Sunday paper that forming an EU army would be one of the best ways for the bloc to defend its values, as well as its borders. […]
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said last month, for instance, that a form of EU army should be a long-term goal for the block. Von der Leyen said that she was convinced about the goal of a combined military force, just as she was convinced that “perhaps not my children, but then my grandchildren will experience a United States of Europe.” 7
it’s a good day for women… it’s an even better day for #Bilderberg.
Ursula von der Leyen: 2019, 2018, 2016, 2014 Christine Lagarde: 2017, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2009 Charles Michel: 2018, 2016, 2015https://t.co/VDL8XPpOnt
Von der Leyen was eventually confirmed as the European Council’s choice on July 16th. Emmanuel Macron, one of the keenest proponents of her appointment, is well-known for his outspoken criticism of the rise of nationalism and yet, as Serge Halimi has pointed out, when it finally came to the confirmatory vote at the European Parliament later the same day:
In the end, Von der Leyen was elected president with a majority of only nine votes, by a coalition including 13 Hungarian MEPs with allegiance to Orbán and 14 Italian populists from the Five Star Movement (M5S), then allies of Salvini. 8
Click here to read Serge Halimi’s full article entitled “The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen: Who Voted for Her?”
Note that: Francois Fischer, Head of the Intelligence Analysis Division, European Union Intelligence and Situation Centre, has been candid in his view that irrespective of Brexit, the UK will continue to be bound in European military alliance:
“First of all, in the security and intelligence sector, the UK will not leave…. it may be a secret, but you will not leave.”
Meanwhile, current head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, who oversaw the imposition of crippling austerity measures on Greece and the other ‘PIIGS’ in response to the so-called ‘debt crisis’, was newly nominated to head the European Central Bank. For the record, Lagarde attended Bilderberg in 2013 (Watford), 2014 (Copenhagen), 2016, (Dresden) and 2017 (Chantilly) all during her tenure as Managing Director of the IMF [Wikipedia only references her participation in 2013]
Lastly, ex-Prime Minister of Belgium, Charles Michel, the newly selected President of the European Council is another frequent guest at Bilderberg. He was invited as Belgium PM in 2015 (Telfs-Buchen) and 2016 (Dresden), and also attended last year’s meeting in Turin. [once again, there is no reference at all to Michel’s Bilderberg attendance on Wikipedia]
As Charlie Skelton chides: “It’s a good day for women… it’s an even better day for Bilderberg.”
Click here to read more of my thoughts on the relationship between Bilderberg and its sister event at Davos, the World Economic Forum (WEF).
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List of western leaders previously groomed by Bilderberg:
Gerald Ford attended Bilderberg 1964, 1966 appointed as US President 1974
Margaret Thatcher attended Bilderberg (at least 1975, 1977, 1986) became Prime Minister 1979
Bill Clinton attended Bilderberg 1991 became US President 1993
Tony Blair attended Bilderberg 1993 became Prime Minister 1997
Paul Martin attended Bilderberg 1996 became Prime Minister of Canada 2003
Stephen Harper attended Bilderberg 2003 became Prime Minister of Canada 2006
Angela Merkel attended Bilderberg 2005 became Chancellor of Germany (Nov) 2005
Emmanuel Macron attended Bilderberg 2014 became President 2017 9
Note that: If Stacey Abrams is picked as Joe Biden’s running mate then that’s another one bagged by Bilderberg who invited Ms Abrams to last year’s meeting in Montreux. Add her name to the roll call above.
Screenshot of BB official website list of participants at last year’s event with Stacey Abrams listed top
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A European Army?
Although the question of the formation of a European Army is repeatedly dismissed as “just a conspiracy theory”, the title of this section is drawn verbatim from the subheading of a recent Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Workshop Report. The report in question offers a résumé of its half-day workshop in collaboration with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) after they had “brought together leading UK and German parliamentarians with leading security and defence experts from both countries to discuss the most salient threats to European security.”
The paragraph beneath “A European Army?” reads as follows [with footnote retained]:
The subject of a European army dominated much of the open discussion. While it is a topic that received passing mentions in previous RUSI–FES engagements, 10 the concept received greater explanation from Bundestag members present, and scrutiny both from UK MPs and subject experts.
With the goal of achieving ‘strategic autonomy’ for Europe, some participants suggested that European states should look to form a joint command structure that would allow the EU to deploy forces both within and beyond Europe’s borders. It was strongly suggested that the US can no longer be regarded as a ‘reliable partner’ and that Europe ought to take responsibility for its own defence mechanisms. Additionally, at present European states do not believe that there are any democratic means to hold NATO accountable. Any actions taken by a European army would be subject to the checks and balances of the European Parliament and thus under the scrunity [sic] of elected representatives. 11
The meeting in question proceeded under Chatham House Rules and the names of participants including those of our “leading UK and German parliamentarians” are not disclosed, so we are left in the dark in this regard. Returning to the text, however, and the passage that most rings alarm bells is surely this:
… some participants suggested that European states should look to form a joint command structure that would allow the EU to deploy forces both within and beyond Europe’s borders.
The response to the Yellow Vests protests has been the recent deployment of French troops on the streets of Paris, whereas the Catalan Independentists have been faced with Guardia Civil forces moved in from Madrid. Suppose instead that troops could be moved in from say Hungary or Poland, somewhere the military personal have no national allegiance to the protesters; how much more brutal might the subsequent crackdown have been?
Arguably the greatest single threat posed by the formation of “a European Army” is that it could enable a deployment of troops within Europe’s borders, and yet found within a document released by one of Europe’s most influential think tanks – “the world’s oldest independent think tank on international defence and security” as it describes itself – is just such a proposal.
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Additional: The snubbing of Václav Klaus
In the same article quoted at the beginning, Shaun Lawson also reminds us of the disdain the EU has shown to elected European leaders, citing the example of Václav Klaus, then President of the Czech Republic:
In December 2008, Klaus met with the leaders of various European Parliamentary groups at Hradcany Castle, overlooking Prague. His country had yet to sign the Lisbon Treaty. You might imagine this would have been a convivial meeting, with full respect shown towards a democratically elected head of state. Quite the reverse.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the European Greens, complained bitterly that the EU flag was not in evidence above the castle, and plonked his own flag down on the table. He then informed the Czech President: “I don’t care about your opinions on the Lisbon Treaty”.
After the appalling Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the EU Parliament, weighed in on Cohn-Bendit’s behalf, it was the turn of the Irish MEP, Brian Crowley: who fulminated against Klaus’ apparent support of the successful ‘No’ campaign in the recent referendum. When Klaus replied: “The biggest insult to the Irish people is not to accept the result”, Crowley bawled: “You will not tell me what the Irish think. As an Irishman, I know it best.”
If this was bad, it would get worse. Far worse. Two months later, Klaus was invited to speak to the European Parliament as head of a member state. Europe’s MEPs – supposed servants of the people – were clearly very unused to being told anything other than how wonderful and important they all were. Instead of engaging in the standard empty platitudes, Klaus took the opportunity to deliver perhaps the most important speech ever made in the continental legislature:
Are you really convinced that every time you vote, you are deciding something that must be decided here in this hall and not closer to the citizens, ie. in the individual European states?… In a normal parliamentary system, a faction of MPs supports the government and a faction supports the opposition. In the European Parliament, this arrangement is missing. Here, only one single alternative is being promoted and those who dare think differently are labelled as enemies of European integration.
As if to prove Klaus right, jeers and whistles now began to ring out around the chamber. Undeterred, the President continued, reminding his audience of his country’s tragic recent history under Communist rule: “A political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition… where there is no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why political alternatives must exist”.
At length, Klaus arrived at the coup de grace. In a few softly spoken paragraphs, he not only punctured the pomposity of the delegates as no-one ever had before; he also set out exactly what was wrong with the European Union, and why this fundamental problem could not be resolved:
The relationship between a citizen of a member state and a representative of the Union is not a standard relationship between a voter and a politician, representing him or her. There is also a great distance (not only in a geographical sense) between citizen and Union representatives, which is much greater than it is inside the member countries.
Lawson adds:
Since there is no European demos – and no European nation – this defect cannot be solved by strengthening the role of the European Parliament either. This would, on the contrary, make the problem worse and lead to an even greater alienation between the citizens of the European countries and Union institutions.
This distance is often described as the democratic deficit; the loss of democratic accountability, the decision-making of the unelected – but selected – ones, the bureaucratisation of decision-making. The proposals… included in the rejected European Constitution or in the not much different Lisbon Treaty would make this defect even worse.
There followed a quite extraordinary spectacle. Unable to bear the laser guided truth missiles raining down upon them from the lectern, 200 MEPs rose to their feet and walked out. In a dispiriting sign of just how impervious the British left had become on the whole question of the EU, many of those doing so were Labour MEPs. As demonstrations of the farce that is European ‘democracy’ go, it will never be bettered. 12
Click here to read the full article by Shaun Lawson and published September 2015 by OpenDemocracy.
Q: Hello. My question is for Mr. Chomsky. In the past you’ve been very critical of the way in which the West has engaged in political and economic imperialism around the world behind closed doors, kind of smoke and mirrors. How do you believe that transparency and democratizing the Eurozone—
NOAM CHOMSKY: And democratizing the Eurozone.
Q: How it will kind of affect or possibly deter this behavior?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually one of the things that Yanis discusses in his book is that the Eurozone—in the Eurozone, democracy has declined arguably even faster than it has in the United States. During this past generation of neoliberal policies there has been a global assault on democracy, that’s kind of inherent in the principles. And in the Eurozone it’s reached a remarkable level. I mean, even the Wall Street Journal, hardly a critical rag, [laughter] pointed out that no matter who gets elected in a European country, whether it’s communist, fascist, anybody else, the policies remain the same. And the reason is they’re all set in Brussels, by the bureaucracy, and the citizens of the national states have no role in this, and when they try to have a role, as in the Greek referendum, they get smashed down. That’s a rare step. Mostly they are sitting by passively as victims of policies over which they have nothing to say, and what Yanis said about the Eurogroup is quite striking. This is a completely unelected work group. Not in any remote way related to citizens’ decisions, but it’s basically making the decisions, the choices and decisions. That’s even beyond what happens here. Here it’s bad enough, but that’s more extreme.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Let me add to this just to clarify something. Actually I will go further than Noam about Europe. The European Union doesn’t suffer or the Eurogroup from a democratic deficit. It’s like saying that we are on the moon and there is an oxygen deficit. There is no oxygen deficit on the moon. There is no oxygen, full stop. [laughter] And this is official in Europe.
At my first Eurogroup, as the rookie around, I was given the floor to set out our policies and to introduce myself, which is nice, and I gave the most moderate speech that I thought it was humanly possible to make. I said, “I know that you are annoyed I’m here. Your favorite guy didn’t get elected, I got elected, I’m here, but I’m here in order to work with you, to find common ground, there is a failed program that you want to keep insisting on implementing in Greece, we have our mandate, let’s sit down and find common ground.” I thought that was a pretty moderate thing to say. They didn’t.
And then after me, after I had expounded the principle of continuity and the principle of democracy, and the idea of having some compromise between the two, Doctor Wolfgang Schäuble puts his name tag forward and demands the floor and he comes up with a magnificent statement, verbatim I’m going to give you what he said, “Elections cannot be allowed to change the economic policies of any country.” [laughter] At which point I intervened and said, “this is the greatest gift to the Communist Party of China, because they believe that too.” [laughter]
2 From an interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon conducted by David Broder for The Tribune, published under the title: “Everyone should know – I am very dangerous” [I am currently unable to find an upload of this piece]
Important note:As we approach the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website currently declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
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Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you
This is the fourth of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to the weaponsation of social media and cyber threats:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
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Trolls R’ Us
JTRIG was in the business of discrediting companies, by passing “confidential information to the press through blogs etc.”, and by posting negative information on internet forums. They could change someone’s social media photos (“can take ‘paranoia’ to a whole new level”, a slide read.) They could use masquerade-type techniques – that is: placing “secret” information on a compromised computer. They could bombard someone’s phone with text messages or calls.
JTRIG also boasted an arsenal of 200 info-weapons, ranging from in-development to fully operational. A tool dubbed “Badger” allowed the mass delivery of email. Another, called “Burlesque”, spoofed SMS messages. “Clean Sweep” would impersonate Facebook wall posts for individuals or entire countries. “Gateway” gave the ability to “artificially increase traffic to a website”. “Underpass” was a way to change the outcome of online polls.
The Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) is a unit attached to Britain’s GCHQ. The summary above is based on a slides leaked by Edward Snowden. It outlines the sorts of disinformation tactics being deployed against targets across the world (including domestic ones) as far back as 2013. Of course, this is long before mainstream reports of Russian troll farms and the consequent calls for active internet censorship to save us from the ever-present threat of “fake news”.
Entitled “Inside the British Army’s secret information warfare machine”, the same Wired report devotes its main attention to the slightly better known UK disinfo operation, the 77th Brigade, that was founded officially in January 2015, although its establishment had in actuality involved the rebranding of a different agency formerly known as the “Security Assistance Group” 2:
Walking through the headquarters of the 77th, the strange new reality of warfare was on display. We’ve all heard a lot about “cyberwarfare” – about how states could attack their enemies through computer networks, damaging their infrastructure or stealing their secrets. But that wasn’t what was going on here. Emerging here in the 77th Brigade was a warfare of storyboards and narratives, videos and social media. An engagement now doesn’t just happen on the battlefield, but also in the media and online. A victory is won as much in the eyes of the watching public as between opposing armies on the battlefield. Warfare in the information age is a warfare over information itself.
A few paragraphs down, we also learn that:
Inside the base of the 77th, everything was in motion. Flooring was being laid, work units installed; desks – empty of possessions – formed neat lines in offices still covered in plastic, tape and sawdust. The unit was formed in a hurry in 2015 from various older parts of the British Army – a Media Operations Group, a Military Stabilisation Support Group, a Psychological Operations Group. It has been rapidly expanding ever since.
In 2014, a year before the 77th was established, a memo entitled “Warfare in the Information Age” flashed across the British military. “We are now in the foothills of the Information Age” the memo announced. It argued that the British Army needed to fight a new kind of war, one that “will have information at its core”. The Army needed to be out on social media, on the internet, and in the press, engaged, as the memo put it, “in the reciprocal, real-time business of being first with the truth, countering the narratives of others, and if necessary manipulating the opinion of thousands concurrently in support of combat operations.” 3
Click here to read the full article in Wired magazine.
In March 2018, James Corbett foreshadowed the Bilderberg group with a broadcast of his own show entitled “The Weaponization of Social Media”:
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New America
The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left and helped Google shape those debates.
According to a New York Times article from August 2017 entitled “Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant”. The critic in question was a scholar working for New America called Barry Lynn who posted a statement on the think tank’s website applauding European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager for levying a fine of 2.4 billion euros against Google for breaching EU antitrust laws.
“New America financial supporters have no influence or control over the research design, methodology, analysis or findings of New America research projects, nor do they have influence or control over the content of educational programs and communications efforts,” [New America’s executive vice president] Ms. [Tyra] Mariani said. She added that Mr. Lynn’s statement praising the European Union’s sanctions against Google had been temporarily removed from New America’s website because of “an unintentional internal issue” unrelated to Google or Mr. [Eric] Schmidt.
Ms. Mariani and Ms. [Riva] Sciuto [a Google spokeswoman] said Google is continuing to fund New America.
Hours after this article was published online Wednesday morning, Ms. [Anne-Marie] Slaughter announced that the think tank had fired Mr. Lynn on Wednesday for “his repeated refusal to adhere to New America’s standards of openness and institutional collegiality.”
Ms. Slaughter also wrote on Twitter that the article was “false,” but was unable to cite any errors. New America would not make Ms. Slaughter available for an interview. 4
So what? Why am I writing about this hand-in-glove relationship between tech giant Google and the Executive Chairman of its parent company Alphabet Inc., Eric Schmidt, with a think tank formerly known as New America Foundation but since renamed simply New America? The short answer is one man: Peter Warren Singer.
A strategist for America Foundation, P.W. Singer specialises in 21st century warfare. In a few years he has published nothing short of a small library of books on related topics ranging from the post-9/11 rise of the mercenary armies, child soldiers, military robotics, cybersecurity and cyberwarfare. Amongst his most recent publications, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (2018) is already regarded as a seminal work.
If “CyberWar” is about hacking networks, “LikeWar” is about hacking the people on the networks, driving ideas viral through a mix of “likes” and lies. And in these battles for virality, which can generate real world power, generating a sense of authenticity has become an important milestone for any online operation, be it selling an album, a political campaign, or an information warfare operation designed to cause your enemies army to run away (as in the #AllEyesOnISIS operation). 5
From an article by P.W. Singer and co-author Emerson Brooking entitled “What Taylor Swift Teaches Us About Online War” published around the time of the book launch by Defense One in October 2018.
Funnily enough, and only a few months later, Singer was invited to the 2019 Bilderberg gathering in Montreux, when one of the key topics happened to be “The weaponisation of social media”.
I wonder whether he contributed to the discussion at all, and found the time to chew the cud with Bilderberg warhorse and his New America Foundation benefactor and Chairman Emeritus, Eric Schmidt.
The pattern of military hardware silhouettes above welcomes visitors to P.W. Singer’s official website. To judge from his CV, he very probably has the same wallpaper up in his bedroom.
In a recent interview he told Lauren Hepler:
Social media is not just a communication space and a marketplace. It’s also a battle space. You have sides that go back and forth. They use tactics and strategies to achieve their goals. We’ve seen its weaponization to target elections, to target military units. We’ve seen it used to target corporations to try to sabotage their share price, to harm the rollout of a new product. We’ve also seen it have a real and very sad impact on public health.
This is now a matter of life and death. The deliberate spread of misinformation on coronavirus didn’t just shape a laggard Trump administration response, but also shaped individual-level decisions that were irresponsible and dangerous. It cost lives.
Singer calls a response at all levels: individual, governmental and, importantly, corporate:
Then we had coronavirus breakout, and all of them [‘the platform companies’] again implemented things [forms of censorship] that were unthinkable, impossible for them to do just a few months earlier. They should be applauded for doing it, but as they take on more and more of a political role, they are forced to play politics. For example, when someone posts information about a medical treatment that is not effective and maybe even dangerous, they knocked offline certain individuals for doing that, but not others because they’re a little bit too prominent, and if we do, then it will look like we’re playing politics.
Singer’s view is that playing politics is fine, indeed something the tech giants “should be applauded for doing”, however in western democracies, maintaining appearances is of the utmost importance. He continues:
I’m incredibly empathetic toward these companies, because they’re being forced to play this role in the U.S. essentially because we have not updated our election rules. In other nations, the companies have more guidance.
Incredibly empathetic… well, you’re hardly going to bite the hand that feeds you! But what is Singer’s role here? As a former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and current Strategist for New America, whose major donors besides Eric and Wendy Schmidt also include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the US State Department, Singer is clearly in the business of shaping US government policy on behalf of corporate interests. In this instance, enjoining the government to issue “guidance” on censorship such that the tech giants are then able to distance themselves from policies deliberately brought in to marginalise dissident voices.
A Washington Post article published in late 2016 entitled “Why Facebook and Google are struggling to purge fake news” made the matter plain:
Facebook, Google and other Web companies have sought to walk a fine line: They don’t want to get into the practice of hiring human editors, which they believe would make them vulnerable to criticisms of partisan bias and stray from their core business of building software. Yet outsiders, as well as some within Silicon Valley, are increasingly clamoring for technology giants to take a more active role in policing the spread of deceptive information.
“It is very difficult for Facebook to say they are not a gatekeeper when they drive such an enormous share of the attention of most news consumers across the world,” said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. “They need to figure out some editorial mechanism; with their scale comes responsibility.” 6
Singer admits:
A few weeks ago, there was a blast of kind-of-weird content moderation happening. It was because the platform companies had to send many of their people home, and they were using more and more AI that was understandably squirrelly. People were looking for conspiracy, when it was just AI doing its thing. 7
As an esteemed expert in his field Singer must know very well, of course, that this excuse of ‘squirrelly AI’ is actually a red herring. After all, the internet clampdown and “kind-of-weird content moderation” didn’t spring forth inadvertently on the back of the coronavirus lockdown a few weeks ago, but has been incrementally ratcheted up even before the first stirrings of the “Russiagate” hoax four years ago. As I pointed out in an earlier piece, fears of the fabled internet “kill switch” are a distraction, as the volume of dissident voices is being steadily turned down and the internet is slowly shut down by stealth.
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Project Birmingham: Alabama’s ‘fake news’ false flag
At least 1,100 Russian-language accounts followed Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore’s Twitter account over the past few days. Moore’s team says they want to know why.
So begins an article in local newspaper the Montgomery Advertiser entitled “Russian invasion? Roy Moore sees spike in Twitter followers from land of Putin”
Caption retained: A screen cap of Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore’s Twitter followers on Monday, Oct. 16, 2017. Moore’s campaign accounts was followed by thousands of Cyrillic-language accounts in the days prior. The Moore campaign says they have asked Twitter to investigate. (Photo: Twitter)
Beneath a composite image showing just a few examples of this huge army of Russian Twitter bots (see above), the same report into the stormy Alabama 2017 senate race between Republican Roy Moore and rival Democrat Doug Jones continues:
“We had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Drew Messer, a spokesman for the campaign, on Monday. “We’ve never purchased followers or dummy ads on Twitter. We’ve asked Twitter to look into this.”
The increase helped push Moore’s following on Twitter from about 27,000 accounts on Friday to over 47,000, ahead of Democratic nominee Doug Jones, who has about 39,000 followers on Twitter.
Adding:
The Jones campaign Monday evening said Moore was “embarrassing the people of Alabama with another disgusting and pathetic lie.”
“Maybe Moore should check with Vladimir Putin, who shares his views on depriving people of their civil rights,” the statement said. 8
Although Moore had been leading in the polls by six to eight points, it was finally Democrat Jones who went on to win the election. So had the disclosure of Russian influence during the campaign finally affected the result? Very possibly, although in the fullness of time something more extraordinary was revealed by an internal report. Those thousands of bots meddling in the campaign had not been Russian at all and had no connection whatsoever to Putin. Instead they were part of “an experiment”:
One participant in the Alabama project [aka ‘Project Birmingham’], Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. […]
The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.
“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.
The same piece includes a number of statements for Morgan, including this explanation:
Mr. Morgan said in an interview that the Russian botnet ruse “does not ring a bell,” adding that others had worked on the effort and had written the report. He said he saw the project as “a small experiment” designed to explore how certain online tactics worked, not to affect the election.
“The research project was intended to help us understand how these kind of campaigns operated,” said Mr. Morgan. “We thought it was useful to work in the context of a real election but design it to have almost no impact.” 9
Click here to read the full New York Times article published in December 2018 entitled “Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics”.
Jonathan Morgan’s New Knowledge is a Texas-based cybersecurity firm, and behind it we find far larger concerns in the shape of American Engagement Technologies (AET) and for-profit investment management firm Investing In US. This is a trail I shall return to below.
However, it turns out that this phoney Russiagate operation was only part of the information warfare strategy. A separate effort had involved an elaborate fake campaign intended to convince voters of Republican candidate Moore’s supposed plans to reintroduce alcohol prohibition:
The “Dry Alabama” Facebook page, illustrated with stark images of car wrecks and videos of families ruined by drink, had a blunt message: Alcohol is the devil’s work, and the state should ban it entirely.
Along with a companion Twitter feed, the Facebook page appeared to be the work of Baptist teetotalers who supported the Republican, Roy S. Moore, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. “Pray for Roy Moore,” one tweet exhorted.
In fact, the Dry Alabama campaign, not previously reported, was the stealth creation of progressive Democrats who were out to defeat Mr. Moore — the second such secret effort to be unmasked.
So who was behind these disinformation campaigns? The same NYT piece continues:
The revelations about the first project, run in part by a cybersecurity company called New Knowledge, led Facebook to shut down five accounts that it said had violated its rules, and prompted Senator [Doug] Jones to call for a federal investigation. There is no evidence that Jones encouraged or knew of either of the deceptive social media projects. His spokeswoman, Heather Fluit, said his legal advisers were preparing to file a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission. […]
The first of the Alabama efforts was funded by Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who apologized and said he had been unaware of the project and did not approve of the underhanded methods. The second was funded by two Virginia donors who wanted to defeat Mr. Moore — a former judge accused of pursuing sexual relationships with underage girls — according to a participant who would speak about the secret project only on the condition of anonymity and who declined to name the funders.
The two projects each received $100,000, funneled in both cases through the same organization: Investing in Us, which finances political operations in support of progressive causes. Dmitri Mehlhorn, the group’s managing partner, declined to comment on whether he approved of the tactics he had helped pay for. 10
For the record, Investing in US was co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Dmitri Mehlhorn, a former senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.
Click here to read the full NYT report entitled “Democrats Faked Online Push to Outlaw Alcohol in Alabama Race”.
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Pulling the strings back at Bilderberg
Reid Hoffman may be a name that is unfamiliar to you, even though he was co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn. As we learn from a NYT puff piece from 2011, after a shaky start, Hoffman was fortunate enough to have some well-connected associates:
In 1985, Mr. Hoffman enrolled at Stanford, where he majored in symbolic systems, the study of the relationship between computing and human intelligence. He soon befriended a fellow student, Peter Thiel, who would go on to found PayPal.
When his own social media start-up SocialNet flopped, Hoffman was invited to rejoin his old pal as Thiel was setting up PayPal:
As an executive vice president, it was up to Mr. Hoffman to manage external relations. “He was the firefighter in chief at PayPal,” Mr. Thiel says. “Though that diminishes his role because there were many, many fires.” 11
Click here to read the full NYT article entitled “A King of Connections Is Tech’s Go-To Guy”
Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman today sit at the high table as Bilderberg regulars alongside Eric Schmidt – the trio of techies have each attended every conference during the last four years: Thiel going under the title President of Thiel Capital; Hoffman more self-effacingly as a ‘Partner’ at Greylock Partners; and Schmidt, evidently the most modest of the three, declaring himself a mere ‘Technical Advisor’ to Alphabet Inc.
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Please note: I started constructing this article as part of a larger review (that was subsequently broken down into this series of smaller pieces) many months prior to the current coronavirus crisis and lockdown.
1 Though it is not referenced by Wikiquote, there are a wide variety of sources including articles published by the Guardian and The Atlantic magazine that have attributed Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 as the original source of this quote. Variations of the same quote are also misattributed to American singer, songwriter, and musician, best known as the guitarist and frontman of the rock band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain.
This is the third of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ to last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
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Welcome to the machine
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been?
It’s alright we know where you’ve been.
More than a century ago, E M Forster wrote an eerily prophetic science fiction novella entitled “The Machine Stops” (1909). The machine in the novel is vast and seemingly omnipotent. It services all the needs for a global civilisation that has long since abandoned the Earth’s surface and retreated underground; all citizens now inhabiting highly luxurious, fully automated, and secluded subterranean quarters, which are compared in the book to the geometrical cells of a beehive.
Although travel is permitted in this future world, it is seen as a bothersome hindrance on the perfectly understandable basis that every settlement in every country is exactly alike every other. Moreover, being accustomed to air-conditioned atmospheres and artificial illumination, once cast into daylight, travelers are likely to experience an urgent need to shield their eyes, the sun to them a distressing aggravation.
For these and other reasons, human interaction is usually limited to minute by minute communication via screens instead. It is here that all ideas are shared, and this is largely how people prefer to occupy themselves. Nevertheless, this is a free society and so there is no active censorship of ideas, although notions about anything that is ‘unmechanical’ have become essentially incomprehensible (just as witchdoctory is incomprehensible to the average twenty-first century westerner today and so we don’t talk about it much).
So this is Forster’s world, and it is in some respects a forerunner to Huxley’s later vision. Clean, efficient, clinical, and absolutely impersonal. Of course it also shares a great deal with our own world and in ways that Huxley did not envision. As many have commented before, it is as if Forster dreamt up the internet, and then afterwards also imagined all the ways such miraculous interconnectedness would soon begin to isolate humanity.
More specifically, we can also recognise ‘the machine’ as not so much the internet as it exists, but actually a foreshadowing of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), where everything that isn’t ‘unmechanical’ is what nowadays we call ‘smart’. Forster’s entire world is ‘smart’ in this most fundamental sense.
But Forster also poses this question and makes it the title of the book: what if the machine stops? To the future citizens of his world this is not actually a question at all, of course, being unutterably ‘unmechanical’. As unthinkable to them as when we try to imagine the sun not rising tomorrow; not that such comparison would be remotely comprehensible to these future humans who descended to dwell within the sunless realms of Forster’s abysmal, yet extraordinary, premonition:
The original upload was taken down, so here’s a different version:
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The Technetronic tranformation
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction. — Aldous Huxley 2
President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski is remembered today for two main reasons. Firstly, he was the principle architect of Operation Cyclone, a successful US strategy to bog down the Soviets in Afghanistan thanks to the help of covertly supplied and trained Mujahideen fighters; the precursors to al-Qaeda.
His other notable and less clandestine claim to fame is the authorship of two works of particular note: The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), a blueprint for US primacy; and, almost three decades prior, his remarkably prescient Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (1970). It is in this perhaps lesser known work that Brzezinski too envisions a future:
“that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially and economically by the impact of technology and electronics – particularly in the arena of computers and electronics”: 3
Indeed, a society that is under rapid construction today:
Alphabet Inc. is best known for its signature product, the Google search engine. But it is useful to think of it as a company that builds platforms – software that serves as a foundation for a growing array of technologies and services that people use every day.
It practically owns the web advertising market through its search platform, it is a leading player in the smartphone ecosystem with its Android platform, it is a large player in the cloud-computing platform, not to mention playing significant roles in the race to build an autonomous-vehicle platform and with high hopes to do the same in the artificial-intelligence space.
With the announcement on Tuesday that its subsidiary Sidewalk Labs would develop a whole new district of Toronto as a working model of a new type of smart city, it’s no stretch to say the company is trying to build a platform for the construction and organization of cities. 4
From an article published by Globe and Mail in October 2017 about plans to transform Toronto into a state-of-the-art “smart city”.
The same piece continues:
Google intends to build a traffic-sensing network that will collect data from smartphones, embedded sensors and cameras to identify areas that could use more bike-sharing slots, or where a self-driving vehicle should be routed, or where a future pop-up store could find a market for its wares.
It’s hoping to be the private garbage collectors of the data that describe what makes Toronto tick and recycle that data into solutions for how this and other cities can be run more effectively.
Now let’s compare this with the ‘Technetronic era’ envisioned by Brzezinski at the beginning of the 70s. Incidentally, Brzezinski’s words might be read as a warning or a blueprint… a deliberate ambiguity that remains unresolved because he hesitates to make his own position clear. 5:
“In the Technetronic society the trend seems to be toward aggregating the individual support of millions of unorganized citizens, who are easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities, and effectively exploiting the latest communication techniques to manipulate emotion and control reason.” […]
“Another threat, less overt but no less basic, confronts liberal democracy. More directly linked to the impact of technology, it involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled and directed society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific knowhow. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control.” 6
It is somewhat of an understatement to say that Brzezinski was well-connected. He was a former member of the Atlantic Council, the National Endowment for Democracy, and had remained a member of the Council on Foreign Relations until his death in 2017. On the back of his thesis, Between Two Ages, he had also been invited in 1973 to co-found The Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, and alongside, Rockefeller, was a high profile and regular Bilderberg attendee. 7
Nowadays Bilderberg is dominated mostly by the tech giants and the person whose star is most in the ascendant appears to be Alphabet chief, Eric Schmidt, who has attended the annual conferences every year since 2007 (with the sole exception of 2009):
If you look around the current conference for people with enough substance — enough ideological meat on their bones to drive Bilderberg forward, you won’t find it in finance, and you certainly won’t find it in politics, because for the last few decades the really smart people have gone into engineering and tech. And that, surely, is where the center of gravity within Bilderberg will end up.
Writes Charlie Skelton, summing up his thoughts after last year’s conference in Montreux, and adding more concretely:
The two figures at Bilderberg who seem to have an aura of influence about them are Schmidt and Thiel. Over the years, Schmidt has been gently aligning himself as the heir to Kissinger, and has populated recent conferences with Google executives. The Libertarian Thiel has already engineered his lieutenant, Alex Karp, onto the steering committee. 8
Click here to read Skelton’s full article published by Newsweek.
As Schmidt’s business model appears set to engender the sort of ‘technetronic’ transformation that Brzezinski outlined, it should hardly come as a surprise that Schmidt takes a less circumspect position on the whole reason for building “smart cities”. A naked ambition that Jathan Sadowski, lecturer in ethics of technology at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, discusses in a Guardian op-ed:
There is much at stake with this initiative – and not just for Toronto and Alphabet, but for cities globally. With a high-profile project like this one, the kind of deals and terms set here could become a template for similar projects in other cities.
Mayors and tech executives exalt urban labs as sites of disruptive innovation and economic growth. However, this model of creating our urban future is also an insidious way of handing more control – over people, places, policies – to profit-driven, power-hungry corporations.
As the Globe and Mail reports, Eric Schmidt said at the announcement: “The genesis of the thinking for Sidewalk Labs came from Google’s founders getting excited thinking of ‘all the things you could do if someone would just give us a city and put us in charge’.” Ambition alone is not a sin, yet desires like these should evoke suspicion, not celebration.
Sadowski concludes his piece with this warning:
It is easy for city leaders to step aside and allow technocrats and corporations to take control, as if they are alchemists who can turn social problems and economic stagnation into progress and growth. […]
When Sidewalk Labs was chosen to develop Quayside, Schmidt said his reaction was: “Now, it’s our turn.” While this was a joyous exclamation for him, it’s an ominous remark for the rest of us.
There’s no doubt that urban labs can help in the design of powerful, useful technologies. But building the smart urban future cannot also mean paving the way for tech billionaires to fulfill their dreams of ruling over cities. If it does, that’s not a future we should want to live in. 9
Click here to read the full article entitled “Google wants to run cities without being elected. Don’t let it”.
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5G and the Internet of Things (IoT)
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them.
So begins a report entitled “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher” published by Wired magazine back in March 2012.
The same eye-opening piece tells us with no less candour how General Petraeus (Rtd), another regular high-profile Bilderberg attendee [every year since Copenhagen 2014 – although curiously Wikipedia only lists 3 of these in its main entry], was licking his lips at the prospect of routinely hacking into the lives of every “person of interest”:
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” – that is, wired devices – at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the “smart home,” you’d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.
“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”
Petraeus allowed that these household spy devices “change our notions of secrecy” and prompt a rethink of “our notions of identity and secrecy.” All of which is true – if convenient for a CIA director. 10
That’s not the end of the whole article by the way, though it might look like an excellent way to conclude it. To read the whole piece click here.
Embedded below is another fascinating episode of The Corbett Report that follows up his How Big Oil Conquered the World. Again he explores the concept of technocracy and now asks, if “Data is the New Oil” then what does that tell us about the 21st Century oligarchy and the world that the plutocrats are busily creating?
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The vision of the future offered by the proponents of this next-generation cellular technology is one in which every object that you own will be a “smart” object, communicating data about you, your movements and your activities in real time via the ultra-fast 5G network. From the grandiose—self-driving cars and remote surgery—to the mundane—garbage cans that let garbage trucks know when they’re full—everything around us will be constantly broadcasting information through the Internet of Things if the 5G boosters get their way.
But beyond the glossy sci-fi fantasy presented in the slick advertisements for this “smart” world of the future is a creepy and unsettling glimpse into a technological dystopia. One in which “social experiences” are “shared” by strapping VR goggles to your face and interaction with humans is reduced as much as possible in favor of interaction with machines, gadgets and personal assistants that are there to cater to your every whim . . . for a price. And, as some are only now starting to realize, the price that one pays for this world of robotic comfort and convenience is control. Control over our data. Control over our security. And control over our lives. 11
From the transcript of another in-depth episode of the Corbett Report entitled “The 5G Dragnet” written and presented by James Corbett and broadcast last June – the full episode (#358) is also embedded below:
Having provided a few cautionary examples of how smart homes and other smart technology is constantly at risk of being hacked, the Corbett Report continues
It isn’t hard to see why these smart technologies, and the 5G network that enables them, are a security concern. And, in that context, it isn’t hard to see why Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE are now being targeted as potential national security threats and barred from developing 5G network infrastructure in country after country. After all, with access to that much data and information—let alone the ability to communicate with, hack into, or disable everything from our “smart” TV to our “smart” door locks to our “smart” car—a potential adversary with control of the 5G network would have nearly limitless power to surveil and control a target population.
But given that these powers—the ability to access our most intimate data and to take control of our homes and personal appliances—are not bugs but features of the 5G-connected Internet of Things, the question is: Why is there such a headlong rush to connect this network? Is demand for smart dishwashers and smart toothbrushes and smart baby monitors really so overwhelming that it requires us to put the security of our homes, our possessions and our families at risk? What is really driving this frenzy for a world where every new object we buy presents another potential vulnerability, another device that can be hacked into to steal our information, to track our location, to record our conversations and to disable our appliances?
One answer to this question lies in the fact that intelligence agencies—whether Chinese or Russian, CIA or MI6, Mossad or CSIS—will make use of the vast amounts of data flowing through these networks to spy on the public. In fact, the members of the so-called “intelligence community” do not even hide this fact; they openly gloat about it.
[Note that here I have edited out a further reference to the same Petraeus statement already quoted above.]
Lest there be any doubt about the intelligence community’s intentions to use these devices to spy on the population, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed this approach in a report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2016:
“Smart” devices incorporated into the electric grid, vehicles—including autonomous vehicles—and household appliances are improving efficiency, energy conservation, and convenience. However, security industry analysts have demonstrated that many of these new systems can threaten data privacy, data integrity, or continuity of services. In the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.
Whistleblowers from within the intelligence establishment—whistleblowers like Russ Tice and Bill Binney, who are actively shunned by the same mainstream media that breathlessly reported on Edward Snowden—have already laid out in exhaustive detail how the NSA is collecting all data flowing through the internet as we know it. Every phone call. Every email. Every web search. Every file stored to the cloud. Everything that passes from one computer or phone to another is being stored, catalogued, data-based and data-mined to construct detailed profiles of ordinary citizens.
But now the 5G network is promising to deliver us not an internet of phones and computers but an internet of things, from cars and watches to fridges and hats to milk jugs and floor tiles. When every manufactured object is broadcasting information about you and your activities to the world at large by default, and when it is discovered that opting out of this surveillance grid is not an option, the true nature of this 5G panopticon will finally begin to dawn on the public. But by that point it will already be too late.
[The following part of the transcript is all about the Quayside project in Canada discussed above]
NARRATOR: Cities use data every day, everything from showing you when your next train will arrive to measuring the air quality in different neighborhoods. Typically all this information is spread out across a ton of different agencies and companies in a bunch of different file formats and spreadsheets. But at Quayside we have the chance to start from scratch and build a single unified digital platform that’s transparent, open, and accessible for everyone working to make our cities better.
TINA YAZDANI: The leaders behind Toronto’s first data-driven smart city are under fire tonight after yet another resignation. This time, a member of Waterfront Toronto’s digital advisory panel quit and wrote a strongly worded letter on her way out, sharing her deep concerns about privacy and data control.
STEVE PAIKIN: I want to get some feedback now from the former information and privacy commissioner from the province of Ontario, who, when you were here discussing this very topic, you were kind of bullish about it. And then I just couldn’t happen but help notice that you’ve resigned from your involvement in all this. What happened?
ANA CAVOUKIAN: And I didn’t. . . I didn’t do it lightly. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that we had to make sure that all the personal data that was being collected automatically by the sensors and other technologies were de-identified at source—anonymized at source—
PAIKIN: “De-identified” meaning . . .?
CAVOUKIAN: Meaning no personal identifiers. You wouldn’t know it’s Ana Cavoukian walking, or you [walking], or this is my car, or anything. And the reason that was critical is unlike most uses of what I call operational data, where the individual—the data subject—can exercise some control over the use—the operation of that data. They can consent to it, they can revoke consent, they can choose not to consent. They have some sense of control with the data. Here you have no control. It’s all being collected automatically with the emerging technology sensors all picking up data.
But it is not just the intelligence agencies or the Big Tech conglomerates who are set to profit from the creation of this newer, stickier world wide web. In fact, the 5G-enabled Internet of Things is a necessary part of the creation of the system of total control—physical, financial and political—that the technocrats have been lusting over for a century now.
Click here to read the full Corbett Report transcript
And here to read an earlier post entitled “the panopticon: a potted history of mass surveillance”
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Addendum: the known health risks of RF radiation
During recent weeks there has been a strange spate of attacks on mobile phone masts. The apparent justification for these sporadic acts of vandalism relates to a claim that the ongoing rollout of 5G technology is the real cause of the deaths now being falsely attributed to coronavirus.
This is nonsense, of course, and yet another example of the mind-numbing idiocy promoted by high priest of flat-earthery David Icke, who is renowned for repeated claims that the world is ruled by shape-shifting lizards, and once advised everyone to wear turquoise to reduce the chance of earthquakes – that was on the same outing of BBC’s Wogan when he effectively declared himself the messiah!
The youtube video below is cued up:
There is a common train of reasoning that goes as follows: since X is rather obviously not doing Y, all those who suspect X of anything at all must be crazy “conspiracy theorists” like David Icke. Technically this is known as ‘guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy’, which is a highly effective debating tactic that can be used to discredit otherwise valid and well-formulated arguments and opinions. 12
At the risk of hammering this point, I have already noticed how this fallacy is being used to dismiss growing concerns about the rapid rollout of 5G, when in fact there are extremely solid grounds for adopting the precautionary principle based on past research, just as there are legitimate health concerns over our current use of 4G and other RF technologies like Wifi.
In fact there have been quite a number of studies looking into the health risks of existing 4G technologies and many of the results from these studies pose very serious concerns. A quite comprehensive overview of the research can be found in a comparatively short review published by the Guardian in July 2018, which discusses in detail “how the wireless industry has “war-gamed” science, as a Motorola internal memo in 1994 phrased it”:
For a quarter of a century now, the industry has been orchestrating a global PR campaign aimed at misleading not only journalists, but also consumers and policymakers about the actual science concerning mobile phone radiation. Indeed, big wireless has borrowed the very same strategy and tactics big tobacco and big oil pioneered to deceive the public about the risks of smoking and climate change, respectively. And like their tobacco and oil counterparts, wireless industry CEOs lied to the public even after their own scientists privately warned that their products could be dangerous, especially to children.
War-gaming science involves playing offence as well as defence – funding studies friendly to the industry while attacking studies that raise questions; placing industry-friendly experts on advisory bodies such as the World Health Organisation and seeking to discredit scientists whose views differ from the industry’s.
Funding friendly research has perhaps been the most important tactic, because it conveys the impression that the scientific community truly is divided. Thus, when studies have linked wireless radiation to cancer or genetic damage – as [George] Carlo’s [industry-financed Wireless Technology Research project] WTR did in 1999; as the WHO’s Interphone study did in 2010; and as the US government’s NTP did earlier this year – the industry can point out, accurately, that other studies disagree.
How the industry has repeatedly tried to mislead governments and the public over the reporting of these studies is also a matter I have covered in previous posts.
Before continuing, it always needs to be stressed that based on the latest findings, authorities in France, Belgium, Israel, Spain, Australia, Italy and elsewhere took action to limit Wifi use in schools and nurseries. 13 Moreover, mobile phones generally come with a warning in the fine print, cautioning users to hold the device away from the body. 14 In short, there is abundant evidence that ought to raise concerns over the health effects of 4G technology.
The upgrade to 5G that is required for the Internet of Things relies on a network of masts transmitting RF radiation at higher frequencies than 4G. Since radiation at these frequencies is less penetrating, the array of masts also needs to be more densely packed. Finally, it is important to understand that the radiation is less penetrating because it is more highly absorbed by objects including buildings, trees and, of course, people. As the same Guardian piece explains:
The industry’s neutralisation of the safety issue has opened the door to the biggest prize of all: the proposed transformation of society dubbed the Internet of Things. Lauded as a gigantic engine of economic growth, the Internet of Things will not only connect people through their smartphones and computers but will also connect those devices to a customer’s vehicles and appliances, even their baby’s nappies – all at speeds much faster than can currently be achieved.
There is a catch, though: the Internet of Things will require augmenting today’s 4G technology with 5G technology, thus “massively increasing” the general population’s exposure to radiation, according to a petition signed by 236 scientists worldwide who have published more than 2,000 peer-reviewed studies and represent “a significant portion of the credentialled scientists in the radiation research field”, according to Joel Moskowitz, the director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped circulate the petition. Nevertheless, like mobiles, 5G technology is on the verge of being introduced without pre-market safety testing. 15
Click here to read the full Guardian article entitled “The inconvenient truth about cancer and mobile phones”.
Please note: I started constructing this article as part of a larger review (that was subsequently broken down into this series of smaller pieces) many months prior to the current coronavirus crisis and lockdown.
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1 Opening lyrics to the Pink Floyd track Welcome to the Machine written by Roger Waters from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here.
2 Quote taken from Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 4, by Aldous Huxley.
The Technetronic age is that which is created by the (theoretical) Technetronic Revolution. It is always fairly ambiguously presented as to whether Brzezinski is actually predicting this revolution based on observation/trends, or whether he is abstractly philosophizing. It certainly is not a work of political science. With this in mind, his concluding line in the book, ‘In the technetronic era, philosophy and politics will be crucial’ serve to confuse the reader further rather than give some closure.
6 Quotes from Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, published in 1970 (although out of print since 1982).
Incidentally, the names of Bilderberg attendees I have picked out above were all drawn from what is only a partial and a highly abbreviated list provided by wikipedia. A list that surprisingly fails to record even the name of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, and another serial warmonger I have featured many times before on this blog. The funny thing is that although Brzezinski’s name is missing from the main list, it is nevertheless registered in one of the many footnotes. A footnote (currently number 83) which reads:
“Western Issues Aired”. The Washington Post. 24 April 1978. “The three-day 26th Bilderberg Meeting concluded at a secluded cluster of shingled buildings in what was once a farmer’s field. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, Swedish Prime Minister Thorbjorrn Falldin, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and NATO Commander Alexander M. Haig Jr. were among 104 North American and European leaders at the conference.”
Alternatively, and if you decide to visit the main wikipedia entry for Zbigniew Brzezinski you’ll see there is a direct link back to Bilderberg. The same goes for Donald Rumsfeld and also Paul Wolfowitz, who though missing from the main list of attendees is actually described on his own page as a former steering committee member of the Bilderberg group. But then the main wikipedia entry for Bill Clinton fails to record his ties to the group and the same goes for Margaret Thatcher – both invited to Bilderberg gatherings prior to becoming national leaders.
France has banned wifi from nursery schools (the younger the child, the greater the danger), and restricted its use in teaching children up to the age of 11.
It has also banned mobile phones from all schools, partly because they are socially disruptive. But the country’s official Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety has recommended that tablets and other wifi devices should be regulated as phones are.
Cyprus has also banned wifi from kindergartens, and only permits it in the staff offices of junior schools for administration purposes. Israel also prohibits it in pre-schools and kindergartens, and allows it only to be gradually introduced in class as children get older. The Israeli city of Haifa has hardwired its school system so children can used computers that don’t need wifi to connect to the internet.
Frankfurt, meanwhile, hardwired 80 per cent of all its schools more than a decade ago, while the school authorities in Salzburg, Austria, wrote to headteachers officially advising them not to use wifi as long ago as 2005.
Ghent in Belgium has banned wifi in pre-schools and daycare centres, while individual local authorities in Spain and Italy have removed it from all their schools. Even faraway French Polynesia has prohibited it in nursery schools and limits it in primary ones. And so the list goes on.
If you receive texts or calls while the phone is on your body (in a pocket or tucked into the waistband of your pants, or wherever) you are exceeding radiation exposure guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
So, how many of you have seen this warning??? […]
It appears in the ‘fine print’ of the user manual packaged with most cell phones. Is it in yours? It’s important to take the time to look.
Here’s a quote from the website of BlackBerry’s manufacturer, Research in Motion (RIM):
“If you do not use a body-worn accessory supplied or approved by RIM when you carry the BlackBerry device, keep the device at least 0.98 inches (25 mm) from your body when the BlackBerry device is turned on and connected to a wireless network.”
Translated this means: You’re NEVER supposed to hold the BlackBerry Pearl (and possibly other BlackBerry devices) closer than 1 inch from your body when it’s turned on!
This is the second of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ to last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to China and Russia:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
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The price of “full spectrum dominance”
“I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum dominance’. That is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.” [from 38:30 mins]
These sobering words come from Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. Dying from cancer and confined to a wheelchair, Pinter courageously seized the occasion and used it as a final opportunity to speak truth to power.
He continued:
“The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
“The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.” 1
In March 2018 ‘Democracy Now!’ interviewed former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, author of “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”. Kinzer reminds us of just a few of the many U.S.-backed coups and invasions beginning with the overthrow of Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya (1909) to the toppling of democratic Prime Minister Mosaddegh in the 1953 Iranian coup d’état to the Dominican Republic to Honduras to Cuba. He also discusses the radical anti-imperialism of Mark Twain:
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During the decade and a half that has passed since Pinter gave his impassioned speech, the US State Department under Hilary Clinton pressed for the disastrous Nato-led regime change operation to topple Gaddafi in Libya (2011), while under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the same Obama administration simultaneously waged war on Yemen, a conflict that since 2015 was further escalated under a Saudi-led and US-backed coalition. 2
A UN report on Yemen released in September accuses the Saudi-led coalition of killing tens of thousands since 2015 and of starving to death a further 85,000 children as a deliberate war tactic. It further accuses America, Britain and France, who have armed and provided logistical support and intelligence to the Saudis, of complicity in those war crimes:
Tamer Kirolos, Country Director of Save the Children said: “It’s unacceptable that those responsible for the killing, maiming and other grave violations against thousands of Yemeni children are yet to face any consequences. The report even notes the use of starvation as a weapon of war, resulting in thousands of children facing severe malnutrition. Children are not only dying from bombs and bullets, they are being smothered silently because they are denied food.” 3
[Bold highlights as in the original]
Meanwhile, under Timber Sycamore and other clandestine operations, the US and its Gulf State allies has also supplied weapons, training and funding directly to Islamist terrorist groups in repeated efforts to destabilise Syria.
And today, as Trump and the neo-con faction surrounding him continue to heighten tensions with Iran, the US already has forces, many of which are private contractors, deployed widely across the Middle East, Africa and further afield:
Don’t fall for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.
Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.
Click here to read John Whitehead’s full article entitled “Come Home America: Stop Policing the World and Waging Endless Wars” published by Counterpunch.
On Monday 13th, Taya Graham of ‘The Real News Network’ spoke to CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin about why special interests are promoting conflict with Iran, the nearly inevitable veto of the War Powers resolution vote, and the urgent need for popular antiwar resistance:
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Sanctions against China: the flagrant lies and double standards
On December 3rd, the US House of Representatives passed by a vote of 407 to 1 the Uighur Intervention and Global Humanitarian Unified Response Act (UIGHUR Act), a stronger amended version of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, which had previously passed the Senate by unanimous consent on September 11th. This revised bill is now awaiting approval by the Senate:
[The bill] adds provisions that require the president to sanction Chinese government officials responsible for the repression of Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic ethnic group, and places restrictions on the export of devices that could be used to spy on or restrict the communications or movement of members of the group and other Chinese citizens. […]
Among other provisions, the bill requires the president to submit to Congress within 120 days a list of senior Chinese government officials guilty of human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xianjiang or elsewhere in China. That list would include Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo and officials responsible for mass incarceration or “re-education” efforts that single out Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
The president would be required to impose visa and financial restrictions on the listed individuals under the Global Magnitsky Act. 5
Click here to read the full article published by Bloomberg on December 3rd.
A fortnight earlier on November 20th, the House had passed Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 (HKHRDA) by 417-1 which again allowed for targeted sanctions.
The justification for the introduction and tightening of sanctions on China is twofold. Firstly it is to protect human rights protesters in Hong Kong and secondly to protect the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim population who live in the Xinjiang province of the north-west.
I have discussed the Hong Kong protests in previous articles (for instance here) and the evidence is overwhelming that genuine grievances have been deliberately inflamed by agencies working on behalf of the US State Department. Such strategies for fomenting colour revolution are tried and tested and other recent examples have included the failed coup attempt in Venezuela and the victorious Maidan in Ukraine. Today neo-Nazis from Ukraine who have flown out to Hong Kong are actively helping out:
With their flamboyant waving of US and British colonial flags and tendency to belt out the American national anthem on megaphones, anti-China separatists in Hong Kong have made themselves a magnet for the US far-right. Staff of the website InfoWars, right-wing social media personality Paul Joseph Watson, and the ultra-conservative group Patriot Prayer are among those who have made pilgrimages to the protests.
The latest collection of extreme-right activists to reinforce the ranks of the Hong Kong separatists are from Ukraine. They call themselves Gonor and have tattoos on their upper torsos with undeniable symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
These extremists previously fought in a notoriously brutal neo-Nazi militia called the Azov Battalion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russian militants. 6
Click here to read the full report by Ben Norton published in The Grayzone.
No mention of this is ever reported by the corporate media, of course; just as the neo-Nazi presence during the original Maidan was deliberately downplayed and ignored. You do not want to have your colour revolution spoiled by uncomfortable facts leaking out.
Which brings me to consider another often-repeated mainstream story: how the Chinese government has arrested and detained a million or more Uyghur, who are being held and tortured inside secret “re-education camps”. Such is the sheer scale of this alleged programme of ethnic cleansing that it encourages comparison to the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. So what is the hard evidence and how reliable are sources?
The claim that China has detained millions of ethnic Uyghurs in its Xinjiang region is repeated with increasing frequency, but little scrutiny is ever applied. Yet a closer look at the figure and how it was obtained reveals a serious deficiency in data.
The second study relied on flimsy media reports and speculation. It was authored by Adrian Zenz, a far-right fundamentalist Christian who opposes homosexuality and gender equality, supports “scriptural spanking” of children, and believes he is “led by God” on a “mission” against China. 7
Adrian Zenz is considered an expert in DC. His research influenced the Uyghur Human Rights Act that sanctioned China.
But he’s also a Rapture-ready evangelical who says he’s “led by God” against Beijing.
The assessment is made by investigative journalists Ajit Singh and Max Blumenthal writing in The Grayzone. The same piece continues:
The “millions detained” figure was first popularized by a Washington, DC-based NGO that is backed by the US government, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
In a 2018 report submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – often misrepresented in Western media as a UN-authored report – CHRD “estimate[d] that roughly one million members of ethnic Uyghurs have been sent to ‘re-education’ detention camps and roughly two million have been forced to attend ‘re-education’ programs in Xinjiang.” According to CHRD, this figure was “[b]ased on interviews and limited data.”
While CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals.
For anyone who remains unfamiliar with the work of the NED, please read this earlier article.
Click here to read the full article which provides a detailed profile of born-again Christian, Adrian Zenz, who:
“recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. ‘I feel very clearly led by God to do this,’ he said. ‘I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.’”
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The fact that Beijing operates a repressive authoritarian regime is not in dispute. There is also irrefutable evidence that China incarcerates many thousands of political prisoners, amongst whom members of the Uygher minority are disproportionally targeted. Others are secretly executed. Why then would the West bother to engage in a campaign that exaggerates the level of human rights abuses taking place?
The short answer is that China is now singled out because America and its close allies wish to isolate and impose sanctions just as they have done previously with Russia, Syria and, most recently, Iran. Sanctions are, of course, the basic tool for economic warfare.
The slightly longer answer is that in order to satisfy their objective, Chinese human rights abuses need necessarily be portrayed as categorically different from the crimes of Western allies. This falsehood is maintained in large part by comparative silence concerning, for instance, the human rights violations under the totalitarian rule of military dictator Abdel el-Sisi in Egypt; the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kashmir carried out by Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi; or the daily crimes against humanity perpetrated by Israel and Saudi Arabia…
Saudi Arabian dissidents do not expect to live for very long. Instead they expect to be tortured, beheaded and ‘crucified’. Or in the case of Washington Post correspondent, Jamal Khashoggi, dismembered alive with a bonesaw on the personal orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Meanwhile, under Israel’s apartheid system, which was formalised after the passing of the Nation-State Law in 2018, one third of the five million registered Palestinian refugees, born of families who lost their homes when their land was ethnically cleansed at the time of the 1948 Nakba, remain crammed into permanent refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. Another third (1.85 million to be exact) exist under a constant economic blockade inside Gaza’s open-air prison and are subjected to periodic military assaults which Israeli strategists and hardliners casually describe as “mowing the lawn”. Those brave enough to protest against these dire conditions are routinely shot at with live ammunition. During the last two years Great March of Return, nearly two hundred unarmed people including many women and children have been killed by IDF snipers, while another six thousand are now maimed for life.
So this becomes a numbers game, with the figures for Uygher victims necessarily measured in excess of the less deserving victims of Egypt, India, Israel or Saudi Arabia, whose plight is correspondingly under-reported and forgotten. Moreover, although the unrelenting war and blockade of Yemen has caused a prolonged cholera epidemic and mass starvation that amounts to actual genocide, this grotesque crime against humanity is seldom if ever mentioned in the news, which prefers to reserve hyperbolic comparisons to Nazi Germany for China rather than India and Saudi Arabia (or allies Britain and France).
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The grey zone
On June 13th, BBC Newsnight broadcast a report on a new mission for the SAS and other UK special forces, which, should ministers choose to authorise it, is set “to counter Russian and other forces around the world.”
As Newsnight’s Diplomatic and Defence Editor, Mark Urban, reported in a related BBC news article:
The plan [called ‘Special Operations Concept’] is currently being considered by military chiefs, Whitehall insiders tell me, and will soon be sent to ministers and is likely to be approved.
The Ministry of Defence has said it does not comment on the UK Special Forces.
UK Special Forces are meant to provide more options for low-profile actions in places where overtly committing conventional troops would be difficult.
For example, under the new plan, an operation might be mounted in a Baltic republic or African country in order to uncover and pinpoint Russian covert activities. […]
The new missions would take UKSF units in a less “kinetic” or violent direction – after almost 20 years of man-hunting strike missions in the Middle East and Afghanistan – and into closer cooperation with allied intelligence agencies and MI6.
The same piece continues:
The role of the SRR [Special Reconnaissance Regiment: one of the three main elements of the UK’s Special Forces working along the SAS and SBS], which carries out covert surveillance, would grow under the Special Operations Concept.
Military chiefs believe Russia has been using its military intelligence arm, the GRU, effectively in Ukraine, Syria and Africa.
“Right now, you do nothing or you escalate,” one senior officer says. “We want to expand that competitive space.”
Adding:
At a London conference earlier this month, Chief of General Staff General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith referred to “authoritarian regimes” rather than mentioning Russia by name, noting they had managed to “exploit that hybrid space between those two increasingly redundant states of ‘peace’ and ‘war’”. 8
The quote drawn from Sir Mark Carleton-Smith’s speech delivered at RUSI is startling: “those increasingly redundant states of ‘peace’ and ‘war’”; and the tone is made all the more alarming due to the placement of quotation marks around the words ‘war’ and ‘peace’. Is this really what the Chief of General Staff intends when he talks about “the grey zone”: that ‘war’ and ‘peace’ now have purely relative meanings and signify nothing at all in any absolute sense? It is hard to imagine anything more Orwellian than this. Moreover, the leaked plans to redeploy Special Forces in preemptive action against other states are very likely in breach of the UN Charter, as the Russian embassy in London subsequently pointed out:
“In fact, this would mean that UK defense agencies are paving the way for removing the existing restrictions imposed by the international law and to claim the right to carry out military operations beyond the limits of self-defense, which constitutes a direct breach of the UN Charter,” the embassy said. “This would not just become a yet another step towards deliberately destroying the world order based on the international law, but also create major risks of those ‘hybrid’ operations evolving into full-fledged armed conflicts as a result of various coincidences and misunderstandings.” 9
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Russia & cyber threats
Having returned from Montreux, National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, David E. Sanger, quickly put together a piece that helps us to better understand the interconnecting parts of another two of last summer’s Bilderberg key topics (Russia & Cyber Threats):
The United States is stepping-up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. 10
‘Current and former government officials said…’ Pompeo and Petraeus by any chance? Just taking a wild guess, of course, because there were others mingling in Montreaux with specialist knowledge who arguably better fit the bill as sources: take for instance, James H. Baker, the Director of the Office of Net Assessment; or alternatively, Matthew Daniels from New Space and Technology Projects, another whose post is under the aegis of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
James H. Baker, the Pentagon's top wargamer (official Orwellian title: Director, Office of Net Assessment), goes for a melancholic stroll outside #Bilderberg. I asked if he was having a good meeting. He turned on his heel & went gloomily back inside. Reminded me of Charlie Brown. pic.twitter.com/QjTgJ0CT3B
Just as plausibly, Sanger may have got the lowdown from Matthew Pottinger, Senior Director of the National Security Council (NSC) while partaking of some of the fine comestibles with NSC colleague and Director for China, Matthew Turpin. And if you’re wondering whether the colleagues at NSC were officially booked into adjacent rooms with a view, do please take note that:
“Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity” (according to the Bilderberg website) 11
On the same basis we must therefore surmise that US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, was driven to this year’s summit by his own fleet of black limousines!
"Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity", says the #Bilderberg website. Here's Mike Pompeo arriving as an "individual" at the venue. He's inside at this point. You can't see the other dozen cars. pic.twitter.com/2xuvrSs87C
…Although attended by, as Charlie Skelton wryly observes, “a small army of secret service bodyguards, a bunch of State Dept staff and advisors, and the US Ambassador to Switzerland.”
the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, drops in for "informal talks" at #Bilderberg 2019, with a small army of secret service bodyguards, a bunch of State Dept staff and advisors, and the US Ambassador to Switzerland. pic.twitter.com/trxxg9mRE2
Officially at least, the White House mustn’t have known two of their senior staffers were even going to Montreux!
two members of Donald Trump's National Security Council are strategising with Jared Kushner at #Bilderberg this year: Matthew Turpin (Director for China, NSC) & Matthew Pottinger (Senior Director, NSC). Ex-CIA director David Petraeus is also here. Pompeo might drop by for nibbles pic.twitter.com/BmSKhst0iI
Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue, after years of public warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. that Russia has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines, or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States.
But it also carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.
Adding:
Power grids have been a low-intensity battleground for years.
Since at least 2012, current and former officials say, the United States has put reconnaissance probes into the control systems of the Russian electric grid.
But now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense, officials say, with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before. It is intended partly as a warning, and partly to be poised to conduct cyberstrikes if a major conflict broke out between Washington and Moscow.
What the article casually describes as “the daily digital Cold War”, if true, is actually nothing of the sort. The Cold War did not involve daily attacks on enemy infrastructure, which is part of the reason why thankfully it remained a cold war. Such an admission of US attacks is again in clear breach of international law, and yet coolly reported as mundane tit-for-tat exchanges justified on the back of entirely unsubstantiated rumours of Russian sabotage.
The article continues:
Mr. Trump issued new authorities to Cyber Command last summer, in a still-classified document known as National Security Presidential Memoranda 13, giving General Nakasone [head of United States Cyber Command] far more leeway to conduct offensive online operations without receiving presidential approval.
But the action inside the Russian electric grid appears to have been conducted under little-noticed new legal authorities, slipped into the military authorization bill passed by Congress last summer. The measure approved the routine conduct of “clandestine military activity” in cyberspace, to “deter, safeguard or defend against attacks or malicious cyberactivities against the United States.”
Under the law, those actions can now be authorized by the defense secretary without special presidential approval. […]
Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.
Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.
Which is the single aspect of Sanger’s article that we can know without doubt is true, since under section 1632 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2019 (H.R. 5515) which passed the Senate on August 1st 2018, and which Trump subsequently signed into law on August 13th, he thereby removed the need for his own presidential authorisation to launch a cyberattack:
Affirming the authority of the Secretary of Defense to conduct military activities and operations in cyberspace. 12
It is a piece of legislation that conjures to mind the essential plot device in Dr Strangelove: a presidential pre-delegation of first-strike nuclear weapons use that grants permission to demented General Jack D. Ripper of Kubrick’s satire to personally launch his nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. 13
On the other hand, claims that Russia and America have already inserted viruses inside each other’s primary infrastructure demands evidence, and without any, the story clearly lacks credibility. So besides fearmongering, what would be the aim of putting out these purported ‘leaks’?
Well, it may help in the construction of a pretext for a genuine attack. A prospect which brings us to consider this admission (quoted again from Sanger’s NYT piece):
Given the current climate Iran would seem to be a more likely target then Russia – it is also the country most conspicuous by its absence from this year’s Bilderberg ‘key topics’. Did Mike Pompeo really spend the weekend at Bilderberg and not talk about Iran? When indeed was the last time the region of the Middle East failed to feature in Bilderberg’s published agenda? (I cannot remember a single occasion.)
In support of this alternative thesis, the article also contains this curious and conspicuous passage:
Both General Nakasone and Mr. Bolton, through spokesmen, declined to answer questions about the incursions into Russia’s grid. Officials at the National Security Council also declined to comment but said they had no national security concerns about the details of The New York Times’s reporting about the targeting of the Russian grid, perhaps an indication that some of the intrusions were intended to be noticed by the Russians.
Noticed by the Russians, the Chinese, the Venezuelans, and the Iranians too presumably… leaks of alleged “intrusions” that the public would know literally nothing whatsoever about were it not for the fact that the whole matter was conveniently brought to the attention of NYT-Bilderberg insider David E. Sanger by those “officials at the National Security Council”. Leaks much to the advantage of those with an interest to heighten tensions and incubate the new cold war.
Author of the piece David Sanger, on the list of Bilderberg participants as it was originally released on May 28th, has since gone missing.
By Friday June 1st, and with the conference well underway, his name was expunged.
As these screenshots show:
Like Mike Pompeo, he is another of last year’s Bilderberg disappeared.
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A reconstructed world order
On the day of the anniversary of the D-Day landings, as Angela Merkel joined fellow western leaders to commemorate the sacrifice of the allied soldiers during the Second World War, two nations fighting alongside the victors were quietly snubbed. Russia and China each lost more than twenty million lives in their struggles against Germany and Japan respectively; the Russian Red Army doing more than all of the other allied forces to halt the march of the Nazis, battling alone against four-fifths of the Wehrmacht and forcing their thousand mile retreat from Moscow to Berlin.
However the isolation and the US-led encirclement of Russia and China has had the inevitable if unintended consequence of forging a closer alliance, and so as British, French, Canadian and American dignitaries laid wreaths on Normandy’s beaches, uninvited leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were instead meeting in Moscow – it would be their thirtieth get-together in just the past six years – a tightening Eurasian partnership that has been relatively under-reported by the western press.
The following is taken a BBC news report:
The alliance between the two countries has intensified since both Moscow and Beijing feel alienated by Europe and especially the US.
Moscow’s relationship with the West turned sour when Russia was put under sanctions for its involvement in the Ukraine conflict five years ago. It has also been criticised for assisting the Assad regime in Syria in 2015.
China’s ties with the US have deteriorated since the Trump administration appeared to turn its back on globalisation in favour of economic national protectionism.
The two countries are currently embroiled in a trade war and tit-for-tat tariffs that intensive talks have so far failed to resolve.
With a shared sense of rejection from the West, Russia and China have hence moved closer together, both in economic and military cooperation, observers say.
The partnership has already seen an increase in trade, which grew by 25% in 2018 to hit a record $108bn (£85bn) according to the Kremlin. 14
There is no mention of the D-Day snub, of course, although the same piece does include a useful breakdown of the burgeoning economic ties between the two superpowers along with this observation:
During Xi’s visit to Moscow, the two sides have promised to deepen military and economic cooperation in the future.
Click here to read the full BBC news report entitled “China’s Xi praises ‘best friend’ Putin during Russia visit”.
Such deals represent a direct response to, on the one hand, the West’s sanctions imposed on Russia ostensibly for its annexation of Crimea, and on the other, Trump’s imposition of tariffs on China. As the trade war against both counties is ratcheted up, once again it is inevitable that they are pushed into forming closer mutual ties. Moreover, Trump’s blustering has effectively backed America into a corner, as economist Michael Hudson explains:
The US is making impossible demands for economic surrender – that no country could accept. What appears on the surface to be only a trade war is really a full-fledged Cold War 2.0.
At stake is whether China will agree to do what Russia did in the 1990s: put a Yeltsin-like puppet of neoliberal planners in place to shift control of its economy from its government to the U.S. financial sector and its planners. So the fight really is over what kind of planning China and the rest of the world should have: by governments to raise prosperity, or by the financial sector to extract revenue and impose austerity. […]
The objective is to gain financial control of global resources and make trade “partners” pay interest, licensing fees and high prices for products in which the United States enjoys monopoly pricing “rights” for intellectual property. A trade war thus aims to make other countries dependent on U.S.-controlled food, oil, banking and finance, or high-technology goods whose disruption will cause austerity and suffering until the trade “partner” surrenders.
The best approach left open to China according to Hudson is to “stand aside and let the US self-destruct”, although he also advocates, albeit a little tongue-in-cheek, that Xi should nominate Trump for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize:
We know that he wants what his predecessor Barack Obama got. And doesn’t he deserve it more? After all, he is helping to bring Eurasia together, driving China and Russia into an alliance with neighboring countries, reaching out to Europe.
Trump may be too narcissistic to realize the irony here. Catalyzing Asian and European trade independence, financial independence, food independence and IT independence from the threat of U.S. sanctions will leave the U.S. isolated in the emerging multilateralism. 15
Click here to read Hudson’s full article entitled “Trump’s Trade Threats are really Cold War 2.0” published on June 13th.
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On July 8th Ross Ashcroft, host of RT’s ‘Renegade Inc’, was joined by the journalist and Middle East based commentator Sharmine Narwani to discuss how Iran and the Middle East is reshaping the world order. Narwani explained how the battle over Syria (which she refers to as ‘Ground Zero’) has marked a turning point in the large-scale, two-decade long, neo-colonial ‘third world war’ raging across the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa:
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Additional: Iraq, Soleimani and the threat of petroyuan
[T]he use of the petrodollar has created a system whereby U.S. control of oil sales of the largest oil exporters is necessary, not just to buttress the dollar, but also to support its global military presence. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the issue of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and the issue of Iraq’s push for oil independence against U.S. wishes have become intertwined. Notably, one of the architects of the petrodollar system and the man who infamously described U.S. soldiers as “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy”, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has been advising Trump and informing his China policy since 2016.
This take was also expressed by economist Michael Hudson, who recently noted that U.S. access to oil, dollarization and U.S. military strategy are intricately interwoven and that Trump’s recent Iraq policy is intended “to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control of the region’s oil reserves,” and, as Hudson says, “to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (ISIS, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the U.S. dollar.”
Hudson further asserts that it was Qassem Soleimani’s efforts to promote Iraq’s oil independence at the expense of U.S. imperial ambitions that served one of the key motives behind his assassination.
“America opposed General Suleimani above all because he was fighting against ISIS and other U.S.-backed terrorists in their attempt to break up Syria and replace Assad’s regime with a set of U.S.-compliant local leaders – the old British “divide and conquer” ploy. On occasion, Suleimani had cooperated with U.S. troops in fighting ISIS groups that got “out of line” meaning the U.S. party line. But every indication is that he was in Iraq to work with that government seeking to regain control of the oil fields that President Trump has bragged so loudly about grabbing. (emphasis added)”
Hudson adds that “…U.S. neocons feared Suleimani’s plan to help Iraq assert control of its oil and withstand the terrorist attacks supported by U.S. and Saudi’s on Iraq. That is what made his assassination an immediate drive.”
While other factors — such as pressure from U.S. allies such as Israel — also played a factor in the decision to kill Soleimani, the decision to assassinate him on Iraqi soil just hours before he was set to meet with Abdul-Mahdi in a diplomatic role suggests that the underlying tensions caused by Iraq’s push for oil independence and its oil deal with China did play a factor in the timing of his assassination. It also served as a threat to Abdul-Mahdi, who has claimed that the U.S. threatened to kill both him and his defense minister just weeks prior over tensions directly related to the push for independence of Iraq’s oil sector from the U.S.
It appears that the ever-present role of the petrodollar in guiding U.S. policy in the Middle East remains unchanged. The petrodollar has long been a driving factor behind the U.S.’ policy towards Iraq specifically, as one of the key triggers for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s decision to sell Iraqi oil in Euros opposed to dollars beginning in the year 2000. Just weeks before the invasion began, Hussein boasted that Iraq’s Euro-based oil revenue account was earning a higher interest rate than it would have been if it had continued to sell its oil in dollars, an apparent signal to other oil exporters that the petrodollar system was only really benefiting the United States at their own expense.
Beyond current efforts to stave off Iraq’s oil independence and keep its oil trade aligned with the U.S., the fact that the U.S. is now seeking to limit China’s ever-growing role in Iraq’s oil sector is also directly related to China’s publicly known efforts to create its own direct competitor to the petrodollar, the petroyuan.
Since 2017, China has made its plans for the petroyuan — a direct competitor to the petrodollar — no secret, particularly after China eclipsed the U.S. as the world’s largest importer of oil. As CNBC noted at the time:
“The new strategy is to enlist the energy markets’ help: Beijing may introduce a new way to price oil in coming months — but unlike the contracts based on the U.S. dollar that currently dominate global markets, this benchmark would use China’s own currency. If there’s widespread adoption, as the Chinese hope, then that will mark a step toward challenging the greenback’s status as the world’s most powerful currency….The plan is to price oil in yuan using a gold-backed futures contract in Shanghai, but the road will be long and arduous.”
If the U.S. continues on its current path and pushes Iraq further into the arms of China and other U.S. rival states, it goes without saying that Iraq — now a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — may soon favor a petroyuan system over a petrodollar system, particularly as the current U.S. administration threatens to hold Iraq’s central bank account hostage for pursuing policies Washington finds unfavorable.
It could also explain why President Trump is so concerned about China’s growing foothold in Iraq, since it risks causing not only the end of the U.S. military hegemony in the country but could also lead to major trouble for the petrodollar system and the U.S.’ position as a global financial power. Trump’s policy aimed at stopping China and Iraq’s growing ties is clearly having the opposite effect, showing that this administration’s “gangster diplomacy” only serves to make the alternatives offered by countries like China and Russia all the more attractive. 16
[Bold highlights as in the original]
Click here to read Whitney Webb’s full article published on January 17th.
Although the Trump administration vastly escalated the counter-terrorism war in Yemen, the war began under President Obama. Over his entire presidency, President Bush had conducted only a single strike in Yemen in 2002.
8 From an article entitled “UK’s special forces set for new Russia mission” written by Mark Urban, published in BBC news on June 13, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48624982
9 From a report by Tass entitled “Russian embassy alarmed by London’s plans to shift focus of UK special forces” published on June 15, 2019. https://tass.com/world/1063933
The Bilderberg Meeting is a forum for informal discussions about major issues. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor any other participant may be revealed.
Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity, and hence are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions.
As declassified U.S. documents show, such pre-delegation existed beginning in 1956 when then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized U.S. air defenses to use nuclear weapons to defend against Soviet bomber forces in the event of an attack. This was further solidified with Eisenhower approving pre-delegation instructions for the use of nuclear weapons in 1959. Some form of nuclear pre-delegation existed at least until the end of the 1980s, as Bruce G. Blair has shown.
Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level nuclear war planner in the 1960s, notes in The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner that during the Cold War years, pre-delegation was seen as an integral part in the nuclear arms race with the Soviets for a simple reason: Its absence would undermine nuclear deterrence. Ellsberg writes: “The theatrical device represented by the president’s moment-by-moment day-and-night access to the ‘football’, with its supposedly unique authorization codes, has always been that: theater — essentially a hoax.”
This is the first of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ to this year’s Bilderberg conference discussed in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
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Smoke on the water
We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile, we didn’t have much time
Is it any exaggeration to say that western civilization is in the midst of an existential crisis? No longer tethered by the old sturdy belief in post-Enlightenment progress, at best we seem to be drifting aimlessly, and at worst, lost at sea and beginning to take on water.
Amongst the young especially, a common view has developed that we are living through a uniquely historical moment. The quickening sense that unless the current socioeconomic course can be abruptly diverted, not just the human species, but the biosphere as a whole, will be dashed to pieces as together we plunge into a vortex of our own making. Some prospect of an environmental catastrophe on a truly planetary scale is now top of many people’s concerns, and understandably therefore, a commensurately international environmental resistance movement has been actuated. A few are even asking whether we need a global dictatorship to solve the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. Of course, we should always careful what we wish for!
The gross flaws inherent in our prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy present us with a still more immediate and thus more daunting threat. Vast disparities of wealth and income have been rupturing our societies as the impact of perpetual “austerity” impoverishes millions and spreads untold misery. Inequalities that have lain partially dormant during the decade since the last crash are now beginning to feed an upcoming breed of far-right demagogues and more overt fascists. But the political centre cannot hold for a reason: by adopting right-wing economic policies, it too became virulently extreme. In fact, the measures that brought us to a crisis point remain wholly endorsed by today’s extreme “centrists” perhaps best exemplified by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Finally, a less spoken-of, if occasionally numbing dread, is felt somewhere in the back of all our minds, as Nato powers drag the world unsteadily into the era of a new Cold War and we once again glimpse the unfathomable absurdity of nuclear obliteration. Oddly, this time around, the unspeakable apparitions of apocalyptic doom seen glinting occasionally across Mike Pompeo’s sociopathic gaze, or else blurted spasmodically in the nocturnal delirium of Trump’s presidency-by-Twitter, seldom shock us because we have all but forgotten how to be more seriously afraid. Our conscious minds are so thoroughly distracted whether by the material consumerism of our nonstop Black Friday (in societies that know nothing about thanksgiving) or the more ethereal dopamine rewards of social media, whilst abandoned and denied, yet still lurking unconscious, is a kind of clammy white vertigo of impossible horrors.
On September 28th, Chris Hedges spoke on his RT show “On Contact” with fellow journalist Stephen Kinzer about efforts by Riyadh and Washington to cripple Iran’s economy, inevitably putting Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies and Washington on a collision course with the Islamic republic that could end in war:
When Bush and Blair were about to deliver their “shock and awe” bloodbath to capture the non-existent weapons of mass destruction operated by Saddam, in London alone two million gathered on the streets to shout truth to power. The antiwar message was loud and clear. How many will gather with placards if Trump and Johnson now decide to send our forces to bring down Iran? The marginalisation of the antiwar movement very much in the midst of the 21st Century’s war without end, with its frontline stretching through the Middle East, Central Asia and more insidiously spreading across Africa, is another disturbing trend.
For these and other reasons, the call for sweeping changes is on the rise in many quarters, and who can deny that western civilisation is in need of swift and sweeping transformation? The old capitalist system is dying, and the elites, the establishment, the globalists (alternative labels for the class of oligarchs who carelessly own and exploit more than half the planet and its “resources”) understand this better than anyone. After all, potentially at least, they stand to lose most in its demise. As the Guardian’s token Bilderberg correspondent Charlie Skelton observed sardonically reporting from this year’s conference in Montreux:
A crisis is looming for Bilderberg, and not merely because of the rise in anti-globalization movements and a creeping loss of faith in the EU project. It’s a crisis of leadership. With the Brexit, Frexit, Grexit and even Polexit dominoes threatening to fall, Bilderberg needs to gird its loins for the long haul if it wants the transatlantic alliance to thrive and its beloved EU to survive. But who’s going to be doing the girding?
The problem Bilderberg faces is a loss of quality, of intellectual backbone. With David Rockefeller tucked away since 2017 in his cryogenic pod, and Henry Kissinger knocking on hell’s door, you realize that Bilderberg is facing a generational crisis. You might not like or admire Henry Kissinger, you might want him strung up for war crimes, but you have to admit he’s a heavyweight statesman and historian. He’s a psychopath with vision. Where will Bilderberg find the serious ideologues to lead them into the 2020s? 2
Click here to read Skelton’s full article published by Newsweek.
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Non-violent totalitarianism
“By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.” — Aldous Huxley 3
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Born in Boston in 1910, Carroll Quigley read history at Harvard University, afterwards going on to teach history, first at Princeton, before returning to Harvard to lecture in Government, History and Politics. Later again, he moved to Georgetown University, where he became one of its most eminent professors. 4 But there were also other strings to Quigley’s prodigious bow.
Quigley had worked for the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration. He became a consultant for the Navy, advising on the development of weapons systems. He had even advised the Smithsonian Institution on the layout of their Museum of Science and Technology.
An exceptional polymath, Quigley was respected and influential. Bill Clinton famously singled him out for special mention during his acceptance speech to the 1992 Democratic National Convention, saying:
“As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest Nation in history because our people had always believed in two things – that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so.” 5
In 1966, Quigley wrote a remarkable if little known book. Entitled Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time, it recounts the central role played by Cecil Rhodes, English imperialist and founder of the De Beers diamond company (which had at the time a virtual monopoly in the diamond mining industry) and the societies and associations established by Rhodes – the so-called Round Table Groups – extending influence and bringing to fruition his and others’ ambitions for expanding the British Empire. 6
“The Round Table Groups”, Quigley explains, “were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups whose original purpose was to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes.” 7 To what political ends? Quigley is quite clear: irrespective of what the John Birch Society afterwards claimed, this was very far from a communist plot:
“…there is no evidence of which I am aware of any explicit plot or conspiracy to direct American policy in a direction favorable either to the Soviet Union or to international Communism.” 8 In fact, Quigley unequivocally dismisses all theories of a communist conspiracy as a “Radical Right fairytale”; before he goes on to make his more important and eye-opening assertion:
“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.” 9
The part of this network which Quigley says he had the greatest access to was the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Founded in 1921, as “a nonpartisan and independent membership organization”, Quigley tells us that it was actually set up as “a front for J.P. Morgan and Company in association with then very small American Round Table Group”, and that by 1928, “the Council on Foreign Relations was dominated by the associates of the Morgan bank.” 10 Indeed, Quigley later informs us that funds for all these Round Table activities came primarily from Cecil Rhodes himself, alongside J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families and associates of bankers Lazard Brothers and Morgan, Grenfell and Company. Apparently their design was to be a grand one:
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland 11, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” 12
A world controlled by international banking interests – who would have thought so? A world of “cooperative politicians” coerced to do their bidding by offers of “subsequent economic rewards in the business world” – oh, come on now… is there even a shred of evidence?
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Bilderberg is a key part of an extensive network of loosely affiliated private groups, institutes, ‘think tanks’ and other organisations that include, in descending order of secrecy, the Trilateral Commission, the US Council on Foreign Relations, its UK cousin the Royal Institute of International Affairs (better known as Chatham House), and not forgetting the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Bilderberg is arguably the most prestigious and is certainly the most “private” of all these.
It is the place (so far as we know) where our own class of oligarchs, those we might usefully distinguish as Atlanticists (plutocrats in the Anglo-American sphere and those who serve them), meet annually to discuss business and to make arrangements with their political go-betweens. This is all done in strict adherence to Chatham House Rules which means we can never know for sure who said what to whom, and thus importantly, who was receiving instructions and who was giving them. We do however know that Bilderberg isn’t managed according to egalitarian principles, and no great leap of imagination is needed to recognise the entrenched internal hierarchy with its top-down steering committee to decide the agenda, topped again – we learn this year – by a managerial board: in effect this is Bilderberg Inc. Quelle surprise.
sorry it's out of focus, but this is a typical #Bilderberg huddle: James Ellis, a director of the world's biggest arms company, Lockheed Martin + Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair + Richard Gnodde, chair of Goldman Sachs International. They're heading here > https://t.co/0sDPvagpCKpic.twitter.com/jixU2yQ6Pf
There are many reasons why Bilderberg operates in darkness, but the semi-official one is that the delegates hide out to avoid the prying gaze of public attention, i.e., they don’t want to have the likes of us looking over their shoulders when they are in the process of trying to run things. In fact this repeated assertion is hardly worthy of doubting. That ‘the great and the good’ of Bilderberg are the best and most worthy leaders is perfectly self-evident – how else did they rise to such prominence if not because of their exceptional calibre? It follows as a matter of course that they eschew, as they see it, the incompetent meddling of the public.
Its (reliably incomplete) list of participants also provides insight into Bilderberg’s political leanings and this year was interesting not just for inviting representatives from both sides of the mainstream political aisle (the usual practice in fact), but with the more surprising appearance of a representative for the Greens: the attendance of Dutch MP Kathalijne Buitenweg was indeed a novelty.
I have highlighted this bringing into the fold of a Green MP because it is revealing. Not only should it challenge a widely held opinion that the greens are inherently anti-establishment, but it also shines light on the peculiar nature of Bilderberg, which aims always to cover all available political bases, and thus perennially invites a mix of individuals feigning to be conservatives and progressives when Bilderberg is by its peculiar nature neither conservative nor progressive, but a phoney amalgam – so we need another word: I tentatively propose “congressive”.
I need to expand on this point a little. Bilderberg is not strictly conservative due to its efforts to keep ahead of the curve, proactively (a horrible word too, but an equally appropriate one) guiding and railroading future advancements under its broad remit to concentrate and centralise existing power. It is this forward-looking, and in some respects pioneering outlook – which is seldom if ever progressive in any recognisably leftist sense – that helps to preserve the status quo; a feature of Bilderberg that is readily apparent once we consider their annual agenda, and especially this year’s list of ‘key topics’. Here’s my own schematically enhanced version:
Notice first how many of the listed items completely transcend the everyday concerns of the industrialists, defence contractors, financiers and bankers, heads of intelligence, and military top brass who make up its main contingent.
Irish finance minister Paschal Donohoe (@Paschald) trying to keep a low profile in a swamp of investors & private equity advisors at #Bilderberg 2019. Locked away for 3 days with dozens of bankers, investors, lobbyists, industry CEOs & private financiers. #transparency#lobbyingpic.twitter.com/KjcJBY6ea9
Why are they even discussing “the ethics of artificial intelligence” or “the importance of space”? In fact, in both cases another cursory glance down the list of participants elucidates one of the likely reasons…
a senior tech/#AI expert at the DoD chatting w/ the head of giant French arms company Thales. Patrice Caine also a board member of lobby group ASD "the voice of European Aeronautics, Space, Defence and Security Industries". Cf this from last yr https://t.co/esFf0U2uIy#Bilderbergpic.twitter.com/QraepBqqjB
That’s Matthew Daniels, Technical Director for Machine Learning and AI Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering at US Department of Defense having a good old natter with Patrice Caine, Chairman and CEO of Thales Group, the French multinational that designs and builds electrical systems and provides services for aerospace, defence and security.
And here’s Admiral (Ret) James Ellis, former Commander of US Strategic Command and current Director of Lockheed Martin leading the way for Jānis Sārts, the Director of NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. Can you feel the breeze from those revolving doors?
the private & public sector are almost indistinguishable at #Bilderberg. Here's a snapshot of the military industrial complex™ ➜ James Ellis, a director of Lockheed Martin, ex-Commander, US Strategic Command + Jānis Sārts, director of the new #NATO StratCom Centre of Excellence pic.twitter.com/H0cSgFk6mM
And there is a second reason to welcome the Greens into the Bilderberg fold. It is arguably the most brilliant ruse of the ruling class: the ability to maintain the illusion of electoral free choice. A ploy I first understood during a spell I spent in retailing: that expanding product lines reliably boosts overall sales and turnover. The same is true when it comes to political choice: by giving the impression of a greater variety of political alternatives, public interest is maintained and electoral turnout is bolstered, all of which serves to maintain the semblance of democracy.
But it is a difficult process, of course, to manufacture political alternatives out of whole cloth. Successful newcomers such as Macron’s neoliberal relaunch under the Vichyesque banner of En Marche! tend to be the exceptions – incidentally, Macron attended Bilderberg in 2014 and became President of France in 2017 (one of many Bilderberg success stories!).
Other comparative newcomers include the quick-to-sell-out Syriza coalition in Greece; Spain’s more honourable leftist alternative Podemos; and its Machiavellian centre-right adversary Ciudadanos (Citizens), whose leader Inés Arrimadas joined President of mainstream conservatives Partido Popular, Pablo Casado, at this year’s Bilderberg conference.
Italy’s noxious, if more enigmatic, Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement); and Nigel Farage’s opportunistic Brexit Party are also notable exceptions to the rule. And of all these new political players, Ciudadanos and En Marche! are unusual in that they receive annual invitations to Bilderberg. 13
Contrast these few successes with the more typical death spiral perhaps best epitomised by already defunct wannabe centrists Change UK and it becomes clear how prefabricated parties only seldom succeed. Instead, the promotion of special interests is more reliably achieved through the capture of established political parties, as well as the infiltration of grassroots movements.
In Britain for instance, takeover of the Labour Party was negotiated by Peter Mandelson (a Bilderberg grandee), its rebranding achieved under Neil Kinnock’s leadership, and the hijacking thereafter concluded under Blair (another Bilderberg attendee). Corbyn’s attempt to undo this process is hampered at every step by the same Blairites who having seized control of the party machinery, remain ensconced at all levels beyond the rank and file of ordinary membership. Here is Labour peer, Lord Adonis, the consummate Blairite, speaking live on an LBC radio phone-in last September, encouraging the British public not to vote Labour:
And here is Lord Adonis enjoying his minibreak in Montreux:
bumped into Lord Adonis this morning outside #Bilderberg. He grimly refused to return my "good morning" with even a nod. Perhaps he thinks nodding hello breaks Chatham House Rules. He looked a bit glum for such a lovely morning. I hope his session on #Brexit didn't go too badly. pic.twitter.com/4LbEsbUmJa
Outstanding amongst this year’s crop of nominally leftist progressives is Stacey Abrams, a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who as then (at the time of Bilderberg) was being touted to run as a Democrat presidential candidate in 2020. 14 Mary Kay Henry, the International President of Service Employees International Union, was another other of this year’s cohort who must account for her glaring conflict of interests, about which she instead prefers to remain tight-lipped [from 15:15 mins]:
So where is this leading? Democracy is always a moveable term. On the one hand it has become more or less synonymous with mere electoral procedure, and on the other, it is held up as a shining western standard, especially so when it comes to imposing American-led versions of it throughout the world. American democracy – well, that’s one word in case you didn’t know!
Trojan Liberty by Anthony Freda
Thus democracy as we authorise it, can also be gauged negatively. Any government acting against the interests of western – specifically US foreign policy – will be singled out and rebranded “a regime” irrespective of the transparency and rigour of its electoral procedures. These days the West alone is sanctioned to decide on who is and isn’t “a dictator”. Yet even when we judge in accordance with its own definition of the word, the United States provides military assistance to more than 70% of the world’s dictatorships – what better measure of double standards and flagrant hypocrisy?
Empire of Chaos – Liberty Bomb by Anthony Freda
In short, whether the determination of democracy is applied to foreign or domestic governments there is never recourse to the neat definition proffered in the Gettysburg Address: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Why? Because set against this measureable benchmark of popular sovereignty, there never has been true democracy, whether in America or elsewhere. No government has ever served the common interests of the people. As French democratic socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon reminded us in a recent interview:
“[T]he French Socialist Jean Jaurès once said, the only question posed in politics is that of the people’s sovereignty. All the rest depends of that, including the question of the distribution of wealth, for this is a matter of reasserting democracy.” 15
Indeed, if we are to take Lincoln’s words seriously and judge historically, there have only ever been better or worse regimes that asymptotically approach or recede from his laudable ideal of true democracy.
Bilderberg is a thoroughly anti-democratic entity, of course, whose operation seeks to gnaw away at structures and institutions that serve true democratic interests. It ought to go entirely without saying that Bilderberg doesn’t gather in tight secrecy to serve the public good, so why am I saying it again? Because the media owners, newspaper editors and other senior staff, whose crucial role ought to hold corporations, institutions and politicians to democratic account, have been instead lodged inside Bilderberg for decades and have chosen to function as its willing agents.
Perhaps the most lurid example of the cronyism at this year’s meeting was the surprise appearance (to some) of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner’s appointment to Trump’s cabinet is an instant measure of how undemocratic US politics has become:
interesting to watch how Jared Kushner spots the cameras across the other side of the harbour, then puts on a dreamy smile, as if he's in a state of grace, which he holds for the rest of the walk to the steamboat. He'll be a politician yet! (Full story: https://t.co/0sDPvagpCK) pic.twitter.com/1R0EaBlpNW
Today the tide of democracy is receding again and as it recedes so too do our individual freedoms. Restrictions on free speech and free assembly were first tightened by the terrorism bills introduced after 9/11, but the chilling effect of total surveillance is more insidious, as is the clampdown on alternative voices by virtue of deplatforming, shadow bans, and algorithmic discrimination, all of which is carried out by the tech giants who dominate proceedings at Bilderberg.
"Les techs sont en force" reports Swiss paper 24heures. Here at #Bilderberg in Montreux are 2 #Microsoft board members, Satya Nadella (the CEO) & Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) + Eric Schmidt (Alphabet), Peter Thiel (Facebook), Alex Karp (Palantir) + #AI experts & investors pic.twitter.com/DWJ27kfvQE
James Corbett on how tech giants like Google envision the search engine of the future:
The steady militarisation of policing provides a further means for quelling popular resistance, as evidenced by the brutal suppression of the French Gilets Jaunes movement (read more here).
Free Speech Zone by Anthony Freda
At another level, all democracies are highly vulnerable to infiltration within existing parties and through the hollowing out of extant political institutions; a process nearing its completion in America and ongoing throughout Western Europe. In all instances, of course, our political systems have managed to retain the outward appearance of democracies. In other ways too, they satisfy the democratic duck test: first and foremost, they still quack like democracies, and are belligerent in quacking that this is the only way to be a democracy. Meanwhile, the power to take decisions that is ostensibly placed in the hands of our elected representatives, shifts incrementally to the technocrats – the appointed experts. This is the preferred end game for the bigwigs at Bilderberg.
In the interim, and faced with a genuine crisis at least in terms of western confidence, Bilderberg, which exists and operates solely to promote the interests of established structures of privilege and power, is now hunkered down to such a degree that it has very nearly disappeared from sight again. For their part, the media, which is reliably obedient to the same insider interests, have purposefully let it disappear.
Image based on a work by Anthony Freda called Presstitute
This year’s location was announced at the eleventh hour thanks to the charade of their annual “press release”: a nod to transparency since they already know the press has no interest whatsoever in reading and reporting on it. And top of this year’s ‘key topics’ (attached to the same press release) was how a system that serves their own plutocratic agenda can survive, or, put in the language of Bilderberg, how to maintain “a stable strategic order”. When it comes to confessing their priorities, could they be any more frank with us?
the top item of the #Bilderberg agenda — "A Stable Strategic Order" — is about the most Bilderbergian phrase you could imagine. I can hear it being growled at the head of NATO by Henry Kissinger, while the King of Holland comes back from the bar with another round of drinks. pic.twitter.com/JJnAxFw8aX
1 Opening lyrics to the famous track “Smoke on the water”. The inspiration for the song was a fire inside a casino that the band had witnessed across the water of Lake Geneva. Here ‘mobile’ actually refers to a type of recording studio although given today’s context seems to fittingly allude to more contemporary methods of audiovisual recording.
“In 1891, Rhodes organized a secret society with members in a “Circle of Initiates” and an outer circle known as the “Association of Helpers” later organized as the Round Table organization… In 1909-1913, they organized semi-secret groups know as Round Table Groups in the chief British dependencies and the United States. In 1919, they founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and the United States where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations. After 1925, the Institute of Pacific Relations was set up in twelve Pacific area countries.”
Extract taken from Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time written by Carroll Quigley, The Macmillan Company, 1966, pp131-2.
11 “The Bank for International Settlements was established in 1930. It is the world’s oldest international financial institution and remains the principal centre for international central bank cooperation.” taken from current BIS website.
13 In 2018 (Turin) then-President of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera Díaz, (ESP) joined Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Sáenz de Santamaría, Soraya of Partido Popular. Rivera Díaz also attended in 2017 (Chantilly) this time alongside then-Minister of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, Luis de Guindos (Partido Popular), soon after appointed Vice President of the European Central Bank. In 2016 (Dresden), Bilderberg welcomed Luis Garicano, Professor of Economics, LSE and Senior Advisor to Ciudadanos.
Stacey Abrams announced on Tuesday that she would not run for Senate in 2020, denying Democrats their favored recruit for the race in Georgia. She did not say if she planned to run for president, which she has also been considering doing.
15 From an interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon conducted by David Broder for The Tribune, published under the title: “Everyone should know – I am very dangerous”. [I am currently unable to find an upload of this piece]
This year’s Bilderberg Meeting is taking place from May 30th – June 2nd 2019 at the Fairmont Montreux Palace in Montreux, Switzerland.
24heures has interview w/ #Bilderberg steering committee member André Kudelski: mentions that Dutch PM Mark Rutte is attending the summit, plus French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire & US Sec. of State, Mike Pompeo. https://t.co/rqTrZ4il1y Geneva, Switzerland, May 30 – June 2.
In an unlikely side excursion, [Mike] Pompeo also will swing by an exclusive meeting in Montreux, where royalty, government officials and business executives are gathering to discuss U.S.-European issues in sessions so secretive that participants must vow never to divulge who says what.
This is according to a report published in yesterday’s Washington Post, which continues:
At some point, he will head to the town of Montreux at the foot of the Alps, where the exclusive Bilderberg Meeting will already be underway. A State Department official confirmed Pompeo will attend briefly to make a few remarks and answer questions. 1
The same article under the hush-hush heading, “Pompeo to discuss Iran in Europe and make a side trip to a secretive conference in the Alps”, adds that:
The clandestine nature of the group has led to a raft of conspiracy theories that the group is plotting a new world order. But the group publicly releases a list of participants and the general agenda.
This is true, of course, although curiously US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo does not appear on the (reliably incomplete) list of attendees as anyone who actually bothers to follow the link will immediately realise.
it'd be a bit odd that they'd reference Pompeo at all if Kudelski didn't mention him… and with Kushner coming…? I guess we'll see. (Actually, we probably won't see, the privacy curtain is already up…) https://t.co/cYszxIU9sj
The motto of The Washington Post is “democracy dies in darkness” which obviously better fits the Bilderberg Group itself. Because as the mainstream media wilfully disregards, or else glosses over, or alternatively, as here, pussyfoots its opinions about (to quote again) this “clandestine” and “exclusive meeting… where royalty, government officials and business executives are gathering to discuss U.S.-European issues in sessions so secretive that participants must vow never to divulge who says what”, such a lack of basic journalistic integrity serves only to plunge democracy in greater darkness. In fact, the biggest, blackest joke is that Bilderberg issues any press release at all. Who is it for? Mainstream reporters, including the Washington Post’s own Megan McArdle, are on the inside already and it is certain not a peep will be heard from any of them.
Click here to read the full Washington Post article.
Other “journalists” who will also not be reporting from this year’s Bilderberg are regular attendees John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg LP; Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist; and Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times. Newcomers include David E. Sanger, National Security Correspondent, The New York Times; Isabel Albers, Editorial Director of Belgian business newspaper, De Tijd / L’Echo; Stefano Feltri, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano; Dominique Nora, Managing Editor of weekly news magazine L’Obs; Claire McCaskill, former Senator and current political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News; and Polish news anchor, Jolanta Pienkowska.
Such a tight lid has been kept on preparations that in contrast to last year, and a few earlier occasions, no information regarding dates or location leaked in advance. Even clues to the chosen country have remained an extremely closely guarded secret. News that the conference was booked into the Fairmont Montreux Palace was eventually reported by Swiss news outlet 24 heures2, a publication owned by Tamedia Group whose chairman Pietro Supino is – perhaps unsurprisingly – a participant this year, as he was in 2012 when Bilderberg met in Chantilly, Virginia.
There are a quite number of standout names on this year’s guest list and the one that jumps right off the page is Trump’s son-in-law and Senior Advisor to the President, Jared Kushner. Only those gullible enough to put faith in any billionare man-of-the-people, or the still more deluded QAnon adherents, can fail to join the dots.
I wonder if Kushner's going to be coming to #Bilderberg tomorrow on Air Force One…? It'd be a bit showy, but he might not be able to resist. And if Pompeo's coming (?) he can use him as cover ➜ https://t.co/AuMJrc1A7Fpic.twitter.com/KzYMZaDMXo
Another notable political figure is Stacey Abrams, a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), she is touted to run as Democrat presidential candidate in 2020 3.
the top item of the #Bilderberg agenda — "A Stable Strategic Order" — is about the most Bilderbergian phrase you could imagine. I can hear it being growled at the head of NATO by Henry Kissinger, while the King of Holland comes back from the bar with another round of drinks. pic.twitter.com/JJnAxFw8aX
Amongst other familiar faces there is Bilderberg grandee and notorious war criminal, Henry Kissinger; co-founder of global investment firm KKR & Co, Henry R. Kravis. Kravis is joined by his right-hand man and former CIA Director, General (rtd) David Petraeus, who is Chairman of KKR Global Institute, and by wife Marie-Josée who happens to sit on the board of Bilderberg and is also President of American Friends of Bilderberg Inc.
Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Michael O’Leary and Alex Karp are back again too, as is Niall Ferguson, to take up seats alongside compadres Tim Garton Ash, Tim Snyder, the King of the Netherlands and the President of Switzerland, Ulrich “Ueli” Maurer!
nothing to see here, just the King & Prime Minister of the Netherlands arriving at #Bilderberg to meet with the heads of #NATO, Davos, the Bank of England, HSBC, Microsoft, AXA, Total, Thales, Santander, the German defence minister, the Irish finance minister & the PM of Estonia. pic.twitter.com/Dv3JOcuhr9
Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, makes his traditional appearance. There is also Jeremy Fleming, former Deputy Director-General of MI5, and current Director of GCHQ, mixing with Lars Findsen, who is Director of Danish Defence Intelligence Service. Both will no doubt find plenty to share with former Chief of MI6 John Sawers, a regular Bilderberg attendee and member of the Steering Committee as well as Senior Associate Fellow of RUSI.
Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, also makes a return, as does former US Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, the Co-Chairman Emeritus of the CFR. Germany’s Minister of Defence, Ursula von der Leyen is another regular, as is Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.
good to see Ursula von der Leyen, Germany's Minster of Defence, making a return visit to #Bilderberg. She's been tipped to replace Jens Stoltenberg as head of #NATO (Jens is also in Montreux this year). We saw Ursula in Turin last June… pic.twitter.com/1lBCHOm3O5
This year they are joined by President of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende; Deputy Secretary-General of OECD, Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen; and Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.
Other politicians include:
from Germany, Linda Teuteberg, General Secretary of Free Democratic Party;
from France, Minister of Finance, Bruno Le Maire;
from Spain, Pablo Casado, President of Partido Popular; and Inés Arrimadas, Party Leader of Ciudadanos;
from Portugal, Mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina; and former Prime Minister of Portugal and 11th President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, who is currently the Chairman of Goldman Sachs International;
from Italy, former Prime Minister (Feb 2014 — Dec 2016), Matteo Renzi, who became a member of the Italian Senate in March 2018;
from Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, Leader of the Moderate Party;
from Poland, Mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski; and Radosław Sikorski, former Minister of Foreign Affairs who served in Donald Tusk’s cabinet, and is married to Anne Applebaum;
from the Netherlands, Green Party MP, Kathalijne Buitenweg;
from Turkey, Ahmet Ünal Ceviköz, MP of the Republican People’s Party (CHP);
And finally from UK there is Lords Adonis spending time with Conservative Member of Parliament for Tonbridge and Malling, Tom Tugendhat, who as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee proclaimed the Salisbury attack was “if not an act of war … certainly a warlike act…” 4
here's Andrew Adonis arriving at #Bilderberg 2019 in Switzerland. #Brexit is on the agenda, and Baron Adonis of Remainia will find plenty of sympathetic ears at the Montreux Palace Hotel. pic.twitter.com/cjAgXqWkEX
Due to this year’s very late announcement, I have not had time to put together anything more than this introductory piece for which I am constrained to focus on the published list of participants and Bilderberg’s other ritual tease that takes the form of its “key topics for discussion” – all of which was uploaded on the official website with only 48 hours to go.
I hope to produce a more extended review of events – something I have done for each and every meeting since I first started writing the blog in 2011 – as and when news trickles out courtesy of a handful of dedicated reporters who are now doorstepping the conference and who can expect to face the usual harassment by private security and the intimidation of the local police. This year is no exception:
As always, I encourage whoever is able to get along to join in with protests, just as I did when, in 2013, Bilderberg hid behind the high and distant fences at Watford.
Charlie Skelton and the late Michael Meacher (Labour MP) at the Bilderberg protests in Watford addressing the crowds on Saturday 8th June 2013:
No need to try to book a room at the Fairmont Montreux Palace. It is complete. Required by the Bilderberg Conference, a private summit that will bring together 130 high-level participants.
Stacey Abrams announced on Tuesday that she would not run for Senate in 2020, denying Democrats their favored recruit for the race in Georgia. She did not say if she planned to run for president, which she has also been considering doing.
Do you remember these harrowing scenes shot inside a hospital in Douma from early April last year?
The footage of an alleged chemical attack is genuinely distressing. The children who have queued up to receive treatment are clearly suffering, and many have terrified looks in their eyes. However, within hours and with the actual arrival of journalists on the ground, the first reports differed markedly from claims presented in this video footage.
They did not find evidence to corroborate the story that poison gas had been released. Instead, they spoke to eyewitnesses who described the aftermath of conventional airstrikes, some of whom also talked about smoke and dust inhalation. (Here are extracts of these on-the-ground reports that I reposted at the time.)
“What you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning,” Dr Assim Rahaibani, an eyewitness working in the clinic, told Robert Fisk of The Independent. The same doctor also explained how although the patients were suffering from smoke and dust inhalation, “someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other.” 1 This story was later corroborated by the eyewitness testimony of others including 11-year-old Hassan Diab (one of the children seen in the video) and by members of the hospital staff. 2
In short, what the video shows is real in one sense, but in another way this is a manufactured panic that was staged, repackaged and distributed all by the White Helmets group. In different circumstances, the footage would be called fake news because it is.
*
The tweet above was written by BBC Syria producer, Riam Dalati, and it first came to light in February before being swiftly deleted. “After almost 6 months of investigations”, Dalati claims, “I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.”
Continuing in another tweet:
Truth is James Harkin got the basics right in terms of Douma’s “propaganda” value. The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise. However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect.
BBC producer Riam Dalati confirms Douma Sarin attack was staged Propaganda by Islamist rebel group Jaysh Al-Islam. This Propaganda led to US cruise missiles attack on Damascus, #Syria For people who couldn’t see his protected tweets 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/Bxsp1YnaCs
I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist. They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation. In fact, one of the 3 or 4 people filming the scene was Dr. Abu Bakr Hanan, a “brute and shifty” doctor affiliated with Jaysh Al-Islam. The narrative was that “there weren’t enough drs” but here is one filming and not taking part of the rescue efforts. Will keep the rest for later.
As Zerohedge reported at the time:
Interestingly, the BBC’s Dalati had actually first hinted he knew that elements surrounding the Douma attack had been staged a mere days after the incident.
In a now deleted April 11, 2018 tweet, he had stated: “Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative.”
Thus far mainstream networks have not picked up on this latest bombshell admission from the BBC producer, but it will be interesting to see if there’s any formal response from the BBC based on the Russian foreign ministry’s request. 3
Click here to read the full report entitled “BBC Producer’s Syria Bombshell: Douma ‘Gas Attack’ Footage ‘Was Staged’” written by Tyler Durden.
*
More recently, a suppressed OPCW report was made public by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. The following extracts are drawn from an excellent overview put together by Kit Knightly and published at Off-Guardian:
The report, signed by Ian Henderson (an investigative team leader for the OPCW), is an analysis of the two key locations which were used as evidence of the Syrian government launching a chemical attack using chlorine gas in Douma, last year.
These locations, referred to as Location 2 and Location 4 respectively, were made famous by these photographs:
Location 2: “The Patio”
Location 4: “The Bed”
The photographs, “analysed” in depth by Bellingcat and other establishment mouthpieces, were claimed as the “smoking gun”, proof of the Assad’s guilt. However, the OPCW fact-finding mission appears to see things rather differently.
The report is fifteen pages long, detailed and thorough, but the most important paragraph is saved for the end (emphasis ours):
“In summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being dropped.”
So there you have it, an apparently genuine OPCW report (kept from the public for as yet unclear reasons), which appears to support the prevailing view of the alt-news community: Douma was staged.
Click here to read the full article entitled “Leaked Report: Douma ‘Chemical Attack’ Likely Staged” written by Kit Knightly.
*
The corporate media has so far paid little attention to the leaked OPCW document. This can be justified, of course, if as the OPCW contend:
“the individual mentioned in the document has never been a member of the FFM [OPCW Fact-Finding Mission]”
However, the provenance of the document was in fact established by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media prior to publicly releasing it. As they explain:
The report is signed by Ian Henderson, who is listed as one of the first P-5 level inspection team leaders trained at OPCW in a report dated 1998. We have confirmed that as the engineering expert on the FFM, Henderson was assigned to lead the investigation of the cylinders and alleged impact sites at Locations 2 and 4. We understand that “TM” in the handwritten annotation denotes Team Members of the FFM.
Moreover:
The engineering sub-team could not have been carrying out studies in Douma at Locations 2 and 4 unless they had been notified by OPCW to the Syrian National Authority (the body that oversees compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention) as FFM inspectors: it is unlikely that Henderson arrived on a tourist visa.
And lastly:
The sub-team report refers to external collaborators and consultants: we understand that this included two European universities. This external collaboration on such a sensitive matter could not have gone ahead unless it had been authorised: otherwise Henderson would have been dismissed instantly for breach of confidentiality. We can therefore be confident that the preparation of the report had received the necessary authorisation within OPCW. What happened after the report was written is another matter. 5
Click here to read more from the briefing notes provided by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media.
One mainstream journalist who did pick up and report on news of the leak is Peter Hitchens:
[A]s I said in my March 9th article ‘On the subject of the cylinders it [the OPCW’s final report] says physical evidence was ‘consistent’ with the view that the cylinders had passed through the concrete roof of the building in which they were found. […]
The leaked document differs sharply from this. So I set out first of all to discover if the OPCW disputed the claim that the leaked document came from within its organisation. As you will see from the response below (As it is mostly flannel, I have highlighted the key words), it does not dispute this. I also asked them to confirm that its named author was in fact an OPCW employee. As you will see from the response below, it declined to confirm the latter. I think, if it had wished to do so, it could have disowned the name person.
I have received the following reply from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons:
‘The OPCW establishes facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic through the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), which was set up in 2014.
The OPCW Technical Secretariat reaffirms that the FFM complies with established methodologies and practices to ensure the integrity of its findings. The FFM takes into account all available, relevant, and reliable information and analysis within the scope of its mandate to determine its findings.
Per standard practice, the FFM draws expertise from different divisions across the Technical Secretariat as needed. All information was taken into account, deliberated, and weighed when formulating the final report regarding the incident in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018. On 1 March 2019, the OPCW issued its final report on this incident, signed by the Director-General.
Per OPCW rules and regulations, and in order to ensure the privacy, safety, and security of personnel, the OPCW does not provide information about individual staff members of the Technical Secretariat.
Pursuant to its established policies and practices, the OPCW Technical Secretariat is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in question. (my emphasis, PH)
At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and the OPCW is unable to accommodate requests for interviews.’
I thank the OPCW for confirming that the document is genuine. 6
[All emphasis retained from Peter Hitchen’s original article]
Click here to read Peter Hitchen’s full article entitled “Strange News from the OPCW in the Hague” published by the Mail Online.
On the basis of available evidence, the OPCW is a compromised intergovernmental body whose independence can no longer be relied upon. Previously the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media had concluded that:
“It is doubtful whether [OPCW’s] reputation as an impartial monitor of compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention can be restored without radical reform of its governance and working practices”
On the basis of the latest disclosure, however, their revised statement concludes more forcibly addressing what it describes as “the hijacking of OPCW”:
The new information we have removes all doubt that the organization has been hijacked at the top by France, UK and the US. We have no doubt that most OPCW staff continue to do their jobs professionally, and that some who are uneasy about the direction that the organization has taken nevertheless wish to protect its reputation. However what is at stake here is more than the reputation of the organization: the staged incident in Douma provoked a missile attack by the US, UK and France on 14 April 2018 that could have led to all-out war.
The cover-up of evidence that the Douma incident was staged is not merely misconduct. As the staging of the Douma incident entailed mass murder of civilians, those in OPCW who have suppressed the evidence of staging are, unwittingly or otherwise, colluding with mass murder. 7
You can read the full report here, or see the embedded version below. You are encouraged to download it and share it widely:
*
As the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media rightly assert, there were victims who were killed at Douma. The most graphic video footage shows literally dozens of corpses lying on top of one another, with some appearing to have a kind of froth on their mouths. These victims were originally said to have been sheltering in an underground shelter where the gas canisters were allegedly dropped, although it seems more probable that the scenes are from inside a flat. Embedded below is only uploaded version I can find on youtube – it forms the opening segment to a CNN bulletin [the footage runs from 30–60 secs]:
Back in 2013, Euronews interviewed Stephen Johnson, an expert in weapons and chemical explosives at Cranfield Forensic Institute, who had outlined inconsistencies in footage of patients’ symptoms released following the earliest alleged chemical attacks:
“There are, within some of the videos, examples which seem a little hyper-real, and almost as if they’ve been set up. Which is not to say that they are fake but it does cause some concern. Some of the people with foaming, the foam seems to be too white, too pure, and not consistent with the sort of internal injury you might expect to see, which you’d expect to be bloodier or yellower.”
As the evidence stacks up that the Douma gas attack was entirely staged, the most likely explanation is therefore a macabre one. Jonathan Cook puts it plainly:
Truly shocking report showing not only that the OCPW covered up its own investigators' findings that the Ghouta gas attack in April 2018 was staged, but hid the most likely conclusion: that western-backed 'rebels' murdered the 35 Syrian victims https://t.co/ATKI49xrOs
An atrocity that appears to be corroborated again by BBC producer Riam Dalati in another of his follow-up tweets:
Russia and at least one NATO country knew about what happened in the hospital. Documents were sent. However, no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene.
Tyler Durden, in the same Zerohedge article, writes:
Dalati’s mention of activists at the flats “manipulating the scene there” is a reference to White Helmets and rebel activist produced footage purporting to show the deadly aftermath of a chemical attack inside a second scene — a bombed-out apartment showing dozens of dead bodies. 8
One final thought as the corporate media turns a blind eye to the approach of the annual “private gathering” of our senior politicians, business leaders, and other movers and shakers at Bilderberg – with days to go the venue still remains a closely guarded secret – it is noteworthy (as I have noted previously) that Ahmet Üzümcü, the Director-General of the OPCW during the Douma investigation, was in attendance at the Bilderberg conference in Telfs-Buchen, Austria (June 2015) just short of three years prior to the Douma incident. His stay at this secretive conference with its strictly off-the-record political agenda meant rubbing elbows with top brass from Nato, CEOs of the major arms manufactures, and senior politicians including ministers of defence, which clearly compromises the independence and discredits claims of impartiality of this former chief of OPCW. There is a conflict of interests here that needs to be investigated.
2 Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.
“We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” the boy told the press conference, gathered by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.
wall of controversy 