[The Great Western Narrative] divides the world into a hierarchy of “peoples”, with different, even conflicting, virtues and vices. Some humans – westerners – are more rational, more caring, more sensitive, more fully human. And other humans – the rest – are more primitive, more emotional, more violent. In this system of classification, we are the Good Guys and they are the Bad Guys; we are Order, they are Chaos. They need a firm hand from us to control them and stop them doing too much damage to themselves and to our civilised part of the world.
The Great Western Narrative isn’t really new. It is simply a reformulation for a different era of the “white man’s burden”.
The reason the Great Western Narrative persists is because it is useful – to those in power. Humans may be essentially the same in our natures and in our drives, but we are very definitely divided by power and its modern corollary, wealth. A tiny number have it, and the vast majority do not. The Great Western Narrative is there to perpetuate power by legitimising it, by making its unbalanced and unjust distribution seem natural and immutable. 1
— Award-winning British journalist, Jonathan Cook based in Nazareth, Israel.
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Introduction: the ‘post-truth’ world
“The Gulf War did not take place” — Jean Baudrillard
Today’s world is awash with screens. The cinema screen, television screens, screens on ipads, ibooks and smart phones, not forgetting the screen directly in front of me. My life, very probably like yours, involves endless interaction with an array of audiovisual devices large and small.
The media amplifies this dependency with constant reference to our screens within its own reconstructions of modernity. In dramas the characters are always checking their phones and computers. Likewise, most interviewees on our news programmes are interrogated via separate screens. On sports programmes this divorce from reality is even starker with analysis carried out via interactive screens – the pundits propping themselves awkwardly next to an adjacent monitor, or, and more comically, walking across the studio to find one. On today’s telly, the screens within screens are absolutely everywhere.
And all of these screens carry an unspoken message. A subliminal message that screens are the must-have portals to our information age and, implicit within this same message, the impression that information provided through these screens can be solidly relied upon. Not that all information on screens is equally reliable, of course, but assuredly when sanctioned by trustworthy purveyors of truth it is the go-to source.
Moreover, the screen is presented to us as a larger window on reality. And in some respects its view is indeed akin to the windows in my house and car, albeit more highly manoeuvrable, while cleverly enhanced by means of composition, editing and overlaid content; qualities that render it ever more enticing than the unadorned reality beyond it. Whereas at the same time, the screen is also, and quite literally, screening the naked truth from us. Constantly intervening and redirecting our attention. It is always nudging us to see the view its way.
Not that this situation is as novel as it may seem. Before the screen we had the wireless, before the wireless the printed word, and even before print, there was oratory. All were capable of coercing us and manipulating reality. Propaganda takes many forms, and the propagandist is a profession nearly as ancient as less respectable forms of prostitution. Fake news is old news.
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In January 1991, as coalition forces gathered in preparation at the beginning of the Gulf War (or First Iraq War), French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard penned an essay in which he boldly predicted that it would not take place. Then, within weeks, as air strikes heralded the onset of Operation Desert Storm, Baudrillard, still undeterred, published a follow-up essay in which he no less flamboyantly declared that the war on our TV screens was not in reality taking place. Doubling down again immediately after the conflict ended in late February, Baudrillard constructed a third essay in which he proclaimed no less assertively that “the Gulf War did not take place.”
Given this sequence of publications, Baudrillard’s final and rather infamous declaration might appear at first sight to be an intellectual face-saving exercise, since the beauty of assuming the role of a celebrated postmodernist is never having to say anything half so straightforward as sorry. Au contraire! Baudrillard was not letting up as easily as that; instead, he was doubling down!
Admitted through gritted teeth, I shall attempt to present his exegesis as clearly and concisely as I can:
The modern world is inherently a media construction. Given that its construction is a false one (as it plainly is), who is in any position to say what literally exists beyond ‘the simulacrum’? Indeed, the real and the fictional have been inseparably blended together to form ‘a hyperreality’. This representation may or may not bear relationship to reality since the reality represented is entirely void of this distinction, and thus it seamlessly becomes its own truth in its own right.
Okay, do you see what he did there…? Baudrillard urges us to make a gargantuan leap of faith from ‘since we cannot discern a difference between fiction and reality’ to ‘there is none’. Postmodernists move in these mysterious ways, and yet reliably they take us always in one direction. Contrary to prior philosophies, their inducement is to consciously judge every book by its cover! Limited to making a choice between competing and inherently consumerist ideologies, Baudrillard at least leaves us the choice of whether or not “to buy into his”. I do not.
I do agree of course that today’s propaganda is rife and more sophisticated than ever, although what has significantly altered is its ubiquity and blinding intensity. Moreover, in the twenty-first century we have been immersed in propaganda by virtue of having screens all around and at all times. If this is Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’, then I concur that it is a dangerous and dismal state of affairs.
I also acknowledge that Baudrillard is addressing a problem of the utmost seriousness. Unhappily, however, his obscurantism is no less plain than it was usefully provocative (certainly in terms of self-promotion). A method that involves the inexhaustibly tiresome postmodernist ploy of wanting your cake and eating it: in this instance making the perverse case that the “Gulf war did not take place” while at the same moment proclaiming ‘the hyperreality’ in which this supposed non-war was witnessed, an ersatz reality. Contradictory points which leave the solid and vital question of ‘what is reality’ deliberately and permanently suspended.
Undeniably, the Gulf War happened whether or not news of it was composed of little more than recurring images of ‘surgical bombing’ and related lies that helped western powers to prolong the carnage and perpetuate the wartime profiteering. And evidently, we need to be mindful of mass media deceptions especially whenever the news on our screens conceals and distorts history, for in that concealment all semblance to truth is soon buried. But firm recognition of this puts a lie to Baudrillard’s postmodern conundrum that ‘hyperreality’ amounts to a truth in its own right. His central paradox is an absolute fraud.
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On the brink (again)?
Today American centrists (who only get to call themselves that because plutocratic media control has made Orwellian neoliberal neoconservatism the dominant ideology in the US) are deeply, profoundly concerned that Donald f—ing Trump is insufficiently hawkish.
This would be the same Donald Trump whose administration just facilitated the bombing of Yemen’s new cholera treatment center. The same Donald Trump who has increased US troops in Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria. The same Donald Trump who is openly pursuing regime change in Iran. The same Donald Trump whose administration committed war crimes in Raqqa. The same Donald Trump who has made many dangerous cold war escalations against Russia. The same Donald Trump whose administration has voiced a goal of regime change in Damascus and the intention of remaining in Syria indefinitely. The same Donald Trump whose air strikes are killing far more civilians than the drone king Obama’s did.
Centrist pundits and politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying that this very man is being too soft and cuddly toward North Korea. These would be the same centrist pundits and politicians who loudly cheered both of the times this administration bombed the Syrian government, effectively sending the message that the only way this narcissistic president can win praise by the manufacturers of the mainstream narrative is by rejecting peace and embracing war. Thanks guys. 2
— independent “rogue journalist” Caitlin Johnstone.
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The pressure for war is building again. We feel its sickly intensity in the air, yet it still remains remote and unthreatening like the rumble of distant thunder. Casual talk of war abounds but somehow exceeds our imaginations: speculation about the coming WORLD WAR is bound to be semi-detached. I wouldn’t ordinarily descend to the use of exclamatory capitals but once in a while screaming is the only purposeful thing to do!
Happily most of us have no physical memory of any actual war, although we can and probably do watch it 24/7 on our TV screens which puts us at an extremely safe distance. The fear on TV is attenuated and can be turned off in an instant, and we trust the cameras not to dwell too long on all the bloated rotting corpses. The ‘theatre of war’ is aptly named. On the ground however it becomes a theatre of the most obscene cruelties: “war is hell” is a literal truth.
Of course, the more wars there are, the less time each war features in news coverage anyway. And the more war we see, the more inured we seem to be to the next and the less we feel empowered to stop it anyway. Libya happened years ago, Iraq is just one war after the next, Afghanistan will presumably always be at war, and Yemen, although fresher in our minds, is hardly mentioned by anyone at all most days.
The anti-war movement was marginalised a decade ago and today the war party have stolen into government like thieves in the night. Quite literally they are thieves: pirates and bandits who come up with perfect apologies in hand to back the latest campaign in the newest instalment of the never-ending war.
Although the twin targets highlighted in this year’s Bilderberg agenda – Iran and Russia – offer a somewhat different proposition: the potential for war on a new and previously unimagined scale. Will we buy into this war too? A war that leaps out from the normal confines of the TV newsroom with slavering jaws and spills absolutely viscerally into our safe and comparatively comfortable lives. Hence the semi-detached speculation about the coming WORLD WAR: a prospect too terrifying to face squarely. (Sorry to shout again.)
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Of course, threats of an attack on Iran have risen and fallen like the price of oil ever since the 9/11 attacks that ignited the money-spinning and usefully racist “global war on terror”. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran had no involvement whatsoever in those attacks and yet, as notoriously outlined by General Wesley Clark, was cued up behind six other “rogue states”, designated to be the last war in America’s sequence of regime change operations against the dastardly “axis of evil”. In short, the threat of war on Iran has always been real, but suddenly the danger looms larger than ever before.
We see this with Trump’s latest neo-con appointments: John Bolton as National Security Advisor; Mike Pompeo at the State Department; and confirmed torturer “Bloody Gina” Haspel as Head of CIA. The swamp in and around the White House is more fetid than ever. Only under George Bush Jr has it accommodated quite such a nest of warmongering vipers.
Meantime, to judge from his presidency so far, the art of Trump’s deal-making means the ability to always say one thing and do another: capriciousness that is backed up by incendiary if expungeable Twitter-diplomacy. It all adds to the sense that Trump doesn’t have a clue what he’s actually doing – besides looking after his own billionaire-moneyed interests obviously – that he just says stuff of the cuff and afterwards official policy has to be redrafted accordingly. This too is perfectly befitting our age of distraction and amnesia.
Upon reaching international crisis points – and we have entered a phase of history when the world seems to be repeatedly poised on the brink on an approximately bimonthly cycle – Trump’s one saving grace has been his failure to follow through on threats. However, the arrivals of Bolton and Pompeo signal a decisive change. Trump’s madcap commitments to AIPAC, overlooked and widely ignored throughout the election campaign by political commentators and rivals alike, have since been enacted. He has thereby committed the US to tearing up the Iran nuclear deal (Obama’s sole but singular achievement) and has recklessly pushed ahead with relocating the US embassy to the occupied city of Jerusalem. Both initiatives bolster his credentials when it comes to making Israel great again.
In response to Israel’s latest massacre of Gazans, US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, enflamed tensions vetoing the human rights of Palestinians caught in the hail of IDF ‘butterfly bullets’ that explode on impact to maximise injuries. Of course, no-one was in the least surprised by America’s brazen support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” or by Ambassador Haley’s total lack of decorum.
However, renewed sanctions against Iran are certain to damage European business interests. This combined with Trump’s crass decision to move the US embassy may already be opening a rift in transatlantic relations: relations that appear all the more strained following Trump’s tantrums at the G7 summit. But how much of this is political theatre? It is hard to tell. That America’s ‘partners’ remain largely onboard was surely indicated by Netanyahu’s tour of the major European capitals where he was warmly received by all concerned. No surprise there either.
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To quote a little more of Jonathan Cook’s excellent recent article on the “Great Western Narrative”:
Gaza is slowly sinking into the sea, but who cares? Those primitive Palestinians live like cavemen amid the rubble of homes Israel has repeatedly destroyed. Their women are hijabbed and they have too many children. They don’t look like us, they don’t speak like us. Doubtless, they don’t think like us. They cannot be us.
Even those young Palestinian demonstrators, with their faces covered with strange scarves, launching flaming kites and throwing the odd stone, look different. Can we imagine ourselves standing in front of a sniper to protest like that? Of course not. We cannot imagine what it is like to live in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, in an open-air prison over which another nation serves as jailers, in which the water is becoming as saline as seawater and there is no electricity. So how can we put ourselves in the demonstrators’ shoes, how can we empathise? It is so much easier to imagine being the powerful sniper protecting the “border” and his home.
But al-Najjar undermined all that. A young, pretty woman with a beautiful smile – she could be our daughter. Selflessly tending to the wounded, thinking not of herself but of the welfare of others, we would be proud to have her as our daughter. We can identify with her much better than the sniper. She is a door beckoning us to step through and see the world from a different location, from a different perspective.
Which is why the corporate media has not invested al-Najjar’s death with the emotional, empathetic coverage it would if a pretty young Israeli female medic had been gunned down by a Palestinian. It was that double standard in his own newspaper, the Guardian, that outraged cartoonist Steve Bell last week. As he noted in correspondence with the editor, the paper had barely covered the story of al-Najjar. When he tried to redress the imbalance, his own cartoon highlighting her death – and its oversight – was censored.
The Guardian’s editors argued that his cartoon was anti-semitic. But the truth is that al-Najjar is dangerous. Because once you step through that door, you are unlikely to come back, you are unlikely ever again to believe the Great Western Narrative. 3
Click here to read Jonathan Cook’s full piece entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave US to a World of Illusions”.
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Bilderberg v. democracy
“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.”
— Arthur Jensen, Chairman of the corporation in the film Network (1976) 4
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You will know them by the words they use, and by the words they do not use. Anybody using words like “globalist,” “global capitalism,” or “neoliberal,” or suggesting that anyone voted for Trump or Brexit for any reason other than racism, you can pretty much rest assured that they’re Nazis. Also, anyone writing about “banks” or the “deep state.” Absolutely Nazis. Oh yeah, and the “corporate media,” naturally. Only Putin-Nazis talk like that. Oh, and definitely anyone who hasn’t spent the last two years attacking Trump (as if there has been anything else to focus on), or has implied that “the Russians” aren’t out to destroy us, or that the historical moment we are living through might be just a bit more complex than that … well, you know what they’re really saying. They’re saying, “we need to exterminate the Jews.”
Look, I could go on and on with this, but I don’t think I really need to. Remember, I’m a Nazi thought criminal now. So just go back and read through some of my essays and make note of all the coded Nazi messages, or check with the Anti-Defamation League, or the SPLC, or the corporate media, or … well, just ask the good folks at Google. 5
— Award-winning playwright, novelist, and political satirist, C.J. Hopkins.
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Due to its isolation and concealment it is all-too easy to think that Bilderberg exists inside some kind of a rarefied and hermetically-sealed bubble, when this is about as far from the case as it is possible to be. Rather Bilderberg serves as the hub to a deeply influential network of Atlanticist think tanks and sister organisations. A nexus that brings into contact, on the one hand, corporate heads and willing academics with, on the other, powerbrokers from Nato, the European Commission, heads of intelligence services and national political leaders.
As Bilderberg notes in its own Charity Commission report (yes – Bilderberg is a registered charity!):
“[T]he conferences facilitate the development of a network of personal relationships to be formed between individuals of responsibility and influence; relationships which can be leveraged in subsequent interactions at important moments.” 6
‘Leveraged’ is an interesting word isn’t it…?
Arguably the best-connected political lobbying group on the planet, Bilderberg is nowadays also fully interfaced with the leading tech giants, most notably Google, who can (and do) manipulate the flow of information on a global scale by simply adjusting their search algorithms. Meantime this same tech cartel is openly harvesting data on all of us thanks to their hold on what Julian Assange once aptly described as “the worldwide wiretap”. These tech links to Bilderberg have been totally hardwired, giving it a central role in the expanding control grid. Scientia est potentia: knowledge is power.
At the more visible level, Bilderberg are long-established kingmakers as the following list (put together and posted in a previous article) proves beyond a shred of doubt:
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 French President 2017 7
(Quite how influential Bilderberg is in terms of policymaking, I will come back to nearer the end.)
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Remarkably, this year’s Bilderberg coincided with no less than two parallel transnational meetings. So at the very same moment Henry Kissinger was glad-handing Dominique Anglade, Deputy Premier of Quebec; over the pond in Toronto, Trump was glowering at Justin Trudeau, this year’s host of the G7 summit. Interestingly, Justin is the eldest son of former Canadian PM and Bilderberg attendee Pierre Trudeau. (Pierre assumed office in 1968 just months prior to his invite to Bilderberg.)
Others in attendance at this year’s G7 included heads of state May, Merkel, Macron, Shinzō Abe, recently installed Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and Juncker and Tusk from the EU. Meanwhile in Brussels, an overlapping geopolitical event involved Nato’s defence ministers in a meeting chaired by Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, who later flew to Turin to join the Bilderberg gathering.
Given this unusually heavy schedule for high-powered get-togethers (it may indeed be unprecedented for Bilderberg and G7/8 to be scheduled on the same weekend) it is worth noting that the Bilderberg cohort was prestigious nonetheless, comprising no less than four current Prime Ministers (from Holland, Belgium, Serbia and Estonia); two Deputy Prime Ministers (from Spain and Turkey); Andrea Ecker, the Secretary General, Office Federal President of Austria; and Bernard Cazeneuve, the last Prime Minister of France. More ominously, others in attendance included Bernard Émié, Director General of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces; Ursula von der Leyen, German Minister of Defence; and, Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference.
As Charlie Skelton writes in his second and final instalment of this year’s somewhat curtailed ‘Bilderblog’ reports:
This year’s Bilderberg summit is a council of war. On the agenda: Russia and Iran. In the conference room: the secretary general of Nato, the German defence minister, and the director of the French foreign intelligence service, DGSE.
They are joined in Turin, Italy, by a slew of academic strategists and military theorists, but for those countries in geopolitical hotspots there is nothing theoretical about these talks. Not when the prime ministers of Estonia and Serbia are discussing Russia, or Turkey’s deputy PM is talking about Iran.
The clearest indication that some sort of US-led conflict is on the cards is the presence of the Pentagon’s top war-gamer, James H Baker. He is an expert in military trends, and no trend is more trendy in the world of battle strategy than artificial intelligence.
Click here to read Skelton’s full report which carries the strapline: “This year’s summit is all about war”.
Note and clarification: In my previous post I accidentally included the name of James H Baker under the heading “familiar faces” mistaking him for the shamelessly hawkish James Baker III who served under Bush Sr as Chief of Staff at the time of the Gulf War and shortly afterwards swivelled through the revolving doors to become a consultant for Enron.
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Russia, meantime, has become the readymade scapegoat for every political mishap and cock up. From Brexit to the election of Trump, Russia, and specifically Vladimir Putin, is accused of plotting it all. On each occasion, albeit with the limited resources of a struggling economy, he somehow manages to fool us anyway.
So let us pause for a moment to remember the tragic death of Arkady Babchenko. It’s okay you can look at the gore because none of it is real:
In fact, it turned out that all news of his death had been greatly exaggerated!
Come to think of it, that blood doesn’t even look real. But in spite all the phoniness our ‘reputable’ media outlets lapped up the whole sorry saga.
Likewise, without a scintilla of credible evidence, the same reporters working for the same media outlets warn of the Kremlin’s diabolic war by social media and of Putin’s unstinting efforts to push the West backwards into a “post-truth” world. Spreading chaos is his preferred mode of attack apparently. Endless repetition of this maddeningly fact-free conspiracy theory (for details read earlier posts here and here) bypasses your rational mind like the advertising jingle it is…
Usefully it also draws the public gaze far away from our own domestic cover-ups and media failings. Western propaganda is denied outright of course – as propaganda always has to be. Likewise our Western ‘intelligence services’ never lie: they are pure as the driven snow! (Please note that I highlighted ‘services’ because if these were run by foreign operatives they would be known instead as ‘agencies’ – names matter.)
Besides the condemnation of alleged Russian ‘meddling’ listen out for the call, as yet sotto voce, to counter enemy lies with lies of our own: for an injection of “persuasive (dis)information” to save the gullible masses from outside manipulation. The following extract is drawn from a research paper published by the RAND Corporation in 2016:
[O]ur fourth suggestion for responding to Russian propaganda: Compete! If Russian propaganda aims to achieve certain effects, it can be countered by preventing or diminishing those effects. Yet, the tools of the Russian propagandists may not be available due to resource constraints or policy, legal, or ethical barriers. Although it may be difficult or impossible to directly refute Russian propaganda, both NATO and the United States have a range of capabilities to inform, influence, and persuade selected target audiences. Increase the flow of persuasive information and start to compete, seeking to generate effects that support U.S. and NATO objectives. 8
[Italicised as in original]
Thus, under the pretext of ‘defending the free world’, we are now in the midst of an absurd information Blitzkrieg. Ostensibly against Russia, the real and ultimate purpose is a clampdown on dissident voices at home; a remorseless attack on free speech in which the key strategy is the filtering out of unwanted, since antithetical, alternative narratives. Any truth in the ‘post-truth world’ must be the truth endorsed by the state authorities and sanctified by the corporate media. Importantly, the internet genie must be forced back inside its bottle and fast. Google and Facebook to the rescue!
Soon all dissenting voices will be unmasked as ‘Russian bots’ – just ask British Twitter-user Ian Shilling (@Ian56789):
This Sky News interview with ‘UK government priority target’ Twitter-user Ian56 broadcast live in April would be simply hilarious if the connotations were not so sinister. The interrogation begins at 3:15 mins.
As C.J. Hopkins writes in his latest satirical blast:
I could go on and on with this. Have you heard the the one about the Putin-Nazis conspiring with the NRA? How about the one where Emmanuel Macron, in order to protect the French from “fake news,” and division-sowing Putin-Nazi memes, wants the authority to censor the Internet? Or have you read the column in which David Brooks, without a detectable trace of irony, laments the passing of international relationships “based on friendship, shared values, loyalty, and affection” … seriously, he used the word “affection” in reference to the Western alliance, one of the most ruthless, mass-murdering empires in the history of ruthless, mass-murdering empires? Oh,yeah, and I almost forgot … MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is reporting that the North Korea summit was also orchestrated by Putin!
I’m not sure how much more bizarre things can get. This level of bull goose loony paranoia, media-generated mass hysteria, and mindless conformity would be hysterically funny … if it weren’t so f—king horrifying in terms of what it says about millions of Westerners, who are apparently prepared to believe almost anything the authorities tell them, no matter how nuts. That famous Voltaire quote comes to mind … “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities,” he wrote. Another, more disturbing way of looking at it is, people willing to believe absurdities, to switch off their critical thinking faculties in order to conform to an official narrative as blatantly ridiculous as the Putin-Nazi narrative, are people who have already surrendered their autonomy, who have traded it for the comfort of the herd. Such people cannot be reasoned with, because there isn’t really anyone in there. There is only whatever mindless jabber got injected into their brain that day, the dutiful repetition of which guarantees they remain a “normal” person (who believes what other normal persons believe), and not some sort of “radical” or “extremist.”
These people are the people who worry me … these “normal” people who, completely calmly, as if what they are saying wasn’t batshit crazy, explain how Trump is just like Hitler, and how Putin is trying to take over the world. I sit there and listen and smile at these people, some of whom are friends and colleagues, people who I genuinely like, and who genuinely like me in return, but who, under the right set of circumstances, would stand by and watch me marched into prison, or worse, and not utter a word in protest. 9
Click here and here to read C.J. Hopkins articles in full.
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All of which in a roundabout way brings me back to Bilderberg…
Skelton was, as usual, alone amongst mainstream journalists, and his annual Bilderblog column inches stand as a token gesture. Along with a handful of intrepid reporters – all, besides Skelton, independently funded – he relates how the lockdown had been exceptionally tight this year and that police harassment and intimidation were virtually non-stop from day one. How very differently the mainstream reporters attending G7 were treated: ‘treated’ being the operative word, such are the ample rewards for recycling official press releases. So what journalist in their right mind would choose instead to suffer the indignities of being pushed around and harried outside the main entrance to the Lingotto Hotel in Turin?
Each year the rough treatment meted out to all reporters at Bilderberg is simply the price paid for the not having a genuinely free press. Moreover, Skelton’s denial of access is the direct fault of the self-same media who passed up the opportunity to drill down into Bilderberg two decades ago when it was publicly outed by Jim Tucker courtesy of Channel 4’s Jon Ronson. But why expect the press follow up with demands for closer scrutiny and deeper analysis? Ever since Bilderberg was first convened and for more than three decades prior to Ronson’s limited exposé, the corporate media has been devoted instead to the task of covering up its excessively heavy tracks. The ‘corporate media’ is labelled ‘corporate’ with good reason.
Skelton says that “this year’s Bilderberg summit is a council of war” and he is being characteristically deliberate in his choice of words: the hint at a literal meaning is loud and clear. So oughtn’t this to send a shudder through each of us? Especially once we know – as we should – that leaked minutes from the Bilderberg conference held in Chantilly 2002 in the months prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq reveal how the pretext for a war was discussed at length.
This is what neo-con attendee Richard Perle said during one of the sessions at the meeting:
But the United States (unlike most of its allies) has the ability to take the war against terrorism to the terrorists, and it may be forced to go it alone in exercising this ability. It will be much quicker if we all do it together. Saddam has invaded his neighbours. He possesses chemical weapons. He is feverishly working to become a nuclear power. His ties to terrorist organisations force us to consider the possibility that he will distribute those weapons to terrorists. Can we wait for this to happen? The United States has no choice but to deal with Saddam: the right to self-defence must include the right to preventative action. 10
Words thereafter echoed by Colin Powell during his infamously false testimony to the UN Security Council. If Turin follows this precedent, then we will soon be at war with Iran.
So are we truly living in a “post-truth” world? Yes no doubt. How else could Bilderberg maintain its cloak of invisibility when the press is not just fully aware of its existence, but deeply embedded within its rank and file? And we might reasonably ask what else the ‘free press’ avoids mentioning out of cosiness or habit. This is perhaps the most urgent question. For wherever political power is permitted to operate above scrutiny, democracy atrophies.
Dan Dicks of ‘Press For Truth’ reveals leaked documents from previous meetings going back to 1950s including discussion of Saddam’s WMDs in 2002.
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Additional: Bilderberg the charity gig
According to Bilderberg itself, the conference is working for the “public good” by enabling participants to address “political, economic and social problems.” These are the exact phrases used in the annual report of the Bilderberg Association, the U.K.-registered charity that enables corporate donors like BP and Goldman Sachs to cover conference costs.
What this requires, on the part of an assenting public and press, is a Bilderburgian leap of faith. You have to believe, honestly and sincerely, that the chairman of Goldman Sachs International is at Bilderberg to do “public good.”
It’s as simple as that. If you think it’s ok (perhaps even preferable) that our elected officials should secrete themselves away to discuss global economic and social policy with all these brilliant financiers, media barons and billionaire industrialists, then you have to believe—truly believe—that the CEOs of Royal Dutch Shell, Ryanair and the Titan Cement Company have come to Bilderberg to do “public good.”
You have to believe—say it out loud—that Brian Gilvary, the Chief Financial Officer of BP (the world’s 12th biggest company, by revenue), has come to Bilderberg at the invitation of a director of BP, Sir John Sawers, in order to do “public good.”
You have to believe—give me an amen!—that David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and now a Wall Street investor, is trying to solve the problems of the world on our behalf. And not on behalf of KKR and his boss, Henry Kravis. He’s in it for the love of fellow man.
And if you believe that Henry Kravis is at Bilderberg to do good, then fine, I’ll see your Kravis and raise you a Kissinger.
And if you’re still happy, then you’ve accepted the technocratic bargain. Let the technocrats reign: Let them quietly get on with running our societies, sorting out our problems, shaping our future, and telling us what’s what in our “post-truth” world, and we can get on with watching Netflix. Because quite frankly, that’s a full-time job. 11
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full report in Newsweek.
Luke Rudkowski of ‘WeAreChange’ speaking with journalist Charlie Skelton about Turin 2018
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1 From an article entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave US to a World of Illusions” written by Jonathan Cook, published in Counterpunch on June 15, 2018. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/15/how-the-corporate-media-enslave-us-to-a-world-of-illusions/
2 From an article entitled “Centrists are very concerned that Donald F—ing Trump isn’t Hawkish enough” written by Caitlin Johnstone, published on June 13, 2018. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/06/13/centrists-are-very-concerned-that-donald-fucking-trump-isnt-hawkish-enough/
3 From an article entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave US to a World of Illusions” written by Jonathan Cook, published in Counterpunch on June 15, 2018. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/15/how-the-corporate-media-enslave-us-to-a-world-of-illusions/
4 Excerpt from Chairman of Communications Corporation of America (CCA) Arthur Jensen’s (Ned Beatty) “corporate cosmology” soliloquy to news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch):
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU… WILL… ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that… perfect world… in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.”
5 From an article entitled “Then They Came for the Globalists” written by CJ Hopkins, published in Counterpunch on March 23, 2018. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/23/then-they-came-for-the-globalists/
6 From The Bilderberg Association (Charity Registration Number 272706) Annual Report and Financial Statements, “Activities, Specific Objectives and Relevant Policies”, p 3, published March 31, 2016. http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends06/0000272706_AC_20160331_E_C.PDF
7 All dates published by wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants#United_Kingdom
8 From a paper entitled “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model” written by Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, p 10. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
9 From an article entitled “Awaiting the Putin-Nazi Apocalypse” written by CJ Hopkins, published in Counterpunch on June 15, 2018. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/15/awaiting-the-putin-nazi-apocalypse/
10 From the official minutes to the Bilderberg meeting at Chantilly from May 30 – June 2, 2002, Ch 1”The Consequences of the War against Terrorism”, p 16. https://info.publicintelligence.net/bilderberg/BilderbergConferenceReport2002.pdf
11 From an article entitled “Bilderberg 2018: Welcome to the Super Bowl of Corporate Lobbying” written by Charlie Skelton, published in Newsweek on June 8, 2018. http://www.newsweek.com/bilderberg-2018-welcome-super-bowl-corporate-lobbying-opinion-966871
wall of controversy 