the united colours of Bilderberg — a late review of Montreux 2019: #5 Brexit and the future of the EU

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.”

— Yanis Varoufakis 1

“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”.

— Jean-Luc Mélenchon 2

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

— Charlie Skelton (@deYook) May 30, 2019

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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:

1. Moved the Council of Ministers from requiring unanimous agreement to qualified majority voting in at least 45 areas of policy
2. 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
3. Established a more powerful European Parliament, which would now forms part of a bicameral legislature along with the Council of Ministers
4. Granted a legal personality to the EU, enabling it to agree treaties in its own name
5. Created a new long term President of the European Council and a High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy
6. 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

— Charlie Skelton (@deYook) July 2, 2019

Von der Leyen was eventually confirmed as the European Council’s choice on July 16^th. 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.

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1

In fuller context [from 1hr 16:40 mins]:

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]

In reply to question during Q+A session following a discussion with Noam Chomsky at the New York Public Library on April 26, 2016. https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/06/28/full-transcript-of-the-yanis-varoufakis-noam-chomsky-nypl-discussion/

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]

3 From an article entitled “Just what is the point of the European Union?” written by Shaun Lawson, published in OpenDemocracy on September 16, 2015. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/just-what-is-point-of-european-union/

4 From an article entitled “Bilderberg 2016: We can expect desperate lobbying against Brexit from Big Business” written by Charlie Skelton, published in International Business Times on June 7, 2016. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bilderberg-2016-we-can-expect-desperate-lobbying-against-brexit-big-business-1563898

5 Ibid.

6 From an artile entitled “Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen nominated to lead EU Commission” published by BBC news on July 2, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48847200

7 From an article entitled “Juncker calls for collective EU army” published by Deutsche Welle on March 8, 2015. https://www.dw.com/en/juncker-calls-for-collective-eu-army/a-18302459

8 From an article entitled “The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen: Who voted for her?” written by Serge Halimi, published in Counterpunch on September 5, 2019. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/05/the-eus-ursula-von-der-leyen-who-voted-for-her/

9 All dates published by wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants#United_Kingdom

10 Sarah Lain, ‘RUSI–FES British–German Dialogue’, Workshop Report, RUSI and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2015.

11 From the RUSI Workshop Report entitled “RUSI-FES British-German Dialogue on Defence and Security 2019” authored by Jeremy Wimble, published by RUSI in August 2019. https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201908_cr_german_security_dialogue_final_web.pdf

12 From an article entitled “Just what is the point of the European Union?” written by Shaun Lawson, published in OpenDemocracy on September 16, 2015. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/just-what-is-point-of-european-union/

Charlie Skelton reports from behind the ring of steel at Watford

Firstly, a few pertinent words from Adam Smith:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

Taken from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) ¹

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At one point in the meeting, during a tense exchange about contingency plans for dog-walkers, [police Chief Inspector] Rhodes let slip that Operation Discuss (the codename for the Bilderberg security operation) had been up and running for 18 months. Residents and journalists shared an intake of breath. “Eighteen months?” The reason for all the secrecy? “Terrorism”.

After 59 years of Bilderberg guests scuttling about in the shadows, ducking lenses and dodging the news, that’s the rationale we’re given? The same rationale, presumably, is behind the Great Wall of Watford, a concrete-and-wire security fence encircling the hotel. As ugly as it is unnecessary, it looks like the kind of thing you throw yourself against in a stalag before being machine-gunned from a watchtower. Appropriately fascistic, you might say, if you regard fascism as “the merger of corporate and government power”, as Mussolini put it.

The same threat of “terrorism” was used to justify the no-pedestrian, no-stopping zones near the venue. The police laid out their logic: they had “no specific intelligence” regarding a terror threat. However, in recent incidents, such as Boston and Woolwich, there had been no intelligence prior to the attack. Therefore the lack of any threat of a terror attack fitted exactly the profile of a terror attack. The lack of a threat was a threat. Welcome to 1984.

So writes Charlie Skelton, who is again one of the only mainstream journalists reporting from this year’s Bilderberg meeting which officially opened yesterday. Skelton, who also has a career as comedy script writer, adding with typically understated irony:

The audience was an odd mix. Half were residents from around the venue worried about the possibility of tyre-damage to a strip of lawn; the other half were journalists from around the world worried about the geopolitical implications of a conference at which BAE, Stratfor and General Petraeus will be discussing “Africa’s challenges”.

Both halves were worried about the funding for the gigantic security operation. The police assured sceptical residents that the conference would be “cost-neutral” for Hertfordshire, thanks in part to a “donation” from the conference organisers. This “donation” will have come, in part at least, from the Bilderberg Association, a registered UK charity that takes “donations” from BP and Goldman Sachs.

So, in a sense, the Herts police are doing charity work for Goldman Sachs. Which must be a comfort for the executives of Goldman Sachs attending the conference: the vice-chairman, a director and the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. They’ve got their charity team out patrolling, keeping the lenses at bay.²

Click here to read his full article entitled “Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984” published by the Guardian on Wednesday 5^th.

Here is Skelton again reporting a few days earlier on his same Bilderblog, and on this occasion delving deeper into Bilderberg’s wonderful and little known works of charity whilst also pointing out how the timing of this year’s get-together happens to coincide with a long overdue scandal about political lobbying:

If you’ve been wondering who picks up the tab for this gigantic conference and security operation, the answer arrived last week, on a pdf file sent round by Anonymous. It showed that the Bilderberg conference is paid for, in the UK, by an officially registered charity: the Bilderberg Association (charity number 272706).

According to its Charity Commission accounts, the association meets the “considerable costs” of the conference when it is held in the UK, which include hospitality costs and the travel costs of some delegates. Presumably the charity is also covering the massive G4S security contract. Fortunately, the charity receives regular five-figure sums from two kindly supporters of its benevolent aims: Goldman Sachs and BP. The most recent documentary proof of this is from 2008 (pdf), since when the charity has omitted its donors’ names (pdf) from its accounts.

The charity’s goal is “public education”.³

Public education! From an organisation that hides its face in shame behind armed guards and steel cordons. Skelton adds:

If you are concerned about transparency or lobbying, Watford is the place to be next weekend. Whether the delegates reach out to the press and public remains to be seen. Don’t forget, they’ve got their hands full carrying out the good works of Bilderberg. The conference is, after all, run as a charity.

A charity which specialises in helping those most in need of a little corporate lobbying:

It’s a remarkable spectacle – one of nature’s wonders – and the most exciting thing to happen to Watford since that roundabout on the A412 got traffic lights. The area round the hotel is in lockdown: locals are having to show their passports to get to their homes. It’s exciting too for the delegates. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical, his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the highlight of every plutocrat’s year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a year was 1976, after the group’s founding chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin.

Here is the definition of “bribe”: Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person’s views or conduct. So surely then, every form of lobbying is a kind of bribery.

Just imagine, for example, if my college discovered that I or any of my colleagues were accepting cash payments (or other ‘gifts’) from students – they would rightly sack us on the spot. Would it make any difference if I told them that the students were only “lobbying me” about their coursework, or would it be deemed more acceptable if I had “registered their interests”? Of course it wouldn’t! So in what way is lobbying not bribery?

That said, some kinds of bribery are more prosecutable than others. So was Prince Bernhard ever criminally charged after accepting a $1.1 million bribe from Lockheed? Of course not, after all he’s Prince Bernhard. Although apparently he was forced “to step down from several public positions and was forbidden to wear his military uniforms again.”⁴ Rough justice.

Back to Skelton’s comparative analysis of the current goings on at the Grove hotel to the on-going parliamentary scandal:

It may seem odd, as our own lobbying scandal unfolds, amid calls for a statutory register of lobbyists, that a bunch of our senior politicians will be holed up for three days in luxurious privacy with the chairmen and CEOs of hedge funds, tech corporations and vast multinational holding companies, with zero press oversight. “It runs contrary to [George] Osborne’s public commitment in 2010 to ‘the most radical transparency agenda the country has ever seen’,” says Michael Meacher MP. Meacher describes the conference as “an anti-democratic cabal of the leaders of western market capitalism meeting in private to maintain their own power and influence outside the reach of public scrutiny”.

But, to be fair, is “public scrutiny” really necessary when our politicians are tucked safely away with so many responsible members of JP Morgan’s international advisory board? There’s always the group chief executive of BP on hand to make sure they do not get unduly lobbied. And if he is not in the room, keeping an eye out, then at least one of the chairmen of Novartis, Zurich Insurance, Fiat or Goldman Sachs International will be around.

Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article.

Charlie Skelton is doing an excellent job again this year, and when, later today, I finally make it down to Watford myself, perhaps I’ll happen to run into him. If not then I’d certainly like to express my gratitude to him here before I leave.

I must also say that it is quite pleasing to see others in the media finally picking up the gauntlet and taking serious note of this most extraordinary annual general meeting for globalisation. There was even a surprisingly balanced report on Channel 4 news broadcast yesterday. You can watch it here:

http://www.channel4.com/news/the-bilderberg-group-a-meeting-of-minds-video

Finally, here is Charlie Skelton talking to Max Keiser on Tuesday’s Keiser Report:

*

This year’s official list (which is reliably unreliable) has been released and includes amongst many the following names of particular interest:

George Osborne – Chancellor of the Exchequer

Ed Balls – Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

Tim Geithner – Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Christine Lagarde – Head of IMF

Peter Sutherland – Chairman of Goldman Sachs

Mario Monti – Former appointed Prime Minister of Italy

Ken Clarke – who is listed merely as “Member of Parliament”

Peter Mandelson – listed as Chairman of Global Council and also Lazard International

José Barroso – President, European Commission

Richard Perle – neo con, veteran warmonger and well known member of PNAC

Henry Kissinger – listed only as “Chairman of Kissinger Associates”

last, but certainly not least, I notice the recently disgraced Gen David Petraeus – why he, we might wonder?

And so to Watford… I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for Mark Carney who has attended previous meetings at St Moritz (2011) and Chantilly (2012) and is about to replace Mervyn King as the next Governor of the Bank of England.

Various livestream broadcasts of the event can also be found here.

1 From Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Chapter X, Part II, p. 152.

2 From an article entitled “Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984” written by Charlie Skelton, published in the Guardian on June 5, 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/bilderberg-2013-goldman-sachs-watford

3 From an article entitled “The week ahead: Bilderberg 2013 comes to… the Grove hotel, Watford” written by Charlie Skelton, published by the Guardian on June 2, 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/02/week-ahead-bilderberg-2013-watford

4 At least according to wikipedia. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals#Netherlands

Kostas Vaxevanis and the truth about Greek tax evasion

On Sunday [Oct 28^th], the Greek police arrested one of the country’s top investigative journalists, Kostas Vaxevanis, whilst he was in the middle of a live radio interview. Vaxevanis was subsequently charged with breaching privacy on the grounds that he had published the names of more than 2,000 suspected tax evaders. The same list of names having originally been leaked by an employee at the HSBC bank in 2007, before being passed on to IMF chief Christine Lagarde, when she was still French finance minister back in 2010:

[Vaxevanis] has said he received the list – named after the International Monetary Fund head, Christine Lagarde, who gave it to authorities in several EU countries in 2010 when she was French finance minister – from an anonymous source.

The daily Ta Nea newspaper also published the 2,059 names, which include those of several politicians as well as many businessmen, shipping magnates, doctors and lawyers. It said the accounts had held about €2bn until 2007, but also made clear there was no evidence that any of the account holders had broken tax evasion laws.¹

You can click here to read some of the names on the so-called ‘Lagarde list’.

And Lagarde had indeed handed the list on to the Greek authorities, but no action was subsequently taken:

On Friday [Oct 26^th], the office of former Prime Minister George Papandreou denied accusations that he knew about the list, after a member of the opposition Syriza party asserted that Papandreou had helped arrange a meeting with the chief of the Geneva HSBC branch when he was in power.

Last week, former Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said that he had asked the country’s financial crimes unit to investigate about 20 Greeks suspected of maintaining large holdings in Geneva, after French authorities forwarded him the list in 2010. He also claimed that the Finance Ministry’s legal adviser had told him that using the list as evidence was problematic, since an HSBC employee had illegally leaked it.

Click here to read the full report on Russia Today.

So it certainly seemed more than curious to many in Greece that it was not any of those suspected of tax evasion who were suddenly under investigation, but the whistleblower Vaxevanis himself who had been arrested. His crime being merely to have published the same list of names in Hot Doc, a weekly magazine which he edits:

“He’s been accused without reason,” said Nicos Constantopoulous, Vaxevanis’s lawyer and a former leftist politician. “The principles of a fair trial are not being followed.”

Vaxevanis’s arrest and trial following publication at the weekend has enraged many people already furious over consecutive governments’ failure to crack down on a rich elite whom they blame for years of recession.²

Click here to read the full report in the Guardian.

It is heartening to learn then, that yesterday, and following a trial that lasted just one day, a court in Athens has found Vaxevanis innocent:

“The three last governments have lied and have made a mockery of the Greek people with this list,” [Vaxevanis] said.

“They were obliged to pass it to parliament or to the justice system. They didn’t do it, and they should be in prison for it.”

Prosecutors had accused him of publicly ridiculing people and delivering them “to a society that is thirsty for blood”.

“The solution to the problems that the country is facing is not cannibalism,” the prosecutor said.

But the court took little time in acquitting the journalist, and observers in the courtroom broke out in applause, according to the AFP news agency.

Click here to read the full story on BBC news and also to watch a short interview with Kostas Vaxevanis.

Yanis Varoufakis, professor of Economics at the University of Athens, spoke to Russia Today about Vaxevanis’s arrest and also put the whole issue of Greek tax evasion into better context:

Let’s not beat about the bush. The great problem with tax evasion in Greece…it is one of the reasons that Greece is being portrayed internationally as a corrupt country, and Greeks on the streets who pay their taxes, work very hard and are suffering are incensed at how they are portrayed internationally.

The fact is that for the last 30-40 years, the rich in Greece has enjoyed a kind of tax immunity. They’re not really tax evaders, they’re immune from tax because of the cozy relationship that they have with politicians who legislate in a way that makes that tax immunity.

1 From an article entitled “Greek Lagarde list publisher accused without reason, court told: Journalists and other supporters pack courtroom in Athens as lawyers for Kostas Vaxevanis open defence case” from Reuters published by the Guardian on November 1, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/01/greek-lagarde-list-publisher-court

2 ibid

‘austerity’ or ‘Grexit’: is there really no better alternative for Greece?

Should the Greeks submit to further the “austerity measures” that have already destroyed their economy and social infrastructure as Angela Merkel and others are demanding, or should they drop out of the Euro and begin tackle their debt crisis by returning to a hugely devalued Drachma? These are the only available choices, as we are all, Greeks included, constantly reminded.

Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director of the IMF, is one of those calling for continued “austerity”, and this is, of course, perfectly in-keeping with her position. Ruining countries through debt and “austerity” being the legacy of so much IMF and World Bank intervention. Lagarde is also keen to protect the Euro, and, as she made very plain in a recent interview to the Guardian [Fri 25^th May], couldn’t care less what this means to the Greeks or the Spanish or anyone else in Europe:

So when she studies the Greek balance sheet and demands measures she knows may mean women won’t have access to a midwife when they give birth, and patients won’t get life-saving drugs, and the elderly will die alone for lack of care – does she block all of that out and just look at the sums?

“No, I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.”¹

We are given to believe that the IMF operates in order to help ailing economies and so judging her remarks on that basis, this is akin to the doctor telling a patient that they’re not interested in treating a broken leg whilst some of their other patents have cancer. Worse than that – because Lagarde and the IMF (as one arm of ‘The Troika’) actually caused the misery that the Greek people are now suffering by insisting upon such a ruinous austerity programme. Returning to the analogy then, and we see that in this instance the patient broke their leg having been run over by the doctor’s own car.

Lagarde seems unaware of her own organisation’s part in the Greek’s downfall, but then it should be noted that she is not an economist. She also has “the little kids” in Niger on her mind “all the time” apparently! Evidently “the little kids” in Athens don’t count. Now it’s hard to imagine Lagarde thought anyone would swallow such cant, which perhaps explains what she immediately went on to say in the same interview:

“Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.”

She wouldn’t say this if she was talking about Niger, of course, whether it was true or false. Anyone dismissing the plight of a African nation on the basis that their society is rife with corruption (which unfortunately is the situation facing most of the people on this planet) would be roundly condemned as a racist. In contrast, it is fine to speak ill of the Mediterraneans.

But this repeated accusation is also such errant nonsense that it’s hard even to begin to correct it. Not that there isn’t tax avoidance in Greece – of course there is – there is tax avoidance in all countries. And in all countries this avoidance is something that the wealthy do far better than the poorer classes. In the real world, accountants are mostly employed for the purpose. Tax avoidance is hardly even frowned upon. Indeed the world’s giant corporations are so good at it that they only pay small fractions of the contributions due of them.

Tax avoidance is absolutely rampant in our globalised off-shore world, and the vast scale of tax avoidance by corporations and the super-rich is a genuinely serious problem that should be urgently redressed. Not that it’s a problem that can be easily treated, just so long as most of the world’s leading politicians use the same legal loopholes and tax haven immunity themselves. But Lagarde doesn’t mean tax avoidance in any case, because if she did, she would be directly blaming previous Greek governments for their major part in such everyday corruption, rather than obliquely pointing the finger towards the ordinary Greek in the street. Her objection is not to tax avoidance but only to tax evasion. All those transparently illegal but comparatively minor tax infringements that are routinely committed by the business small-fry in every society – and just how many cash-in-hand payments slip the British government treasury’s coffers to fall instead into the pockets of our own independent traders?

Lagarde insinuates that the Greeks’ unpayable debts are entirely down to a lack of tax receipts. If this were true then it must follow that the fate of the Euro, and along with it the whole European project, is all now hanging in the balance because of the failures of the Greek tax collection system. But this is patent nonsense too – endlessly recycled nonsense at that – which, and if it only held a grain of truth, ought to make every one of us call into question our entire economic system simply on the grounds of its unsustainable frailty.

However, this financial crisis did not start with Greek taxpayers and will not be solved simply by collecting more Greek tax revenues now, as Lagarde’s comments also imply. This whole financial crisis is a banking crisis. One that was caused by systemic failures and criminal trading. It continues because those failures have never been rectified and because no prosecutions have yet been brought. Austerity cannot cure this disease. It will bring nothing but pain. So as our own lives get tougher – along with the lives of those in Germany, France and elsewhere – we should not be blaming the Greeks for their “contagion”, but people like Christine Lagarde, Angela Merkel and the other austerity-mongers for helping to turn a crisis into a catastrophe by such wrong-headed economic thinking.

So what of the second option – the one that already has the stupid text-style name of Grexit? Should Greece abandon the Euro altogether? Well, firstly, the Greeks cannot be forced to drop out of the Eurozone – or at least there is no recognised mechanism for expelling any member nation. Secondly, it should be noted that the Greek people don’t want to leave the Eurozone. Like most of the peoples of Europe, these days they are broadly enthusiastic about the European project. Added to this, they also clearly recognise the serious risks of trying to suddenly go it alone in such perilous times. Once isolated, the Drachma would be mercilessly attacked by the same predatory banks and hedge funds that are currently threatening to bring down the Euro. The Drachma wouldn’t stand the ghost of a chance.

Which brings us to an impasse. Accept “austerity” or get out! Jump off a cliff or suffer slow death by a thousand cuts. Is there really no genuine alternative for the Greeks?

Well, the answer to that question actually depends upon what you value. If you think that all debts are sacrosanct, then it necessarily follows that the Greeks must go on paying the banks to their bitter end. That the debt is unpayable doesn’t matter. That the debt is the consequence of so much ineptitude and malfeasance within the banking system doesn’t matter either. The Greeks must cough up because otherwise the chaos will worsen (or so we are again constantly given to believe). But if you value human life above money, and recognise that debts that cannot be repaid will never be repaid, then you can begin to think more constructively. In fact, the alternative becomes immediately and blindingly apparent. Since a debt cancellation will inevitably come sooner or later, the only real question is how much longer must the Greeks be punished in the meantime.

A way-out of all this mess is entirely possible. It doesn’t involve “austerity” and does not necessarily require a Greek exit from the Eurozone. What is needed is simply an end to the bottomless banker bailouts and then new money being made available for reconstruction projects and other productive enterprise within Greece, Spain and elsewhere. Such a ‘New Deal’ injection is unlikely to be offered by the IMF, and neither will it be supported by the likes of Angela Merkel. But it can be fought for by the Greek people themselves, and in this battle to stop the wanton destruction of their nation, as fellow Europeans we should stand with them, recognising that the same aggressive financial interests that have already eviscerated Greece, will be pillaging our own lands soon enough.

*

One potential hope for Greece is that in the coming second election, Syriza (a coalition of leftist parties not always in agreement with each other) may just pip the two more traditional main left (PASOK) and right (New Democracy) parties and win the election. Syriza have been attacked from both political flanks and by almost all of the mainstream media, and yet remain strong in Greek opinion polls. The reason presumably being their commitment to staying in the Eurozone whilst seeking an end the savage “austerity” programme through a total renegotiation of the loan agreed under Pasok, New Democracy and Loas (the Greek version of the BNP) prior to the recent elections and under guidance from a technocrat, Lucas Papademos.

Their leader Alexis Tsipras, who has certainly been bold in his criticisms of the German government for its self-righteous and unhelpful stance, is also trying to drum up vital support from other progressive leftist European parties. And Syriza together with the German party Die Linke have now to put together a 6-point programme  offering “alternatives to austerity and bank rescue”. A set of proposals that other movements like los indignados and Occupy might also consider endorsing.

*

Additional:

In an article published in the Guardian on May 29^th, entitled “Greece can do without the ‘sympathy’ the IMF has shown Niger”, Nick Dearden explains how in the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank’s economic reforms and “austerity programme” ruined Nigeran agriculture and helped unleash a famine:

These policies fed into the 2005 famine, a crisis caused not primarily by natural catastrophe – food was available but unaffordable – but by an appalling set of policy decisions. Even during a crisis there was no let-up in economic dogma. The IMF told the Niger government not to distribute free food to those most in need. Today’s so-called “tough love” to Greece is nothing new.

And yet these genocidal measures, which were part of “the IMF’s now infamous Structural Adjustment Programme”, ultimately failed even to reduce Niger’s debt levels:

The desperate impact of IMF policies on Niger has not even achieved the purported chief objective of the IMF – to control debt. In a Jubilee report released last week, we found that 10 years after debt cancellation, Niger’s debt payments as a proportion of government revenue are projected to be the same level as they were before cancellation. IMF attempts to “restructure” Niger have failed even in these terms.

Nick Dearden concludes:

To pretend that the IMF operated in a somehow kinder way towards Niger than it is doing in Greece stands up to no scrutiny whatever. The IMF’s policies cannot assist countries in crisis. Greece can learn from this – and has little to gain from Lagarde’s “sympathy”.

Click here to read the full article.

1 From an article entitled “Christine Lagarde: can the head of the IMF save the euro?” and captioned with the banner “Her charm is legendary, but Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, is far from a pushover. She talks about sexism, swimming and saving the European economy”, written by Decca Aitkenhead, published in the Guardian on May 25, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/christine-lagarde-imf-euro

the IMF and its part in our downfall

For a refreshingly frank and insightful examination of the reasons for the current global economic crisis, and, more specifically, of the IMF’s part in our accelerating downfall, I recommend the following programme:

Empire: The IMF on trial

broadcast on Al Jazeera on Thursday 11th August at 9:00pm–10:00pm

Presenter Marwan Bishara leads a searching debate into the historic failures of the IMF, with reflections on the legacy of its intervention in Latin America — most especially in Argentina — as well as in East Asia and Africa. There is also speculation about what is likely to happen to Egypt, after calls for IMF intervention were declined, and to Greece, where the imposition of “austerity measures” is already in full swing.

The guests are:
Professor Alex Callinicos, director of European Studies, King’s College London and author of “Bonfire Of Illusions”.

Ann Pettifor, fellow, at the New Economics Foundation and author of “The Coming First World Debt Crisis”

Georges Corm, former Lebanese finance minister and former special consultant, World Bank

Dr Mario Blejer, former governor, Argentine Central Bank and former advisor, Bank Of England

Also included are interviews with:
Christine Lagarde, managing director, International Monetary Fund

Professor Alan Cibils, chair, Political Economy, Universidad Nacional Sarmiento

The programme is still available on Al Jazeera at the following times next week:

Sunday: 7:00 am; Monday: 9:00 pm; Tuesday: 1:00 pm; Wednesday: 2:00 pm; and Thursday: 7:00 am.

Click here to watch on the Al Jazeera website.