The following is based on the press statement published by the Stop Starmer campaign on their official website with additional notes and links included.
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Politics shouldn’t be about personalities.
It should be about principles on how we can build a better society.
But every so often in history, an individual emerges who is a danger to our democracy – someone who lacks any principle, is dishonest about their motives and who will say or do anything in pursuit of power.
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He is the most untrustworthy political leader this country has seen.
When he stood to be Labour Party leader he made 10 pledges. All of them have been shown to be false. How can we tell what Keir Starmer really believes?
Starmer’s views on every political issue change according to what he thinks will help his career: whether it is Brexit, anti-Semitism, the Royal family, foreign policy, austerity, outsourcing of the NHS to private companies, public ownership of utilities, climate change or gender self-identification.
Everything he says or does – including his flag waving and tedious family backstory – has been drawn up by PR companies.
Starmer’s campaign is well resourced and one of his donors (a beneficiary of apartheid in South Africa) has pledged over £5 million.
Starmer is not open to discussion and debate. It’s all PR.
Starmer’s campaign is the most cynical attempt to manipulate our opinion ever undertaken.
Under supervision from Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Lord Peter Mandelson, Starmer has won the support of media barons and faces hardly any scrutiny from press and TV.
But there is one thing we do know: he is against free speech; and eager for investigative journalist Julian Assange to be deported. He is also in favour of controls of what people can say online. And he has silenced people within his own party by perpetuating false claims of anti-Semitism:
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As Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from 2008–13, Keir Starmer was in charge when the body was overseeing Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden to face questioning over subsequently retracted sexual assault allegations.
US records show Starmer met with Attorney General Eric Holder and a host of American and British national security officials in Washington in 2011. However, as former Financial Times journalist Matt Kennard revealed for Declassified, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England and Wales’ public prosecutor, has deleted all records of its former head Keir Starmer’s trips to the US.
Musician and political activist Lowkey recently spoke to Matt Kennard about his investigations of Labour leader Keir Starmer for Mint Press News:
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As journalist Peter Oborne also revealed in his own concise analysis (embedded below), as a political leader Keir Starmer enjoys exceptionally close ties to UK intelligence services:
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What would a Keir Starmer government look like? He has said he would rather be at the World Economic Forum in Davos than in Westminster. On foreign policy, he says he will support the US on whatever military action it undertakes.
Once he is in power, we have no idea what he will do as he has never honoured his pledges.
This is why it is a massive mistake for people to think they can trust him or somehow control him if he gets into Number 10.
His chancellor, Rachel Reeves is a former employee of the Bank of England and has backed the bank’s increase in interest rates; his health secretary, Wes Streeting speaks about saving the NHS while receiving money from private health care providers.
Is a Starmer government better than a Conservative government? No, it will be worse. It will be the end of hope.
Most of the media are not challenging Starmer. It’s time we did.
Criticising Starmer is not enough, it’s time to stop him.
Stop Starmer is focused on protecting our democracy. Starmer does not believe in democracy.
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This is not a negative campaign, but one that seeks to stop the rot in politics.
We seek to educate people about the dangers of voting for Starmer’s Labour and to show that grassroots campaigns are stronger than manufactured campaigns designed in London.
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Our campaign includes:
– Leaflets for distribution in every city, town and village in the country.
– Stop Starmer street stalls across the country.
– T-shirts, badges and other material.
– Amplifying social media posts and videos that expose Starmer.
– Confronting Starmer at every opportunity.
– Stop Starmer rallies across the country.
We are 100% reliant on crowdfunding as we do not want sponsorship to compromise our campaign. We also have no allegiance to any political party. Our only aim is to Stop Starmer.
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Click here to visit the Stop Starmer website to add your name in support or simply to find out more.
I am very sorry to announce that Bilderberg is back on the globalist schedule. Following a three year time-out since its previous meet up during June 2019 in Montreux, Switzerland – an event I covered in extensive detail over a series of seven articles – and on the back of last month’s reconvened WEF Davos conference, Bilderberg gathered for a 66th year; its newest location, the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington D.C.
Encamped about a mile to the south of the White House, a short ride from CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia and a just hop across the Potomac River from The Pentagon, this more shadowy sister summit to Davos had arrived in the capital with plenty to discuss. And with so much going on around the world, Bilderberg conspicuously extended its regular list of ‘key topics’ from the usual ten to a far more impressive fourteen. Although in truth there are basically just three major issues preoccupying the transatlanticist ruling class and all involve wars of one kind or another.
The schematic above is my reinterpretation of this year’s official Bilderberg agenda in the form of a Venn diagram.
With the faltering collapse of US global hegemony, top of their published list are the interrelated concerns over what to do to halt the re-emergence of competing superpowers Russia and China. I wrote an extended article on the subject of escalation against both China and Russia last December entitled “the coming wars with Russia, China and Iran – why the stakes are raised in the last days of the unipolar order” in which I made the following concluding points:
America’s long-term geostrategic repositioning through the stealth expansion of Nato directly up to the borders of Russia and China is now combined with its ever more bellicose political posturing. Repeatedly under the threat of attack, loose defensive alliances have tightened between Russia, China and Iran, so a coordinated response becomes all the more likely. Should the West or Israel (with US consent) take the decision to declare “pre-emptive” war against any one of the three sovereign powers, the realistic expectation is wider war. Given the probable magnitude of a three-pronged retaliation and the genuine potential for a thermonuclear exchange, the prospect of wars against Russia, China and Iran is therefore absolutely unthinkable.
A century ago a detached and callous ruling class led a largely innocent and unwitting generation into the bloody technological hellhole of no-man’s land to slaughter one another for the glory of king and country and, importantly, for the sake of empire. Back then and ever since, we have rightly talked of “lions led by donkeys”. Astonishingly, the donkeys are back in charge again, except that this time around besides an imbecilic and unprincipled political class, we also have an atrophied antiwar opposition, a moribund fourth estate and an endlessly diverted populous, so the worry is that we may be dealing with donkeys virtually all the way down.
So forgive me when I hammer this point: war is in the air again, and not just any old war. WAR with Russia! WAR with Iran! WAR with China! WAR with all three simultaneously!
I make no apologies for my vulgar use of capitals. We all need to shout about this. What’s the alternative?
When Russia illegally invaded Ukraine in February, the stakes were immediately raised of course. In the months that have followed and with the imposition of tough sanctions we have also seen the schism between the West and the rest of the world widen and widen. Furthermore, as the sanctions predictably backfired, the situation for the West (and Europe especially) looks increasingly shambolic with already raging inflation and the likely prospect of fuel shortages. In fact to ameliorate the self-imposed economic damage being caused by its sanctions regime, Europe has quietly sought ways to circumvent their own blockade – this would be laughable were it not for the seriousness.
During this same period events on the ground have also been going badly for Ukraine as the mainstream media is finally starting to confirm, and in response, we are now seeing moves to switch attention and geostrategic policy away from Russia and back on to China; the White House once again stirring up tensions over its longstanding dispute with Taiwan – something I also addressed in greater depth in December’s post.
We must keep in mind that the US is the most militarised power on Earth. It spends more on “defence” than the next ten nations combined! (Far more than both Russia and China together.) Having very recently pulled an occupying force out of Afghanistan, at the present time it remains deeply embroiled in the Saudi war against Yemen, in Somalia and, by proxy, in aiding Ukraine with weapons supplies, training and intelligence. The US also illegally occupies approximately a third of the oil-rich north-eastern territory of Syria. Worldwide there are at least 750 US military bases occupying zones in over 80 countries: a network spanning the Indian and Pacific Ocean and extending into South Korea, Japan and the Philippines.
In 2016, investigative reporter and independent filmmaker John Pilger released a new documentary entitled The Coming War on China saying “The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable”:
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, ‘disappeared’, a political embarrassment.
Another shadow now looms over all of us. This film, The Coming War on China, is a warning that nuclear war is not only imaginable, but a ‘contingency’, says the Pentagon. The greatest build-up of Nato military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia. On the other side of the world, the rise of China as the world’s second economic power is viewed in Washington as another ‘threat’ to American dominance.
To counter this, in 2011, President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’, which meant that almost two-thirds of all US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific, their weapons aimed at China.
Today, some 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. They form an arc from Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. It is, says one US strategist, ‘the perfect noose’.
As the crisis in Ukraine consumes public attention, geopolitical analyst and East Asian specialist Brian Berletic highlights other events unfolding in the background that are potentially leading to a much worse crisis:
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Meantime, the ruling class has opened up its third front on the domestic populations of the West under the guise of the most open of open ‘conspiracy theories’ – a conspiracy that proudly announces itself on an official WEF website and that brazenly dares to speak its own name: “The Great Reset”.
This blueprint for a hi-tech future that ensures perpetual austerity and mass surveillance is today proselytised and peddled on the basis of ‘fairness’ and ‘sustainability’. As independent researcher and activist Alison McDowell writes:
We’re living in tumultuous times with polarizing political theater and pandemic providing ample cover for the roll out of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. From the World Economic Forum’s outpost at San Francisco’s Presidio, the tentacles of dispossession triggered by Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” are rapidly encircling the globe.
We are witnessing the culmination of a century of machinations by western social engineers. We see predatory philanthropy using such euphemistic framing as “Living Cities,” “Healthy Cities,” “Resilient Cities,” and “Build Back Better” to package the profoundly anti-human and anti-life initiatives coming out of Davos as aspirational goals for “smart” living.
The oligarch class asks us to play along and overlook the fact that all of this smartness rests on a foundation of continued growth, fossil-fuel expansion, child labor, toxic waste, and space pollution. They demand we overlook the insatiable energy requirements needed to run the augmented reality Internet of Things illusion. That we put out of our minds the existence of vast data centers cooled 24/7 with the water of a thirsty, poisoned world.
They’ve outdone themselves propagandizing youth to cheer on transnational global capital’s plans to implement a final “green” solution. Though my hope is after months of digital alienation people’s spirits will stir in time to derail the intentions of this cruel biocapitalist regime to push us away from our rightful connection to natural systems and one another and into isolated virtual realms. The spell of faux ICT sustainability must be broken.
Alison McDowell’s presentation embedded above was part of an online forum, “Politics In And Out Of Europe”, hosted by Rutgers University’s Center for European Studies on Monday October 26th 2020. There were two panels followed by an hour of discussion. Alison McDowell was the second presenter, and framing remarks and response was provided by Naomi Klein.
Click here to read the same article interspersed with slides from the full presentation and comments published on Alison Hawver McDowell’s official website Wrench in the Gears on October 27th 2020.
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At Montreux three years ago, China and Russia were already in the Bilderberg crosshairs (listed third and fourth respectively of the ten ‘key topics’), but away from the Alps this year’s backdrop has significantly darkened. From 2019’s rather optimistic tone of “A Stable Strategic Order” and “What Next for Europe?” we move instead to talk of “Geopolitical Realignments”, “Disruption of the Global Financial System” and “NATO Challenges” for which we are impelled to read more straightforwardly “sanctions and war”. This is what happens when empires fall, the Anglo-American oligarchs now desperate to prop up theirs by any means necessary.
As spectacular evidence of the rapid decline in US regional power, this week leaders across Latin America boycotted the ninth Summit of the Americas that was held in Los Angeles. Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said the move was in solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua who were not invited to attend:
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Yet arguably the most striking item in this year’s ‘key topics’ is literally tucked away at the very heart of their list: number 7: “Continuity of Government and the Economy”. For those unfamiliar with the term ‘continuity of government’ (COG) I have supplied a description below which is actually the opening paragraph to the current Wikipedia entry on the subject:
Continuity of government (COG) is the principle of establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of a catastrophic event such as nuclear war. [highlight retained]
It seems Bilderberg are surreptitiously warning that the lights are blinking red. And sooner than we might suppose, as the crises start to pile up, and people across the entire world (including the most prosperous regions in Europe and North America) are made desperate for food and energy, drastic contingency measures will need to be instituted. States of emergency. Martial law. Or worse. How else do we translate this most central item on last weekend’s Bilderberg agenda?
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A council of war
This year’s press release is characteristically terse and last minute (doubtless to keep the crowds at bay) and reliably the corporate media with so many close ties to Bilderberg have mostly failed to mention any of it. In fact this year’s British media cohort included Bilderberg stalwart Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist accompanied by colleague and defence editor, Shashank Joshi as well as Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs commentator at The Financial Times. One reliable exception to the general rule of media silence was maverick journalist Charlie Skelton, and he trotted out a brief report smuggled inside the Guardian. Writing on Saturday [June 4th] as the meeting kicked off, Skelton begins:
Bilderberg is back with a vengeance. After a pandemic gap of two years, the elite global summit is being rebooted in a security-drenched hotel in Washington DC, with a high-powered guest list that includes the heads of Nato, the CIA, GCHQ, the US national security council, two European prime ministers, a healthy sprinkle of tech billionaires, and Henry Kissinger.
Skelton’s tidy overview of this year’s list of participants is worth fleshing out a little bit more. For instance, the two aforementioned European PMs were Mark Rutte of the Netherlands (a perennial Bilderberg attendee) and, more noteworthy, Sanna Marin of Finland. Strictly off-the-record, devoid of public oversight or media scrutiny, Marin was doubtless engaged in frequent discussions with head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg about the terms and conditions for membership (generally about 3% of GDP channelled into weapons procurement). This is how open democracy functions today in Finland as in the rest of the western world.
Skelton writes:
The summit is heaving with experts in Russia and Ukraine, including the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, and ex-deputy national security adviser Nadia Schadlow, who has a seat on the elite steering committee of Bilderberg.
The conference room is rigged up with video screens for shy dignitaries to make a virtual attendance, and it’s highly likely that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will Zoom in for a T-shirted contribution to the talks. Just a few days beforehand, Zelenskiy met with a Bilderberg and US intelligence representative Alex Karp, who runs Palantir, the infamous CIA-funded surveillance and data analysis company.
Palantir, which was set up by billionaire Bilderberg insider Peter Thiel, has agreed to give “digital support” to the Ukrainian army, according to a tweet by the country’s deputy prime minister.
The participant list is rife with military advisers, one of which is a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and some hefty cogs from the Washington war machine. Among the heftiest is James Baker, head of the ominous sounding office of net assessment.
Another very high profile politician on the list is Canadian Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, a member of the WEF’s Board of Trustees and a person many see as the power behind the throne of the Trudeau government. The granddaughter of a prominent Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, Freeland was banned by Moscow in 2014. Given her background it isn’t very hard to understand Freeland’s virulent Russophobia or why she was behind the organisation of the so-called Lima Group with its goal of overthrowing Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolas Maduro. At Bilderberg she came to rub elbows with Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, and the CEO of Naftogaz, the state-owned Ukrainian oil and gas company.
The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal spoke with comedian Jimmy Dore about his own attempt to investigate last weekend’s meeting in Washington DC:
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Within the ranks of this year’s participants there were also three senior politicians from the UK. With Boris Johnson days numbered (as I predicted as far back as December 2020!), and Bilderberg’s prodigious historic record as kingmakers (something I have previously documented – a summary also provided below), could it be that Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Tom Tugendhat who marks his second appearance at Bilderberg is finally being groomed for higher office? It is also curious that Michael Gove made a Bilderberg debut. Gove memorably stabbed Boris Johnson in the back in a bid for power during the 2016 Tory leadership contest that he eventually lost to Theresa May. So are we about to see him throw his hat into the ring once again?
Less high profile was the attendance of Labour’s David Lammy. Nominally on the left of the party, his Bilderberg appearance coincides with an invitation of the no less outwardly progressive Democrat Senator, Kyrsten Sinema as well as the reappearance of Mary Kay Henry, who by day is the international president of Service Employees International Union.
We must be aware that Bilderberg (and Davos too) functions along cross-party lines, seeking constantly to straddle some kind of dreamed up political ‘centre’. The ruling class is able to do this by being reactionary and progressive at one and the same time: reactionary in promoting their special interests and protecting the status quo, yet genuinely progressive not only by adapting to the times but in quite deliberately shaping our collective future.
For this secondary reason, a burgeoning contingent go there as representatives of the ever-more powerful tech sector; this year’s roll call featured Bilderberg everpresents Eric Schmidt (chairman of Google), Reid Hoffman (co-founder of Inflection AI and partner of Greylock), and Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies), who were also joined by Yann LeCun (vice-president and chief AI scientist at Facebook); Demis Hassabis (CEO and founder of DeepMind) and Kevin Scott (chief technology officer at Microsoft Corporation)
Of course, the crises we face are a direct consequence of comparatively recent policies. The stagflation was caused by economic mismanagement that stems from the bailouts and misguided policy of QE that was used to tackle the 2008 financial collapse and then pursued more vigorously since the lockdowns and additional bailouts following the covid pandemic. However neoliberal failures can actually be traced further back to the deindustrialisation of western societies.
Meanwhile, the looming prospect of energy and (potentially) food shortages is mostly due to the geopolitical boomerang of sanctions that were intended to cause a regime change in Moscow – sanctions that have evidently failed in every regard. Leaving such details aside, however, late-stage capitalism has been in crisis for at least three decades and the plutocrats at Davos and Bilderberg are perfectly well aware of this fact. So the underlying purpose of WEF’s “Great Reset” is to manage the technologically-driven socioeconomic changes, accepting that change is unavoidable, in order to ensure maximal benefit for the corporations and the oligarchs who own them.
Reminding us of the close ties between Bilderberg and Davos, Skelton points to this matter succinctly:
Bilderberg is sometimes dismissed as a talking shop or crazed imagining of conspiracy theorists. But in reality it is a major diplomatic summit, attended this year as ever by extremely senior transatlantic politicians, from the US commerce secretary to the president of the European Council.
Many consider it an older, less flashy Davos, staged annually by the World Economic Fund. The two events have a good bit in common: namely, three WEF trustees at this year’s conference, and Klaus Schwab, the grisly head of Davos, is a former member of Bilderberg’s steering committee. His “Great Reset” looms large over the Washington conference, with “Disruption of the Global Financial System” at the heart of the agenda.
Concluding his article:
[H]olding court at the hotel bar will be Klaus Schwab’s mentor, Henry Kissinger.
Incredibly, Kissinger, 99, has been attending Bilderbergs since 1957.
The prince of realpolitik has been the ideological godfather of Bilderberg for as long as anyone can remember. And he’s recently co-authored a book, The Age of AI, with Bilderberg steering committee member Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, and this year’s Washington conference is noticeably rammed with AI luminaries, from Facebook’s Yann LeCun to DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis.
Bilderberg knows that however the global realignments play out, and whatever a reset global financial system looks like, the shape of the world will be determined by big tech. And if the endgame is “Continuity of Government”, as the agenda suggests, that continuity will be powered by AI.
Whatever billionaire ends up making the software that runs the world, Bilderberg aims to make damned sure that it has its hand on the mouse.
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article entitled “Bilderberg reconvenes in person after two-year pandemic gap: The Washington conference, a high-level council of war, will be headlined by Jen Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general” published in the Guardian on June 4th.
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As a further insight into the comings and goings at this year’s meeting, here is my categorised guide to the more mentionable delegates:
First, the three intelligence chiefs alluded to in Skelton’s article are Jake Sullivan, director of National Security Council; William Burns, director of CIA; and Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ. They were joined by the director of France’s external intelligence agency, General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), Bernard Émié; Jen Easterly, the director of US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and seasoned Bilderberger, the former chief of MI6 (2009–2014), John Sawers.
Beside the Prime Ministers of Finland and the Netherlands, the political contingent also included Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Wopke Hoekstra; Belgian minister for energy, Tinne Van der Straeten, alongside Polish MEP, Radoslaw Sikorski, the husband of fellow attendee, Anne Applebaum, member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a rabid neo-con commentator who routinely calls for war on Russia in her columns for the Washington Post and The Atlantic magazine. In addition there were two top level EU representatives: vice-president of European Commission, Margaritis Schinas and president of European Council, Charles Michel, who is Bilderberg returnee – first invited in 2018 when he was Belgian Prime Minister.
Lastly, a mention to a handful of the usual suspects in attendance: Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis and their close associate David Petraeus (chairman of KKR Global Institute); the chairman of Goldman Sachs International, José Manuel Barroso (no globalist shindig runs without top-level representation from ‘the squid’)… oh, and also just along for the craic, the one and only (presumably) King of the Netherlands!
Click here to read the reliably incomplete official list of participants as published on the Bilderberg website.
Correction:
In the original version it was incorrectly stated that the CIA HQ is at Arlington, Virginia when the correct location is a few miles north at Langley, Virginia.
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List of western leaders previously groomed by Bilderberg:
Gerald Ford attended Bilderberg 1964, 1966 appointed as US President 1974
Margaret Thatcher attended Bilderberg (at least 1975, 1977, 1986) became Prime Minister 1979
Bill Clinton attended Bilderberg 1991 became US President 1993
Tony Blair attended Bilderberg 1993 became Prime Minister 1997
Paul Martin attended Bilderberg 1996 became Prime Minister of Canada 2003
Stephen Harper attended Bilderberg 2003 became Prime Minister of Canada 2006
Angela Merkel attended Bilderberg 2005 became Chancellor of Germany (Nov) 2005
Emmanuel Macron attended Bilderberg 2014 became President 2017 *
Alison McDowell is an activist, writer and researcher who has carefully studied and documented the working parts of the World Economic Forum’s declared “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) and the commensurate global takeover of industries and public policies by the central banks, multinational corporations, big tech technocrats and billionaire-funded foundations:
“In this world that’s coming there will be a tiny group of billionaires, there will be a cohort of people who are the data analysts that run the dashboards, and manage the people that run the dashboards; and they will be essentially oppressing people. Their job will be to manage the oppression. And then there will be everybody else who will be the oppressed. As a parent, I don’t want to aspire for my kid to succeed by being in a position to be the oppressor.
“And I don’t mean to say we haven’t always lived in this situation where the privileged have been in positions of enacting certain levels of oppression. But it will be increasingly brutal and increasingly automated. And I think the mental health impact of that on everyone is going to be devastating.
“So, I’m just trying to think through, how do we build a world with no badges, with real knowledge, with reciprocity, in which the resources of the earth and the community are shared in ways that support humane relationships? And, you know, maybe humans are not that good at that – maybe I should just like throw it in with the robots. But, I just don’t want to be with the robots!”
[from 27:30 mins in Part 3]
Embedded below is an extended interview with Alison McDowell conducted by Jason Bosch in Philadelphia on May 17th 2020. Divided into five wide-ranging sections, I have tried (as far as it is possible) to provide a concise overview and guide to the topics covered in each.
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Part 1: The revolution will not be funded
Alison McDowell got interested in researching the whole topic of global technocratic takeover and 4IR because of the privatisation of schools in her local area. With time on her hands she decided to follow the money. The trail quickly led to Bill Gates and other billionaire philanthropists and associated foundations that operate behind a vast network of often well-meaning groups including NGOs.
In this first part she discusses how the billionaire class has a long-term plan for our futures that involves the commodification of humanity as data, the automation of labour, programmable money, and the management of global systemic poverty. She points out that this whole agenda for building a post-war cybernetic world has never actually been hidden but now emerges as an entirely open conspiracy.
Specifically, McDowell believes that Social Impact Bonds (SIB) and Human Capital Bonds (HUCAP) are being introduced to enable a soft system of slavery that will operate though Blockchain or alternative ‘distributive ledger technologies’ (DLT) in parallel with digital identity eventually linked up under schemes of Universal Basic Income (UBI). She believes the approach has been taylor-made to appeal to the American mindset, and anticipates little to no resistance will come from the middle classes.
Reflecting upon how far this agenda has recently been advanced, she asks rhetorically: “what kind of world are we creating that you have to have two full-time parents working two jobs to sustain a family so that your kid can be on a surveillance play table for Goldman Sachs?”
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Part 2: We don’t need no stinking smart badges!
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is a concept advanced by the World Economic Forum. This envisioned future is fully digital. The Internet of Things (IoT) will increasingly enable us to interact with the world with everything digitally mediated through electronic sensors. New virtual environments will then be built around artificial intelligence with increasing use of biometric surveillance, synthetic biology and bioengineering as well as robots and automation. Already we have manifestations of digital work such as platform labour, telepresence, avatars, synthetic humans and humanoid robots.
In this second part, Alison McDowell talks about how the Fourth Industrial Revolution marks a seismic shift that will bring about our dispossession from the world and a wholesale clearing of the commons to the point that ultimately people will no longer have autonomy over their bodies or their mental states. In the near future, besides implementing UBI to keep a lid on things, a rising technocratic state is set to employ predictive analytics alongside automated policing with robot dogs and weaponised drones.
One of the great pioneers in this field and the father of cybernetics was Norbert Wiener who once claimed “as objects of scientific inquiry, humans do not differ from machines”. However later in life, Wiener became more critical and sounded the alarm on the dangers of ‘human systems engineering’ declaring for instance: “Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor”.
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Part 3: People are not impact investment commodities
Getting to grips with a slippery lexicon surrounding Human Capital Bonds (HUCAP) and related financial structures can be tricky: “Oh, it’s not a ‘Social Impact Bond’, it’s ‘Pay for Success’; or it’s not Pay for Success, it’s a Social Impact Partnership.”. But the essential premise of this human capital financialised system moving forward is that based on ‘equations’ created by esteemed academic institutions and think tanks (e.g. the Heckman equation), it becomes possible ‘to cost out’ negative externalities.
So, for instance, what does it cost to incarcerate you? Or to provide special education? And what’s the cost of you being depressed and unfit to work? By analysing in this way, all social programmes will have money attached to them on the basis that pre-emptively we can fix someone (who may never yet have been incarcerated, identified as needing special education, or diagnosed with depression) by profiling them to determine the potentiality of these harmful outcomes – reminiscent of a pre-crime scenario – in order that ‘a cost offset’ can then be generated. i.e., if it’s going to cost society this much to fix you when you’ve been broken, then instead we can make a saving if just a fraction of that cost is required to fix you pre-emptively. It’s ‘in the space between’ where the new investment entities will negotiate a profit, and public-private partnerships and benefit corporations are instrumental in this system.
Since everything is about virtualising life and social relations and uploading it as data on a ‘dashboard’, it is important to understand who these dashboard entities actually are. And one of biggest players is Salesforce and Marc Benioff; there’s also Microsoft and Steve Ballmer.
Coming back to the new lexicon, Alison McDowell describes how “closing a gap” more literally means merging data from separate entry points in order to provide modes for engineering human and community behaviours via these ‘dashboards’. And she explains how this approach creates two immediate problems: first, once you generate a global market around tackling any problem (by “gap closing”) – say for instance, poverty management – then you also create a disincentive to stop the gap completely, because if the gap is ever fully closed, the original source of the market is eliminated and the game is over. Moreover, in what eventually becomes a securitised investment environment, there will be some players who will actually bet against each particular solution working! Bottom line: to make the game profitable, the logic of the market dictates that we always keep some amount of poverty (or other problem) in order to manage it.
Currently, finance to seed these kinds of schemes is derived from governments through taxation. So what will happen in future presuming large numbers are made redundant (due to automation of labour) and there’s less tax revenue to draw on? Well, there are already proposed alternatives to bypass government altogether. Alison McDowell puts it this way: “An investor can invest in an evidence-based programme with a performance-based contract in a non-profit, and if they achieve it they can be paid back by a foundation”.
Thus, corporations with parallel foundations will be able to maintain what she calls “the human capital battery system”: for example, Hewlett-Packard – and this is just conceptual at this point – may decide to invest in an early childhood intervention predicated on data where Hewlett-Parkard tablets, products, devices, wearable technology, brainwave headbands, etc are used to collect the data, with the aim of managing behaviour to make the kids jump through the correct hoops and hit a target they need to reach. And if this is achieved then they are paid back by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Or perhaps the Dell corporation is paid by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Or Microsoft by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this way the corporations can just circulate their own capital and ‘philanthropic capital’ round and round and round.
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Part 4: We’re already living in a debt-financed matrix
The pharmaceutical giant Moderna that in January 2016 “entered a global health project framework agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance mRNA-based development projects for various infectious diseases” also describes its own mRNA medicines as “the software of life”. Is this statement to be taken at face value, or should we regard it as nothing more than commercial blurb and hype: if we take it seriously, then shouldn’t we consider the possible ramifications: do we actually want to become genetically modified organisms?
On a related issue, Microsoft in collaboration with the University of Washington are now in the process of developing molecular-level read and write technologies built from DNA to boost storage capacity for digital information! And how concerned should we be about advances in RFID tracking or quantum-dot tattoos and upcoming nanotechnological developments including ‘smart dust’ by DARPA? Do we actually want to live in a QR code world?
Moreover, what are the inherent physical dangers of the new ‘smart’ technologies? The rollout of 5G technology had been so rapid that it has involved the circumvention of the precautionary principle. Latent dangers to human health are one problem, but what happens if this or future technology such as GMO and geoengineering irrevocably harms the ecosystem including adversely impacting our soils and even pollinators? Will we have to grow all our food hydroponically, aeroponically, and in labs?
Meanwhile, the overarching goal of this new model society with its financialisation of the commons, globalised data collection and mass surveillance is finally to isolate people and extract as much data as possible: “so when they talk about project-based learning, which sounds great, they don’t say oh, but it’s in a VR headset and you’re going to be in North Dakota collaborating with a person in New Mexico…”
The trouble is, Alison McDowell says, “The role of the media – the mainstream media, the social media and even the alternative media – is to have people not look at the thing. Because if we all looked at the thing and we saw it with clarity… we would be an incredible threat to what’s coming. And so we’re in the process of being managed though these platforms.”
She adds: “It feels like decisions are being made beyond the reach of the people, and that there isn’t space to weigh the possible risks against the consequences of the decisions as a whole community… You hear a lot about ‘Blockchain is trust’, like we’ve really eroded trust. Trust in our government; trust in one another; trust in the facts: like we have very little trust until these tech people sweep in with ‘Blockchain is your trust’.
“But if we lived in a world where we respected one another and we had authentic empathy towards one another, I think we could have more robust conversations about risks and benefits of how to deal with what’s unfolding. But that’s not how it’s happening and it’s not meant to happen that way.
“Clearly what’s happening is there are playbooks that are rolling out: region one does this; region two does that; it’s a very structured response – it’s not organic, it’s not like one community decides to do things a certain way, for the most part with community input.
“For me that is what is meaningful… people should have the right of free association, of their lives and their labour, and they should have an ability to have some control over that, and what their future is – presuming again, you’re not harming other people in the process. And we’re not there with this situation.”
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Part 5: Heads we lose, tails they win!
‘Lifelong learning’ is another great idea, but what will it mean in reality for most of us? What if it entails just perpetual re-skilling for a global gig economy; i.e., to be constantly remade simply in order to function as human capital within an ever-shrinking labour market?
Trapped in such a system, and compelled to chase jobs that, as work becomes fully automated, are continually disappearing, will bring only misery and immiseration, desperation and destitution. But still it’s a game, one that necessitates continual retraining; and all the while, the hedge funds will be betting on the re-skilling part with ‘success metrics’ based on your pursuit and acquisition of the next badge – which means educational accreditation by compliance – rather than on enhanced employment prospects and a guaranteed income:
“You hear ‘eds and meds’ and you think we want a bunch of teachers and healthcare workers, right? That’s an economy of ‘eds an meds’. No, I’m pretty sure what they mean is we are to be processed by ‘eds and meds’. We’re not the processors, we’re the product. We will be managed as chronically ill people. We will be managed as chronically under-employed people through the educational systems that are being set up, through digital platforms and through digital systems that are telemedicine, and also teletherapy.”
In a future when labour is redundant, people will also be profiled from very early age and then encouraged to pursue directed pathways. Alison McDowell draws attention to the so-called “Dear Hillary” letter sent by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) on November 11th 1992, in which he laid out plans “to remold the entire American system” into “a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone”, coordinated by “a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels” where curriculum and “job matching” will be handled by counsellors “accessing the integrated computer-based program.”
This planned workforce development model was proposed explicitly to better serve the interests of the US Chamber of Commerce. In lockstep, there has since been a bipartisan adoption of the Swiss Apprenticeship Model, which means limited options allocated on the basis of regional determinations, with emphasis on STEM pathways that will in turn enable the advancement of Fourth Industrial Revolution goals.
Which brings us to the ‘Sharable Content Object Reference Model’, aka SCORM, and to the related ‘Experience Application Programming Interface’ or ‘Tin Can API’ or simply xAPI; the next level in e-learning software that records and tracks all types of learning experience. Functioning as a web service, xAPI enables users to upload statements in the form “subject verb object” and thus essentially reduces education to: “I did this”. I read this book. I accomplished this level in the martial arts game. I caught three fish and I took a picture of it and uploaded the picture. Every experience is accordingly reduced to fit this same box of “subject verb object”.
Alison McDowell believes that the plan is to link these xAPIs directly to Ethereum ‘smart contracts’ both for payment processing and credentialing – I went to the rock climbing wall. I got certified that I got to the top. All of which then goes into your ‘learning locker’ and so the climbing centre gets paid, as your data is tracked and as the investor who is investing in your physical education also gets paid. And last (but not least), it’s all put on the ledger and so it’s all ‘very trusting’ and very ‘transparent’ as we operate like pawns inside a video game world!
Alison McDowell says: “This is being imposed by an anti-life, engineering, militarised force across the world. This isn’t US versus China. This is us in solidarity with the Uighurs, in solidarity with the Palestinians, in solidarity with the families in Boa Vista, families of North Philadelphia, the people who are being dispossessed off their lands in India. We’re all in this together against this system that would seek to reduce our lives to fit in the ‘I did this’ box to profit hedge funds.
“And knowing some of the hedge funds are betting against us. Betting against our health. Betting against our education. Betting against our well-being. Betting against our housing. Betting against all of it. They will say that they’re just betting for us, but for every person betting for us, there’s somebody else betting against us.”
Heads we lose, tails they win!
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Final thoughts: How do we resist?
The technocratic goal, Alison McDowell says, is to reframe liberation as “we can sell ourselves”, and so by getting really good at personal branding we will be enabled to come out ahead of our neighbours. If we wish to resist this dog-eat-dog culture then we need to act in solidarity and, more specifically, we must oppose the introduction of digital identity systems, and the implementation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that comes with the installation of 5G:
“We don’t need a world where humans are redundant. And we need to understand this not in a partisan way and not in a nationalist way. Right now, it is the masses of humanity against the billionaires.”
She says: “This system is coming after all people and we have a lot to learn from people who have been resisting these systems of domination for years and years. We need to stand in solidarity with one another and we need to understand that our struggle is the struggle of people around the world.
“And I’m sitting here as someone who has the benefit of mostly owning a home, having somewhat stable employment, but I can see where this is heading, and where this is heading is towards anti-life. So I think if we can be very clear about that – and I’m appealing to all the people who care for liberation and who care for the vulnerable among us… to put peaceful hearts forward in a very insistent and direct way and to challenge these authorities because I believe that our spirits together are very powerful things.
“I’m under no impression that it’s going to be some quick resolution – if it were we wouldn’t be addressing the actual problem – because this problem is tied to the doctrine of discovery and is at least 400 years or more in the making; so it’s not a quick fix. But, it’s the work that has to be done.”
Click here to visit Alison McDowell’s official website Wrench in the Gears.
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Additional: What Silicon Valley has planned for public education
The following presentation by Alison McDowell entitled “Future Ready Schools: What Silicon Valley Has Planned for Public Education” was recorded on March 25th, 2017 at the Lake City Library in Seattle, Washington:
Alison McDowell is a mother and an independent researcher based in Philadelphia, PA. She blogs at the intersection of race, finance, nature, and technology at wrenchinthegears.com.
Her activism began fighting to slow the privatisation of public education in her city. These efforts eventually led her to an examination of globalized poverty management, euphemistically known as social impact investing. This new form of capitalism – biocapitalism or stakeholder capitalism – aims to turn humans into data commodities.
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which has been planned out by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, seeks to replace human labor with artificial intelligence and robotics, a problem has arisen as to how life can be made profitable for transnational global capital interests once the poor have no buying power and are drowning in debt. The solution?
Human capital bond markets, but first everyone must be tagged and trackable for “impact.” That’s where biometric Covid health passports come in. Alison welcomes curious engagement and fellow travelers. You can follow her on Twitter at @philly852.
Alison McDowell’s presentation embedded above was part of an online forum, Politics In And Out Of Europe, hosted by Rutgers University’s Center for European Studies on Monday October 26th 2020. There were two panels followed by an hour of discussion. Alison McDowell was the second presenter, and framing remarks and response was provided by Naomi Klein. A full transcript is provided in the addendum below.
Click here to read the transcript in its original form interspersed with slides from the full presentation with comments beneath as it was published by Alison Hawver McDowell on her official website Wrench in the Gears on October 27th 2020.
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To mark ten year’s blogging, reproduced below is the sixth of my re-uploads from the WoC archive. Originally posted on August 7th 2011, if you tolerate this… looked into the creeping rollout of biometrics in society, in particular in schools thoughout the United Kingdom, and the central role played by Serco.
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My eldest nephew is very excited at the moment. He has just turned eleven and is about to move to his new secondary school. Anyway, a few weeks ago, my sister showed me a letter she’d received via the assistant head at her son’s new school. It read:
“Dear Parent/Carer,
I am pleased to inform you that we will be installing biometric fingerprint readers at the – – – School as part of the catering system.”
“Pleased to inform you… as part of the catering system!”, I parroted back, as my sister read on from the briefing, my own voice rising with incredulity. “They’re fingerprinting the kids to help with the catering?!”
“Yes, but he’s not going to have his fingerprints taken”, she assured me, “they’re not going to treat him like a prisoner. It’s not compulsory…” And she then read on:
“This will enable students to get their dinners more quickly by speeding up the payments process. It will also mean that they can put cash into the system (via paying in machines, like a ticket machine) whenever it suits them so that they do not have to carry cash around with them all day…”
I interrupted again: “But you could do that with a card or something.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, “that’s the alternative option…” And then continuing from the letter:
“Swipe cards can be issued as an alternative to the finger scanning however these can obviously be lost, forgotten or stolen.”
“So what are the other parents thinking?” I asked her.
“There are a few of us refusing but mostly they think it’s just a good idea.”
“Do you know what company’s behind it?” I asked.
“No, but there are some notes on the back…” And she turned the letter over to show me, adding: “perhaps you can check it out”.
On the back of the letter, there is indeed “information” about the biometric system being installed. Information that explains why: “students, parents and staff can rest assured that the fingerprint images cannot be used by any other source for identification purposes”, because “the software turns your child’s fingerprint into a mathematical algorithm” and about how “the image of the fingerprint is then discarded”.
What the notes fail to mention, however, is that this kind of “processing” is standard procedure when recording any kind of digital biometrics. With “image capture” followed by “feature extraction” leading finally to “digital representation”, data compression is an inevitability, but that’s okay so long as in this processing the “vital information” isn’t lost. The important thing is that “the encoded information is functionally as unique as the original, and as easily processed, i.e., compared.”
How do I know this? In part because I’ve just read through Chapter 8 of the Defense Science Board Task Force report on biometrics (p35–6) published in September 2006. Not that a report from the US Department of Defense has anything to do with the installation of a catering system at a school in Sheffield, obviously…
So the fact that “the information stored cannot be used to recreate an image of the child’s fingerprint”, as the notes on the back of the letter explain, is actually beside the point. The actual point being that they can be used to identify the child, because the information is still “as functionally unique as the original”. To put all this another way, a photograph cannot be used to reconstruct a perfect 3-D likeness of your head. There is a loss of information. But that obviously doesn’t mean a photograph can’t be used to identify you. It can, and even when still more information is removed, by let’s say photocopying it a few times, a photo will still retain a sufficiently detailed likeness to identify you. Biometrics are just the next step down. The original photo can be deleted, just so long as sufficient details are retained of, for example, how wide your mouth is and how close together your eyes are. With enough of the right pieces of information, they can distinguish one person from another, reliably and consistently. Which is how biometrics works.
All of this biometric information, “the unique digital signatures” are then held in the database, as the notes on the letter from school also explain. Less clear is who actually owns this database. And skipping through the other details on the back of the letter, I can’t immediately find the name of the company involved, but it does give the brand name of their “cashless catering system”, which is IMPACT. So I looked up IMPACT:
“A million users in over 1700 schools throughout the UK.
We design, build and maintain industry leading, reliable and functional cashless payment systems under the brand name IMPACT…”
Here begins the sales pitch on the homepage of CRB Solutions. Never heard of them? Nor had I. Well, it turns out that they are a “Serco Learning Partner”, one of many. Indeed, Serco have more than 20 current “Learning Partners” offering “solutions” to “clients” (i.e., schools and colleges across the country), which means they have access to a lot of biometric and other kinds of data on school pupils and college students. For instance, listed directly above CRB Solutions, there is Aurora Computer Services, who are:
“The UK market leader in face recognition. faceREGISTER is designed for sixth form registration or whole school lateness. faceREGISTER enables students to register automatically in school, college or university.”
Gone are the days, apparently, when teachers simply remembered their student’s faces. Now whenever a student is late:
“they will be asked for a reason why they are late and these marks are fed back to Serco Facility via our administration software faceMANAGER.”
Those of a more curious disposition are perhaps wondering what other kinds of personal information is downloaded at the “Serco Facility”. In fact, what other kinds of information more generally, since Serco already offers its services in sectors as diverse as environmental services, health, science, transport, local government, welfare to work, defence and nuclear. Nuclear? Yes, nuclear:
“We support the operation of over 20 nuclear reactors, and serve as the lead nuclear safety advisor to Westinghouse, designer of the AP1000 nuclear reactor currently under assessment for the UK’s new civil nuclear programme.” 1
That and the management of the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), which Serco says is the leading nuclear technology services provider in the UK, “with expertise across the full range of nuclear technology, including waste management, nuclear safety and non-proliferation, materials and corrosion and plant inspection.” So that’s pretty comprehensive. Aside from this, Serco also manages the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) as part of a consortium with Lockheed Martin and Jacobs. So the company behind the introduction of school biometrics systems across the country is also responsible for managing the UK atomic power and weapons programmes:
“Serco has a reputation for being a tad secretive. This is perhaps not surprising, as it manages the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire, where nuclear weapons are made, and runs the ballistic missile early warning system.
There are parts of AWE that even the head of the company, Kevin Beeston, can’t go into. Other secrets, too, are kept from him, such as where the company stores evidence on behalf of the National Crime Squad. “I don’t need to know or want to know,” he says.” 2
So begins an article entitled “Serco thunders down the tracks: Traffic lights, rail services, atomic weapons, the time of day. This secretive company manages them all” from the Independent on Sunday, published in March 2002. The article goes on:
“While many people haven’t heard of Serco, almost everyone in this country will have come across its services. It is Serco that runs the speed cameras on the M25, and maintains the traffic signals on a third of motorways in the UK. Half of London’s traffic lights are run by Serco, as are all the signals in Dublin. Manchester’s tram service, Metrolink, and London’s Docklands Light Railway (DLR) are both Serco-operated. When you ring National Rail Enquiries, you will speak to a Serco employee. The company has also built hospitals and prisons.
“In fact, Serco is so ubiquitous, it even sets the time. It manages the National Physical Laboratory, which owns the atomic clock that gives us Greenwich Mean Time.
“You’d be forgiven for thinking Serco was a government ministry.”
This article was published almost a decade ago and yet Serco‘s involvement in running public services was so large and far-flung that comparison is already being made to “a government ministry”. So just how did Serco manage to expand so rapidly and yet so inconspicuously? Well, here’s a brief overview of their rise and rise, taken from the same article:
“As well as having a novel corporate culture, Serco also has an intriguing history. It started out in 1929 as the UK maintenance division of RCA, at the time a cinema and radio equipment company. In the late Fifties it got its first taste of top-secret government contracts. The Ministry of Defence needed a radio equipment specialist to design, build and run the four-minute warning system for nuclear attacks. RCA got the job and has been maintaining it since.
“But it was in the early Eighties that the government-related business really started taking off. Beeston takes up the story: ‘Mrs Thatcher had come in power in 1979 and began reducing public sector costs on a tax-reduction agenda and carrying out privatisation. One of biggest areas that was first turned to contractualisation was the Ministry of Defence.’
“Happily for Serco, Thatcher’s successors, John Major and Tony Blair, both exhibited a fondness for getting the private sector involved in the public sector.”
Click here to read the full article by Heather Tomlinson.
Four years later and Serco were already being talked of as “probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of”, as a glowing profile of their CEO Christopher Hyman in the Guardian explained:
“Have you recently travelled on a train in northern England? Or on London’s Docklands Light Railway? Or perhaps been caught by a speed camera?
“If the answer to any of these questions was yes — or you have spent any time in custody or the armed forces — chances are you have dealt with the support services company Serco. With almost 48,000 people helping to service 600 largely public-sector contracts around the world, Serco is probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of.” 3
No longer a small British subsidiary of a little known American corporation, by 2006, when the article above was published, Serco had gone global. Here, for instance, is taste of what Serco are already running in Canada, Ireland, Dubai, and Australia these days:
Taken from ABC Australia’s Hungry Beast. [Link has since been removed]
Rebranded with Olympian titles, we are familiar with the names of most of our new gods: Blackwater and DynCorp, gods of war and reconstruction; Monsanto, god of harvests; Nokia, god of messages; Walmart, god of convenience; Aviva, god of life (insurance); but then, above and beyond all of these, there is Serco, the god of all the things the other gods don’t already do. A god without portfolio, and although not quite omnipresent, Serco is certainly “highly maneuverable”. As their own bragging PR likes to put it: “Serco has a finger in many pies”.
Now, having reached this point I realise that I have drifted well away from the original issue. My initial response to reading the letter from my nephew’s school having been to wonder at the kind of country we are living in. Already the most surveilled society in history, and now face-scanning and fingerprinting our children on a routine basis. In the process, as my sister says, we are already treating them as if they’re little criminals. Is it really necessary to hammer home the point here?
For we may believe this data can and will never be retrieved for uses beyond the bounds of the schools and colleges involved, but in permitting such licence we are nevertheless inculcating a sense of naïve trust in the next generation, which will normalise them to accept adult life in a surveillance society. We are teaching them to submit to authority. The word Orwellian is very overworked, but what other word can be applied in this instance? We are fingerprinting our children and entrusting that information to the major government defence contractor. And there is barely a raised eyebrow. Parents are mostly thinking that this is “helpful”. So please, if you haven’t done so already, read Nineteen Eighty-Four (not that Orwell has anything to say about fingerprint or face recognition systems, because back in the 1940s such hi-tech digital biometrics had yet to be imagined, let alone invented).
So what kind of a world awaits my nephew and his friends when he finally leaves school in five years time? Well, that will depend.
The road ahead is already laid. As our national assets and provision of our state sector were stolen away, Serco, and a few other giant corporations, absorbed the new workforce and took over. And now, as ours and other economies around the world begin to splutter and flail, they are about to suck up whatever remains at bargain prices. Finally, they will put up their toll-booths at every turn of our daily lives, and in the envisaged “cashless society”, these toll-booths will also be our checkpoints — logging every transaction and every movement.
History ought to have taught us to beware, its overriding message being that the rise of tyranny needs to be constantly guarded against. But those, like Thatcher and Reagan, who rushed us away from more direct forms of centralised government (supposedly to save us from a Soviet style tyranny) have delivered us instead into the talons of an unregulated and monopolised market. Any distinction between interests of the state and the corporations having thus been eroded, the takeover by multinationals such as Serco has been unstoppable. After all, someone has to be in charge of things. Serco then (and the pantheon of other corporate gods we must increasingly bow to) amounts to governance by another title, and not merely at a national scale, but transnationally — a few corporations becoming, in effect, arms of an unelected and largely unaccountable “global governance”.
This shift away from democracy and towards neo-feudalism is happening in plain sight. You even get the picture from Serco‘s own PR material — the closing overlapping mosaic of corporate heads in their latest video simultaneously and hypnotically announcing: “we are Serco”; with the eerie subtext being that “resistance is futile”. But resistance isn’t futile, not yet…
If you’d like further information about this widening programme of school biometrics then I direct you to a worthwhile campaign group called Leave Them Kids Alone (LTKA) that is calling for a stop to this latest encroachment upon our civil liberties, or rather, the civil liberties of our children.
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Addendum: The full transcript of Alison McDowell’s presentation
We’re living in tumultuous times with polarizing political theater and pandemic providing ample cover for the roll out of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. From the World Economic Forum’s outpost at San Francisco’s Presidio, the tentacles of dispossession triggered by Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” are rapidly encircling the globe.
We are witnessing the culmination of a century of machinations by western social engineers. We see predatory philanthropy using such euphemistic framing as “Living Cities,” “Healthy Cities,” “Resilient Cities,” and “Build Back Better” to package the profoundly anti-human and anti-life initiatives coming out of Davos as aspirational goals for “smart” living.
The oligarch class asks us to play along and overlook the fact that all of this smartness rests on a foundation of continued growth, fossil-fuel expansion, child labor, toxic waste, and space pollution. They demand we overlook the insatiable energy requirements needed to run the augmented reality Internet of Things illusion. That we put out of our minds the existence of vast data centers cooled 24/7 with the water of a thirsty, poisoned world.
They’ve outdone themselves propagandizing youth to cheer on transnational global capital’s plans to implement a final “green” solution. Though my hope is after months of digital alienation people’s spirits will stir in time to derail the intentions of this cruel biocapitalist regime to push us away from our rightful connection to natural systems and one another and into isolated virtual realms. The spell of faux ICT sustainability must be broken.
Predatory debt-finance got a spit and polish makeover, rebranded as circular economies and stakeholder capitalism to make it more palatable. Post-Covid, vast poverty mining enterprises will emerge from the ashes. Smart city sensor networks, predictive policing, and public-private partnerships will latch onto shell-shocked families trying to pick up the pieces.
And while Bitcoin-loving Agorists dream of liberation on Blockchain, central bankers have an entirely different vision in mind. They are conjuring a future of data flowing through digital wallets, fuel for an emergent social impact economy, one carefully plotted out for Third Sector, now Fourth Sector, implementation by Social Finance and Sir Ronald Cohen, Harvard Business School graduate and father of UK venture capital.
Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Innovation Project and the Global Parliament of Mayors based out of The Hague will ensure gov-tech and open data platforms are ready to deliver all the data that is needed. Conveniently, a new “operating system for government” developed by Neil Kleiman of NYU’s GovLab and Stephen Goldsmith of Harvard Kennedy School’s Data-Smart City Solutions, will permit politicians to deftly shift accountability for devastating policies onto faceless cadres of analysts. Dashboards are effective weapons to sway populations conditioned for compliance. It’s difficult to effectively direct public sentiment against something as ephemeral as an algorithm.
The war on terror has been swapped out for pandemic preparedness, which should work out well for the World Bank’s efforts to grow their vaccine and pandemic bond markets. We all pose threats to state security simply by living in a human body. Robot police dogs, drones, facial recognition cameras, wearable sensors, and biometric tracking are framed vital investments needed to keep communities “safe” in what is rapidly becoming a global open air prison. Track and trace free-range humans; look to industrial farming; look to wildlife management; look to Gaza; look to The Commons Project.
CommonPass isn’t their only venture. Not by a long shot.
It’s not just air travel that the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Economic Forum intend to regulate. In their imagined future, presentation of tokenized credentials will be required to go to work, to school, to the store, to access public buildings and events. Such micro-management was unfathomable mere months ago, at least to everyone not in on the scheme.
When we speak of politics, when we speak of citizens’ rights this is THE game changer. Who voted in Common Pass? Who decided individual liberties will now be governed by apps advanced by corporations that stand to profit from population management?
How relevant will national borders be in an age of real-time geo-fencing? Pass laws have long been used to control targeted populations: on Indian reservations, in Nazi Germany, in Apartheid South Africa. Now we have Serco. Now we have legal discrimination based on health status? In the global biosecurity state on any given day the border could very well end up being your front door.
If we don’t object, moving forward blockchain tokens representing all sorts of digital assets, including rights and privileges, will be held in digital accounts. Social entrepreneurs need these biometric identity systems in place in order to install their planned impact economy. Using health status as an issue of national security, our hijacked governments plan to impose this upon us, not for our own good, but because the biocapitalist agenda must proceed.
Few realize it, but the Covid drama is providing cover for a far more insidious program of perpetual tracking and tracing tied to health management and Sustainable Development Goal 3. Health data will create new equity markets meaning more and more wearable tech surveillance. The Impact Management Project’s practitioners, the asset holders whose greed led to a world beset by chronic illness, have structured profit centers in Internet of Things preventative care – social determinants of health weaponized.
What we are living through is not a public health emergency but a reset of the global economy managed from Davos on behalf of the finance, technology and defense sectors. This “new normal” is totalitarianism wrapped up in a shiny “green” bow.
The post-Covid world will be characterized by welfare dependency on a scale heretofore unimaginable, justifying the creation of innovative human capital debt products. Portfolios of people, poor people, will emerge as a new asset class enabled by pay for success government contracts.
Education, training, healthcare, counseling, nutrition, and housing services all aligned to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to generate the metrics needed to satisfy contractual obligations. The richness of life narrowed to fit the stingy confines of a data analyst’s worldview.
This is a diagram featuring a digital wallet where food assistance funds are stored on blockchain with coded nudges guiding a recipient’s food purchase behaviors.
The State of Illinois Blockchain Task Force developed this thought experiment, but similar digital food payment programs are in use to manage the displaced. UK company IrisGuard’s is a major player in that space. Additional NHS has made arrangements to purchase DNA nudge bands tied to Covid Testing. Makes you wonder where the DNA from the testing is going, doesn’t it? Likely into academic tech-transfer hubs. Such is biocapitalism.
Stakeholder capitalists can’t profitably mine poverty without biometric identification that can be used to aggregate interoperable data. Vaccine registries are central to this program. GAVI is a key player with Gates sitting at the pinnacle of the Stakeholder Capitalist pyramid. ID2020 efforts running through the United Nations will ensure no one “gets left behind,” but few are aware the US Department of Homeland Security bankrolled much of the World Wide Web Consortium’s work in the digital identity space.
As I prepared these remarks I couldn’t help but mull over the intelligence communities’ interest in signals intelligence, weaponized narrative, simulation, predictive modeling, and social contagion. How will our collective voices ripple through this militarized cloud architecture into the general consciousness and beyond? Such are the thoughts that haunt the corners of a Zoom consciousness – Bluffdale and the NSA always out on the horizon, you know?
But those with eyes to see have the duty to speak.
So I am here today as a mother.
I am here as a mapper of geographies of power, as a voracious LinkedIn profile reader, and a viewer of obscure government webinars.
I am here as a resident of Philadelphia, a “smart” city set up for predatory “what works” “data-driven” government.
I am here to shine a light on municipal nudge units funded by self-interested foundations seeking to replace civil servants with apps that manage citizens as agents in behavioral economic equations.
I am here as a human relative living among a multitude of non-human beings on this beautiful earth, not yet remade as a planetary computer to profit social impact investors.
I am here as a lover of stars who opposes the weaponization of space, the atmosphere, and our weather systems.
I am here as a voice for peace who views 5G and the planned 6G installation as a domestic military occupation.
I am here to speak of Davos’s plans to deny us the opportunity to communally atone for and begin to remedy the devastation capitalism has wrought against nature and indigenous people.
I am here because we have entered a cyborg era in which sociopathic billionaires and defense contractors want to fundamentally alter what it means to be human, tapping nano-technology and morally bankrupt scientists to do their dirty work.
To the wealth hoarders, the masses exist as nodes in the Internet of Bodies, nodes that must be separated from the cosmic dance through force of law, hydro-gel biosensors, and blockchain.
Will you own your ledger or will your ledger own you? We are looking at a future where the masses will forfeit their innate human freedoms in exchange for the behavioral currency needed to survive within the panopticon.
Human capital bonded. Each life calculated according to its perceived burden on the coming robot society, at least in the eyes of hedge fund traders as they place their bets.
Don’t worry there’s safety on the “continuum of care” pathway. Just do as you’re told and keep your social credit score where it needs to be.
Every move in every country advances lockstep – a playbook aligned to strategic investments made over decades by philanthro-capitalists like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidyar, Steve Ballmer, and Marc Benioff.
Will human rights mean anything once financiers, faith community endowments, health insurers, pensions, and even sovereign wealth funds hold our futures in escrow?
Rockefeller Foundation-funded think tank change agents have cleared the way for life to be railroaded into virtual space – for our own good, the good of the planet, in service of the World Bank’s One Health initiative.
The oligarchs will use the UN Sustainable Development Goals to justify imprisoning the planet using sensor networks. Once the electrical engineers have nature and humanity firmly in their grasp, transnational global capital can channel its concentrated wealth through our bodies, our social relationships, and our non-human kin.
As we stand on this threshold questions must be asked.
Who intends to rule life on Earth?
To what end?
On whose authority?
John Trudell, visionary leader of the American Indian Movement, poet and prophet, expressed that it is our responsibility to use the intelligence gifted to us by the creator to be thinkers who will go up against the machine of tech-no-logic.
So today I am here to declare on behalf of the women of the world to say we do not consent to Davos’s Fourth Industrial Revolution.
In this battle of sacred and profane we stand ready to defend the children and the earth from further predation and to strive towards a future of reciprocity and abundance and spirit.
We stand firm in our power full of love and light, ready to face off against Klaus Schwab’s PharmaColonial Technocracy of Necromancers.
Click here to read the same article interspersed with slides from the full presentation and comments published on Alison Hawver McDowell’s official website Wrench in the Gears on October 27th 2020.
3 From an article entitled “Happy, touchy-feely and driven by God: The Serco chief Christopher Hyman is unusual for his values of doing business, with staff and customers coming first and profit last” by Jane Martinson, published in the Guardian on Friday 24th February, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/feb/24/columnists.guardiancolumnists
I would have been called “a conspiracy theorist” at the beginning of the pandemic if had had predicted that countries in the heart of Europe like Austria would apply a lockdown purely for those who have not taken the vaccine… If I’d said that any of that would have taken place I would have been called “a conspiracy theorist” but now that I express criticism of it, I’m called “a conspiracy theorist”.
— Max Blumenthal
*
The quote above is taken from a very recent interview [premiered on Sat 20th] with independent journalist Max Blumenthal when he joined host RJ Eskow on his show The Zero Hour – the full show is embedded below along with annotated segments of the conversation that I have transcribed beneath including relevant links, video uploads (with descriptions in Italics) and occasional disagreements:
*
“Since we’ve been having these conversations for a few years, you can see that I’ve been branded “an antisemite” for my work on Israel-Palestine, and trying to understand and interrogate how the Israel lobby influences US politics. I’ve been called “an Assadist” for my critical reporting on the dirty war on Syria, which was largely kept from the US public by legacy and corporate media. I’ve been called “a Kremlin shill” or “Russian spy” or “asset” for challenging the narrative of Russiagate, which has just been exploded in broad daylight in recent weeks with the indictment of several key players in the construction and dissemination of the Steele Dossier.
“And so now, for using the same kind of techniques and applying the kind of critical thinking that I do to every major issue – and having you know been inspied to get into journalism because of the way 9/11 was exploited to consolidate this massive security state and carry out regime change across the Middle East – for just applying that same kind of thinking to the pandemic, yes, I’m branded “an anti-vaxxer” and large segments of the organised left, or the establishment left, are angry with my analysis, and according to them, you’re not really supposed to have an analysis: we just are supposed to go along with the proclamations of public health officials which are constantly shifting.
“Just through my conversations with colleagues and people on the left; they all know something’s wrong, but many of them self-censor because they’re afraid of having this label applied to them which does have implications; disturbing implications when you consider that in September, around the anniversary of 9/11, the DHS issued a terror threat warning that there was no specific terror plot, but that people who are critical of vaccine policy in the US were “a terror threat”. In other words, the concept of being “an anti-vaxxer” – which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary means anyone who even opposes mandates – is now being criminalised.” [from 3:05 mins]
Drawing upon Cold War comparisons, RJ Eskow broadens the conversation raising the point that the West has once again entered a period of Manichean ‘bi-polar’ thinking, to which Blumenthal responds:
“These terms are never fully explained. It’s just a way of, first of all, appealing to establishment prejudice against the dissenter, and applying a pejorative or label in order to shut down debate.
“And you’ll find that on this, even more than Russiagate, it is impossible to have a rational or reasoned kind of calm and measured debate on the issues, with particularly people who are to the left of Tucker Carlson. I mean it goes through the Democratic Party, all the way to the radical left. You have the almost, near blanket support, or silence in the face of so many violations of human rights, and obliteration of legal strictures, and concepts that we took for granted in an already weak liberal democratic system; that’s probably an understatement.
“The purpose of 9/11 – not the attack but the response to it – was to create a state of exception where international law and conventions around torture could be wiped away, because the public provided consent to the Bush administration and the Blair administration to do so because it was gripped with fear.
“You remember the days after 9/11: I remember people were concerned that Bin Laden was going to wage a dirty bomb attack; there was the anthrax – the very mysterious anthrax attacks – to keep the fear going. And the public gave full consent for the Bush administration to create what Carl Schmitt called the ‘state of exception’ where the laws of the past no longer apply, and you had to, in the words of Dick Cheney, ‘take the gloves off’; begin torturing people; establish the unitary executive, where congressional approval of wars was no longer of interest; the AUMF [2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force] “Emergency Authorisation” – we hear that word so much around the Vaccines, well it reminds me of the AUMF, which has never been sunsetted since 9/11.
“So now we have another ‘emergency situation’: the threat of the virus, which is real, has absolutely been exaggerated, and we’ve moved from ‘responsibility to protect’ – the R2P Doctrine where the US has to come in and save some civilian population after we’ve witnessed so much death – to witnessing death all around us, and the government has to simply do something, and the public has give their consent for the government to do something. It’s gone from R2P to R2V: Responsibility to vaccinate – and that means mandating vaccines – something that Anthony Fauci said the government would never do. Something Joe Biden and Jen Psaki said [here and here] they would never do, because it seemed usually draconian to voters back in 2002. Now they’re doing it, Democrats have overwhelmingly supported it – even a slice of Republicans have – and we’re seeing restrictions and human rights violations take place that we never could have imagined.
“I would have been called “a conspiracy theorist” at the beginning of the pandemic if had had predicted that countries in the heart of Europe like Austria would apply a lockdown purely for those who have not taken the vaccine. I would have been called “a conspiracy theorist” if I’d said another country Slovenia is now refusing to allow the unvaccinated to buy gasoline – you have to present your health card there in order to buy gasoline.
BBC news finally reported on the full extent of protests across Europe including Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands last Sunday evening [Nov 21st]:
On Thursday [Nov 18th] British comedian Russell Brand uploaded his own report on developments in Australia where thousands of protestors are also gathering to demonstrate against legislation granting new government powers:
*
“Germany will soon apply a lockdown of the unvaccinated, and lockdowns themselves, and the way we’ve seen them applied, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, where if there’s one or two cases an entire region or country locks down; and all the health effects that that has on the public are completely ignored in order to eradicate an airborne respiratory virus that’s simply impossible to eradicate and is endemic.
“If I’d said that any of that would have taken place I would have been called “a conspiracy theorist” but now that I express criticism of it, I’m called “a conspiracy theorist”. So there’s almost no way to win, but I think a large part of the public is starting to come to its senses and realising that the response to the pandemic is not necessarily about public health.
“It’s about private wealth, monetising the response, and militarising the response. The military-intelligence apparatus has been involved in this from the beginning… in a different way than it was involved in 9/11, and in some ways a more intimate way: in the way that censorship and surveillance are creeping into our lives on the grounds of a public health response.” [from 7:50 mins]
Responding to this last point, RJ Eskow says that he also recognises how governments can and do usefully regulate for public safety and worker protection and that as someone who suffers with health problems that have left his own immune system suppressed, he too desires freedom of movement. He feels that it is therefore understandable that a responsible government would encourage citizens to get a vaccine, adding however, that “a little alarm goes off” once he sees the state exercising its powers to impose enforced inoculation.
Eskow then references an article co-authored by Max Blumenthal and published by The Grayzone [Oct 19th] about the vaccine passport and who’s behind it, continuing:
“This to me is vitally interesting and you know I did a project for a think tank in Palo Alto fifteen years ago where I modelled future possible pandemics – and I found out, and very few people have written about it – back then that the federal government had already put plans in place to impose internal passports and internal restrictions on travel, military takeover of transportation hubs and things like that, and you know I thought ‘wow, that sounds dystopian’.
That’s a lot of what you’re describing and it and it seems to me we should be able to hold more than one thought in our head, which is that we want to reduce loss of life from this pandemic, but we also want to be concerned about not strengthening the mix of state and private forces that already have too much control over our lives. Do you get where I’m coming from?” [from 15:10 mins]
Blumenthal answers:
“Yes I do. I think that if there had never been mandates in the US where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of workers had a pink slip dangled in front of their face, if they did not want to take a vaccine – and we should talk about what they’re being asked to take – then there wouldn’t be this hysteria about “anti-vaxxers”.
“I mean you have people around the world – not just masses of people in Italy, in France, protesting vaccine passports: what’s called ‘the Green Pass’ in Italy where millions of workers are being told that they have to present this in order to get into their very jobs.
On Saturday [Nov 20th] thousands of protesters attended a demonstration to oppose the Green Pass in Rome. The certificate is mandatory in order to work and attend all public places and events, including public transport between cities. The protesters gathered in Rome’s Circus Maximus, after Italian authorities banned demonstrations against the Green Pass in historic or tourist sites. One protester says, “Between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Are we all equal? We are equal human beings. We are equal.” Another tells the reporter, “Everyone makes their choice. I am not against the vaccine, I am here for freedom of choice”:
On the same day thousands also took to the streets in the Croatian capital Zagreb in the biggest demonstration the country has seen against Covid-19 measures since the beginning of the pandemic:
*
“You have protests in the West Bank in Palestine. You have protests in Tehran. You have protests in Martinique. You have protests in Morocco – massive protests against their vaccine passport system. Now you have protests in Costa Rica and Colombia; all across the Global South protests are cropping up, as well as in New York City: there’s a massive protest this Saturday in Central Park, and all across the West.
“You wouldn’t have this if there hadn’t been mandates. If people hadn’t been forced and coerced: if they had simply been encouraged. And many people who were immuno-suppressed or who were in risk groups have mostly gone out and gotten the vaccine.
“And then we have another problem and it’s the intersection of these two problems that caused me to start raising issues about the pandemic response. First, the coercion and the attacks on workers, obliterating worker rights as [economist] Richard Wolff said: one of the core foundations of the labour struggle is that the boss should never have the power to decide what life decisions the workers make. It’s up to the workers. That’s why workers organise, and so that’s why they’re opposing these mandates.
“But the other issue is the vaccine itself. They were rolled out under emergency usage. The trials were shoddy at best.* They were approved then by the FDA under very suspect conditions – in one case, the Pfizer vaccine had the control group eliminated. I mean these aren’t real trials, so people are naturally suspicious of it. It is using a novel technology called mRNA, which is essentially a gene therapy…
[Warning: Before continuing I need to insert a few words of caution: a lot here hangs on the Max Blumenthal’s use of the word ‘essentially’. More assertive claims that the vaccines are gene therapy are widely discredited. Of course, this point is highly technical and well beyond my own scientific training, but here is an article that attempts to clear up the matter.
Regarding the claim that “the trials were shoddy at best”, this is a strong statement and I have found little evidence to directly support it. However, it is important to keep in mind that the Pfizer vaccine alone has yet to receive full FDA approval (restricted to people aged 16 and above and granted as recently as August) while the alternative vaccines remain under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) which means that clinical trials are ongoing. Moreover, The Lancet has acknowledged that “long-term safety issues might arise” due to the accelerated development under the Operation Warp Speed – see the footnote for further details.]
“… and while it has been shown to reduce severe illness or death when people have antibodies, it does not prevent infection. And that’s something that everyone from Anthony Fauci to CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, admitted; there’s a new study in The Lancet out this week: it’s called “Community transmission and viral-load kinetics of the SARS-Cov-2 delta variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated Individuals in the UK” [click here] and it clearly shows that the vaccines do not prevent viral transmission.†
“So what does this mean? It means that the mandates are essentially unscientific. Because if the vaccines had prevented infection and transmission, then it would mean you are protecting others around you by taking it. And it would mean that there was a logic behind requiring people to take it to go into a workplace, or a logic behind vaccine passports requiring people to take it in order to mingle with others at a bar. But there is no logic there. So what is the point of the mandates and the passports? It feels like simply control. And people feel abused by this.
One of the inventors of mRNA vaccine technologies, Robert Malone, warned of the risks of the accelerated vaccine rollout and has subsequently been accused of misinforming the public on a few specific technical points. As a non-specialist it is difficult to gauge whether or not his expertise is fully reliable or we should just trust in government agencies and the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. In this interview he talks at length about many related topics, but I have cued the video to begin where he discusses the covid vaccine response:
*
“Now the people who are ratioing Richard Wolff; that’s you know the laptop-left. They don’t have a whole lot of connection with workers. But if you go out and talk to workers, including those who have willingly taken the jab under threat of losing their job, they feel like there’s been no informed consent – that’s been violated. Their bodily autonomy has been violated. And their right as a worker has been violated.
“And all to take a vaccine that doesn’t prevent them from giving the virus to others. That’s why in Ireland right now, which has over 90% vaccination uptake, you’re seeing cases rise massively …
“The same thing is happening in Singapore which ended its long lockdown and is now being swamped with cases. They have about 85% of people over [the age of] twelve vaccinated. The most vaccinated place on earth, Gibraltar – close to 100% – is going to cancel Christmas; has announced plans to cancel public celebrations of Christmas because of the massive rise in cases. [from 16:10 mins]
John Campbell [Nov 24th] confirms the recent surge in cases in Gibraltar but also finds dramatically lowered rates of death that supports the case that vaccines do provide protection against serious disease:
RJ Eskow then picks up on the points Max Blumenthal raised and summarises, pointing out that there are actually ‘two logics’ operating: one aims to reduce transmission, while the other and sounder reason aims to reduce cases of severe illness, hospitalisation and death. Following on, he says, this means there are correspondingly two moral arguments to consider: first, that it is your duty to your fellow citizens to be vaccinated so that you don’t infect them; and, separately, that you take the jab for your own personal good:
“We don’t want you to be hospitalised or die or get long covid, which is terrible. So we will mandate you take this vaccine so that doesn’t happen. Now, I would argue that the left has not sufficiently analysed the fact that there are two principles here… So when it becomes an issue of ‘for your own good I want to mandate that you take this’, if that is the only principle, then we need to have a debate about whether that is a valid reason for mandating.” […]
“Now, if the goal is to help other people, it’s interesting to ponder whether the mandate has in fact backfired because more people are resisting because of the mandate than would have taken the shot if it had been presented to them in a clear way why they should take it. So that’s my map of the moral landscape. Do you agree with it, disagree with it?” [from 22:40 mins]
Max Blumenthal replies:
“Well, the federal court has ruled that Biden’s mandate as applied to companies of one hundred workers or more that would be enforced by OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] is extraordinarily overbroad – in their words – and a point that the judges makes, which I think is salient, is that not all workers are the same.
“If you have a long-haul trucker who’s in the truck all day by his or herself, it’s very different from someone who’s working in a crowded office or a workplace where people are indoors together for long periods.
“Beyond that they raised the issue of natural immunity, which I think is another blow to the Achilles’ heel of the mandates and this biomedical security regime that’s being erected before our eyes.
“As we know from an August 2021 study by Tel Aviv University – the largest of its kind – comparing those who are vaccinated but have not been previously infected versus those who had been previously infected and not vaccinated, they found that immunity is something like twenty times stronger in those who had been previously infected, and much more durable.
As this report explains, the true figure is closer to thirteen times, but still significantly higher:
*
“We’re seeing that bear our right before our eyes. I mean just look at the number of cases. Now who is most likely to have been previously infected? It’s the frontline workers. It’s the people who were out there while the laptop class was at home during the lockdowns that they seemed to enjoy. Those are the people who now face the mandates.
“I mean the mandates are coming down on the backs of frontline workers who were celebrated with pots and pans being banged out windows, and they’ve gone from heroes to zeroes. That’s who you’re seeing at the protests in New York City is EMS [emergency medical services] workers, firefighters, restaurant workers, healthcare workers; people who sacrificed throughout 2020 and are now facing the pink slip.
*
“So natural immunity has to be recognised here and it’s a hard thing to demonstrate. So that’s another major issue.
“And then we have the issue of boosters. In lockstep, leaders across the West began making the case for boosters including Anthony Fauci, who said in an interview that the mRNA vaccines wane in efficacy over the course of six months. […]
“If you were vaccinated more than six months ago then you are considered unvaccinated in Israel. And not only that, you are not able to go to restaurants or the gym or a spa with your Green Pass anymore, even if you did your part and got vaccinated, because they’re already on their third jab and they’re making space for the fourth one.
“Bloomberg has a piece out – you know citing various public health officials and supposed experts – on how no-one knows how many booster shots you will have to take. And so when you combine this fact with the mandates, and the vaccine passports, which are coming in in more and more draconian fashion around the world, you have to consider that for the rest of your life, every six months you will have to take a vaccine – [one] that in my view is still experimental because it usually takes around four to seven years to adequately test a vaccine and run it through trials and this one has just been rushed out. You will have to do that for the rest of your life in order to continue participating in society, or working.
“So that to me is unacceptable, and I think to many more people it’s unacceptable. And I wonder if boosters haven’t been rolled out so aggressively here and mandated is just to avoid the social catastrophe that’s inevitable if they are.” [from 24:25 mins]
Back in October, Max Blumenthal carefully detailed a variety of initiatives spearheaded by such groups as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [BMGF], Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization [GAVI] which is 25% funded by Gates, Microsoft, Accenture, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Omidyar Network, along with Australian Aid and UK Aid, concluding his piece with a statement made by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who is best known for his work investigating Carl Schmitt’s concept of the state of exception:
Two days before anti-Green Pass protests exploded across Italy, the renowned philosopher Giorgio Agamben appeared before the Italian Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Commission to issue a dramatic statement of opposition to the Green Pass.
Agamben is most famous for his concept of Homo Sacer, or bare life, in which an individual is stripped of rights and reduced to their biological essence in an extra-legal regime justified by war or other emergencies. When Italian authorities declared the first lockdown in March 2020, the philosopher applied the theory to his own country’s heavy-handed restrictions.
“The defining feature…of this great transformation that they are attempting to impose is that the mechanism which renders it formally possible is not a new body of laws, but a state of exception – in other words, not an affirmation of, but the suspension of constitutional guarantees,” the philosopher explained in the foreword to his collection of 2020 writings on Covid-19, “Where Are We Now: The Epidemic As Politics,”
In his remarks before the Italian Senate, Agamben pointed to a sinister agenda behind the official rationale for vaccine passports: “It has been said by scientists and doctors that the Green Pass has no medical significance in itself but serves to force people to get vaccinated. Instead, I think we must say the opposite: that the vaccine is a means of forcing people to have the Green Pass. That is, a device that allows individuals to be monitored and tracked, an unprecedented measure.”
The philosopher concluded his address by taking aim at the supra-national forces – Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, and Rockefeller Foundation, among others – determined to impose a system of digital identification and high-tech social credit as much of the human population as possible.
“I believe that in this perspective,” Agamben warned, “it is more urgent than ever for parliamentarians to consider the political transformation underway, which in the long run is destined to empty parliament of its powers, reducing it to simply approving – in the name of bio-security – decrees emanating from organizations and people who have very little to do with parliament.”
*
To close their discussion, Max Blumenthal once again summarised his findings including the underreported consequences of the rollout of a biometric digital ID system called Aadhaar that led to a spate of deaths in rural India in 2017 as a direct result of starvation due to denial of access to basic food rations – systems of a kind that tech billionaires including Bill Gates are keen to install across the globe (and I direct readers again to read his article in full). In brief he reminded us that:
“Vaccine passports are now in the US essentially handwritten CDC cards, and I assume that they will eventually be digitised. And in fact, there is a long-standing agenda to produce a digital ID and link it to a central bank digital currency, which will be administered through your digital wallet, and it will also be connected to now, as we see, your biomedical history.
“So your ID is connected to your finance, your medical history, and it’s all required to participate in society under the current biomedical security regime, which has come into play through a state of legal exception.” [from 29:40 mins]
Finally, they talk about how society is being fractured over these issues. Max Blumenthal delineates as follows:
“The group that is not just resisting the vaccine, but resisting what I call ‘the new normal’, which is this entire biomedical security regime and propaganda apparatus that’s grown up against the backdrop of 9/11 and Russiagate in this ‘state of exception’ through the pandemic is more heterogeneous than the group that angrily and aggressively supports ‘the new normal’. That group is mostly uniform.
“And then you have another group that has decided ‘to go along to get along’, because generally they’re in an economically precarious situation and they can’t afford conflict. Or they just simply aren’t heavily politicised and don’t want to get involved in the ugliness and toxicity – especially in the US where everything has been framed through the lens of fears of populism and nationalism and you know in the course of a culture war.
“So that group that’s more heterogeneous is impossible to stereotype and you do have right-wingers in there who are there because they just see anything the government does is evil. You have a number of left-wingers who are concerned about monopoly capital gaining unprecedented control over everything including people’s biology. They don’t trust the government. Strangely, I thought there would be more. I’m kind of baffled by the reflexive obedience of large sectors of the left here.
“But it isn’t anymore just about unvaccinated versus vaccinated. I know many people who are fully vaccinated who now see the booster regimen coming in and see these bizarre and exotic restrictions like lockdowns exclusively for the unvaccinated, and they’re just disgusted on civil liberties grounds.
“Of course, the entire resistance to this programme is legitimate, but the idea that every single person in the entire world needs to take one of these vaccines – that has failed on so many of their promises – is to me unacceptable. And to many other people.
“It’s going to require so much coercion and we haven’t even talked about adverse effects. They do have adverse effects. And if you believe the CDC’s VAER’s system – the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system – it’s harming people and injuring people every week. And that’s a concern people have. It’s a legitimate concern.
“I went to a press conference of American’s from all walks of life, many of them had testified in the Senate earlier that day – this was two weeks ago – and hearing their stories about being injured by the vaccines was shocking. Most people are not going to be injured by them – this appears to be uncommon – but it’s a concern that we have to recognise.
“But on a population level, the idea that we can vaccinate our way out of the pandemic has, in my view, been totally discredited. And that’s why we’re going to see in 2022, a focus on therapeutics, on pills people can take. The public health officials will finally accept early treatment after demonisingIvermectin – like your Youtube video could be taken down because I just said the word Ivermectin – it’s been called “horse paste”.
“And now we’re seeing what amounts to Pfizer-mectin and all these other pills – 2022 will be the year of therapeutics. So it’s a tacit admission that the vaccines failed to end the pandemic.
“So why keep pushing people into a corner and creating this kind of new, very heterogeneous resistance? When the vaccine uptake, in my view, has been pretty high across the board, and will continue to go up if people are simply encouraged through positive means, and if public health officials now finally accept the reality that it’s an individual’s choice to protect yourself against illness or death in some cases.
“And I want to make another point that I think is controversial, but I’ve made it before and it’s true [read my note below], which is that the death toll is being inflated – and that doesn’t mean covid is not a threat – but it’s being inflated and accounted in unusual ways to make us think that we’re living through some kind of genocide and to cut off our critical faculties. [from 39:00 mins]
Unfortunately, this is where my own views radically depart from Max Blumenthal’s. In the UK, where I have studied the excess death figures very carefully I have found zero evidence supporting this contention and have in fact presented contrary evidence that shows the British government did everything within its power to reduce the apparent death toll during the early months – for reasons that are blindingly obvious.
Although the system of accounting in many countries, including Britain, undoubtedly is misleading, since it does falsely include some number who have died from other causes, it also inevitably misses other cases that were not diagnosed and thus where cause of death was wrongly attributed for a counterbalancing reason. The only figures that I believe are wholly reliable are these two: the number of hospitalisations and of excess deaths. Considering the case for Britain again, excess deaths counted over the full period beginning from March 2020 approximately correlates with official covid deaths (within a margin of around 10%). Given the difference in methods a small discrepancy is to be expected.
For these and other reasons, I remain entirely suspicious of claims of this sort. Indeed, I view this whole argument about false accounting as a canard and an unnecessary distraction, although as a firm advocate of free speech I do accept that others like Max Blumenthal have the right to make contrary assertions even while I believe it weakens their otherwise sound case. I include this digression at the risk of interrupting the flow merely to stress that I do not agree with Max Blumenthal on all points.
However, Max Blumenthal does finish on a point that I’m in full agreement with:
“We’ve gone from the left advocating for ‘Medicare for All’, and calling for public healthcare, to at least quietly acquiescing as public health officials and pundits call for denying healthcare to the unvaccinated. We’ve even seen a Colorado hospital deny an organ transplant to a woman simply because she and her donor were unvaccinated. She had to go to Texas to save her own life. And that’s something that we are now accepting as triage.
“There’s so many lives that could be saved here by not cutting ICU beds – Andrew Cuomo, how many ICU beds did that guy cut throughout his tenure as governor? Thousands and thousands and thousands…
“And now we’re looking at the symptoms instead of the cause. The symptoms: there’s not enough beds and the unvaccinated are filling everything up. No, this is about neoliberalism; there should just be more beds.
“And then finally, so many people, because of the lockdowns and the fear, delayed routine treatments and many of them died because of that – I mean including chemotherapy. And now they’re coming in and they’re flooding hospitals – look at the reporting right now – the hospitals are full of people who have now decided that they can’t wait any longer to have their routine procedures done, but they waited because of the pandemic.
“So all the hospitals are flooding with people and they’re going to be even more full because of the flu this winter. So covid isn’t the only issue here. It’s the response to it that has been absolutely inhuman, and there needs to be some debate about it – and the critics who have criticised and critiqued every other response by the powerful; every other undemocratic overreaction to a crisis – many of them are absent.” [from 46:35 mins]
Please note: Although the transcript is mine, the views expressed above are not necessarily shared by Wall of Controversy. (My own views are expressed across a range of posts on the subject.)
Importantly,I have not been trained as a medical professional and do not claim to have expert knowledge of this subject. This article is in no way intended to provide medical advice of any kind.
*
* From a report by The Lancet Commission on COVID-19 Vaccines and Therapeutics Task Force published in The Lancet (Vol 9, Issue 7, E1017–E1021), released March 26, 2021 entitled “Operation Warp Speed: implications for global vaccine security”:
OWS has accelerated the development of COVID-19 vaccine without compromising efficacy, safety, or quality.1 There are, however, long-term safety issues that might arise. For example, three Ad5-vectored vaccine trials for HIV showed excess HIV infections in vaccine recipients; could Ad5-based vaccines for COVID-19 enhance HIV infections? Similarly, the use of the AS03 adjuvant was thought by some to be associated with the development of narcolepsy.20 Rare events, such as intussusception after the use of oral rotavirus vaccines, might not be apparent, even in trials of 30 000–60 000 people.21 Vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease and antibody-dependent enhancement were reported in animals given vaccines against SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV;22 fortunately, these effects have not been reported in small animal, non-human primate, or human studies of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.23 However, a long-term effect, similar to the enhancement that was observed for the Sanofi dengue virus vaccine, cannot be ruled out.24 Disregarding safety can undermine public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and decrease vaccination uptake.25 Strengthening of systems in LMICs to monitor, record, and report adverse events after immunisation will be important given the multiple vaccines in use.26
† Interpretation of the study (quoted directly from the paper):
Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.
Important note: It is well past the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, so it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website still declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
— Frank Zappa
This is the seventh and last of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to the future of humanity and including ‘The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence’:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
*
The new normal
In May 2017, Forbes magazine published a piece by financial analyst and writer John Maudlin that bears the prophetic title: “Brace Yourself For ‘The Great Reset’”. Interestingly, the piece is not concerned with climate change or forthcoming pandemics, but simply addresses what Maudlin describes as “the largest twin bubbles in the history of the world”:
These promises add up to hundreds of trillions of dollars. That’s vastly larger than global GDP.
These are real problems we must face. It will mean forging a new social contract. It will also require changes to taxes and the economy. I believe that within the next 5–10 years, we have to end the debt and government promises.
The banking crisis that broke in 2008 has festered ever since; western economies today are continually propped up thanks to vast injections of cheap money: non-stop rounds of quantitative easing with interest rates maintained at levels close to zero. Maudlin was right therefore to forewarn of the ramifications of what have been systematic failures; ones that by the time of publication of his article had already generated a global debt-to-GDP of 325%.
Moreover, he was far from alone in sounding the alarm. As recently as last July, the New York Federal Reserve’s own in-house model, which predicts the probability of a US recession occurring in the next 12 months and is regarded as critical indicator, recorded its highest level since 2009: a reading of 32.9% for June. As Business Insider reported:
“That could mean tough times ahead, considering the measure has breached the 30% threshold before every recession since 1960.” 1
Then in October (still in the months before covid), former Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, went on the record to say that he believed the world was sleepwalking into another crash:
Giving a lecture in Washington at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, King said there had been no fundamental questioning of the ideas that led to the crisis of a decade ago.
“Another economic and financial crisis would be devastating to the legitimacy of a democratic market system,” he said. “By sticking to the new orthodoxy of monetary policy and pretending that we have made the banking system safe, we are sleepwalking towards that crisis.”
He added that the US would suffer a “financial armageddon” if its central bank – the Federal Reserve – lacked the necessary firepower to combat another episode similar to the sub-prime mortgage sell-off. 2
Nor is Maudlin isolated when it comes to questioning whether levels of public spending are sustainable, although here he is necessarily buttressing his own ideological stance and keen to advocate further neoliberal reforms as a matter of unavoidable necessity. Thus, he continues:
What I mean by government promises are pensions and healthcare benefits. 3
Yet beyond the title of Maudlin’s piece, so far his forecast has been rather less than impressive. Instead of policies of stringent austerity, the crisis we now face has in fact resulted in a sudden flood of government spending. It transpires that ‘magic money trees’ aren’t really so hard to find after all.
Moreover, a sizeable fraction of that money has gone directly into the pockets of ordinary people through elaborate schemes set up to compensate for the shutdown of our societies. Meanwhile, a great deal more is being siphoned off into the coffers of global corporations – in America especially, this grand theft has been brazen, whereas in Britain the transfer of public money is a stealthier affair: a prime example being the £100 million wasted on privatised track-and-trace systems run by Serco.
Peter Geoghegan of OpenDemocracy discloses how the Tory government has exploited the coronavirus crisis and handed over multiple millions of pounds of public money in the form of contracts to friends of the party:
Of course, the situation is a temporary one and so the current economic measures are stopgaps, but still this easy availability of public money puts an immediate lie to simplistic arguments that previously justified a decade of austerity. Governments are not constrained to live within their means like households. Austerity is always an ideological choice and never an inescapable inevitability – as I have argued many times before, it is in any case counterproductive because it stifles growth.
That said, historically high levels of government debt do provide a perfect and very nearly irresistible excuse for waves of future austerity and for the sell-off of public assets. This is how disaster capitalism works.
*
On October 7th, economists Michael Hudson and Steve Keen were invited to discuss the current state of western economies and how the so-called ‘K-shaped recovery’ is now dividing the world into haves and have-nots with Peter Lavelle on RT’s Crosstalk.
Michael Hudson explained the ‘new normal’ as follows:
“What has become normal since 2008 has been completely different from the old normal. People have the idea that with ‘normal’ you go back to a balance. But really the economy hasn’t grown at all since the 2008 crisis. All of the growth in GDP, all of the growth in wealth, has accrued to the financial sector, to the real estate sector, and to the one percent. For the ninety-nine percent of the people, they’ve gone down and down and down.
“So the ‘new normal’ is you can’t get rich again by buying housing and joining the middle class like you used to. The ‘new normal’ is paying all of your increase in wages on debt service, in rents, and in monopoly prices. And so the ‘new normal’ is that the market is going to shrink and shrink until we look like Greece looks in the last five years. Think of the ‘new normal’ as looking like Greece: debt deflation and rent deflation.” [from 2:10 mins]
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The great reset
Today, if you visit the website of the World Economic Forum, you will come across an article by its founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab that likewise calls for “a great reset”. From the main page, there is then a link to what WEF calls its “Great Reset microsite”, where the blurb reads:
As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum’s communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.
Time for the Great Reset – screenshot of WEF website
Schwab, a former member of the Bilderberg group steering committee, writes that:
We must use it [the COVID-19 crisis] to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need. That will require stronger and more effective governments, though this does not imply an ideological push for bigger ones. And it will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way.
Dressed up as a synthesis of capitalism and socialism, here the thinly-veiled intention is to amalgamate the worst elements of both systems with an ever-tightening alliance between global corporations and governments, and the replacement of any meaningful representative democracy with greater accountability going instead to so-called “stakeholder” interests. Schwab continues:
The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination (for example, in tax, regulatory, and fiscal policy), upgrade trade arrangements, and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy.” At a time of diminishing tax bases and soaring public debt, governments have a powerful incentive to pursue such action.
Combined with these market-orientated reforms the public can also look forward to enjoying “socialism” in the form of restrictions on individual freedom for reasons of “sustainability”, “intellectual property” rights, green taxes, and, within an overarching plan for the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the growth of “smart cities”:
Moreover, governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes. Depending on the country, these may include changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.
The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. […]
[F]or example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.
The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. 4
Click here to read the full piece by Klaus Schwab entitled “Now is the time for a ‘great reset’”.
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AI is key to the NWO transformation
Meanwhile, as long ago as April 3rd – albeit with his crystal ball firmly in hand – Bilderberg’s most illustrious war criminal wrote this in an op-ed by The Wall Street Journal:
When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus.
Adding:
Global leaders have learned important lessons from the 2008 financial crisis. The current economic crisis is more complex: The contraction unleashed by the coronavirus is, in its speed and global scale, unlike anything ever known in history. 5
Kissinger’s solution to this impending crisis when boiled down (and seeing through all of the cant about “ameliorat[ing] the effects of impending chaos on the world’s most vulnerable populations” and “defend[ing] and sustain[ing] their Enlightenment values”) is this: to “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.” Where for “liberal” we must read “neo-liberal”, and for “world order” we should prefix with the adjective “new” (as Kissinger himself has done on countless past occasions).
Indeed, here is Kissinger presenting a keynote conversation just last year at the George W. Bush Presidential Center beneath the very title “The New World Order” (not that he elucidates much on what he envisions for the NWO):
Kissinger’s view of ‘the shape of things to come’ might be better gauged from an article published August last year and provocatively entitled “The Metamorphosis” that was co-authored by Bilderberg confederate, former executive chairman of Alphabet Inc and current chair of the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, Eric Schmidt, along with fellow techie and former director of Amazon, Daniel Huttenlocher. In it they write:
If AI improves constantly—and there is no reason to think it will not—the changes it will impose on human life will be transformative. Here are but two illustrations: a macro-example from the field of global and national security, and a micro-example dealing with the potential role of AI in human relationships.
The first of these examples relates to the development of new weapons and strategies, and implications for arms control and deterrence. The second is headed simply “Human Contact” and begins as follows:
Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa are digital assistants already installed in millions of homes and designed for daily conversation: They answer queries and offer advice that, especially to children, may seem intelligent, even wise. And they can become a solution to the abiding loneliness of the elderly, many of whom interact with these devices as friends.
The more data AI gathers and analyzes, the more precise it becomes, so devices such as these will learn their owners’ preferences and take them into account in shaping their answers. And as they get “smarter,” they will become more intimate companions. As a result, AI could induce humans to feel toward it emotions it is incapable of reciprocating.
Already, people rank their smartphones as their most important possession. They name their Roombas, and attribute intent to them where none exists. What happens when these devices become even more sophisticated? Will people become as attached to their digital pets as to their dogs—or perhaps even more so?
All of which tiptoes very lightly indeed around the major concern when it comes to our routine installation of hi-tech surveillance equipment inside the home; Alexa already far exceeds the intrusion of Orwell’s telescreens in his dystopian nightmare Nineteen Eighty-Four – and there is something else to worry about here (mention of it is again buried away in the middle of the text):
AI algorithms will help open new frontiers of knowledge, while at the same time narrowing information choices and enhancing the capacity to suppress new or challenging ideas.
As Eric Schmidt is perfectly well aware, of course, this is precisely what the Google algorithm already does. Social media platforms have also been installing filters to censor content, narrow opinion and condemn us to engage in ever decreasing bubbles of discussion. When one echo chamber then rubs up against another no light is shed, but only increasing levels of heat. Obviously, it isn’t AI as such that narrows and suppresses public debate, but the actions of the tech giants with their more or less unregulated control over content.
Then, finally, they get to the crux of the matter:
The technological capacity of governments to monitor the behavior and movements of tens or hundreds of millions is likewise unprecedented. Even in the West, this quest can, in the name of harmony, become a slippery slope. Balancing the risks of aberrant behavior against limits on personal freedom—or even defining aberrant—will be a crucial challenge of the AI era. 6
But once again, it isn’t AI that defines “aberrant” either, it’s whoever operates the AI and has control over the algorithms – and to understand who that is, I recommend studying the lists of Bilderberg participants throughout the past decade. Ever more prominent amongst the ranks of the great and good you will find many of the biggest names in Silicon Valley – one of whom, Reid Hoffman, also happen to sit on Eric Schimdt’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board alongside owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, “the richest man in modern history”, Jeff Bezos.
*
Klaus Schwab and the fascist new deal
“We are at the threshold of a radical systemic change that requires human beings to adapt continuously. As a result, we may witness an increasing degree of polarization in the world, marked by those who embrace change versus those who resist it.
“This gives rise to an inequality that goes beyond the societal one described earlier. This ontological inequality will separate those who adapt from those who resist—the material winners and losers in all senses of the words. The winners may even benefit from some form of radical human improvement generated by certain segments of the fourth industrial revolution (such as genetic engineering) from which the losers will be deprived. This risks creating class conflicts and other clashes unlike anything we have seen before”
Those who believe the multi-billionaire class of plutocrats who gather annually at Davos and more “privately” at Bilderberg do so in pursuit of “socialism” are either delusional or else miss the point for more deliberate reasons. In fact, the primary agenda set forth by these exclusive clubs is rather more straightforward and perfectly understandable if we adjust to see the world through the jaundiced eyes of its membership. The goal is to forge an ever-tightening relationship between the corporations (which they already own and control) and governments (where political power ultimately resides) until eventually there will be no distinction.
This process of public-private convergence has been underway for many decades with groups like Bilderberg and WEF at the vanguard. If and when the merger they seek is completed, our society will be governed wholly in accordance to a political regime known as corporatism, which is a form of fascism (of the type first implemented by Mussolini).
As Winter Oak explains in a very recent article entitled “Klaus Schwab and his Great Fascist Reset”:
In other words, fascism and socialism (at least ‘state socialism’ which first emerged in the Soviet Union) are superficially similar but mainly because they are both statist, while in other ways they are diametrically opposed. That said, fascists have historically used “socialism” for left-cover, and this trend continues today.
The same article then breaks down how Schwab’s plans for a “stakeholder society” (with its leftist overtones) can be rolled out in order to achieve the kinds of fascist (or corporatist) ends desired:
[I]n 1971 [Schwab] founded the European Management Forum, which held annual meetings at Davos in Switzerland. Here he promoted his ideology of “stakeholder” capitalism in which businesses were brought into closer co-operation with government.
“Stakeholder capitalism” is described by Forbes business magazine as “the notion that a firm focuses on meeting the needs of all its stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, the community, and society as a whole”.
Even in the context of a particular business, it is invariably an empty label. As the Forbes article notes, it actually only means that “firms can go on privately shoveling money to their shareholders and executives, while maintaining a public front of exquisite social sensitivity and exemplary altruism”.
But in a general social context, the stakeholder concept is even more nefarious, discarding any idea of democracy, rule by the people, in favour of rule by corporate interests.
Society is no longer regarded as a living community but as a business, whose profitability is the sole valid aim of human activity.
Schwab set out this agenda back in 1971, in his book Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau (Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering), where his use of the term “stakeholders” (die Interessenten) effectively redefined human beings not as citizens, free individuals or members of communities, but as secondary participants in a massive commercial enterprise.
The aim of each and every person’s life was “to achieve long-term growth and prosperity” for this enterprise – in other words, to protect and increase the wealth of the capitalist elite.
Winter Oak then highlights and discusses at length admissions made by Schwab in his writings for public consumption and in particular his 2016 book The Fourth Industrial Revolution [the same term is often abbreviated to 4IR]:
Schwab waxes lyrical about the 4IR, which he insists is “unlike anything humankind has experienced before”.
He gushes: “Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people connected by mobile devices, giving rise to unprecedented processing power, storage capabilities and knowledge access. Or think about the staggering confluence of emerging technology breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing, to name a few. Many of these innovations are in their infancy, but they are already reaching an inflection point in their development as they build on and amplify each other in a fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds”.
He also looks forward to more online education, involving “the use of virtual and augmented reality” to “dramatically improve educational outcomes”, to sensors “installed in homes, clothes and accessories, cities, transport and energy networks” and to smart cities, with their all-important “data platforms”.
“All things will be smart and connected to the internet”, says Schwab, and this will extend to animals, as “sensors wired in cattle can communicate to each other through a mobile phone network”.
He loves the idea of “smart cell factories” which could enable “the accelerated generation of vaccines” and “big-data technologies”.
These, he ensures us, will “deliver new and innovative ways to service citizens and customers” and we will have to stop objecting to businesses profiting from harnessing and selling information about every aspect of our personal lives.
“Establishing trust in the data and algorithms used to make decisions will be vital,” insists Schwab. “Citizen concerns over privacy and establishing accountability in business and legal structures will require adjustments in thinking”.
At the end of the day it is clear that all this technological excitement revolves purely around profit, or “value” as Schwab prefers to term it in his 21st century corporate newspeak.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Schwab also writes with tremendous enthusiasm about the use of the blockchain (the distributed ledger behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin) and 5G technology, and then, having pronounced that “a world full of drones offers a world full of possibilities”, he spells out what the “revolution” means at a human level, saying “Already, advances in neurotechnologies and biotechnologies are forcing us to question what it means to be human”
The following passage is quoted directly from his more recent book Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018):
“Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us—they will become part of us. Indeed, some of us already feel that our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves. Today’s external devices—from wearable computers to virtual reality headsets—will almost certainly become implantable in our bodies and brains. Exoskeletons and prosthetics will increase our physical power, while advances in neurotechnology enhance our cognitive abilities. We will become better able to manipulate our own genes, and those of our children. These developments raise profound questions: Where do we draw the line between human and machine? What does it mean to be human?”
This is where Schwab turns to a favourite subject: transhumanism – and please bear in mind that he was raised in Germany (born in 1938) during the last years of The Third Reich – which as Winter Oak reminds us was “a police-state regime built on fear and violence, on brainwashing and control, on propaganda and lies, on industrialism and eugenics, on dehumanisation and ‘disinfection’, on a chilling and grandiose vision of a “new order” that would last a thousand years.”
The article continues:
A whole section of this book is devoted to the theme “Altering the Human Being”. Here he drools over “the ability of new technologies to literally become part of us” and invokes a cyborg future involving “curious mixes of digital-and-analog life that will redefine our very natures”.
He writes: “These technologies will operate within our own biology and change how we interface with the world. They are capable of crossing the boundaries of body and mind, enhancing our physical abilities, and even having a lasting impact on life itself “.
No violation seems to go too far for Schwab, who dreams of “active implantable microchips that break the skin barrier of our bodies”, “smart tattoos”, “biological computing” and “custom-designed organisms”.
He is delighted to report that “sensors, memory switches and circuits can be encoded in common human gut bacteria”, that “Smart Dust, arrays of full computers with antennas, each much smaller than a grain of sand, can now organize themselves inside the body” and that “implanted devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a ‘built-in’ smartphone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brain waves and other signals”.
“Synthetic biology” is on the horizon in Schwab’s 4IR world, giving the technocratic capitalist rulers of the world “the ability to customize organisms by writing DNA”.
The idea of neurotechnologies, in which humans will have fully artificial memories implanted in the brain, is enough to make some of us feel faintly sick, as is “the prospect of connecting our brains to VR through cortical modems, implants or nanobots”.
It is of little comfort to learn that this is all – of course! – in the greater interests of capitalist profiteering since it “heralds new industries and systems for value creation” and “represents an opportunity to create entire new systems of value in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
Click here to read the full article by Winter Oak entitled “Klaus Schwab and His Great Fascist Reset”.
And here to read an extended post about the nature of fascism and how historically it has repeatedly disguised its true intentions with recourse to ‘left cover’.
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The future of humanity
“Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.”
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher with deep scientific and technical training 9 ,who aside from being Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University is also co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (renamed Humanity+, Inc.) as well as an acknowledged inspiration for Elon Musk and Bill Gates. 10
A self-confessed utopian, Bostrom is strangely religious in that way only scientific materialists can be: so he has dreams of constructing a future heaven by wholly technological means and with ethical foundations grounded and held firm by pure reason. Inspired, he says, by a youthful acquaintance with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, his envisioned Utopia will be a brave new world that is infinitely more delightful, more pleasurable, and finally more pristine than Huxley’s arch conception – a place without death and, in all likelihood, devoid of all corporeality. Subscribing to an increasingly fashionable opinion that the physical universe is just some kind of digital simulation (it used to be clockwork), Bostrom’s Utopia, is set to be the best of all possible simulations: the matrix par excellence! 11
That said, Bostrom is amongst first to acknowledge that unavoidably the road to hell is also paved with good intentions. Indeed, lurking just beneath his sometimes optimistic and occasionally exuberant facade, it is hard not to discern a rather desperate almost pathological desire to escape the horrors of the material world.
During an interview conducted by the Guardian in 2016, he was asked about membership of Alcor, “the cryogenic initiative that promises to freeze mortal remains in the hope that, one day, minds can be reinvigorated and uploaded in digital form to live in perpetuity.” The conversation with Tim Adams then proceeded as follows:
“I have a policy of never commenting on my funeral arrangements,” he says.
But he thinks there is a value in cryogenic research?
“It seems a pretty rational thing for people to do if they can afford it,” he says. “When you think about what life in the quite near future could be like, trying to store the information in your brain seems like a conservative option as opposed to burning the brain down and throwing it away. Unless you are really confident that the information will never be useful…”12
Bostrom was one of a handful of academics and another of the new faces who made it on to the guest list at Bilderberg last year. A few months prior to his attendance, in January 2019, he had also been invited to chat with head of TED and business entrepreneur, Chris Anderson, about his “Vulnerable World Hypothesis”.
As Business Insider reported:
Philosopher Nick Bostrom is known for making scary predictions about humanity.
Over 15 years ago, he made the case that we are all living in a Matrix-like simulation run by another civilization. The idea, though difficult to swallow, is well-regarded by some philosophers, and has even been sanctioned by Elon Musk.
Many years later, Bostrom isn’t done outlining frightening scenarios.
On Wednesday, he took the stage at the TED 2019 conference in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss another radical theory. While speaking to head of the conference, Chris Anderson, Bostrom argued that mass surveillance could be one of the only ways to save humanity from ultimate doom. 13
The full discussion is embedded below:
What Bostrom goes on to outline is a world threatened by ever more sophisticated future technologies whether from advances in nuclear arms; bioweapons research; development of drone swarms; or from other applications of AI: all of which do indeed have the potential to destroy civilisation.
What he says he fears most is that one of these future technologies might become ‘democratised’, accidentally enabling rogue individuals who are without compunction to deliver a Samson-like attack that brings the world down on our heads. In preempting such an existential catastrophe Bostrom therefore presents four solutions.
The first is simply to control the development of such dangerous new technologies; an approach that Bostrom quickly dismisses (for reasons that are hard to fathom). The second, subtitled “eliminate bad actors”, is already more sinister and accompanied by a strange image of a drone sending love bombs (presumably) to dissuade some future assailant. Bostrom half jokes “I think it’s like a hybrid picture: I think ‘eliminate’ could mean incarcerate or kill, or it could persuade them to a better view of the world.”
He continues:
“Suppose you were extremely successful in this and you reduced the number of such individuals by half. And if you want to do it by persuasion I mean you’re competing against all other powerful forces that are trying to persuade people: [political?] parties, religion, education systems; but, suppose you could reduce it by half: I don’t think the risk would be reduced by half, it would maybe be reduced by five or ten percent.” [from 14:45 mins]
Response 2: Eliminate bad actors
That brings him to ‘Response 3: Mass Surveillance’ – Chris Anderson fittingly describes this as the “Minority Report option”:
“So I think there are two general methods that we could use to achieve the ability to stabilise the world against a whole spectrum of possible vulnerabilities. Probably we need both. So one is an extremely effective ability to do preventive policing, such that if anybody started to do this dangerous thing, you could intercept them in real time and stop them. This would require ubiquitous surveillance – everyone would be monitored all the time… AI algorithms, big ‘freedom centres’ that were reviewing this, you know, etc, etc. [from 15:30 mins]
Response 3: Mass Surveillance
Referring to the accompanying picture (see screenshot above), he adds:
“Yes, so this little device there – you might have a kind of necklace that you would have to wear at all times with multidirectional cameras. But to make it go down better just call it ‘the freedom tag’ or something like that.” [from 16:15 mins]
And finally we have ‘Response 4: Global governance’.
Bostrom says, “Surveillance would be kind of [plugging the] governance gap at the micro-level – preventing anyone ever doing something highly illegal – then there is a corresponding governance gap at the macro-level, at the global level. You would need the ability reliably to prevent the worst kinds of global coordination failures: to avoid wars between great powers; arms races; and cataclysmic commons problems. [from 16:55 min]
Asked in summary what the likelihood is that we’re all doomed, he replies:
“On an individual level I mean we seem to be kind of doomed anyway just with a timeline from rotting and aging and all kinds of things.” [from 20:00 mins]
As Business Insider points out:
Under Bostrom’s vision of mass surveillance, humans would be monitored at all times via artificial intelligence, which would send information to “freedom centers” that work to save us from doom. To make this possible, he said, all humans would have to wear necklaces, or “freedom tags,” with multi-directional cameras.
The idea is controversial under any circumstance, but especially at TED, which has focused this year on strategies to ensure privacy in the digital era.
Even Bostrom recognizes that the scenario could go horribly wrong.
“Obviously there are huge downsides and indeed massive risks to mass surveillance and global governance,” he told the crowd. But he still thinks the ends might justify the means.
“On an individual level, we seem to be kind of doomed anyway,” he said.
Click here to read the full article published by Business Insider entitled “An Oxford philosopher who’s inspired Elon Musk thinks mass surveillance might be the only way to save humanity from doom”.
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In this video essay Tom Nicholas contextualises Muskian futurism to ask what its appeal is and what other social, political, economic and cultural movements it might have something in common with. In the final segment he discusses the ramifications of some of Musk’s specific projects – his is not a vision of egalitarian prosperity for all, but one of gilded corridors for an elite few:
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Final, final thoughts: Ctrl-Alt-Del
“Humans will be able to evolve by harnessing the super-intelligence and extra abilities offered by the machines of the future, by joining with them. All this points to the development of a new human species, known in the science-fiction world as ‘cyborgs’. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to become a cyborg. If you are happy with your state as a human then so be it, you can remain as you are. But be warned – just as we humans split from our chimpanzee cousins years ago, so cyborgs will split from humans. Those who remain as humans are likely to become a sub-species. They will, effectively, be the chimpanzees of the future”
Some years ago I had been thinking up names for an envisaged progressive political movement, when, after realising that all of the traditional labels ‘people’s’, ‘popular’, ‘democratic’, ‘freedom’, ‘revolutionary’, etc were already irreparably sullied, it occurred to me that in our mimetic age something snappier might be more suitable. Something along the lines of ‘system reset’, although without the Maoist overtones! Briefly that led me to consider the familiar 3-fingered salute on every computer keyboard, Ctrl-Alt-Del: a consideration that altogether stopped me in my tracks.
In fact, picking apart the elements, Ctrl-Alt-Del already represents the three-pronged assault we are increasingly subjected to: the plutocrats using these precise three strategies to oppress and dominate. First through Ctrl by means of propaganda and censorship, with the steady encroachment of mass surveillance in all areas of our lives (the panopticon), and arguably too with the mental health crisis and widespread prescription of ‘chemical cosh’ opiates and more Soma-like SSRI antidepressants.
In a recent study by scientists at University of Chicago, it was found that rats given anti-anxiety medications were less inclined to free a companion in distress, presumably because they didn’t have the same ability to feel empathy:
Next is Alt (i.e., alteration) with rollout of GMO in agriculture and transhumanism which opens the door to many developments including the advent of designer babies by means of gene editing and the literal rewiring of human consciousness. Finally there is Del (delete) by virtue of ‘population control’ which is a shorthand euphemism for the desire to dramatically reduce human numbers.
Bostrom clearly stands at the forefront of methods of Ctrl and Alt being a leading proponent of total surveillance and for transhumanism, which is basically eugenics 2.0 enhanced by virtue of refined genetic manipulation and accentuated by means interfacing with machines. As Bostrom’s Humanity+ announces its own intentions:
What does it mean to be human in a technologically enhanced world? Humanity+ is a 501(c)3 international nonprofit membership organization that advocates the ethical use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, to expand human capacities. In other words, we want people to be better than well. This is the goal of transhumanism. 15
‘Better than well’ is putting it extremely mildly. If you read past the opening statements then you quickly appreciate that the final goal is nothing short of total mastery of biology in order to achieve absolute control of human life and everything in the biosphere. Advocates of such godlike dominion over Nature should perhaps attend to the writings of Mary Shelley and Johann von Goethe. For Bostrom with his outspoken desire to install mass surveillance to save the world, I also recommend a healthy dose of Orwell.
It is almost tempting to think that the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Del was meant to be a piece of subliminal predictive programming, except that the man credited with its origins is an IBM engineer called David Bradley, who says it was not intended for use by ordinary end users but helpful for software designers. Curiously, however, as Bradley also says (see interview embedded above): “I may have invented control-alt-delete, but Bill Gates made it really famous.” 16
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Additional: ‘Against Transhumanism: the Delusion of Technological Transcendence’
Richard Jones is a Professor of Materials Physics and Innovation Policy at the University of Manchester. Jones is an experimental physicist, whose research centres around the properties of polymer molecules at interfaces and ultrathin polymer films.
Between 2007 and 2009 he was the Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; he was also Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield from 2009 to 2016.
In this discussion with futurist and transhumanist enthusiast Nikola Danaylov, Jones covers a variety of topics including his own work in nanotechnology and his book and blog on the topic; technological progress and whether it is accelerating or not; Ray Kurzweil and technological determinism; Platonism and Frank J. Tipler‘s claim that “the singularity is inevitable”; the strange ideological routes of transhumanism; Eric Drexler’s vision of nanotechnology as reducing the material world to software; the over-representation of physicists on both sides of the transhumanism and AI debate; mind uploading and the importance of molecules as the most fundamental unit of biological processing; the quest for indefinite life extension and the work of Aubrey de Grey; and the importance of politics and ethics in technology.
Richard Jones’ scholarly book Against Transhumanism: the delusion of technological transcendence is available free for download: Against Transhumanism, v1.0, PDF 650 kB.
Bostrom, a 43-year-old Swedish-born philosopher, has lately acquired something of the status of prophet of doom among those currently doing most to shape our civilisation: the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley. His reputation rests primarily on his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which was a surprise New York Times bestseller last year and now arrives in paperback, trailing must-read recommendations from Bill Gates and Tesla’s Elon Musk. (In the best kind of literary review, Musk also gave Bostrom’s institute £1m to continue to pursue its inquiries.)
Throughout the last decade and longer, the news media has been leaking the story of a new kind of global technocratic leadership. Often this has revolved around talk of “Davos Man”, a new taxonomic sub-group (or rather super-group) which evokes (in my own mind at least) the image of a silhouetted yet still pinstriped figure leading our ancestors out of the primordial sludge and striding forth at the head of that catwalk procession of ever more erect hominids. Java Man, Peking Man… you know what’s coming:
Davos Man is most publicly embodied in Bill Gates, the ubiquitous chairman of the Microsoft Corporation. He appeared recently, as do all main speakers at the gathering, both in person and blown up on a huge television screen. Mutterings were heard from some techies in the hall as the giant head spoke; they find the quality of Microsoft products mediocre. But to most of the executives, he is a heroic figure, and not just because he built a huge business from scratch.
That comes from an article published by The Independent as far back as 1998, which provided one of the first reports on the annual Davos shindig in the Alps – officially known as the World Economic Forum – and from whence “Davos Man” cometh. The article tells us that:
Along the main street a snake of limousines writhes in front of the conference hall, where there are guards, police dogs, and metal detectors. Each of the 2,000 people who descend on the village need an electronic security badge to enter the hall, but the badge does more than keep out riff-raff. It has an electronic code which allows the bearer to read and send messages on an elaborate computer system, and so to arrange meetings and to cut deals – in the coffee lounges, on the ski slopes, or at the exquisite dinners whose seating plans are frequently disrupted by the press of business.1
With regards to these early sightings of Davos Man in the flesh (so to speak), Richard Sennett the author of the piece, explains how these “monarchs of capitalism [who] assembly their courtiers and meet to plot all our futures” prefer to see themselves. Like Gates, our new crop of plutocrats are “ruthless and greedy”, but unlike the older crew, they are more “flexible” with a greater “tolerance for fragmentation” (whatever that means precisely) and, most importantly, these guys are properly connected – not that the old guard wasn’t.
A more recent article published by the Financial Times (in 2011) offers, however, an alternative view of the rise of Davos Man, pointing out how “As the World Economic Forum grew in importance and prominence, so outside observers [i.e., the corporate media] began to identify a new creature – ‘Davos Man’” Although the label itself was originally intended as a pejorative, apparently:
The phrase was coined by political scientist Samuel Huntington (of “Clash of Civilisations” fame). Huntington was no fan of “Davos man”, whom he regarded as elitist and loyal only to his own financial interests and to his international peer group. The delegates at Davos, Huntington later wrote disapprovingly, “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that are thankfully vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.”2
This is interesting because Samuel Huntington is someone very much on the inside track. Closely connected with this same “elite” (his word), Huntington is most renowned for his forecast of a coming “Clash of Civilisations”, whilst he also co-authored a notorious report – produced by another globalist group known as the Trilateral Commission – entitled “The Crisis of Democracy”, in which Huntington frets about future problems arising from “an excess of democracy” in the western world. The solution, he (and his fellows) advise, is to ensure we (Homo plebeians) are far too disorientated and beleaguered to organise any serious or sustained challenge against the powers-that-be.
Here is what Noam Chomsky wrote about the Trilateral Commission and Huntington’s report back in 1981:
The Trilateral Commission was founded at the initiative of David Rockefeller in 1973. Its members are drawn from the three components of the world of capitalist democracy: the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Among them are the heads of major corporations and banks, partners in corporate law firms, Senators, Professors of international affairs – the familiar mix in extra-governmental groupings. Along with the 1940s project of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), directed by a committed “trilateralist” and with numerous links to the Commission, the project constitutes the first major effort at global planning since the War-Peace Studies program of the CFR during World War II. […]
The Trilateral Commission has issued one major book-length report, namely, The Crisis of Democracy (Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, 1975). Given the intimate connections between the Commission and the Carter Administration, the study is worth careful attention, as an indication of the thinking that may well lie behind its domestic policies, as well as the policies undertaken in other industrial democracies in the coming years. […]
The report argues that what is needed in the industrial democracies “is a greater degree of moderation in democracy” to overcome the “excess of democracy” of the past decade. “The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.” This recommendation recalls the analysis of Third World problems put forth by other political thinkers of the same persuasion, for example, Ithiel Pool (then chairman of the Department of Political Science at MIT), who explained some years ago that in Vietnam, the Congo, and the Dominican Republic, “order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism… At least temporarily the maintenance of order requires a lowering of newly acquired aspirations and levels of political activity.” The Trilateral recommendations for the capitalist democracies are an application at home of the theories of “order” developed for subject societies of the Third World.
In Short, “The Crisis of Democracy” provides a blueprint for our current race to the bottom and politico-economic subjugation. As Chomsky details at the end of the same article:
The crucial task is “to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions, and to grapple with the immediate economic challenges.” The demands on government must be reduced and we must “restore a more equitable relationship between government authority and popular control.” The press must be reined. If the media do not enforce “standards of professionalism,” then “the alternative could well be regulation by the government” – a distinction without a difference, since the policy-oriented and technocratic intellectuals, the commissars themselves, are the ones who will fix these standards and determine how well they are respected. Higher education should be related “to economic and political goals,” and if it is offered to the masses, “a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of those who receive a college education.” No challenge to capitalist institutions can be considered, but measures should be taken to improve working conditions and work organization so that workers will not resort to “irresponsible blackmailing tactics.” In general, the prerogatives of the nobility must be restored and the peasants reduced to the apathy that becomes them.
This is the ideology of the liberal wing of the state capitalist ruling elite, and, it is reasonable to assume, its members who now staff the national executive in the United States….3
You can read my own fuller critique of Huntington’s “The Crisis of Democracy” in the lower half of this earlier post.
Huntington is himself well connected and part of the big club which Davos is just a smaller and supposedly more cuddly offshoot. So all this brouhaha about the rights and wrongs of Davos Man is really nothing more or less than internal bickering about the proper way for plutocrats to tyrannise. Naturally, the Financial Times are keen to play up this supposed schism (just as chocolate manufacturers are keen to bring out tantalisingly novel candy bars), and especially so when provided with the opportunity to pour scorn on an editorial, “In Praise of Davos Man”, published by their immediate competitors at The Economist. Oddly, the author of the piece which challenges The Economist‘s “paean to Davos Man”, Gideon Rachman, concedes in his own article (parenthetically) “I was working for The Economist at the time, but did not write the editorial in question”. He might just as well have added “Splitters! Splitters…!”
Which brings me at last to the main point of my own piece – that Davos Man plus Trilateralist Man [Left Twix and Right Twix, as the advert puts it] are gathering again and under cover of that more perennial darkness which cloaks the premier confab of all globalist confabs – the annual Bilderberg meeting, which kicks off tomorrow in Copenhagen. Founded in 1954, it is precisely sixty years to the weekend since “the great and the good” first secretly convened at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands.
Sixty years is a long time in (geo-)politics, and so the poisonous fruits of their clandestine bargaining are scattered and rotting all around – from the banking crisis and “austerity” to mass surveillance; and from dismantlement of the NHS to privatisation of the post office (and everything else besides). Neo-liberal policies that have opened the way to the success of racist Marine Le Pen’s Front National and to the lesser gains of neo-Nazis Golden Dawn in Greece, combined with directly neo-conservative assaults that have deliberately aided the spread of Islamist fundamentalism and inflamed wars across the Middle East and beyond. This has all occurred under Bilderberg’s watch – and yet Bilderberg takes little blame, because they are unaccountable. The media makes sure they remain so.
Last year I joined the protests when the Bilderbergers met at Watford and witnessed for myself the enormous state protection afforded this “private meeting”. There were an estimated three thousand of us coralled within the ‘free speech paddock’ staring out across a canal and about half a mile of rolling Hertfordshire parkland to the hotel on the hill. A steel cordon had been erected in the distance, just to make sure. As a helicopter buzzed overhead, the police and G4S security guards all faced us, although the criminals were behind them of course – Henry Kissinger, the world’s greatest living war criminal, enjoying five-star hospitality and the chance to impart wisdom to the likes of Peter Mandelson, George Osbourne, Ed Balls — there was also a surprise appearance by our illustrious leader David Cameron.
I shot the video below, which features activist Charlie Skelton and Labour MP Michael Meacher speaking at Watford:
This year I can’t make it and so will look out for analysis from across the alternative media, keeping an eye out for Charlie Skelton in particular, who will be reopening his annual Bilderblog. Here are a few extracts from Skelton’s first article of this summer, in which he pries into the Bilderberg connection to the Transatlantic trade deal known as TAFTA (and also TTIP). He begins:
Next week, at the Marriott Hotel in Copenhagen, the annual trade and policy summit held by the Bilderberg Group will throw open its doors for three days of top level talks, from May 29th to June 1st. I say “throw open its doors”… the doors will remain, as ever, firmly closed to the public and press. Unless you happen to own a newspaper, or run a publishing conglomerate, or be the Executive Chairman of Google, chances are you’re not going.
It’s remarkable how many bank bosses and corporate CEOs manage to clear their diary, every year, for a full three days of conferencing at Bilderberg. Last year, BP sent its Group Chief Executive, the Michelin Group sent its CEO, while HSBC was represented by both the Group Chairman and the Vice Chairman. From Goldman Sachs came two board members, including their Vice Chairman. And Royal Dutch Shell left a skeleton crew back at headquarters: the company sent its Chairman, CEO, and CFO – and in case that wasn’t enough, they also sent along a director, Josef Ackermann. Who’s also on the board of Investor AB, the £20 billion asset management company. Which also sent its CEO and Chairman. You get the picture.
All this corporate brass spending three days conferencing with media moguls and billionaire investors wouldn’t matter so much, but for the fact that quite a few of the participants who get locked away with them are politicians. And senior politicians at that.
In 2013, the Bilderberg conference was attended by seven Finance Ministers, three Foreign Ministers, two deputy Prime Ministers, and two serving Prime Ministers: Mark Rutte, the PM of Holland, and our very own David Cameron. With them: the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso; EU Commissioner, Viviane Reding; the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde; and various other politicians and policymakers.
He ends:
For now, if we want transparency at Bilderberg, it’s going to have to be provided by the politicians. Luckily, many of them who go to Bilderberg are avowed champions of transparency. Like David Cameron (Bilderberg 2008, 2013) who launched a war on out-of-control lobbying in a speech back in 2010, when he attacked the “far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money”.
In that speech, Cameron described lobbying as “the next big scandal waiting to happen.” At Bilderberg, that scandal happens every year. This year, it’s happening in Copenhagen, at the Marriott Hotel, from May 29th to June 1st.4
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article, in which he points to the many conflicts of interest that arise in light of TTIP and the surrounding secrecy of Bilderberg.
We also now have this year’s official (and thus almost certainly incomplete) Bilderberg attendee list. Reading down, it quickly becomes evident that this is more than just an out-of-control lobbying group (as bad as that is). So here is just a small selection of famous (or not) names and associations which are indicative of a broader agenda:
Victor Halberstadt – Professor of Economics at Leiden University
Yiping Huang – Professor of Economics at National School of Development, Peking University
Christine Lagarde – Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
Benoît Coeuré – Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank
Stephen Poloz – Governor of the Bank of Canada
H.R.H. Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands
H.M. the Queen of Spain
And then more worryingly, I feel:
Anders Fogh Rasmussen – Secretary General of NATO
Gen. David Petraeus (as Chairman of KKR Global Institute)
Eugene Rumer – Senior Associate and Director of the Russia Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
John Sawers – Chief of UK Secret Intelligence Service
Ahmet Üzümcü – Director-General, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
Just for the record, two other notables on his year’s list are:
Martin Wolf – Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times…
and, not to be outdone, John Micklethwait – Editor-in-Chief at The Economist.
Let’s pray they will at last see eye-to-eye about the wondrous rise of Davos Man… but then, who is more Davos, I wonder – Wolf or Micklethwait. It has to be Micklethwait, doesn’t it…?
Oh, nearly forgot… another attendee of some note: dear old Henry Kissinger, who is, coincidentally it seems, also Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Click here to read the full (official – and thus incomplete) list of this year’s Bilderberg attendees at zerohedge.
1. Be witness to the world summit that dare not speak its name
If more than a hundred of the highest ranking politicians, financiers and other major corporate leaders from across Europe and North America were meeting for a conference near London then you might naively suppose that the world’s media would be interested to hear about it. If additionally, it transpired that such meeting was not only to be held behind closed doors and patrolled by armed guards, but also conducted under such strict secrecy that attendees were prohibited from speaking about whatever had been discussed or even disclosing the names of other attendees, you would be forgiven for supposing that the press would be swarming outside the gates and banging on the doors to find out more. But, and in the words of the song, it ain’t necessarily so…
As this year’s Bilderberg meeting approaches, the press and the rest of the mainstream media is instead maintaining its commitment to silence. Indeed, there has barely been a single column inch devoted to the surprise appearance of Bilderberg on our shores, although here is a local exception:
Hertfordshire taxpayers will foot the bill for a major police security operation to protect a shadowy summit of world leaders taking place in Watford next month.
The Bilderberg Group of around 140 influential figures including royalty, politicians and business leaders will meet at The Grove from June 6 to June 9.1
So begins what ought to be regarded as a world press exclusive but published not by Reuters or AP or the BBC, but in the Watford Observer, suddenly finding themselves forced into the vanguard. Well, not quite. The story that this year’s Bilderberg chinwag is coming to Watford having first broken more than a month earlier and being soon after confirmed (as initial rumours of Bilderberg appearances have reliably been) by many in the alternative media:
The 2013 Bilderberg conference is now confirmed at the Grove hotel, Watford. A spokesman for Herts Constabulary said:
“I can confirm that the Bilderberg group meeting is taking place at The Grove hotel, Watford, between 6th-9th June 2013″
Watford’s finest hotel, playing host to the world’s most powerful political summit. A bright day indeed for the Grove.
That was taken from bilderberg2013 and published the day before the more official story was released by the Watford Observer. Those at protest group bilderberg2013 having posted as early as April 12th the notice that:
There is growing evidence that this year’s Bilderberg conference will take place in the UK, at the luxury Grove Hotel, Hertfordshire, just north of Watford.
Whilst urging:
“citizen journalists, concerned citizens and interested parties to come along and witness a major international summit taking place.”
2. What’s to lose by going along?
I consider myself both a “concerned citizen and interested party”, and must confess to finding it odd to think there are many who still don’t. But then, for some reason (we all know the reason, but I’ll let it pass for a moment) Bilderberg has a way of putting blinkers on the public as well as the press – even the minority who have actually heard of the event, perhaps justifiably wary of too much speculation, but also uncharacteristically reticent when it comes to freely expressing their own concerns and objections to this secret elitist get-together.
So I find that many of the kinds of people who are deeply concerned and sick to the teeth with the state of the politics and world affairs, including friends who have previously travelled as far as Edinburgh to voice dissent at a G8 summit, or who regularly take to the streets of London to rage against Westminster, will prefer to turn a blind eye to the annual Bilderberg event.
Incuriously dismissing Bilderberg as insignificant or simply irrelevant is the surprisingly common response I get when I raise the subject. Without presenting a single shred of evidence to support such a contention, they tell me that Bilderberg is just a big talking shop. A place for glad-handing, patting one another on the backs and saying what jolly good chaps they all are…. yes, very probably, but patting one another on the backs about what exactly? Well, about being a part of a damned big exclusive club, they’ll insist, and that’s all you need to know. This lack of curiosity from those who more generally wish to get to the bottom of things being curious in itself, and also to my mind a little alarming…
For why dismiss something merely on the grounds of its (partial) invisibility? Obviously, the physicist in me protests – most of the really interesting and important areas of physics being ordinarily out of sight, and yet nonetheless driving the rest of the visible universe.
However, I think what the Bildersceptics (to coin a necessary term) are implicitly acknowledging is that “this is just the way the world works”, which is almost precisely how the Bilderbergers themselves have tended to justify their “private” gatherings. So to such a response I can only really say: well, didn’t you make the great effort to protest against G8 or outside Westminster precisely because “this is the way the world works”? Added to which, what has become of your usually excellent sense of political smell…?
For Bilderberg simply reeks to high heaven, and though special interest deals are, of course, brokered in a great many places, including no doubt behind the scenes at the G8 and the corridors of Westminster, the whiff of that stale, smoky air of corruption appears so much the thicker at Bilderberg. Following a few rounds of golf and a splendid five-star luncheon just what else is there to do stuck together inside a five-star hotel for three days and nights besides sealing deals of one kind or another; the glad-handing and the back-patting all part of the crony favour system.
And beyond the corporate hobnobbing, which is surely smelly enough, might our politicians not indeed be conspiring in a different way? Aligning themselves with some kind of an overarching agenda that very deliberately chooses to remain “private” – although actually ‘clandestine’ is a word that better serves the purpose; more appropriate because until very recently Bilderberg didn’t exist at all supposedly, being merely the paranoid fiction of a few overheated imaginations.
And here is the reason that the pointed finger often becomes unsheathed. Wait for it: I can hear the C-word coming. Oh dear! “You don’t believe in any conspiracy theories, do you?” My abrupt reply: “well, what constitutes a conspiracy…?”
And it’s funny to think how the pointy finger is so casually aimed towards the very people who sought the truth and found it. Those who insisted that Bilderberg was real when commonsense and logic appeared to be against them. Having been proved correct, they might have expected to hear a few more apologies from those who’d dismissed them as mad. But apparently the pointy finger is harder to shift. There are a thousand ways to kill the messenger.
3. Bilderberg only pretends to be an irrelevant talking shop
Bilderberg is far from irrelevant. To judge better for yourself, however, I recommend downloading a surprising and very much one-off BBC Radio 4 broadcast called “Club Class” from 2003, which is available online: http://wikileaks.org/w/images/5/5d/BBC-bilderberg-2003.mp3
On top of which there are plenty of other clues that have slowly come to light. Such evidence being limited and fragmentary for obvious and unavoidable reasons given the sustained and almost blanket media blackout on Bilderberg. And it really goes without saying that we would know so much more already if the media had probed and investigated as it should. Yet what is already known is surely incriminating enough.
For instance, we can say with certainty and no hesitation that the goal of forming a single world government is one very much desired by Bilderberg’s most significant members (and for further details I recommend my first post about the group when it was meeting at St Moritz in 2011 – although these days, Bilderberg’s globalist agenda isn’t really a secret at all).
Now saying this, I also realise that such plans for global governance may sound attractive to some readers, and especially to those who see themselves on the left of the political spectrum. I too would love to live in a world of ethical international collaboration and global justice. But it is wise to always be careful what we wish for, and so let’s not be soft-headed here: the mainstay of Bilderberg Group (head honchos such as David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and our own British contingent being spearheaded by Ken Clarke and dear old “Prince of Darkness” Peter Mandelson) obviously not remotely interested in expanding internationalism in any traditional socialist sense. Their less stated though transparently clear objective – if we judge by actions rather than words – being to consolidate and expand the established corporatocracy.
4. This is a protest that might conceivably achieve its main goal
As you may have gathered, I certainly intend to trundle down to Watford to stand outside the cordons at this year’s Bilderberg meeting and I am hoping that not hundreds, or even thousands, as have attended previous meetings (the protests continuing to grow over recent years), but that hopefully and potentially hundreds of thousands might decide to join us. My fingers are crossed.
Ordinarily, when we venture out to protest, we do so with the near certain foreknowledge that our protest will have been in vain. None of the real objectives having been achieved. We most probably tune in to watch the TV news highlights later, but it is only really to see how extreme the mismatch was between the official police estimate and the number determined by the march organisers. But protesting Bilderberg will be different and for one perfectly straightforward reason: that between June 6th and 9th we’re not supposed to be there at all – and just imagine that! Being involved in a protest that hasn’t already been officially sanctioned by Ed Miliband, or led from the front by the last leader of the Lib Dems, or else entirely pushed aside from the headline news by another of Bob Geldolf’s giant celebrity gigs.
And suppose there are a hundred thousand or more who do steadily gather outside the gates of The Grove in a three weeks time, then the BBC, C4, ITV, Sky and the rest must finally be forced to follow us there, whereas, and without such a determined mass protest, the meeting will again pass off barely reported upon and completely unnoticed by the majority of the world’s population. So why hesitate to go when numbers alone might be enough to tear down this veil of secrecy. Isn’t this how a free people begins to make itself heard?
We should not allow this excellent opportunity pass. For when Bilderberg are at last forced out into the light of day we will have achieved something – if nothing else, we will have forced the world’s media to do its proper job.
5. It’s okay to have fun
Unlike the Bilderbergers themselves, I am inclined to believe that as a rule it is better not to mix business and pleasure. But if none of the above has helped in persuading you to join us, then here’s an alternative pitch – everything else besides, this is very likely to be the most interesting protest you’ve ever been involved with – so why not just roll up and:
Enjoy the spectacle, meet new friends, and secure your souvenir picture of a Bilderberg participant gliding into the Grove’s grounds in a tinted limo. [also from the bilderberg2013 website]
Protesting, in my humble opinion, ought to be a serious business. When out in opposition against the latest war, or the imposition of further “austerity measures”, partying doesn’t really help. It is in my view (and apologies for seeming such an old curmudgeon) an unnecessary and unwanted distraction. However, any protest against Bilderberg is significantly different from most other protests. For once, sheer publicity being our overriding aim.
Entertainment, therefore, is all to the better. So here is a little more encouragement to come along offered by the bilderberg2013 protest group, who are also planning to launch their own “Bilderberg Fringe Festival” outside the main event:
The Bilderberg Fringe Festival is a platform for conscious citizens from all over the world to join together at the Grove Hotel, Watford and positively influence global powerbrokers to make the right decisions for our future….. and have a fantastic party.
If you are a musician, poet, artist, speaker, performer, workshop host or have a soundsystem, tent or anything else you would like to bring to the party, get in touch at bilderbergfringe [at] yahoo.co.uk. We would love marvellous art to be created around the perimeters of the Grove hotel to drench the area in joy and creativity!
We will be providing the infrastructure for any individual or group wanting to get involved, plus a media tent and press centre to facilitate much-needed coverage of the Bilderberg conference itself.
Together let us make this a historic occasion for freedom and democracy.
6. Henry Kissinger and his partners in (war) crime
This is what Watford’s elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill had to say about the staging of this year’s Bilderberg conference on her doorstep (from the same article in the Watford Observer):
“I have my concerns about it because it does attract people who can and do cause violence and disturbance.”
How very well said Mayor Thornhill; never a truer word spoken…just scan your eyes down the guest lists of previous Bilderberg meetings and you’ll see exactly what she means:
Indeed, Henry Kissinger, who is one of the grandees of Bilderberg, has alone been responsible for more “violence and disturbance” than just about anyone else alive on the planet today. Responsible for the overthrow and murder of elected leaders like Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as the instigator of more widespread murder and mayhem, for example, with the formation of Operation Condor which directly led to millions of people being tortured and “disappeared” across much of Latin America. Then there is Kissinger’s role in the war crimes carried out in Indochina; his commitment to covertly spreading the ‘scorched earth’ tactics of the Vietnam War with the carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos under Operation Menu. And that barely scratches the surface of all of Kissinger’s crimes and misdemeanours, so here are a few lesser known instances:
Take, for example, the case of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and East Timor. Declassified documents reveal that after the Timorese declaration of independence from Portugal in 1975, Kissinger and President Gerald Ford, fearing that the new country would become a communist outpost, gave Indonesian President Suharto the green light to invade the island in a Jakarta meeting the day before the invasion.
The United States was then supplying Indonesia’s military with 90 percent of its arms, and Kissinger himself described their relationship as that of “donor-client.” As the civilian death toll from the invasion climbed into the tens of thousands and the reports of atrocities mounted, Kissinger ensured that US arms continued to flow to the invading forces despite Congressional strictures. Estimates of those who died from military action, starvation or disease range from 100,000 to 180,000—roughly one-seventh to one-fourth of the entire population of East Timor.2
But then, as Henry Kissinger once candidly explained [from wikileaks]:
“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Speaking at this year’s World Economic Forum – that more public globalist confab at Davos in Switzerland – Kissinger also chillingly warned that a crisis involving a nuclear Iran in the “foreseeable future” could lead to a nuclear war and “a turning point in human history”. And with Kissinger still so close to the strategic helm, there’s good reason to pay heed to his words – especially when he also adds so grimly and predictably that “no option is off the table”:
Well, it is very possible that we will see Kissinger in Watford all too soon. So maybe we can arrest him for his many crimes, and before it’s too late. Certainly on the occasion that he does attend, the many charges laid against him might reasonably be brought to the attention of senior officers of the Hertfordshire Constabulary who will otherwise be inadvertently protecting a wanted man. As a matter of fact, there is a rather interesting precedent here:
The latest move to question Kissinger was by Peter Tatchell, a British human rights activist. While Kissinger was speaking in Britain at the UK’s Institute of Directors annual conference on April 24, Tatchell attempted to have him arrested for committing war crimes under the Geneva Conventions Act.
Judge Nicholas Evans at the Bow Street magistrates’ court rejected Tatchell’s request because Tatchell did not present enough evidence implicating Kissinger to war crimes. However, according to Tatchell, the judge left the door open for future attempts to arrest the former U.S. official if suitable evidence is presented.
According to Tatchell’s recent contribution to London’s The Guardian, if he is able to “produce stronger evidence of Kissinger’s culpability in the killing, maiming, torture and forced relocation of civilian populations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the late 60s and early 70s,” then there is a possibility an arrest warrant for Kissinger may be issued in the future.3
Click here to read more in an article entitled “Henry Kissinger, Wanted Man” written by Christopher Reilly, and published in counterpunch more than a decade ago.
7. You never know who might turn up as a surprise guest
Incidentally, the names of Bilderberg attendees I have picked out above were all drawn from what is only a partial and a highly abbreviated list provided by wikipedia. A list that surprisingly fails to record even the name of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, and another serial warmonger I have featured many times before on this blog. The funny thing is that although Brzezinski’s name is missing from the main list, it is nevertheless registered in one of the many footnotes. A footnote (currently number 68) which reads:
“Western Issues Aired”. The Washington Post. 24 April 1978. “The three-day 26th Bilderberg Meeting concluded at a secluded cluster of shingled buildings in what was once a farmer’s field. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, Swedish Prime Minister Thorbjorrn Falldin, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and NATO Commander Alexander M. Haig Jr. were among 104 North American and European leaders at the conference.”
Alternatively, and if you decide to visit the main wikipedia page aboutZbigniew Brzezinski you’ll see there is a direct link back to Bilderberg. The same goes for Donald Rumsfeld and also Paul Wolfowitz 4, who though missing from the main list of attendees is actually described on his own page as a former steering committee member of the Bilderberg group. But then the main wikipedia entry for Bill Clinton fails to record his ties to the group and the same goes for Margaret Thatcher – both invited to Bilderberg gatherings prior to becoming national leaders (there is more about this again in my earlier post).
And then there was last year’s do in Chantilly, Virginia: “were Mitt Romney and Bill Gates there?” Here’s Charlie Skelton (a journalist and also one of the campaigners behind bilderberg2013) writing on his Guardian Bilderblog and answering the question to the best of his ability:
Four eyewitnesses on the hotel staff told me Willard Mitt Romney was here at Bilderberg 2012. My four eyewitnesses place him inside. That’s one more than Woodward and Bernstein used. Romney’s office initially refused to confirm or deny his attendance as Bilderberg is “not public”. His people later said it wasn’t him.
So, was he being crowned, or singing for his supper? Will Mitt Romney follow in the august footsteps of Clinton, Cameron and Blair to have attended Bilderberg and then shortly become leader? Four years ago, Senator Obama shook off his press detail and nipped (many think) into Bilderberg. This exact same hotel. […]
You won’t see the names Mitt Romney or Bill Gates on the officially released Final List of Participants because, well, the list is a nonsense. It’s nothing like a complete list of people who attend Bilderberg. It’s a smokescreen, a bit of spin. So can we all, please, stop repeating it as gospel? 5
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article.
8. This year offers two events for the price of one
Incidentally, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as I mentioned in another recent post, is also well-known in some circles as the author of what he called the Technetronic Era; a future vision featuring:
‘a society that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially and economically by the impact of technology and electronics – particularly in the arena of computers and electronics.’ 6
So he perhaps above all others attending – presuming of course that he does attend (this year’s official guest list is yet to be leaked) – may be surprised and delighted to learn that within the secluded 300-acre grounds of the same luxury Hertfordshire hotel, there is going to be yet another “select gathering”. A meeting of minds that might also be to his taste:
of new media gurus, political pointy-heads, start-up whiz kids and pop stars awarded the post-chart career title “humanitarian” are meeting to carve up the digital future.
“To carve up the digital future”, so what does that involve exactly? Well, according to the article, which was published in last year’s Independent, The Grove annually hosts what it describes as “The great Google gathering”:
Each year, Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, jet into London for the invitation-only annual gathering, at the Grove hotel, where 400 delegates, chosen from the “great minds of our time”, discuss topics ranging from technology and the media to politics and the arts.
This year’s guest list includes Goldman Sachs’s BRICs expert Jim O’Neill, singer Annie Lennox, and Bill Clinton, who will shoot the breeze with Schmidt at a panel session today.
Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger and model Lily Cole (who boasts a double first from Cambridge, should anyone doubt her credentials) also made the cut at an event previously graced by Prince Charles and Sir Richard Branson.
It certainly sounds like a shindig that’s right up Brzezinski’s technetronic avenue… but what’s this? The same Independent article going on to say:
For conspiracy theorists, the conference, staged by the search engine giant, which reported a 60 per cent surge in earnings to $2.89bn this year, is a cuddlier version of the Bilderberg Group, the supposedly shadowy network of financiers that holds a private annual assembly, recast in the image of our new tech masters. 7[my own bold highlight added]
A technetronic home from home then! And isn’t this all just a little peculiar? That this year’s Google’s annual Zeitgeist conference (we might call it ‘googleberg’), which has been based at the Grove since 2007, will be followed within days by the rather less cuddly Bilderberg proper – most likely with either Kissinger or Brzezinski in tow. Well, no, actually it isn’t…
Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, has in fact already attended Bilderberg meetings in 2008, 2010 and 2011 (according again to wikipedia). So what should one make of this improbable convergence of “private meetings”, aside from the obvious fact that it will be extremely convenient – for Eric Schmidt to name but one…
9. They don’t want us (but maybe we can change some minds)
Hold on – sorry, sorry, it would seem that when quoted above I had misunderstood and misrepresented the viewpoint of Mayor Thornhill. Allow me to correct myself.
It’s not the alleged war criminals and their hangers on that are bothering the elected mayor… no, not at all, and if only I’d read down just a far as the next line in the Watford Observer I could have presented her opinions more accurately. Now I’ll need to go back and quote what she said from the beginning again:
“I have my concerns about it because it does attract people who can and do cause violence and disturbance. [which is not a reference to Kissinger]
“But I am confident the police will be able to minimise that and give them their right to protest.
“I am ambivalent about whether this is a good thing. It’s potentially a positive thing as long as things don’t kick off.”
“I am concerned about the use of police resource but it is very good The Grove has been deemed a prestigious enough venue.”
Click here to read the full article in the Watford Observer.
In other words, it is people like me (and hopefully you) she is worrying about and encouraging to stay at home. Exercising our democratic right to free speech and assembly entirely from the comfort of our own living rooms. Not that Mayor Thornhill is alone in this regard, of course.
Perhaps Mayor Thornhill will be reassured if we point out that none of the demonstrations against Bilderberg have ever “kicked off”, as she very eloquently puts it. And would she really want Watford to miss out in sharing the proper recognition it deserves? For what’s the point in having a “prestigious enough venue” when so few will ever get to hear about it? Put this way, I feel sure Mayor Thornhill will welcome us with open arms. After all, not even Elton John and his millions of pounds was enough to put Watford on the map (even if they did make it to the FA Cup Final in 1984). Whereas just a couple of hundred thousand demonstrators could easily make all the difference…
So maybe you would like to join us, Mayor Thornhill, because please believe me when I say you’re not any part of the in-crowd, but much like the rest of us, just another insignificant peasant – in any case, the offer remains an open one.
10. Bilderberg might be even more odious than we imagined
Here’s another thing Mayor Thornhill may be interested to ponder over. I wonder if she’s heard what the Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy, Ferdinando Imposimato, revealed to Articolo Tre little more than a month ago on April 11th. Allegations against Bilderberg that I imagine Herts Constabulary might also be interested to learn more about:
“I found a document that left me awestruck, where when it comes to slaughter it also speaks of the Bilderberg Group. A document in the possession of a terrorist Ordine Nuovo, Ventura. I believe in this document. I made some tests and I can say that behind the strategy of tension and the massacres there is also the Bilderberg Group… ” 8
The “strategy of tension” that Judge Imposimato is referring to here, being a series of false flag terrorist attacks carried out across Europe (but especially in Italy) under CIA directions and the codename Operation Gladio.
By adding this note, I can already feel the pointy fingers unsheathed once more and jabbing in my virtual direction. But look, this idea of a “strategy of tension” is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ at all. It is no more a ‘theory’ than the lied about proof of Saddam’s WMDs or the long denied existence of Bilderberg, but simply another established yet little known historical fact – and one that once again is easily retrievable from wikipedia.
A meticulously detailed exposé of Operation Gladio has even featured as a three part “Timewatch” broadcast on BBC in 1992, and though I have embedded it in an earlier post, I see no reason not to embed it again below – after all, Operation Gladio played a very important part in shaping the destiny of post-war Europe and if we lived in a genuinely free society the truth about Gladio would be taught as part of the national curriculum in our schools:
Oddly, and almost exactly ten years earlier, the Gladio plot was also indirectly alluded to in an episode of BBC’s political sit-com Yes Minister. A military insider and whistleblower presenting cabinet minister Jim Hacker with evidence that sophisticated computerised bomb detonators manufactured by British defence contractors were getting into the hands of Italian terrorist groups. I have embedded the episode entitled “The Whisky Priest” below:
As for Ferdinando Imposimato, and aside from being a former Senior Investigative Judge, he was also a Senator who served on the Anti-Mafia Commission in three administrations, and the author or co-author of seven books on international terrorism and state corruption. Added to which, Imposimato presided over a great many terrorism-related cases, including the kidnapping and assassination of President Aldo Moro, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, and other political assassinations and kidnapping cases including several against the Mafia.
Judge Imposimato may be wrong about Bilderberg’s direct involvement in Gladio, but he evidently believes that the document he has seen is genuine. And Imposimato is an expert witness when it comes to state-sponsored terrorism and particularly with regards to the crimes of Operation Gladio. So with Imposimato’s latest allegation, shouldn’t we be calling for further investigation?
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And here are two more [too late change the title now]:
11. Our time has come…
Summing up then, there will be all sorts of different people and groups gathering to protest against this year’s Bilderberg meeting, but in spite of different outlooks we all have a common cause. All equally sick and tired of the way our nations are run solely for the benefit of the one-percent, and fed up with being bullied into line. We don’t need to agree on every point to stand side-by-side.
Outside the locked gates of Bilderberg we can join in defiance against “austerity”, and against the neo-imperialist wars, and the rise of a police state, and every other assault on our civil rights, our social welfare and our democracies. Those inside Bilderberg are in part responsible, whether they purposefully deliberate on the destruction of our societies, or whether our decline and fall is an inadvertent consequence of their venality and greed. What is happening to all of us is happening under their powerful watch. So there’s no need to be a ‘conspiracy theorist’ to understand why those inside Bilderberg will once again prefer to hide their faces and names and to scurry about in tinted limos desperate to be unseen. And yes, we are going there to shine more light and to shame them all.
Bilderberg is a carbuncle. A recurring and festering sore. Symptomatic of a deep malaise, it bursts forth annually, rarely in the same place twice and hardly ever within touching distance. It comes this close about as a rarely as a new comet, and likewise portends nothing but doom and disaster. Just consider, for instance, what followed in its wake immediately after appearing in Athens (2009) and then Sitges near Barcelona (2010). The timings could hardly have been more striking given what subsequently happened to Greece and Spain. And as Bilderberg moves across to Britain, we also have the coincidence of a Goldman Sachs stooge called Mark Carney preparing to succeed Sir Mervyn King as Governor of the Bank of England. Do you think Carney might be on the guest list? Well, we shall soon see…
So I ask in a spirit of solidarity that in one way or another (and if only by spreading news of the meeting and our protest to friends and associates on facebook, twitter and by old-fashioned word of mouth) you join in our resistance to Bilderberg and everything it so evidently stands for. Lending our bankrupt ruling elites tacit permission to continue operating in the dark won’t help the greater cause in any way. For as our freedoms and rights are stolen right from under our noses, we must act with urgency and also in as many useful ways as we can. Taking our protest to the doorstep of Bilderberg being just one such very purposeful way to respond.
Finally then, and though I wouldn’t as a rule quote anything by Sebastian Coe, I happen to believe that those remarks he made at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics were never more pertinent than now – for when the limos have driven off back off into the distance, and the police helicopters have stopped whooring overhead, then I hope we might have a tremendous reason for saying:
“When our time came – Britain we did it right. Thank you!”
12. To stand and be counted
But I actually don’t wish to end there… hanging semi-ironically on the vainglory of Lord Coe, but to finish instead with a few words truly worth reflecting upon.
Martin Luther King Jr:
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.9
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Update:
Since I posted the article:
The elected mayor of Watford has written to the Prime Minister voicing concern about the potential impact the Bilderberg security operation will have on the county’s police budget.
Dorothy Thornhill penned a letter this week to David Cameron saying she found it “galling” that the Hertfordshire taxpayers could shoulder the cost of policing a meeting for some of “the wealthiest people in the world”.
The Liberal Democrat said she also wanted the Government to understand the stresses the secretive conference had placed on the town and its public services.
4 Another footnote (currently 110) on the List_of_Bilderberg_participants: “Why is our governor visiting this group”. The Augusta Chronicle. 19 June 2008. p.8. “Some of the names on the list are intriguing. Some of the well-known names include:Ben Bernanke – chairman, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System; Condoleezza Rice – U.S. secretary of state; James A. Johnson – tasked with choosing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate; Paul Wolfowitz – with the Institute for Public Policy Research. The one name that stands out in my opinion this year is South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.”
8 “Ho trovato un documento che mi ha lasciato sgomento, dove quando si parla di stragi si parla anche del gruppo Bilderberg. Un documento in possesso di un terrorista di Ordine Nuovo, Ventura. Io credo a questo documento. Ho fatto delle verifiche e posso dire che dietro la strategia della tensione e alle stragi c’è anche il gruppo Bilderberg, una specie di Grande Fratello che sta sopra, manovra, si serve di terroristi neri e massoni”.
At this very moment, Kenneth Clarke is meeting in secret with Peter Mandelson. The de facto head honchos of our two main political parties are rubbing shoulders right alongside Richard Perle, Robert Rubin, Henry Kissinger, and Garry Kasparov… yes, that’s right, the Russian chess grandmaster. They are also putting their heads together with chiefs from many of the world’s corporate giants including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Fiat, Airbus, Dow Chemicals, Unilever, AXA, Barclays, Siemens, Citigroup, Microsoft, Google, Vodaphone, to name but a few, and not forgetting, Peter Sutherland, the Chairman of Goldman Sachs — no meeting being complete these days without the man from Goldman Sachs!
Also at this meeting, a meeting that has now entered its fourth and final day, are Pascal Lamy, the Director-General of the WTO; Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank; Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission; and Josette Sheeran, Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum – not ‘Davos Man’ but, as the Guardian‘s Charlie Skelton put it, perhaps their “ice-queen”:
In terms of power structures, Josette is number 2 at Davos, and Davos is about number 10 behind Bilderberg.1
Bilderberg…? What’s that, I hear some mumbles. Well, it’s this meeting I’ve been talking about. The meeting between Ken Clarke and Pete Mandelson and the hundred or so other hangers-on such as H.R.H Prince Philippe of Belgium and H.M. the Queen of the Netherlands.
Look, if this strikes you as odd then please be assured that it isn’t. A Bilderberg meeting takes place in a different five-star hotel every year around this time. It’s like clockwork, and has been happening now for more than half a century. Although if you’d never before heard about these Bilderberg meetings, then it’s in part because the heads of the global media outlets have also been in regular attendance – this year’s crop including representatives from Le Monde, El País, Die Zeit, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Economist, as well as talkshow host Charlie Rose. Rest assured none will be spilling the beans later – they didn’t go in order to report on the meeting!
Of course, it might interest the people of Ireland that their own Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan is one of those on the guest list. Likewise, those worried about their futures in Spain might be interested to hear that their Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría Antón, is another of the elite gaggle. The Dutch may also be surprised to learn that their Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, has a booking in this year’s hotel. And what would the Chinese make of the reappearance of their Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ying Fu, who also attended last year when the meeting was held in St Moritz. And finally, what are any of us to make of the attendance of Bassma Kodmani, Head of Foreign Affairs for the Syrian National Council? Just what is it that they don’t want the rest of us to hear them all talking about? Unfortunately, the mainstream media (with honourable exception given to our own Guardian newspaper) show no interest in any actual journalism, but remain intent only on maintaining the bluff that “there’s nothing to see here…”
Precisely what’s being discussed right now, out of sight beyond the fences and high security cordons, is therefore hard to know for sure. Issues involving power and money evidently. And, in a word, a push towards ever-greater globalisation – Bilderberg being a meeting organised by self-confessed globalists. But just what precisely is globalisation – what is its overarching agenda?
To bring the world together under a unified corporate governance. Ultimately, although step by step, a world government of technocratic cronies running things for the sole benefit of a small oligarchical elite. This is certainly how it appears, not only to me, but also to the increasing number who have turned out to protest each successive meeting. This year’s protest even managing to ally forces from the Tea Party with others in the Occupy movement to form into Occupy Bilderberg.
Which is perhaps the silver lining to what’s happening right now in Chantilly. That the anti-globalisation movement which fizzled out about a decade ago through lack of focus, and then briefly reignited last year in encampments on Wall Street and elsewhere, has momentarily found alliance with unlikely compadres. Bilderberg being apolitical, at least in the sense that it operates outside of the acknowledged left-right paradigm, having brought together protesters who are likewise catholic in terms of their usual party political persuasions. Occupy Bilderberg therefore points to a way ahead and for the possible emergence of a more cohesive popular movement of dissent. Anti-globalisation 2.0 — if you like. Here is Ryan Devereaux, also reporting for the Guardian:
The gathering outside the Westfield Marriott hotel in Chantilly included Ron Paul supporters, Occupy veterans, members of the 9/11 truth movement and Oath Keepers, a Tea Party-affiliated group comprised of military and law enforcement officers.
Carrying signs with messages such as “Humanity is winning” and “Warning to secret societies: you are pissing off American patriots. We have machine guns also,” the 200 or so protesters could only be there for one event: Bilderberg.2
Click here to read more of Charlie Skelton and Ryan Devereaux’s excellent reports on the Guardian Bilderblog.
The chasm that exists between those in power and those in the streets could hardly be more in your face than in Chantilly during the last few days. Such a stench of power and money that it really should be getting up all our noses.
Yes, there’s plenty to see in Chantilly today – so don’t move along! Protest and spread the word of what you are seeing and hearing. Like a great many others around the world, in spirit I too stand with all of you protesting outside the gates of Bilderberg.
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Here’s an interesting example of the kind of debate taking place in Chantilly – Adam Kokesh interviewing Webster Tarpley:
Click here to read the official 2012 Bilderberg attendance list.
Click here to watch a live stream of the protests produced by Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change.
Just in case you missed it, here was one of the main headlines on BBC News just few days ago on Wednesday 8th June:
In the manner of a James Bond plot, up to 150 leading politicians and business people are to gather in a ski resort in Switzerland for four days of discussion about the future of the world.
Previous attendees of the group, which meets once a year in a five-star hotel, are said to have included Bill Clinton, Prince Charles and Peter Mandelson, as well as dozens of company CEOs.
The “James Bond plot” in question was this year’s outing of the secret gathering of the political and business elite known as the Bilderberg Group. The inaugural tete-a-tete of this most elite of elite gatherings was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg, near Arnhem in May 1954; a location that lends its own name to all subsequent gatherings. Every year since then, a hand-picked group of 120 participants, have met up for drinks and a game of golf at one of the Bilderberg meetings.
How do I know? Well, for starters, these days the group has its own website – a site that is light on information and heavy on restrictions. The disclaimer page basically says don’t trust the information on this site, it may be unreliable, and don’t even think of copying it. It has the strictest copywrite notice I’ve ever come across. For the last few years, there has also been a rapidly growing discussion on the internet, which includes an ever-expanding entry on Wikipedia, though such readily available information wasn’t so easy to source ten years ago, and my own first insight into the Bilderbergers came from a most unlikely reporter.
Jon Ronson would describe himself as a humorist. His speciality is quirky human interest stories, and Ronson is wonderfully adept at gently teasing his subjects in order to get beneath their skins. But this time he had happened to land something much bigger than that.
In June 1999, Ronson met with “Big” Jim Tucker, a chain-smoking hick journalist (who had already devoted much of his life trying to stake out the Bilderberg Group), and Tucker and Ronson together made tracks to a five-star hotel in Sintra, Portugal.
Upon arriving at the secret location, it wasn’t long before Tucker and Ronson were being tailed by security men, or as Ronson puts it, “the henchmen of the shadowy elite”. A game of cat and mouse that continued throughout the day. In desperation, Ronson phoned up the British Embassy to ask for help. The response he received was probably not what he was expecting:
“I am essentially a humorous journalist,” Ronson explained to the woman at embassy. “I am a humorous journalist out of my depth. Do you think it might help if we tell them that?”
“Listen” came her reply, “Bilderberg is much bigger than we are. We’re very small. We’re just a little embassy. Do you understand? They’re way out of our league. All I can say is go back to your hotel and sit tight.”1
When Ronson first got the run around with Jim Tucker, he’d gone along just for the ride. He was interested to learn what had led “Big” Jim Tucker, and others like him, to believe in “a fabled shadowy cabal that secretly rules the world”. He was anticipating a wild goose chase. So blundering in on a flesh and blood Bilderberg meeting as it was about to kick-off in Portugal – just exactly as Tucker had described – came like a bolt from the blue. “It seemed that Jim had stumbled on to something extraordinary,” Ronson says in the voice-over to his film, adding, “It seems that Jim was right.”
Ronson later managed to get hold of a guest list for the meeting in Portugal. It included such luminaries as Conrad Black (news media), Donald Graham (chief executive officer of the Washington Post), Richard Holbrooke, William Joseph McDonough (8th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), Henry Kissinger, and sure enough, David Rockefeller (who had apparently arrived there in the back of a taxi).
They’d also spotted a fresh-faced Peter Mandelson staring back from one of the coaches that pulled through the gates. Ronson also established that previous Bilderberg attendees had included, amongst the ranks of the great and the good, Margaret Thatcher and Bill Clinton (who were, it is worth noting, in attendance at meetings prior to their election as premiers).
Later, Ronson managed to arrange an interview with Denis Healey, who was proud to acknowledge his own involvement in the group. When Ronson put it to Healey that there was a rumour from outsiders that the Bilderberg Group were intent on constructing a One World Government, Healey replied that this was “exaggerated but not totally unfair”. And Healey hastily dismissed any suggestion of a secret conspiracy. It was simply a way for industrialists, financiers, politicians and those in the media to discuss ideas in private: “that is the way it happens in the world, and quite right”.
So now you know… And if so you’re ever asked the question: “what links Denis Healey, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Peter Mandelson?” you’ll know now – if you didn’t know before – that the answer doesn’t have anything to do with playing the xylophone.
Knowledge of the Bilderberg Group opens many questions. Some of these questions have very obvious answers, although other, perhaps more important questions, are far harder to get to the bottom of.
For example, who actually decides on the attendees for each meeting? This question is important because, although there is a common core who attend most, if not all, of the annual Bilderberg meetings, there is also a constant rolling and evolving contingent of new introductions. Thatcher and Clinton were just such new recruits, presumably being groomed for office. But the question is also important for different reason, because it would seem most likely that a smaller and even more elect sub-group act as the gatekeepers to Bilderberg. But who actually makes decisions regarding future invitations?
Well, hardly surprisingly, Bilderberg has its own steering committee; an inner circle. Healey indeed claims to have been a part of that steering committee. So is there still a smaller inner circle again? After all, who decides on the members of the steering committee, or is the steering committee fully autonomous? The simple truth is that we don’t know, with the reason being that everything about these meetings, from the minutes taken down to the final guest list, is wreathed in secrecy.
So what then can we know most certainly about the Bilderberg Group? The simple truth is still not very much at the present time. The almost total media blackout means that Ronson remains one of the very few respected journalists who have ever investigated the group at all. Indeed, back in May 2005, at a time when the Bilderbergers were gathered again (on this occasion at Rottach-Egern in South Germany) Ronson was invited onto CNN to provide a little inside analysis. What he said was interesting enough, though Ronson certainly doesn’t regard himself as a political journalist let alone a Bilderberg expert. Unfortunately, and aside from Jim Tucker, Ronson remains the best expert we have!
In the CNN interview, newscaster Charles Hodson asks Ronson’s opinion on whether the Bilderberg members are “the fabled shadowy elite” that conspiracy theorists imagine. “Well, yes and no,” Ronson replies, stifling a nervous laugh, before adding, “I do think that by and large, many members of the Bilderberg Group actually see themselves in much the same way as the conspiracy theorists see them. As this shadowy cabal, out to – if not to rule the world, to influence world events.”
Questions regarding Bilderberg meetings have also been raised on occasions in the House of Commons, publicly addressed to those who have returned from one of the meetings, but again no fresh insights are forthcoming. Professor Andrew Kakabadse, co-author of new book Bilderberg People, told the BBC in Wednesday’s article:
The group has genuine power that far outranks the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, he argues. And with no transparency, it is easy to see why people are worried about its influence.
“It’s much smarter than conspiracy,” says Prof Kakabadse. “This is moulding the way people think so that it seems like there’s no alternative to what is happening.”
The agenda the group has is to bring together the political elites on both right and left, let them mix in relaxed, luxurious surroundings with business leaders, and let the ideas fizz.
It may seem like a glorified dinner party but that is to miss the point. “When you’ve been to enough dinner parties you see a theme emerging,” he says. The theme at Bilderberg is to bolster a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe, he says.
“Is this all leading to the start of the ruling the world idea? In one sense yes. There’s a very strong move to have a One World government in the mould of free market Western capitalism.”
Three things about Bilderberg are immediately clear to anyone who makes even the most cursory examination. Firstly, the fact that the Bilderberg Group was originally chaired by one of its founder members, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and that it is still regularly attended by members of other ruling European monarchies, means that we should put aside any cosy modern notions that somehow aristocratic rule is a thing of the past. Instead it seems that even the so-called “bicycling monarchs” of the Netherlands still wield quite considerable political clout.
Secondly, and as Andrew Kakabadse says, there is no clear preference for admitting participants on grounds of being politically left, right or centre. All parties have had (and continue to have) their representatives. Thatcher, Mandelson, David Owen, and more recently Ed Balls and George Osborne from home, whilst from the US, there was Clinton and many from the subsequent Neo-Con administration. We are left to presume then that all parties are, in very important respects, reading from the same globalist script; and that the left-right paradigm is, at least in party political terms, a partial if not total fraud.
The third and last point is that Bilderberg Group has only recently become visible – not so long ago all respected journalists regarding it as just another crackpot conspiracy theory. Quite how the great and the good had managed to meet up secretly every year since 1954 for decade after decade without anyone blowing their cover is frankly astonishing (even if we know that most of the major media proprietors are Bilderberg affiliates). But then, and almost like a miracle, Jon Ronson proved that truth really can be stranger than fiction.
Wednesday’s article on BBC News was entitled “Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?” Well, what is a cabal? According to my dictionary it is 1. a secret intrigue, or 2. a political clique or faction. So Bilderberg then is unquestionably a cabal, and the question should really be: is it a type–1 or a type–2 cabal?
Of course the very word “cabal” is intended to put readers off the scent. Related to the words “cabbala” or “kabbala”, it has an unmistakably antisemitic flavour. It reeks of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion hoax, and this is something that the BBC article and Times columnist David Aaronovitch are keen to play up. Aaronovitch complaining that those who gnash their teeth about Bilderberg:
“…tend to believe that everything true, local and national is under threat from cosmopolitan, international forces often linked to financial capitalism and therefore, also often, to Jewish interests.”
But going back to the title of the BBC article, what about the first part – the “Bilderberg mystery”. Why is there any mystery at all? And why is it, as the article begins, that:
Ordinary people can only guess at the goings-on at the meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, which is bringing together the world’s financial and political elite this week.
The answer is depressing. The BBC and The Times and almost all the mainstream media throughout the half century of its existence have chosen to look the other way, which is another important side to the Bilderberg conspiracy. Rather than doing the job that a free press is supposed to do — a role that is so vital to ensuring our freedom and protecting society against corruption, and one that involves actually getting you hands dirty and doing some work — the media has instead collectively backed off from the real story and, after years of denial, now offers a meta-story in its place. The meta-story is all about the silliness of “conspiracy theorists”, whereas the real story is taking place behind police-lines and closed doors right now in St Moritz, Switzerland. And if you want to know about the real story then don’t bother to check the BBC or the Times because they’re still not interested…
If you are looking for more information about the true story of this year’s Bilderberg meeting then I recommend Russia Today (as the only mainstream broadcast network with reporters on the ground):
And also Charlie Skelton’s yearly Guardian blog which has so far revealed that:
On the 2011 delegate list, Osborne appears thus: Osborne, George, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I’ve just spent the entire day trying and failing and failing and trying again to get an official confirmation that Osborne is attending the St Moritz conference, and if so, in exactly what capacity he’s here.
At long last the Treasury Press Office gave me a straight answer, but it wasn’t the answer I was expecting: “George Osborne is attending the Bilderberg conference in his official capacity as Chancellor of the Exchequer” – and he’s coming along “with a number of other international finance ministers.” Any Treasury staff? “Probably not more than one.”
For information with regards to past Bilderberg events you might also try the unofficial website bilderberg.org which provides lists of previous attendees.
*
Update:
The link to google video is lost but I have since found a version of the same documentary on youtube which is embedded here:
That one has since disappeared too. Third time lucky:
1.The Secret Rulers of the World, Episode 5: The Bilderberg Group was first aired on Channel 4 on May 27 th, 2001. Here is the full transcript of the filmed conversation as taken from Ronson’s book based on the TV series (the book was given a rather different title than the original series) “Them: Adventures with Extremists”:
“British Embassy.”
“Okay,” I [Ronson] said, “I’m a journalist from London. I’m calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril . . .”
“I’m a journalist from London,” I said. “I’m calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril. I’m being tailed, right now, by a dark green Lancia belonging to the Bilderberg Group.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Go on,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I just heard you take a sharp breath.”
“Bilderberg?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “They watched us scouting around the Caesar Park Hotel and they’ve been following us ever since. We have now been followed for three hours. I wasn’t sure at first, so I stopped my car on the side of a deserted lane and he stopped his car right in front of us. Can you imagine just how chilling that moment was? This is especially disconcerting because I’m from England and I’m not used to being spied on.”
“Do you have Bilderberg’s permission to be in Portugal?” she said. “Do they know you are here?”
“No,” I said.
“Bilderberg are very secretive,” she said. “They don’t want people looking into their business. What are you doing here?”
“I am essentially a humorous journalist,” I explained. “I am a humorous journalist out of my depth. Do you think it might help if we tell them that?…”
“Listen”‘ she said, urgently, “Bilderberg is much bigger than we are. We’re very small. We’re just a little embassy. Do you understand? They’re way out of our league. All I can say is go back to your hotel and sit tight.”
wall of controversy 