Should the Bilderberg Meetings be made more available to the public?

[Irish Girl]

A writer from The Guardian is trying to cover the annual Bilderberg Group meeting currently underway in Greece, however, the poor chap keeps getting followed and detained by local authorities. You can follow his daily updates here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlie-skelton">Charlie Skelton, Our Man At Bilderberg

My questions for DUers are;

1. Do you feel the annual Bilderberg Meeting Agendas should be made available to the public?
2. Should there be more mainstream media coverage of this annual event, as opposed to the peculiar current media blackout? Are journalists overstepping their boundaries or do they rightfully deserve to be detained, followed and harassed for trying to report on the meeting?

I'm not trying to upset anyone by posting this but am very curious as to what fellow DUer's thoughts and opinions are. And for those interested, here are some snippets from Skelton's journey thus far.

May 13, 2009



I don't quite know why I'm on a flight to Athens, except that it seems like the right thing to do. I'm flying out on a last minute whim to hang around outside a conference which may, or may not, be happening and to which I've not been invited. None of you has.

You won't have read about it. You won't have seen a guest list, you won't see photographs of it. It isn't happening. It doesn't exist. I'm flying out to Athens for no reason at all. To have a holiday I don't deserve and can't really afford. Maybe catch a little sunstroke, grab some food poisoning, and come home. Pointless.

Unless, of course, the rumours are true. Unless, as a handful of people are saying, this weekend is Bilderberg. The yearly alignment of the distant stars that shape our destiny. A long weekend at a luxury hotel, where the world's elite get to shake hands, clink glasses, fine-tune their global agenda and squabble over who gets the best sun loungers. I'm guessing that Henry Kissinger brings his own, has it helicoptered in and guarded 24/7 by a CIA special ops team.

If it's happening at all, Kissinger will be here. David Rockefeller will be here. Presidents of banks, and chairmen of boards. The Ben Bernankes and Condoleezza Rices of this world. Heads of oil companies, media magnates, the Queen of the Netherlands and Peter Mandelson. Probably Ben Bernanke, possibly David Cameron. Politicians and financiers from all five corners of the globe (don't let them tell you there are four). And me.

(Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/13/in-search-of-bilderberg)

May 14, 2009


You know your day's gone badly when it ends with you being shouted at in a Greek police station.

It wasn't meant to end this way. I'd gone for a gentle sunset walk, up by the Bilderberg hotel, to relax before the big opening day of the elite globalist shindig, watch Phoebus plunge headlong into the western sea, and (yes) maybe sneak a couple of short-lens pictures of the mounting security.

Opposite the hotel gates I took a casual photo out over the bay, limbering up to swivel round and snap off some naturalistic "armed guard having fag and chatting up policewoman" sort of shots. A plainclothes officer jogged across the road and got in my face.

"No photos."

"Of the sea?"

"Give me your camera."

"I don't understand."

"Passport."

"I've got my Oyster card".

"Passport."

"Driving licence?"

He takes my licence. A group of policemen have sauntered over, and mutter Greekly about the enormous threat to the smooth running of Bilderberg I seem to represent.

<..>

And then it struck me: there really ISN'T any fotografia. There's none. Not a single member of the mainstream press. Not a single newshound camera on a tripod. Nothing. Nothing is happening here. Nothing to report.

The limousines have started to arrive. Nothing to report.

They've closed off an entire peninsula. There are roadblocks. Machine guns. Nothing to report.

This is Bilderberg's 57th annual meeting. Nothing to report.

Susan Boyle plucks eyebrows! Finally, something to report.

(Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/14/bilderberg-charlie-skelton-dispatch)

May 15, 2009


Now I've got too much to report.

I'll talk later about the strange secret circus of limousines, blacked-out windows, sirens, helicopters. No time to relate being detained for a SECOND time, for the crime of being half a mile from the Bilderberg hotel gates trying to take "arty" photographs of limousine wheels as they whisked past. Doing so little wrong that I was doing it while standing next to three policemen who were fine about it. Until the call came through on the radio and the motorbikes and squad cars squealed around me like a bad dream. I'll tell that story later. I have to talk now about what just happened.

But before I begin, please believe me when I say: I haven't gone nuts. I really haven't. Nine times seven is 63 and the capital of Italy is Rome. I know what I know. And I know that I'm being followed. I know because I've just been chatting to the plainclothes policemen I caught following me. As absurd as it sounds, I've just "made my tail".

They're watching me now. REALLY. They're sitting on the wall outside the cafe Oceania or whatever this is called, watching me type this sentence. I asked them in for a coffee but they declined. They laughed sheepishly when I called them Starsky and Hutch. They asked my name. "I told your colleagues. Twice."

They asked again. I told them. I asked back. There was an awkward pause. They're not very good at this. "... ... Nick … … … … and … John."

So there we were, me and my shadows. Nick and John. "We're just walking up and down." That was their cover story, and they didn't bother sticking to it. They simply couldn't resist: "How many days you spend here?" – "Where you from exactly?" – "You staying here alone?" I was laughing. It was too bizarre. "What is your job?"

<...>

I'm just an ordinary guy. A concerned citizen. For this week at least, a blogger. Barely a reporter. A terrible photographer. No threat to anyone. I'm nobody. But just up the hill, in a luxury hotel, there's a meeting of the most powerful somebodies in the world. Bilderberg. I've been hauled off to the police station twice. Before this week, I've never had so much as a cross word with a policeman IN MY LIFE. I once drove at night with my lights off and was pulled over and told not to drive like an idiot. And that's it. I'm not a bad person. I don't even know what I am any more. I think I write jokes for a living. I think maybe I used to. I'm a man clutching a laptop to his chest, trying to breathe quietly.

(Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/15/bilderberg-charlie-skelton-dispatch)

May 15

I am so unbelievably backteeth sick of power being flexed by the few. I've had it flexed in my face for three days, and it's up my nose like a wasp. I don't care whether the Bilderberg Group is planning to save the world or shove it in a blender and drink the juice, I don't think politics should be done like this. This might be a facile point, but if they were organising a charity snooker league, they could do it upstairs at Starbucks. If they were trying to cure cancer they could do it with the lights on. Innocent thoughts can be minuted.

Or maybe they're simply swingers. Maybe that's why the curtains are drawn. Imagine chucking your key in the tub and pulling out Ken Clarke. Sorry Timothy Geithner, that's the cost of doing business.

I have a confession. (I'm not a swinger, that's not it.) My confession is that being tailed today by Greek special branch, and doubling back through a cafe and catching them out, and buying them chilled water on a hot day like in Beverley Hills Cop, when Eddie Murphy has room service sent to their car – all this was pretty exciting. It's was my own little episode of the Equaliser. (The Greequaliser? No, really no, I'm tired). Being tailed was exciting and funny and absurd and confusing and terrifying and utterly, utterly wrong. And I know this sounds pathetic but I got a bit teary in the police station when I was telling the nice desk sergeant lady that I'm not a bad person and not a threat to anyone, and it would be nice if someone could call off the goons. I don't like to be made to feel like this. I've been "put" in this position, and I haven't deserved it.

Bilderberg is about positions of control. I get within half a mile of it, and suddenly I'm one of the controlled. I'm followed, watched, logged, detained, detained again. I'd been put in that position by the "power" that was up the road.

Likewise, the Bilderberg delegates occupy a position of power over the bobbing ignorance of the people patting beach balls in the sea, and me with my crappy little camera and my curiosity and my ill-formed sense of citizenship. I may not be very good at bearing witness here, but I'm doing my best. I haven't shinned over the fence and shoved a camera in David Rockefeller's face but I don't want to be shot in the forehead.

(Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/15/bilderberg-charlie-skelton-dispatch1)

[Joanne98]

1. YES

[eleny]

2. I'm surprised that there aren't huge public demonstrations

[wildbilln864]

3. Yes and k&r! nt

[Reform]

4. hmmmmmm

Royalty, top world executives, NGO's, Presidents, prime ministers, top banking officials, Media figures just to name a few who meet here.
The Logan Act which is a federal statute making it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States, this is repeatedly broken here time after time. You cant tell me policy is not set at these meetings, Étienne Davignon recently admitted that the Euro was created by the “informal” Bilderberg group while he was chairman.

"A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group - an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr Davignon - could also “improve understanding” on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said."


http://euobserver.com/9/27778


So policies we now know for a fact are talked about at these meetings for a wide range of nations.
Why this does not bother the Average American or respected citizen of any nation is beyond me.


Good is done in light
Evil is done in dark

[MineralMan]

5. They can't do that.

It would lead to the end of the conspiracy theories about the Bilderberger deal, and then it wouldn't be fun to go to it anymore.

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. And lamb chops should grow on trees.

I understand the sentiment, but what's the point?

The people who attend them aren't capable of being shamed into making them available to the public, now are they?
Nothing gets accomplished there that can't be done with an e-mail, or a phone call.
If they were somehow forced to be public, then they would cease.
Or be replaced with something else. Like the Trilateral Commission. Or Davos. Or the Council on Foreign Relations
And if they ceased, would the world be a better place?
Enough to notice?
Enough to matter?

[graywarrior]

7. If they're dloing something worthwhile, they should be bragging about it.

If not, they should be dragged out into the light and exposed.

[Mari333]

8. Lookee Lookee , TIM GEITHNER might be there

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=870_1227422559

[w4rma]

9. No government should protect that place like they are protecting it.

Simple as that. I don't care who is in there, they don't deserve the ridiculous government protection they are getting.

They can meet one another like normal people do at the coffee shop, a resturaunt or a bar.