For the past 60 years, the Bilderberg Group has held an annual meeting, and many say it has been a way for business, academic and political powers to set the course of the world’s affairs.
The most recent one took place only days ago (May 29-June 1) at the Marriot Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark.
According to BilderbergMeetings.org, the official website, the meeting is organized to “foster dialogue between Europe and North America.” It goes on to say that “every year, between 120-150 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media are invited to take part in the conference. About two-thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields.”
Here are five facts you may not have known about the Bilderberg meeting:
Fact No. 1: Bill Clinton attended Bilderberg in Germany in 1991.
Clinton, the governor of Arkansas at the time, attended the 1991 edition of the Bilderberg conference. Just a few years later, Mr. Clinton was catapulted into the presidency of the United States. Many analysts have suggested that Clinton’s presidency may be a result of him being a favorite of the Bilderbergers back in 1991.
Note: Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was on the 2014 Bilderberg guest list.
Fact No. 2: The Logan Act expressly forbids US citizens from engaging in talks with foreign governments about disputes or affairs of the United States with the intent to influence.
Some analysts suggest that Americans who have attended the Bilderberg meetings may be in violation of the Logan Act. The Logan Act says:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
The Logan Act was first passed in 1799. While some critics say that this is an archaic law that doesn’t apply, you have to ask yourself an important question: If this was the case, why did Congress amend this law in 1994 if it was archaic and not useful?
Notable US Citizens that attended Bilderberg 2014 are David Petraeus, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Eric Schmidt of Google and Henry Kissinger.
Fact No. 3: Bilderberg participants brainstormed the EU and the Euro currency in 1955.
Wikileaks.org presented us with a document that mentions that Bilderberg participants talked about a united currency for Europe in the mid-1950s. Leaked documents note that Bilderbergers were saying that “it might be better to proceed through the development of a common market by treaty rather than by the creation of new high authorities.” In the late 1950s, the European Economic Community was built via the Treaty of Rome. That set the stage for the Lisbon Treaty, thus cementing the EU as we know it today.
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Fact No. 4: UK’s prime ministers love Bilderberg; European banking elites also enjoy the secret conference.
Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all attended Bilderberg at some point. The United Kingdom is always well-represented at Bilderberg with many of the UK’s prime ministers making multiple appearances.
European bankers also are always well-represented. In 2014, George Zanias, chairman of Greece’s National Bank; Martin Wolf, Chief Economic Commentator for the British Financial Times; Sweden’s Marcus Wallenberg, board of directors, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken; and Germany’s Paul Achleitner, chairman of Deutsche Bank all attended.
Fact No. 5: Technology, more precisely, robotics, automation and cloud, were heavily represented by many of the business leaders present at Bilderberg 2014
Schmidt, chairman of Google, leads a company that is the world’s top innovator in robotics, automation and cloud. When you couple that stark fact with the computing power and amount of raw data and analytics that Google possesses, anything and everything suddenly becomes possible. For example, Google has licensed several driverless cars throughout the United States. They have only been in two accidents, which were both at the fault of human drivers.
Bezos, founder of Amazon, runs a company that operates the world largest cloud computing service. Amazon’s popular consumer website has used this computing power to create an algorithm that predicts who will order products based on their browsing habits. This enables your item to be pulled off of the warehouse shelf before you order the product on the Amazon.com website, in anticipation for the user to click the order button. While this is seen as a way to increase efficiency, others feel as if this technology is just plain creepy.
What do you think of the Bilderberg conference? Is there something secret going on, or is this “much ado about nothing”? Tell us in the comments section below.
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