Bilderberg May Be Just as Powerful
Prime ministers, finance ministers, leading entrepreneurs and a former spy chief are among the attendees at this year’s influential Bilderberg conference, but one regular guest, George Osborne, will be absent.
The guest list for the conference, which begins on Thursday in Dresden, was released on Tuesday and includes a large number of senior politicians and policymakers, dozens of bank bosses and high-finance billionaires who will gather inside the newly erected security fence around the Hotel Taschenbergpalais.
Two prime ministers, four finance ministers, the head of the IMF and a vice-president of the European commission are all listed as attendees. With so many politicians present, including three members of the German cabinet, the German military has been drafted in to oversee security.
Army officers have been meeting conference staff, scouting the round the hotel and taking photos of the entrance. They’re working with corporate security from Airbus to make sure the politicians are kept safely away from the press for the entire three-day conference.
No one wants the Danish minister of justice or the deputy prime minister of Turkey to have to field awkward questions, such as: “Where do you stand on corporate lobbying?” Especially when they’re standing between the chairman of HSBC and the president of Siemens.
Airbus is also responsible for an elaborate arrangement of bubble tents and staging being put up in the courtyard of the hotel, according to some of the workmen.
The aerospace manufacturer and seventh biggest arms company in the world is a key player at Bilderberg 2016. Every year, a major corporation with links to the Bilderberg steering committee coordinates security for the event with the police: at Watford in 2013 it was Barclays. This year it’s Airbus. Which makes the whole conference even more obviously the corporate lobbying event that it is –with giant corporations handling everything from security to dry ice. And it makes the silence of the politicians who attend even more egregious.
Even a cursory comparison between the guest list and the conference agenda raises red flags. All those finance ministers sitting round discussing the “geopolitics of energy and commodity prices” with the group chief executive of BP, the vice-chairman of Portuguese petroleum giant Galp Energia, and the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. And then afterwards saying nothing to their respective parliaments about what they discussed. It’s so off-the-chart inappropriate that it beggars comprehension.
On the subject of Royal Dutch Shell, the king of the Netherlands is due to attend this year’s conference, replacing his mother, Beatrix, at the heart of Bilderberg. Given his family’s long-standing interest in big oil, King Willem-Alexander will doubtless have lots to talk about with the Dutch environment minister, Sharon Dijksma.
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