Bilderberg: the meeting of the mediocre minds
By Hans Vogel
Practically no one has been reporting on the 2009 meeting of the Bilderberg group in a fancy seaside resort near Athens. The Greek newspaper To Vima, however, published a list of the 150-odd participants at the conference. The Guardian has published some articles by Charlie Skelton, who was incessantly being harrassed by Greek police and even arrested for trying to do his job as a journalist. Nothing new here, since from the very beginning, the Bilderberg conferences have been shrouded in secrecy.
Russian-born Daniel Estulin, the man who knows most about the Bilderbergers and who has published extensively about their wheelings and dealings, has declared that this year's attendants discussed how to manage the world economic crisis they allegedly engineered themselves. Basically, details are unknown, although one may deduct some facts from the publication, by Wikileaks, of the reports of earlier Bilderberg conferences. I have no reason to disagree with Estulin, but I would like to suggest some points to take into consideration.
The list of participants is a good starting point. Led by four representatives of European royalty, the list contains mostly the names of politicians, high civil servants, bankers and CEOs. Politicians are dependent on public favor, which today is largely manufactured by venal media. And as we all know, if there is anything politicians, especially modern ones, are lacking, it is a spinal column. The bankers are just that: bankers, managing other people's money. The CEOs are lavishly-paid employees of corporations, taking decisions about other people's investments. Mind you, none of these bankers and CEOs have adventurous minds. They are not entrepreneurs who have set up their own business, risked their own savings and turned te venture into a success, like, for instance, Richard Branson. These bankers and CEOs are mere bureaucrats. So are the high civil servants from various nations and the “European Union.” Needless to say, the high civil servants are bureaucrats, by nature. As for the occasional soldier (David Petraeus), or glorified thug (Richard Holbrooke), these are also people who must carry out orders. If their biographies show anything, it is precisely that they are very good at this.
In case you would be looking for innovative ideas, for ideas on how to cope with the ongoing crisis, who would you ask: a succesful businessman like Richard Branson or some incompetent CEO who was foolish enough to take his bank to the edge of the abyss by buying obscure financial products from failed US companies such as Lehman Brothers?
Thus, the overwhelming majority of those attending the recent Bilderberg conference are dependent people, men and women who made their careers by suppressing their own initiative and taking orders, always alert to any opportunity for advancement. In other words, most 2009 Bilderbergers, like most of their many predecessors, are people of limited imagination, with a limited capability of independent thought. For if they had any independent or original ideas in the past, these would certainly have interfered with their careers or they would by now be suffering from awful cancers and other nasty diseases. Apparently, however, all are in good health. Besides, a round table conference in a big room with well over a hundred participants, no matter how open and freely they may express themselves, is hardly conducive to the transmission of creative thoughts. As anybody knows who has been present at large meetings with more than a dozen people, many participants will be fighting against boredom, yawning, looking at the ceiling, doodling on a sheet of paper. On similar occasions, I have witnessed people dozing off, even snoring. Usually during conferences, the real business is done in the corridors, over coffee, or while strolling through the garden. Even then, shop talk is often squeezed between longer and more interesting discussions on second homes, vacations, the kids, the looks and legs of the secretaries, or the finer points of tax evasion. I am talking about scholarly conferences (just read David Lodge's novels to get an idea). Why should it be different at a Bilderberg conference?
There was a significantly strong presence this year of Greeks, Turks and Spaniards. The Greek participation is expmained by the fact that the Bilderberg meeting took place in their country. Moreover, Greece is one of the countries where violent street demonsrations earlier this year have shaken the government and where the effects of the current crisis are being felt most acutely. But the Turks? They are the neighbors of the Greeks, but we may suspect there was a lot of talk of how to get them to join the “European Union” after all, overriding both official (French) and widespread popular opposition all over Europe. The Spanish presence, led by their Greek-born Queen, was also interesting. Coincidentally, Spain has been affected very badly by the economic crisis, with staggering unemployement rates, a collapse of the real estate market, and structural, widespread discontent among the young. For years now, young Spanish men and women have been unable to find jobs. Over the past years, Spain has had the highest unemployment rate among the young. It must have been interesting and disconcerting for the Bilderbergers, to hear about the Greek and Spanish experience of the effects of the crisis.
