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URGENT REPORT / NEW WORLD ORDER CONFIGURATION NEWS
| Bilderberg conference 2003: Versailles, Paris, France TRIANON*****HOTEL Thursday 15th to Sunday 18th May source: www.bilderberg.org (see whois -report)  At least two of this year's guests: French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin (articles 1 and 2) and King Juan Carlos of Spain (right of photo) are missing from Bilderberg's official list - how many more? Paris Indymedia has a page with lots of Bilderberg pictures - mostly taken through the windows of the little trains which took participants up to visit the palace of Versailles on the Saturday Questions about Bilderberg answered by President of the European Commission Romano Prodi for the European Parliament - May 2003. Three European Commissioners atten
ded the Versailles meeting: Mario Monti (competition), Frits Bolkenstein (internal market) and Pascal Lamy (trade). Some Bilderberg 2003 news articles http://paris.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=3041 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3031717.stm http://www.DaanSpeak.com/Bilderberg02.html http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32606 http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE22Ak03.html http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/0/045171-8360-021.html http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=82 http://www.schnews.co.uk/archive/news406.htm http://www.americanfreepress.net/05_17_03/Bilderberg_Convenes/bilderberg_convenes.html http://www.zaman.com/default.php?kn=2335 http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/05/06/003.html http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=11229 http://www.prisonplanet.com/gosling_05_22_03.mp3 http://www.vpro.nl/info/tegenlicht/index.shtml?7738514+7738518+7738520+11838857
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2003 Agenda -- from Bilderberg Press Release "The conference will deal mainly with European-American relations and in this context Iraq, The Middle East after Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, The European Convention, Economic Problems." (rest of 'press release' much like previous years but no participant list yet)
BILDERBERG MEETINGS Versailles, France, 15-18th May 2003 CURRENT LIST OF PARTICIPANTS: B - Honorary Chairman - Davignon, Etienne - Vice-Chairman, Societe Generale de Belgique GB - Honorary Secretary General - Taylor. J Martin - Chairman WH Smith PLC; International advisor, Goldman Sachs International F - Adler, Alexandre - Editorial counsel, Le Figaro (*) I - Ambrosetti, Alfredo - Chairman Ambrosetti Group TR - Babacan, Ali - Minister of Economic Affairs
GR - Bakoyannis, Dora - Mayor of Athens GB - Balls, Edward - Chief Economic Advisor to the Treasury P - Balsemão, Francisco Pinto - Professor of Communication Science, New University, Lisbon; Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister P - Barroso, José M. Durão - Prime Minister TR - Bayar, Mehmet A. - Deputy Chairman of DYP (True Path Party) A - Becker, Erich - Chairman of the Managing Board and CEO, VA Technologie AG I - Bendetti, Rodolfo de - Managing Director CIR S.p.A. I - Bernabè, Franco - Chairman Franco Bernabe & C. S.p.A. F - Beytout, Nicolas - Editor-in-Chief, Les Echos KW - Bishara, Ahmad E. - Secretary General of Kuwait's liberal National Democratic Party CDN - Black, Conrad M. - Chairman, Telegraph Group Limited INT - Bolkestein, Frits - Internal Markets Commissioner, European Commission USA - Bolton, John R. - Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security F - Bon, Michel - Honorary Chairman, France Telecom F - Bruguière, Jean-Louis - First Vice President, Justice Department D - Burda, Hubert - Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda Media Holding GmbH & Co. F - Camus, Phillipe - CEO, European Aeronautics Defence and Space company European Aeronautics Defence and Space company (EADS) INT - Cary, Anthony J. - Head of Christopher Patten's cabinet, EU. [Patten is European Commissioner for Enlargement] F - Castries, Henri de - Chairman of the Board, AXA E - Cebrián, Juan Luis - CEO, PRISA B - Claes, Willy - Minister of State [Willy Claes is not now a Belgian Minister but former Bel
gian Foreign Minister and former Secretary General of NATO 1994-1995 - now disgraced - TG] GB - Clarke, Kenneth - Member of Parliament, [former Chancellor of the Exchequer] USA - Collins, Timothy C. - Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holdings LLC F - Collomb, Bertrand - Chairman and CEO, Lafarge F - Copé, Jean-François - Secretary of State in charge of relations with Parliament; Government Spokesman USA - Corzine, Jon S. - Senator (D, New Jersey) S - Dahlbäck, Claes - Chairman, Investor AB GR - Dav
id, George A. - Chairman of the Board, Coca-Cola H.B.C. S.A. USA - Donilon, Thomas E. - Executive Vice President, Fannie Mae I - Draghi, Mario - Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International DK - Eldrup, Anders - CEO, Danish Oil and Gas Corporation USA - Feldstein, Martin S. - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research CDN - Fell, Anthony S. - Chairman, RBC Dominion Securities Inc. USA - Friedman, Thomas L. - Foreign Affairs Columnist, The New York Times F - Gergorin, Jean-Luis - Executive Vice Pr
esident, Strategic Coordination, European Aeronautics Defence and Space company (EADS) USA - Gigot, Paul A. - Editorial page editor, The Wall Street Journal F - Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry - French President 1974-81; Chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe N - Gjedrem, Svein - Governor, Central Bank of Norway IRL - Gleeson, Dermot - Chairman designate, Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. GB - Gould, Philip - Public Relations Adviser to Prime Minister Blair USA - Haass, Richard N. - Director, Office of Policy Planning Staff, State Department NL - Halberstadt, Victor - Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings CDN - Harper, Stephen - Leader of the Opposition USA - Hertog, Roger - Vice-Chairman, Alliance Capital Management NL - Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de - Minister for Foreign Affairs USA - Hubbard, Allan B. - President, E&A Industries USA - Hubbard, R. Glenn - Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance, Columbia University USA - Johnson, James A. - Vice Chairman, Perseus L.L.C. USA - Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. - Senior Managing Director, Lazard Freres & Co. L.L.C. CH - Kielholz, Walter B. - Former Chairman of the Board, Credit Suisse; Executive Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Swiss Re GB - King, Mervyn A. - Deputy Governor, Bank of England USA - Kissinger, Henry A. - Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Member, Defense Policy Board; Member J.P. Morgan International Council FIN - Kivinen, Olli - Senior Editor & Columnist, Helsingin Sanomat NL - Kok, Wim - Former Prime Minister D - Kopper, Hilmar - Former Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AG <
br> USA - Kravis, Henry R. - Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. USA - Kravis, Marie-Joseé - Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc. INT - Lamy, Pascal - Trade Commissioner, European Commission F - Lellouche, Pierre - Vice Chairman, NATO Parliamentary Assembly (**) F - Lévy-Lang, André - Former Chairman, Paribas S - Lindh, Anna - Minister for Foreign Affairs FIN - Lipponen, Paavo - Former Prime Minister; Speaker of the Parliament
DK - Lykketoft, Mogens - Chairman, Social Democrat Party CDN - MacMillan, Margaret O. - Provost, Trinity College, University of Toronto RUS - Margelov, Mikhail V. - Chairman, Committee for Foreign Affairs, Council of Federation F - Montbrial, Thierry de - President, French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) INT - Monti, Mario - Competition Commissioner, European Commission USA - Mundie, Craig J. - Chief Technical Officer, Advanced Strategies and Policy, Microsoft Corporation N - Myklebust, Egil - Chairman, Norsk Hydro ASA D - Naas, Matthias - Deputy Editor, Die Zeit NL - Netherlands, H.M. the Queen of the [Queen Beatrix - Royal Dutch Shell] PL - Olechowski, Andrzej - Leader, Civic Platform FIN - Ollila, Jorma - Chairman of the Board and CEO, Nokia Corporation INT - Padoa-Schioppa, Thomasso - Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank I - Panara, Marco - Journalist, La Republica I - Passera, Corrado - Managing Director, Banca IntesaBCI USA - Perkovich, George - Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace USA - Perle, Richard N. - Member, Defense Policy Board ; Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for Public Policy Research; member Project for a New American Century (PNAC) B - Philippe, H.R.H. Prince - Crown Prince of Belgium I - Poli, Roberto - Chairman, Eni S.p.A. F - Ranque, Denis - Chairman and CEO, Thales Aerospace and Defence DK - Rasmussen, Anders Fogh - Prime Minister CDN - Reisman, Heather - President and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. F - Riboud, Franck - Chairman and CEO, Danone Foods CH - Ringier, Michael - CEO, Ringier AG USA - Rockefeller, David - Member, J.P. Morgan International Council P - Rodrigues, Eduardo Ferro - Leader of the Socialist Party; Member of Parliament E - Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias - Executive Vice Chairman, Banco Santander Central Hispano F - Roy, Olivier - Senior Researcher, CNRS USA - Ruggie, John - Director, Center for Business and Government, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University NL - Ruys, Anthony - Chairman of the Board, Heineken N.V. TR - Sanberk, Özdem - Director, Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation I - Scaroni, Paolo - Managing Director, Enel S.p.A. D - Schäuble, Wolfgang - Deputy Parliamentary Leader, CDU/CSU Group D - Schily, Otto - Minister of the Interior A - Scholten, Rudolf - Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG D - Schrempp, Jurgen E - Chairman of the Board of Management, Daimler Chrysler AG INT - Schwab, Klaus - President, World Economic Forum DK - Seidenfaden, To
ger - Editor in Chief, Politiken RUS - Shevtsova, Lilia - Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace E - Spain, H.M. the Queen of [King Juan Carlos (see photo) arrived with the queen, but he is not on this list] USA - Steinberg, James B. - Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution CDN - Steyn, Mark - Journalist for various publications IRL - Sutherland, Peter D. - Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International; Chairman, BP Amoco USA - Thornton, John L. - President and CEO, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
F - Trichet, Jean Claude - Governor, Banque de France GR - Tsoukalis, Loukas - Professor, University of Athens; President Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy A - Trumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude - Vice Governor, Central Bank of Austria CH - Vasella, Daniel L. - Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG NL - Veer, Jeroen van der - President, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company; Vice Chairman of the Committee of Managing Directors of Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies F - Villin, Philippe - Vice Chairman, Lehman Brothers Europe NL - Vries, Klaas de - M
ember of Parliament (Labour); Former Minister of the Interior FIN - Whalroos, Björn - President and CEO, Sampo plc. S - Wallenberg, Jacob - Chairman of the Board, Skandinavivska Enskilda Banken GB - Williams, Gareth - Leader of the House of Lords GB - Wolf, Martin H. - Associate Editor/Economics Commentator, The Financial Times USA/INT - Wolfensohn, James D. - President, The World Bank USA - Wolfowitz, Paul - Deputy Secretary of Defense, US Department of Defense USA - Zakaria, Fareed - Editor, Newsweek International USA - Zoellick, Robert - Principal Trade Adviser to the President D - Zumwinkel, Klaus - Chairman, Deutsche Post Worldnet AG Rapporteurs: GB - Micklethwait, R. John - United States Editor, The Economist GB - Rachman, Gideon - Brussels Correspondent, The Economist comments * It is interesting to note that Alexandre Adler is a 2003 Bilderberger. He is also a freemason and political commentator. He broadcasts about history, historical reviews, books. Do the Bilderbergers want to write an history of their own, the 'official' version? Adl
er is certainly their spokesman. He wrote a messianic book on the 9/11 attacks titled "J'ai vu finir le monde ancien" ("I saw the old world ending"). Does this means the rise of the New World Order? ** Pierre Lellouche is one of the few French politicians who supported the war against Iraq, while Chirac opposed Bush. Chirac's government is under-represented in this list.
VERSAILLES, 10:00, Sat 17May03, Tony Gosling: Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan-Carlos of Spain, Paavo Lipponen (former Prime Minister of Finland), Henry Kissinger, Kenneth Clarke and Richard Perle have all been positively identified among the guests arriving at Versailles' Trianon Park hotel for this years exclusive and
secret Bilderberg meeting. Bilderberg is made up of central bankers, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers and royalty, the most powerful people in the western world, and always takes place close to the G8 meeting one or two weeks before it. The five star hotel, next door to the palace of Versailles and one of the most exclusive in Paris, is surrounded by two tight cordons of french riot police, the infamous CRS. Amongst the various guests, taken from the NATO and EU countries, Perle is a particularly controversial figure - remaining a member of the U.S. defence policy board who pushed for the Iraq war his companies are likely to profit directly from the so-called 'war on terrorism'. As a key architect of the illegal Iraq war the invasion will add to his private fortune (see Commondreams and Seymore Hersh's New Yorker article). Colin Powell is expected to deliver a report to the conference today (Saturday) on his way back home from
Germany and the Middle East. The hotel has been cordoned off and is impossible to see. Friendly staff say windows have been blacked out to stop photographers who get inside the riot barriers from snapping secret guests inside. The conference agenda is supposed to be secret but leaks strongly indicate management of the Iraq and Palestine invasions as well as a final push for a European Army are top of the list this year. Any 'consensus' reached inside is an artificial one because so many of the guests are elitists and have much to lose by sharing their wealth and power with ordinary people. Conference organisers are available on the hotel telephone line and will be able to fax out an agenda and list of participants from Sunday afternoon. Despite the ultra high-powered businessmen and royalty in attendance, no journalists from any media outlet controlled by Bildererg multinational bo
sses such as Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black are covering it. BBC Radio 4 are making a documentary for broadcast on Thursday 3rd July and independent journalists from Iceland, Norway and Turkey too. Journalists from London magazine, The Economist, are inside Bilderberg every year but since one curious 'mistake' in the 1980's never mention the conference in their pages. The anti-globalisation French daily newspaper, 'Liberation', says it might cover the Bilderberg conference in a few weeks time. Many journalists are afraid of the power the Bilderbergers wield and believe lies accusing key Bilderberg investigative journalists American Free Press of being neo-nazis. In fact Bilderberg conferences were started in 1954 by Queen Beatrix's father, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. He was a card-carrying member of Hitler's SS under the Nazi regime. The organisers refuse to allow any part
icipant lists out until after the conference has finished and feed lies to the handful of journalists about who is inside. I shall attempt to distribute the Bilderberg press release on PEPIS - along with a description of the agenda when/if I get it. As for Henry Kissinger's possible arrest in France (remember the hotel incident?) - it now appears that the French lawyer who was after him for answers about the Chile coup in 1973 has received replies from the U.S. state department. It is not known whether or not these replies were deemed sufficient. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bilderberg items and news 2003: 29May03 - (added)
Bilderberg Hotels distance themselves over death of Pim Fortuyn 24May03 - The Franco-American divide: getting worse 22May03 - Asia Times - The masters of the universe 22May03 (added to this site) Question from Patricia McKenna MEP Approx February 2003 21May03 - Financial Times - A partnership heading for a destructive separation 07May03 (added to this site) - Management Today - profile of Martin Taylor, Secretary General of Bilderberg 04Apr03 - Point Reys Light - Sparsely, sage and timely 07Mar03 - Het Financieele Dagblad - Royal fortunes turn on a screw* Feb03 - Expatica - A royal headache from too much Margarita* 22Feb03 - Independent - This Europe: House of Orange's apparent unity may peel away in court* 21Feb03 - Het Financieele Dagblad - Angry princess breaks royal silence* 14Feb03 - Glasgow Herald - House of Orange turned bitter by royal row* * Queen Beatrix is a central figure at Bilderberg meetings though she often fails to appear on the lists of attendees 25Jan03 - Reuters - Thousands throng Fiat factory to mourn "king" Agnelli 24Jan02 - Reuters - Italy mourns Gianni Agnelli - death of a legend 23Jan03 - Toronto Star - Maurice Strong 'man of influence' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bilderberg Hotels blamed for death of Pim Fortuyn - just in http://www.perssupport.anp.nl/cgi-bin/perssupport/poc_anp.cgi?2002105113_LKG .4V.SPX.out19 PRESS RELEASE Renkum, 13 may 2002 - Today many phone calls came in at headquarters of Bilderberg Hotels & Restaurants from worried guests and suppliers. The reason for this is an article in
Algemeen Dagblad last Saturday, in which involvement from the Bilderberggroep (amongst others) is suggested in the murder on political leader pim fortuyn. The article refers to the Bilderberg conference, an international organization which meets annually, and which is named after Hotel de Bilderberg, where the first meeting was held in the 50's. Bilderberg Hotels & Restaurants has therefore nothing to do with the organization mentioned above, and calls on news media editors to maintain the utmost carefulness in their publications. For more information: Bilderberg Hotels & Restaurants, Mr. J. Serbrock, tel.0317-318.319. ANP Press support, the ANP is not responsible for the content of the above message.
http://www.perssupport.anp.nl/cgi-bin/perssupport/poc_anp.cgi?2002105113_LKG .4V.SPX.out19 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Franco-American divide: getting worse David Ignatius "American anger at France was reignited last weekend by remarks that de Villepin made at Versailles to a foreign policy gabfest known as the Bilderberg meeting." http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/24_05_03_d.asp The Daily Star, Lebanon, 26May03 After Napoleon executed his royalist rival, the Duc d’Enghien, in 1804, a French chronicler famously remarked: “It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake. That bon mot sums up what’s at issue in the debate over French policy toward the United States. Is recent French anti-Americanism simply a mistake a product of the grandeur and romanticism of President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in their stand against the US-led invasion of Iraq? Or is it something more serious the culmination of a long-running Gaullist challenge to US power and
leadership? There is growing evidence to support the latter view that we are witnessing a deep Franco-American fissure and the start of a chilly new era in relations between the two countries. To rephrase the famous epigram: It is worse than a mistake; it is a policy. The French and the Americans succeeded Thursday in patching things over enough to avoid what would have been a messy discussion at the G-8 summit that will begin June 2 in Evian, France. The UN Security Council voted 14-0 to approve a resolution that will end sanctions for Iraq and phase out the oil-for-food program (as the US wanted) and provide some form of oversight by a UN Special Representative for Iraq (as the French wanted). But the new resolution is partly a fig leaf, critics argue; it avoids some of the messy issues about Ir
aqi reconstruction for the sake of a compromise that was backed by France’s key allies, Germany and Russia. The French want to preserve a role for the UN, even a symbolic one, since their only claim to global power is their status as a permanent member of the Security Council. And the Americans need this appearance of international harmony as much as the French do. Things haven’t been going awfully well in Baghdad, and the Americans could use some international cover. US and French officials say privately, however, that this veneer of pragmatism masks fundamental differences. To state it bluntly, Chirac’s France rejects the interventionist global role claimed by George W. Bush’s America. And Bush’s America finds France a pompous nuisance, a country whose military power doesn’t match its ambitions and whose views, in the end, don&#
x2019;t matter. The G-8 summit at Evian is likely to illustrate this divide, whatever the spin doctors say. Chirac is organizing the meeting as a not-so-subtle celebration of French leadership on such soft-power issues as the need to provide drugs for AIDS victims in poor countries. In a touch of this symbolism, the French president is inviting the heads of 25 smaller countries to join the Big Eight for a photo opportunity. To American eyes, the Evian summit is being framed as an implicit rejection of American hard-power leadership. “Chirac will use the G-8 as a personal platform to grandstand and cater to the Third World,’’ predicts one US official. American anger at France was reignited last weekend by remarks that de Villepin made at Versailles to a foreign policy gabfest known a
s the Bilderberg meeting. Though the gathering was supposedly off the record, European and American sources have volunteered accounts of comments that infuriated Americans there. It was only because Chirac and Pope John Paul II opposed the American war in Iraq that the world was able to avoid a Christian-Muslim “clash of civilizations,’’ de Villepin reportedly said in response to a question. At another point, he implied that if America had just made clear from the outset that its goal in Iraq was “regime change,” then the French might have been willing to go along. Pique over the aristocratic style of the French foreign minister or the vanity of the French president misses the point. Chirac is following a traditional dictum of French foreign policy, namely: How do you maintain and enhance France’s power in a world dominated by Ame
rica? The US response to Chirac’s manipulations, alas, seems overwrought and ultimately unworthy of a superpower. For the White House to disclose that Air Force One is serving “freedom toast’’ is at least as childish as anything the French have done. And French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte was right to demand last week that Washington stop winking at fabrications about French policy on Iraq. Still, Chirac’s riposte to America will almost certainly fail. Paris lacks the military might to translate its ambitions into reality. And while Germany and Russia may share French wariness of the Bush administration, they are unlikely to underwrite Chirac’s continuing defiance of Washington. The French version of optimism these days is that things will get better once Bush
is gone from the White House. But in this, as in too many other foreign-policy judgments, the French appear to be making a costly mistake. David Ignatius, Paris-based syndicated columnist, is former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/24_05_03_d.asp ------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- The masters of the universe By Pepe Escobar - Asia Times - 22nd May 2003 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE22Ak03.html It may be instructive to learn what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle were doing last weekend. From May 15 to 18 they were guests at the Trianon Palace Hotel, close to the spectacular Versailles palace near Paris, for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg club. Depending
on the ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power elite of Europe and America, capable of steering international policy from behind closed doors; a harmless "discussion group" of politicians, academics and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret society operating entirely through self interest and plotting world domination. The Bilderberg club is regarded by many financial and business elites as the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. You can't apply for membership of such a club. Each year, a mysterious "steering committee" devises a selected invitation list with a maximum 100 names. The location of their annual meeting is not exactly secret: they even have a headquarters in Leiden, in the Netherlands. But the meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Participants and guests rarely reveal that they are attending. Their security is manage
d by military intelligence. But what is the secretive group really up to? Well, they talk. They lobby. They try to magnify their already immense political clout, on both sides of the Atlantic. And everybody pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed. The Bilderberg mingles central bankers, defense experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international financiers and political leaders from Europe and America. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included banker David Rockefeller, as well as various members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain, and high officials of assorted governments. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans or Africans. Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg, in their view, to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus, an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - what's good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of mankind. If they have a hidden agenda, it is the fact that their fabulous concentration of wealth and power is completely dissociated from the explanation to their guests of how globalization benefits 6.2 billion people. Some of the club's earlier guests went on to become crucial players. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited and duly "approved" by the Bilderberg before they took office. There are innumerable shady, still unexplained connections between the early Bilderberg club and the Nazis, via Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the father of Queen Beatrix, who founded the club in
Bilderberg in 1954 (the name is taken from a Dutch hotel), aiming to "increase understanding between Europe and North America". Bernhard was a member of Adolf Hitler's SS. One of the founding members of the Bilderberg is Otto Wolff von Amerongen - who actively improved business links between Germany and the Soviet bloc and served on 26 boards of directors, including Deutsche Bank. Few people know him - and perhaps for some good reason: he has been linked to the Nazi's theft of Jewish holdings before and during World War II. Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of Swiss energy company ABB. And ABB happened to have sold two light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. At the time, of course, North Korea was not an active member of the "axis of evil&qu
ot;. This year, the Bilderberg meeting in Versailles conveniently merged into the G8 meeting of finance ministers in Paris, a 20-minute car ride from Versailles, on May 19. The procedure is traditional: what happens in the Bilderberg is usually a preview of what is later discussed at the full G8 gathering, which this year will be held from June 1 to 3 at Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps. On Bilderberg's first full working day on May 15, French President Jacques Chirac delivered a welcoming speech, trying to bury the bitter divisions among the guests over the war on Iraq by emphasizing that the US and Western Europe are longtime allies. But Chirac's gracious hosting may not have been enough to soothe the hawks in the US administration still miffed at "pacifist" France. An influential Jewish E
uropean banker reveals that the ruling elite in Europe is now telling their minions that the West is on the brink of total financial meltdown; so the only way to save their precious investments is to bet on the new global crisis centered around the Middle East, which replaced the crisis evolving around the Cold War. According to a banking source in the City of London connected to Versailles, what has transpired from the 2003 meeting is that American and European Bilderbergers have not exactly managed to control their split over the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as over Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline policy against the Palestinians. As the Bilderbergers were chattering away, Sharon all but rejected Bush's Middle East road map, already endorsed by the other members of the so-called quartet: the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. This road map, as it stands, is over: even the presence of US Secre
tary of State Colin Powell - who stopped by Versailles to brief the Bilderbergers - was not enough to persuade Sharon to even discuss the dismantling of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory. American imperial adventures are usually rehearsed at Bilderberg meetings. Europe's elite were opposed to an American invasion of Iraq since the 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld himself had promised them it wouldn't happen. Last week, everybody struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the infamous "weapons of mass destruction". Most of Europe's elite do not believe American promises that Iraq's oil will "benefit the Iraqi people". They know that revenues from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what America has bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will "benefit" Western Europe. Europe's elite, according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious that the US does not need or even want a stable, legitimate central government in Iraq. When that happens, there will be no reason for the US to remain in the country. Europe's elite see the US establishing "facts on the ground": establishing a long-term military presence and getting the oil flowing again under American control. This could go on for years, as long as the Americans can guarantee enough essential services to prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in a war of national liberation. It was also extremely hard at the Versailles meeting to forge a consensus on the necessity of a European Union army totally independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The US establishment, of course, is against the EU army. But so are some Europeans, starting with anti-army cheerleader Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general. Europe's e
lite can't stand US domination of NATO any more. Some Europeans suggest a separate force, but controlled by NATO. Americans argue that a separate EU force would dissolve NATO's role as the UN's world army. And Americans insist that NATO is no longer confined to the defense of Europe: its troops now could go anywhere in the world, directed or not by the UN Security Council. The impasse remains. All these crucial developments were discussed behind closed doors. The Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles was closed to the public and all non-Bilderberg guests had to check out. Part-time employees were sent home. The ones who remained were told that they would be fired if caught revealing anything about the meeting. They couldn't speak to any Bilderberger unless spoken to. They couldn't look anybody in the eye. Armed guards completely isolated and cordoned off the hotel. Some members of the American corporate press were there - but the public will n
ever know about it: Bilderberg news is not fit to print - or broadcast. No journalists from any media controlled by Bilderberg multinational tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch were or will be allowed to report it. Even if they somehow managed to crash the party. There's no business like (private) elite business. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE22Ak03.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question from Patricia McKenna MEP Approx February 2003 Commissioners Mario Monti, Erikki Liikanen, Pedro Solbes Mira, Gunther Verheugen, Antonio Vitorino and Frits Bolkestein have in the past attended Bild
erberg meetings and are thus de facto members, since they are kept appraised of its activities. Commission President Romano Prodi was a Steering Committee Member of Bilderberg in the 80s, at the time when ECB President Wim Duisenberg was Treasurer. Three Commissioners are or have been members of the Trilateral Commission, Mario Monti, Chris Patten and Pedro Solbes Mira. Will the Commission say which Commissioners will be attending the forthcoming Bilderberg and Trilateral meetings, whether they will be attending on behalf of the Commission or in an apparent private capacity, and whether they will be granted daily allowances or other expenses in connection with those meetings. Will the Commission ensure that these memberships are mentioned in the Commissioners' individual declarations of interest. P-1370/03EN Answer given by Mr Prodi on behalf of the Commission (15 May 2003) Several Members of the Commission have been invited to and have participated in meetings of the Bilderberg group during their term of office, while others have been invited and have participated before becoming Members of the Commission and have not then participated during their term of office. It should be pointed out that in the group's rules there is no such category as "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". No Member of the Commission is a member of the Steering Committee. Personalities who do not belong to the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg group may be invited to the meetings. Occasional participation at a meeting does not need to be mentioned in the declaration of interests provided for by the Code of Conduct for Commissioners, since the act of participating occasionally at one or another conference, or of receiving information on the activities of a group, does not necessarily mean that the person concerned is a member of or belongs to a group. As regards participation at the next meeting of the Bilderberg group, which is due to take place from 16 to 18 May 2003 in Versailles, three Commissioners have accepted the invitation that has been extended to them on account of their functions, although they will not be participating on behalf of the Commission. The three in question are Mr Monti, Mr Bolkenstein and Mr Lamy. Their trip will be governed by the rules generally applicable in this matter. As regards the Trilateral Commission, its rules p
reclude the participation of any member who holds public office. No Commissioner is therefore a member of the Trilateral, and no Commissioner has as yet voiced any intention of participating in a future meeting of the Trilateral Commission. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A partnership heading for a destructive separation From The Financial Times - 21/05/2003 (966 words) By MARTIN WOLF The US is no longer a status quo power. Attendance at this year's Bilderberg meeting, in Versailles, made clear how big a challenge this poses to the health of the transatlantic alliance. I went to the meeting convinced that divorce between the US and Europe had become possible. I left thinking that it could easily become unstoppable. Clyde Prestowitz, a former member of the Reagan administration, has expressed the worry in his provocatively entitled new book, Rogue Nation.* In this he makes two significant points. The first is that "the imperial project of the so-called neo-conservatives is not conservativism at all, but radicalism, egotism and adventurism articulated in the stirring rhetoric of traditional patriotism". The second is that this radicalism both frightens and enrages foreigners. What astonished me at the meeting is that these emotions are felt by pro-American businesspeople, politicians, aca
demics and journalists. Americans believe that French and German opposition to the war in Iraq was a betrayal of decades of support. But many Europeans believe recent US behaviour was a betrayal of what the US has taught them. The ideological gulf is wide. Americans and Europeans share many values. That is hardly an accident. The US devoted much blood and treasure to turning Europe into a stable continent of liberal democracies. But in many ways, Europe and the US have become very different. Most important, the US has now adopted old European theories of international relations, while the Europeans have embraced a newer American one. The classic European system rested on the sovereign independence of states. In their relations, states recognised neither legal nor moral constraints. But states also agreed not to interfere in one another's internal affairs. Today's European
states reject this view of the world, because it engendered catastrophe. Operating within an unstable balance of power, illiberal states fomented wars that brought the deaths of millions. European civilisation foundered. The answer, Europeans decided, was to embrace the ideals proffered by the American president Woodrow Wilson: peace, free markets and democracy. Within Europe, under American auspices, they created a supra-national order that stood the classical system on its head. Instead of sovereign independence, Europe would have a supra-national authority and a shared commitment to democracy and human rights. Sensible Europeans are not naive enough to believe the world can operate without resort to force. They are also grateful to the US for its ability and willingness to apply that force. But they are Wilsonian, for an obvious reason: if Germany were to announce its adherence to the doctrines that now animate the US, stability in Europ
e would vanish. Today's US is not Wilsonian. It is important, however, to define in what way it is not. In doing so, we must recognise the tension within the administration between nationalists and neo-conservatives. Where they agree is in their rejection of moral or legal constraints on the sovereign independence of the US. Where they disagree is on how far pursuit of those interests requires interference in the internal organisation of other states. Nationalists focus only on direct threats, principally state sponsorship of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Neo-conservatives desire to embed liberal democracy, as well, since its absence explains, in their view, why states generate these threats. Nationalists then are anti-Wilsonian in both their means and their ends. Liberal imperialists are anti-Wilsonian in their means, but Wilsonian in their ends. Yet both gr
oups unambiguously reject the secular religion of contemporary European elites, which is Wilsonian in means and ends. The new US doctrines are, from the general European point of view, poison. They invite them back to the world of Bismarck. For many Europeans the contemporary American ideology is made more bitter by the perception that it represents a betrayal of what they have learned from the US. A transatlantic alliance cannot be sustained if the US remains dedicated to its current doctrines, except as a state of dependency on one side and mastery on the other. There are, instead, two alternatives. The first is a divorce, with abandonment of the institutions that bring the two sides of the Atlantic together. The second is a pragmatic partnership, in which the two sides work together in areas of common interest. This is the approach advanced by a number of foreign polic
y thinkers, from both sides of the Atlantic, in a statement released at the end of last week.** The proposition is that common interests do exist both over immediate issues, such as Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and over longer-term issues, such as development, trade and even global warming. Yet if practical co-operation is to be achieved, much will depend on US behaviour. Tony Blair now plays a pivotal role. Should the credibility of his support for the US be destroyed, his country may range itself more closely alongside Europe's principal powers. For the UK, too, is thoroughly Wilsonian. Should the US replace an Iraqi tyranny with enduring anarchy, as has happened in Afghanistan, or fail to alter the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it will be hard even for this prime minister to support the US in further ventures. The US believes in unbridled freedom of action. Europeans believe in international rules. The US wants to transform the world. Europeans want to manage it. The difference reflects differences in power and in attitudes to its legitimate use. The transatlantic relationship is now a partnership of convenience. It is already no more than that for the US. Europeans should adopt a similarly utilitarian view. If they fail to do so, the amicable co-operation that is indispensable to both sides may become impossible. Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions, Basic Books, 2003; ** Declaration on Transatlantic Relations: How to Overcome the Divisions, May 2003, www.cer.org.uk martin.wolf@ft.com www.ft.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Profile of Bilderberg Secretary-General Martin Taylor Management Today - 14/03/2002 After the famous bust-up at Barclays, he put his great future as a CEO behind him and, when not advising Gordon Brown or railing against the euro, does the portfolio rounds at WH Smith, Goldman Sachs and elsewhere. This brainy ascetic is as enigmatic as his CV Martin Taylor looks a new man. Big smile, friendly handshake, chummy demeanour, strolling down the office tall and trim asking when I want to start, as if he has always been that kind of easy-going guy. He has on the dress-down gear to match his mood - open-neck knitted shirt, slacks, loafers, blue cord jacket slung over a chair. Sorry? Is this the same young man-in-a-hurry who ran Barclays at the age of 41 and used to terrify many with his sombre suits and steelier intellect? Well, we're all a bit more relaxed now. Taylor, 49, has a portfolio career - non-exec chairman of WH Smith, adviser to Goldman Sachs, a clutch of directorships - and the change is clearly doing him good. He has also recently divorced and started a new family with someone rather younger than himself ... maybe it is more than just a change of office that has put a spring in his step. I wish I'd had the opportunity to ask him, but at that stage I didn't know and Taylor wasn't about to tell me. He was seeing me on the hoof, anyway; he'd had to cancel the first appointment, had rung up later to apologise, said pop in tomorrow, he wasn't doing anything. The joys of portfolio flexibility. If it's Friday, it must be Smith's. So there we are in his third-floor office in WH Smith's corporate HQ in London's Wigmore Street, informal as anything, small room, small desk, table, chairs, only the line of serious-looking books marching tirelessly across the windowsill giving a hint of personality. Milk? Taylor pours my coffee and appears so genial that I am pinching myself. The last time we had met, at Barclays six years ago, he had been earnest, fast-talking, body tensed, crouched over my tape recorder, the sheer weight of running one of Britain's biggest
firms seeming to bow him over. He had also shown signs of polite exasperation whenever I couldn't keep up. Everything was so complex, his intellectual rigour so sharp, his drive so unsparing that I found an hour in his company just made me feel a bit thick. Taylor had started in journalism before moving into industry, and I had expected him to be more sympathetic. Others found him hard work too. As one of his former colleagues put it: 'Martin's great, but he is not the kind of guy you would go down the pub with.' Then bang, three and a bit years ago, the golden boy suddenly walked from Barclays for reasons that have never quite been explained. Ructions over future strategy? Fallout with the chairman? Bored? Since then, Taylor, once hailed as the brightest young prospect in British management, has joined many other ex-CEOs in the portfolio routine, taking time off to advis
e Gordon Brown, sort out his family life and appear before the odd parliamentary select committee or two. He has also, perhaps unusually for a New Labour adviser, been an occasional campaigner against the euro, which he believes Britain would be mad to sign up to. Taylor, I suspect, is not loyal to any party line, simply to his intellect. Hence he is corruscating about matters he finds illogical, in a manner that many bosses would deem ill-advised. That Friday, he was still recovering from the WH Smith AGM. Overall results at the retailer were fine - sales up to pounds 2.7 billion, stores worldwide now topping 1,500 - but there are blips in the US, with Smith's 600 outlets reporting a loss, and worries over long-term strategy. The shareholder response? Apathy, and, rather than being delighted, Taylor just looks peeved about it. 'Frankly, AGMs are a disaster. We had 30 sha
reholders coming, and we're pleased they came, but the average age was nearer 80 than 70. I mean, the meeting has no function. You could imagine it could have a function if the governance of the company was very bad, but ...' He shrugs, his wide smile tightening into a grimace. His face is filling out with age but under the thinning flop of sandy hair, it still looks studiously boyish. Most chairmen, of course, are happy just to grin and bear shareholder apathy but that, it seems, is not in Taylor's make-up. He says what he thinks and he thinks a lot. In a career that has spanned writing the Financial Times's Lex column as well as running Courtaulds Textiles and Barclays, it's probably got him in more trouble than people realise. There is certainly a volatile restlessness about him that he is the first
to acknowledge. It is the reason he cites for not becoming an academic despite sparkling academic success at school and university - 'Oh, I just can't sit still in libraries' - and is probably the reason he left journalism to work in industry. 'Actually, I was not that interested in news, really,' he says. And he wanted a change of scene. 'The thing that has driven me throughout my life is a fear of boredom.' Is he easily bored? 'I was brought up to believe it is disgraceful to be bored, so it's almost the most shocking admission I could make to you, but the answer is yes. The great thing is that it makes you do things.' It's why he loves his new portfolio career and why he was so determined, once he had left journalism, to rise fast up industry's greasy pole. Senior jobs are just more interesting. Oh, and he doesn't like being told what to do, either. 'I hate being told
what to do, but unlike other people who hate being told what to do, I get no pleasure from telling other people what to do either.' All of which makes you wonder how on earth Taylor became such an accomplished manager. He didn't want to do this, he didn't want to do that ... Like many able people, perhaps he just had too many choices. He grins. 'You might say my whole career has been doing things I am not, just a long series of impostures.' Is it? 'Yes!' he laughs, and I can't really tell if he is serious, or not. I'd bet he got used to pretending from an early age. Born the eldest son of a Burnley accountant, he was packed away to boarding school aged eight just a week after his father died of a heart attack. Prodigiously clever, he was sent to Eton on a scholarship four years later, the only member of his family to attend the famous public school, and probably the only
boy in Burnley. His younger brother, now a solicitor in the town, would tease him about being a posh southerner. 'Being a Burnley-born Old Etonian is rather strange,' muses Taylor, 'but then I tend not to categorise myself as an Old Etonian. All these things provide a certain amount of information but you can look at me through many lenses. I have been lots of different things.' Ah. He describes his father's death as an 'enormously formative moment' in his life. 'I am not naturally very self-sufficient, but it made me more so.' It also, he says, made him both more sociable and more lonely. He was put up two years because of his academic prowess; by the time he was 10 he was working with 13-year-olds. Later, he was to use that prowess to take A-levels in Physics, Maths and Chemistry, switch to English at Oxford, hate that and flip to Oriental Studies and learn Chinese. Those kind of fearless leaps were to continue through his business career. 'Maybe some of the terrors don't throw you so much because you have been through things that are so much worse,' he says, frowning. Why business? Part money - his family didn't have much - and part intellectual interest. He loves the complexity, although he is the first to acknowledge the pitfalls. 'Managers who are intellectually driven can be quite dangerous, of course, as they can pursue complexity for its own sake. And complexity is a terrible thing in business. The worst business I ever saw in my life was Barclays France in 1994, incredibly complex, structured to lose money in every way, but for the people who ran it, it was a source of endless fascination.' He laughs. Barclays and Courtaulds, where he picked up 'the essentials of management', were diametric opposites. The textile firm was simple
, unpretentious, easy to learn; the bank grand, complicated, full of flummery. When Taylor joined, Barclays had just posted its worst results for almost 300 years, a loss of pounds 244 million caused by bad loans and a recession squeeze. Within two years profits were back over pounds 2 billion and Taylor was being hailed as a management Wunderkind, even though he protested that much of the work had been done before he arrived. Three years after that, it ended in tears. So what happened? Everyone knows he fell out with his chairman, Andrew Buxton - who also left abruptly - but why? Taylor sighs. 'We just disagreed so fundamentally on very important things ... It took me a long time to realise that what I thought I was there for was not what a lot of the board thought I was there for. I thought I was there to make the business more valuable, and they thought the job was to make the business more glorious. That is the pursuit that many banks d
id follow. I just wanted to make it a bloody good business. And for the first three years there was no trouble,' he adds, 'the two objectives were perfectly aligned.' And then, when Taylor decided he wanted to break up BZW, Barclays' investment banking business, all hell broke loose. 'The board didn't want to think about it. I wanted us to get out of investment banking. The only way we could make a go of it would be to buy a huge investment bank, back our way into it - and that just clearly didn't make sense. But the board was attached to this fantasy of a UK champion. It was absurd, absolutely absurd. 'And BZW itself was dishonest in the way it presented its figures to the parent board. I got rid of it because it was a bad business and was never going to be a good business and we were going to have a problem if we kept pumping money into it. It just had to be addressed.
The board was asked to address it on one occasion and refused to.' It was, he says, a fundamental clash between the shareholder value model and the old-fashioned establishment model. Which to follow? 'In the end, as they would see it, I more or less took the law into my own hands. What we did was carve out what we wanted to get rid of and kept the rest to build a new business, Barclays Capital, which has been a huge success.' But the leaks started, casting doubts about his judgment, and the atmosphere soured. The real problem, he says, was that he just didn't think that the non-execs - including, in 1998, David Arculus (IPC), Mary Baker (MFI), Hilary Cropper (FI Group - now Xansa), Peter Jarvis (Debenhams), Sir Nigel Mobbs (Slough Estates), Sir Nigel Rudd (Williams) - knew enough about banking to sort out the firm's difficulties. 'We tried to explain,' he says, 'but they did not understand the industry and they were not competent to make choices about it, and as a board not of a high enough quality for a business of Barclays' strength.' Not competent? Others see it differently, of course, and put the blame squarely on Taylor's manner. One who worked with him at Barclays says he handled the board badly - 'He looked at people and treated them as idiots.' There were also serious concerns about the way he managed and the pressure he was putting on himself. According to another former colleague, it comes down to Taylor's one weakness: people skills. Like many formidably bright individuals, he's reluctant to trust the judgment of others. So how did he become acclaimed as a manager? Because, as former colleagues at Courtaulds attest, he was brilliant in the right environment.
No-one ever doubted his people skills at the textile firm. But at Barclays, something clearly rankled. The delusions of grandeur? He certainly left with a low opinion of some of the senior staff there. 'Most of the people in Barclays who thought of themselves as bankers had not actually learnt anything about the industry for 20 years,' he sniffs. They thought an inexperienced 41-year-old CEO would be malleable. That's why they appointed him. They were wrong. Did the experience put him off CEO positions for life? 'No,' he says, 'I had already decided I was not going to be a CEO again. I had done five years at Barclays and intended to do seven; I had been a CEO for 12 years by then. Just in sheer physical terms most sensible people wouldn't want to do more than that.' Did it hurt having his reputation dented, going from hero to fall guy so rapidly? He bridles slightly. 'I k
new I was being overpraised when I joined and underpraised when I left, but one reason for that was the great deal of lies and poison being put out by wicked, mediocre men. That didn't worry me. What I was worried about was what was going on in the business, as it made the job impossible to do.' Was it hard choosing what to do next? No, he says. The WH Smith chair was a safe port in stormyWas it hard choosing what to do next? No, he says. The WH Smith chair was a safe port in stormy waters. He was already a director and had sat on the committee that appointed Richard Handover as CEO of the retailer. The two work well together. Says Handover: 'I'm the operator. Martin is good at asking the awkward questions.' Goldmans, who had been after Taylor for years, also stepped in. Taylor now works there as an adviser roughly two days a week, chairing their asset management business
outside the US, and working with equities clients. He's a director of other firms too, many of them based abroad, as he likes to travel. Is he paid a lot? 'Not much, but enough,' he shrugs. Over pounds 160,000 from WH Smith, more from others. 'I am rich enough to work because I want to, not because I have to.' He has famously ascetic tastes - lives in Kensington, no holiday houses, travels by Tube - so his living costs are not huge. It also gives him enough time to devote to other projects, such as running Bilderberg, the controversial discussion group attended by politicians, academics and business bosses. Taylor is now secretary general of the organisation, which takes its name from the hotel where it first met after world war two with aims to 'increase understanding between Europe and north America'. Others have accused it of being an evil capitalist club bent on world
power (I am not joking, take a look at the internet); the Guardian last year described it as a secretive clique. 'It's not secretive, it's private,' butts in Taylor sharply, 'but I wouldn't expect the Guardian to know the difference.' This spring's meeting will be in Washington. Yes, there will be demonstrators and heavy security, because of the government heads that will attend, but the group's detractors are just 'loonies'. So if there is misunderstanding of the group's aims, why doesn't he PR it more effectively? 'Actually, I think that is the kind of sloppy thinking that gets people into trouble.' Gulp. I wonder if the Bilderberg's American links have any influence on Taylor's views on the euro? Of course not. Nor have his stints advising Gordon Brown on tax reform and tobacco smuggling caused him to muffle his anti-euro sentiments. What a suggestion ... 'I will talk about the euro any time you want. We would be mad to enter.' He picks off the reasons: for the first time in years we have a working monetary policy in the UK; Britain gets more trade from being 'the outlier' beyond the eurozone; Europe is rent with unfinished constitutional business and immense tensions, it only works now because Germany is weak, once Germany is strong there will be huge problems ... 'And if you join the single currency, you give up the means to manage the economy, it's as simple as that.' Better for business? Taylor almost sneers. 'Obviously, if you are a manufacturer of soap powder sold across Europe it would be convenient to sell it at one price, but what has your own convenience got to do with it?' Does he think the Government will make us join? 'Maybe Tony Blair has a death wish,
maybe he is attracted to the one thing in the world that can bring him down, I don't know. But Britain's good fortune in not joining the euro is considerable.' He goes on to talk cogently about the lack of management skills at the heart of government, the obsession with spinning the present rather than planning the future, the ridiculousness of criticising business leaders who advise politicians - 'you get all this moaning about the public service ethic, then when you have people who aren't public servants displaying the public service ethic, people say it's unconstitutional!' There is an edge of intolerance in his arguments, not of people but of their illogicality. At times he seems too highly strung, too wrapped up in issues that others don't spend more than a minute on. Yet when I move the conversation off business, to talk about how he spends his wealth or his leisure
time, he becomes fidgety, getting up to check his e-mails, muttering about his password, glancing at the time. 'Are we there?' he asks, twice. His mood has swung. Eventually he ushers me out, relaxing again, chatting away about the photo shoot with Harry Borden in four days' time. He might have to go to Luxembourg - RTL, where he is a director, is being taken over by Bertelsmann - but don't worry, he promises, we'll get it sorted. The next week, he's poleaxed by the flu, won't do the shoot and suggests we pull the interview. Whatever happened? Was he too frank about Barclays? Had I been digging too much in his private life? It was only after the interview that I learnt that Taylor, who has two grown-up daughters, had left his wife the year before last and now lives with Pippa Wicks, a 38-year-old Pearson executive who was formerly Courtaulds' finance director. It has been, others tell me, a traumatic time for him.
TAYLOR IN A MINUTE 1952: Born 8 June in Burnley. Educated Eton and Balliol College, Oxford 1974: Financial journalist, Reuters 1978: Writer, Lex column, Financial Times 1982: Joins Courtaulds 1984: Director of Courtaulds plc and MD of Courtaulds Textiles 1990: CEO of Courtaulds Textiles after its demerger from Courtaulds 1994: CEO of Barclays plc 1997: Heads task force advising
Treasury on tax and benefit reform 1999: Becomes chairman of WH Smith and adviser to Goldman Sachs Martin Taylor is also a director of the Buttonwood Focus hedge fund, the broadcaster RTL, the agrochemical firm Syngenta and the biotech business Antigenics. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sparsely, Sage and Timely "While the entire Bush clan appears to be depending on the Bilderberger crowd to keep them in the Oval Office, the Lord may step in and tell them, ‘Enough.’ " By David V. Mitchell A nonagenarian correspondent in South Carolina http://www.ptreyeslight.com/columns/sparsely/sparsely0403_03.html Early this year, The Light started receiving letters to the editor from a 90-year-old subscriber named Julius C. Taylor in Taylors, South Carolina. I don’t know if his ancestors founded the town or if the names are merely further evidence of the long arm of coincidence. In any case, Julius identified himself as a veteran who had served in the Army from 1943 to 46 and the Air Force from 1950 to 54. His return-address label includes a photo of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat and notes that Julius is a "Reagan Ranch Member." His envelopes invariably carry American-flag stamps. By now, Julius writes us virtually every day about the news, particularly the Bush Administration and the Iraq War. Given his background and letterhead, I expected him to favor both, but he doesn’t. While Bush was denouncing everyone from Saddam Hussein to Jacques Chirac in the weeks before the bombing of Baghdad began, Julius wrote, "This wild President needs to be muzzled." The range of Julius’ political interests is amazing. Last Wednesday he wrote The Light, "Let’s make a deal. I will trade our new South Carolina governor for California’s governor – no questions asked. [Obviously Julius is familiar with this state’s unpopular Gray Davis.] "Our newly elected governor Mark Sanford, Republican, doesn’t seem to know where he came from, where he is, or where he is headed. State Senator David Tho
mas, Republican, says, ‘I give him the benefit of the doubt that (his agenda) is there, and he is pushing it – whatever it is. "State Senator Thomas said that Gov. Sanford is somewhat laissez faire, and that coincides with his political philosophy: ‘I have never seen that with the five governors I have dealt with.’" Sometimes Julius’ letters, however, are complementary in an odd sort of way. On March 24, he wrote, "Today my March 20 Light arrived...Sticking to the bottom of Page 1 was the address label of Sgt. First Class Mark A. McBurney in Decatur, Georgia. I don’t know Mark, but he may wonder what happened to his Light. What a pleasure it would be to know that Mark did not miss a copy of your paper. After all, this is a valuable newspaper." Julius, you have my promise: we will send a copy of the March 20 issue
to Sgt. McBurney. But when Julius really gets swinging, his jabs fly right and left. "Will President George W. Bush be able to hornswoggle enough voters to be reelected? It appears this is his No. 1 problem right now," Julius wrote the evening Bush ordered an all-out attack on Iraq. "While the entire Bush clan appears to be depending on the Bilderberger crowd to keep them in the Oval Office, the Lord may step in and tell them, ‘Enough.’ He did this after the first Bush ran for reelection." The 49-year-old Bilderberger Group, to which Julius refers, is a global elite that some people believe was founded to take over the world. The Trilateral Commission has been described as the child of Bilderberg. Bush Sr., Julius added, "fumbled the ball with Iran-Iraq [enough] to
cause a replacement: Bilious Clinton. We have been scraping the bottom of the barrel ever since. "Our Senate and Congress need to step in and do their job and say, ‘Look, boys, we must dust off our Constitution and read the requirements for declaring a war. It rests in the hands of Congress, not George W." Our nonagenarian correspondent also keeps up with business news and last month noted in bemusement that Cheli Industries Inc. has, in truth, just developed "business suits with charcoal and jade powder sewn into the armpits and crotch to block computer-screen radiation and boost energy." Probably anyone whose armpits and crotches are losing their energy ought to at least check out Cheli Industries. These days no one should have to endure the embarrassment of underarm dysfunc
tion. http://www.ptreyeslight.com/columns/sparsely/sparsely0403_03.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Royal fortunes turn on a screw Publicationdate: 3/7/2003 BY ROBIN PASCOE AMSTERDAM - Never before has a simple screw generated quite so much media coverage as it did yesterday, after Eef Brouwers, head of the state information service RVD, said that one had been mistaken for a microphone by princess Margarita. Photos of the misleading screw, or photographers taking pictures of it, appeared in most Dutch newspapers yesterday, as efforts to debunk Margarita's allegations gathered momentum. Margarita alleges that she and her husband have been spied on, ostracised by and financially ruined by the royal family, with her aunt Queen Beatrix leading the fray. 'Secret service uncovers fake baron's antecedents, file shows improper goings-on,' read the headline in staunchly pro-royal paper De Telegraaf, referring to reports that
Margarita's husband, Edwin, claimed to be a noble. 'Never before has a head of state been publicly accused of abusing her position without a shred of evidence,' the paper said, referring to Margarita's allegations that the Queen had abused her position of power. Newspaper Trouw said that all the accusations against the Queen were irrelevant anyway because 'the monarch can do no wrong'. No matter what the Queen has done, she can never be held to account, the paper argued. It was the intervention of prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende on Wednesday that put a serious political spin on a story which, until then, had been largely treated as anti-royal gossip. Margarita's accusations were unveiled in a series of interviews with a Dutch maga
zine over the past four weeks but came to a head on Tuesday when Margarita told a TV programme that her conversations with Brouwers and the Queen had been bugged. 'The prime minister hits back,' said the left-leading daily De Volkskrant in its editorial. 'After four newspaper articles and a television interview, a political reaction could be delayed no longer,' the paper wrote. And even though the prime minister fought back against Margarita's allegations, he did admit the most 'piquant fact' to date - that Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn's background had been investigated in 2000, an allegation which was denied by the then-cabinet. It was just as well that Balkenende had now agreed to make a statement to parliament, the paper said. 'More information is desperately needed if people are going to make their ow
n judgement about this painful affair.' Attention to Margarita is not simply confined to the Netherlands. Britain's Guardian newspaper ran a long article on the row yesterday, highlighting the fact that Margarita wants to claim £23 mln (euro 33.7 mln) in damages from the Queen for undermining her husband's reputation and business interests. It cited allegations that the Queen is 'overly fond of red wine' and that her father, prince Bernhard, had a 20-year affair with his secretary. This interest is to be expected given the scandals that have engulfed the British royal family, the NRC Handelsblad newspaper said.
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------------------------------- A royal headache from too much Margarita February 2003 http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pad=2,253,&item_id=29063 Forget everything you have been told about the Netherlands being a small, but happy and tolerant, multicultural constitutional monarchy. There are some fundamental changes taking place in the Netherlands. Whether the changes will be good or bad depends largely on society here itself. Many things held to be self-evident have turned out to be pipe dreams and Dutch society needs to re
define itself if the Netherlands is to remain a vibrant and fun place to live. Over the past 12 to 18 months, we have learned that the native Dutch don't understand or particularly like newcomers and vice versa, consensus-style politics has been abandoned as former allies savage each other and the Left is accused of complicity in murdering the doyen of the new right-wing populism, Pim Fortuyn. The Netherlands' once proud record for business is badly tarnished by revelations of endemic price-fixing and fraud within the building sector. The Dutch military tradition is no better off, as a series of reports have shown how dithering from the political and army leaders led to the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys supposedly under the protection of Dutch peacekeepers in Bosnia in 1995. At least the royal family was a pillar of strength; we have had two royal weddings, one baby and a funeral for Queen Beatrix's much-loved German husband Prince Claus. The House of Orange has been one of the enduring bastions of Dutch sobriety while the British monarchy mired itself in embarrassing-after-embarrassing scandals. The reputation of the Windsors in Britain has been crippled by repeated blow-by-blow revelations of infidelity (Charles and Diana); failed marriages (Charles and Diana, Prince Andrew and Fergie); Diana's death in Paris and insensitive racially tinted remarks (Prince Philip). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most recently, we have had the prosecution and subsequent acquittal of two butlers incorrectly accused of theft. N
ot to forget allegations of male rape and bullying among the staff. The Dutch royals, in comparison, have been saintly, apart from one or two old unproved scandals. There have been allegations that Queen Beatrix's German father, Prince Bernhard, the eldest son of Prince Bernhard von Lippe and Baroness Armgard von Sierstorpff-Cramm, was a member of the Nazi SS in his youth. It was also suggested, but never proven, in the 1970s that a certain member of the royal family was mixed up in a bribery case involving US aircraft maker Lockheed (Bernhard); allegations of affairs and children conceived out of wedlock (Bernhard); and allegations of general wild living (Bernhard). One might say there appears to be something of a pattern here. Queen
Beatrix, on the other hand, is portrayed as a fun-loving, but responsible head of government, mother, wife and all-round caring person. The nation's heart went out to her when she had to cope with the death of her husband, Prince Claus, in November 2002 just as the coalition government collapsed. There is no denying that Queen's Day (actually the birthday of Beatrix's mother, Queen Juliana) is one of the high points of the Dutch social year as everyone takes to the streets to celebrate. In light of this, we really know something is up in the Netherlands when we read headlines about how the Queen and the royal family have been accused of mounting a smear campaign against the husband of the Queen's niece, Princess Margarita. Princess Ma
rgarita and her businessman husband, Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn, have given a lengthy interview to magazine HP/De Tijd, which if true, casts serious doubt over Queen Beatrix's suitability to be head of state. Margarita and her husband claim the royal household monitored his finances, the couple was bugged and attempts were made to prevent their marriage. The couple apparently is getting ready to sue the royals for EUR 35 million for allegedly messing up Edwin's multi-million euro business deals. And the Queen, Princess Margarita says, also tried unsuccessfully to stop her son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, marrying Argentinean Maxima Zorreguieta. The Dutch AIVD secret service has not been spared and it has had to deny — possibly
the first time it has ever answered a straight question — that it spied on Edwin. Suggestions that the House of Orange is more dysfunctional that the Simpsons of Springfield could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. The Christian Democrat CDA leader wants to return the Netherlands back to the path of righteousness after years of what he would see as wanton indulgence under the two-term centre-left government that ruled from 1994 to May 2002. The regime's emphasis on consensus in everything and tolerance of just about everything (cannabis, sex and porn, euthanasia, petty crime) has led to a lot of problems. Many people think even the most basic laws do not apply to them and think nothing of litte
ring, speeding, being abusive, cursing and fighting. The country has lost its quaint innocence and concern for your neighbours and the environment is out of style. Balkenende wants to remedy this by re-injecting 1950's style norms and values back into society. His first attempt failed as his centre-right coalition imploded in acrimony and unchristian-like infighting. But just as it looks like he has a second chance at promoting his vision of a modern, multicultural, orderly society, his best roll models, the multicultural House of Orange, has fallen from its lofty perch. Balkenende must be wondering if the entire country is a lost cause. http://www.expatic
a.com/index.asp?pad=2,253,&item_id=29063 and... Royal couple appoint compensation lawyer http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pad=2 Princess Margarita and her husband Edwin de Roy van Zuydewyn have appointed Professor P Nicolai as their representing lawyer to prepare a compensation claim against the royal family. Nicolai — who previously successfully represented journalist Willem Oltmans in a legal battle against the State — confirmed his appointment on television current affairs show Nova on Thursday night. The lawyer denied Princes Margarita and De Roy van Zuydewyn were initiat
ing the legal action for money and claimed they were doing so in order to reveal the truth. He said the royal couple claims they were treated with ill-respect, harassed and tormented over several years by the royal family. The lawyer believes he has been presented with a tough case, but that it will not be difficult to prove essential evidence indicating that Princess Margarita and De Roy van Zuydewyn were unjustly treated. He also confirmed that the princess had taped a conversation with Queen Beatrix. The tape allegedly recorded the monarch dismissing Princess Margarita's allegations against the House of Orange as being "very paranoid". -------------
------------------------------------------------------------------- This Europe: House of Orange's apparent unity may peel away in court http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=380476 By Isabel Conway in Amsterdam - 22 February 2003 The House of Orange has turned crimson with rage over allegations depicting Queen Beatrix as a manipulative snob who falls asleep at parties after too many glasses of wine. To make matters worse the lid has been lifted not by the "boulevard" press in the Netherlands, bu
t by an insider – the Queen's niece. Now the feud between Princess Margarita and her husband, Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn, and the Dutch Royal Family is threatening to spill into the courts. The couple, who now live in France, allege that a sustained slander campaign against them was orchestrated by the monarch and her court and has ruined their livelihoods. Mr van Zuydewijn claims to have lost millions of euros in contracts. He and his wife say companies who were on the brink of signing contracts with his Fincentives, a business specialising in personnel options, mysteriously pulled out at the last minute. They claim the reason was pressure from the Dutch Royal Family. Palace insiders say Mr van Zuydewijn was seen as a "dodgy character" who styled himself as a baron. A genealogical expert told a Dutch newspaper his wing of the family had never been titled.
Professor W J Slagter of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, who runs a legal business, confirmed that a legal action was planned and the couple intended calling 35 witnesses to back up their claim. For two weeks now a Dutch public, unaccustomed to any controversial publicity surrounding its royalty, has been lapping up further instalments of life inside the royal goldfish bowl in the current affairs magazine HP De Tijd. Princess Margarita, who is the eldest daughter of the Queen's younger sister, Irene, portrayed her aunt as a tyrant who had decreed that Mr van Zuydewijn was unsuitable for marriage. When the couple married in France in 2001 few family members turned up. They claim that whenever they attended family gatherings since then they have been ignored and insulted. Mr van Zuydewijn told how he
was subjected to "psychological terror" around the royal dinner table during an inquisition on his business background. At one royal wedding the Queen ordered him to be removed from the group photograph. At one party they had attended, on the Queen's birthday, the monarch was slumped in a chair asleep and she drank a lot of glasses of wine, Mr van Zuydewijn told the Dutch magazine. The couple also claimed that their former home in Amstedam was bugged and Mr van Zuydewijn's mail intercepted by the intelligence service. Queen Beatrix is said to be appalled at the intrusion into the House of Orange's privacy and furious with her niece. The only official statement has been one stating that "out of love for Margarita the family does not wish to comment". The Dutch royal biographer Fred La
mmers, who has written books on Queen Beatrix and Crown Prince Willem Alexander, told The Independent: "This is all a nightmare come true; for years the Queen prided herself on avoiding the type of thing which has so damaged the British monarchy. Now it seems the skeletons are being rattled and, if anything, what's emerging here is even more damaging." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Angry princess breaks royal silence Publicationdate: 2/21/2003 - Het Financieele Dagblad The Queen's niece Margarita aims more arrows at her 'arrogant' family by Richard Jürgens AMSTERDAM - The determination of Queen Beatrix's niece to get revenge for the way she feels the royal family has treated her since her marriage two years ago took a new turn this week when princess Margarita claimed that her grandfather, prince Bernhard, had a 20-year affair with his personal assistant. The allegations were part of an exposé of royal life seldom seen in the Netherlands. In the second part of a long interview with weekly
magazine HP/De Tijd published this week, the princess continued to air her grievances with her family. She said that prince Bernhard had arranged for his assistant, 'Cocky' Gilles, to be given a private apartment at Soestdijk palace, and that he had later given her a house. The relationship was an open secret in court circles, the princess claimed, adding that she was annoyed to have to ask permission from her grandfather's mistress when she wanted to see her grandmother. Margarita had been required to address the secretary as 'aunt' and to kiss her on the cheek when greeting her, Margarita said. The royal family said in a statement that they regretted the princess's decision to speak in public about family matters, and would not comment further 'out of love for the princess'.
The couple regarded the timing of the engagement party of prince Constantijn and Laurentien Brinkhorst, which took place on the same evening as their own, as a 'plot' on the part of Queen Beatrix's court. Margarita said she was angry with the Queen for suggesting that her husband sometimes behaved in a rude and unpleasant manner. She countered that he had always acted in a polite and friendly manner to members of the royal family. The family had taken against him because he 'could look after himself' and did not meekly accept abuse.
The royal family were themselves capable of very unpleasant behaviour, she added. During festivities around the marriage of prince Bernhard junior she had seen prince Johan Friso waving with one hand from the bus while he held a derogatory middle finger up at the public below the window. She had heard prince Willem-Alexander referring to Pieter van Vollenhoven, husband of the Queen's sister Margriet, as a 'farmboy'. Van Zuydewijn added that he had seen the princes and their cousins lighting up cigarettes in public buildings where smoking was forbidden, and using glasses as ashtrays. 'That shows their arrogance,' he said. They both remember a particularly painful moment when Queen Beatrix made it publicly evident that she disliked her niece's choice of husband. Van Zuydewijn had placed himself next to Margarita for a photo on the occasion of the marriage of Constantijn and
Laurentien. 'He will not be in the photo,' the Queen said. Van Zuydewijn had to take himself off. 'Don't worry, you should see the way they treat us,' he said a servant said to him, as he was standing fuming in a sideroom. During the interviews with HP/De Tijd, which the magazine says took over six months to complete and include over 60 hours of tapes, the couple also claim that their telephone conversations were tapped in 2000. Margarita says that she asked her mother, princess Irene, whether this was the case, only to be told: 'Of course you're being listened to. Don't be so naive, child.' The couple now live in France, in a chateau near Toulouse, to distance themselves from the events surrounding their engagement, they say. Van Zuydewijn works as a consulting strategic analyst withABN AMROsubsidiary
Bouwfonds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- House of Orange turned bitter by royal row http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/14-2-19103-0-6-21.html BILLY BRIGGS - Glasgow Herald - Feb 14th 2003 THE image of Dutch royalty was tarnished yesterday by a princess's claim that she was the victim of a smear campaign designed to destroy her marriage. In circumstances reminiscent of the row that engulfed Britain's royal family, Princess Margarita de Bourbon de Parme, went public with complaints that negative press was being fed by her own family. The princess, who is fourth in line to the throne, is the eldest daughter of Princess Irene, Queen Beatrix's sister, and Carlos de Bourbon-Parma, erstwhile pretender to the Spanish throne. The Princess told HP/De Tijd, a respected Dutch weekly magazine, that her home had been bugged and her husband's confidential records leaked to the press to blacken his name. She also claimed that Queen Beatrix had coldly rejected her pleas to stop the royal house from releasing damaging information to the media. "I was loyal to my family my
entire life, but the moment I expected support there was none. "They have tried to destroy what makes me happy," she said in a nine-page interview. The row in the House of Orange was splashed across the front pages of national newspapers, with bold headlines quoting her as saying her father has an illegitimate child. In an effort to end a string of negative media reports about her, Princess Margarita said she first went to the queen asking for help and then wrote to Wim Kok, the former prime minister. Under the Dutch constitution, the premier bears responsibility for the royal family and speaks on their behalf. She did not say when she wrote, but Mr Kok le
ft office last year. "I have the feeling the flow of negative press is being fed by my own family," Margarita is quoted as having written. "I am asking you to intervene." The interviews prompted a terse statement in which the palace expressed regret over the articles and said it "doesn't recognise the family's portrayal" in them. "Out of love for Princess Margarita, the family restricts itself to this reaction," it said. Princess Margarita married Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn, a commoner, in September 2001 in a relatively low-key ceremony. Her father and most members of the royalHer father and most members of the royal family we
re absent from the ceremony, the reputed reason being the bridegroom's use of a bogus title. The newlyweds live in a castle in Gascogne in south-west France and rarely appear in the Dutch press. In the article, the first of a series, Princess Margarita claimed the royal house took such a dislike to her choice of partner that the couple have been socially isolated. As the fourth in line for succession, Princess Margarita often represents Queen Beatrix at official or semi-official events. In Romania yesterday, meanwhile, the remains of Carol II, known as the "playboy king", were welcomed with national honours on their return to his homeland, 50 years after he died in exile in Portugal. The remains are to be buried today in a national funeral in the royal chapel in Curtea de Arges. "Romania receives back its prodigal sons (to help us) be stronger in the future," said Adrian Nastase, the prime minister, calling the return "a reconciliation with the past". King Michael, Carol's son, was notably absent from the ceremony. The former king, who had cool relations with his father, had nevertheless agreed to the return of his bones. Known for romantic escapades that led him to give up his throne twice and earned him the nickname of "the playboy king", Carol II ruled Romania from 1930 to 1940. Historians say his failed attempt to forge an alliance of small countries a
gainst Hitler was partly to blame for Romania's loss of territory to the Soviet Union in 1940. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/14-2-19103-0-6-21.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thousands throng Fiat factory to mourn "king" Agnelli Sat January 25, 2003 06:20 AM ET By Christian Plumb http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2108622 TURIN, Italy, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Michael Schumacher bowed his head alongside Italians from all walks of life, as thousands gathered on Saturday to pay their last respects to Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli, the king of Italian business. Even as the one-time jewel of his industrial empire looked increasingly tarnished, the man who in life never shrank from the spotlight was in death accorded the kind of attention usually reserved for heads of state and religious figures. Fiat factory workers, top businessmen, sporting stars and union leaders came to the centre of Turin to mourn the man whose empire spanned cars and energy as well Chateaux Margaux wines and Ferrari Formula One racing. The lavish send-off underscored Agnelli's status as Italy's de facto royal. Thousands filed past the coffin laid at Fiat's founding Lingotto factory in the heart of the northern city, where flags fluttered at half-mast under blue skies and against a backdrop of the snow-capped Alps. Banners emblazoned with Fiat logos hung side-by-side with those from his championship-winning soccer team Juventus, recalling a man who mourners remembered as much for his passion for sport, art collecting and beautiful women as for business. Police said the factory would remain open all night if necessary. On Sunday, a memorial is to take place in Turin cathedral, followed by a private family funeral. Agnelli is expected to be
buried next to other members of the family. Agnelli's surviving dynasty lined up to shake hands with those who had come to pay their respects, including Formula One racing driver Michael Schumacher, Ferrari chief Luca di Montezemolo and the whole of the Juventus football team. Agnelli's younger brother Umberto, who is set to take over the reins of power, stood next to Agnelli's grandson John Elkann, tipped to be the long-term hope for Fiat, the company founded by Agnelli's grandfather in 1899. Agnelli's death dominated national media coverage, with national papers devoting as many pages to the tragedy as they did to the September 11 attacks. But the soft-focused nostalgia was mixed with questions about how long Fiat's ailing automakin
g operations would survive without Agnelli, their great defender. Umberto Agnelli is seen to be far less enamoured with its cars, which in Fiat's heyday and under Agnelli's stewardship included design icons like the tiny Cinquecento car. Elena Pertossa, 70-years-old and a nurse on Fiat's factory floor for 20 years, had made her way on to the roof of the Lingotto building, where the Agnelli family famously built a race track to test cars, to pay her last respects. "He was a happy man, charismatic and intelligent but he died at an ugly moment," she said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italy mourns Gi
anni Agnelli - death of a legend Fri January 24, 2003 09:06 AM ET By Philip Pullella http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2104804 ROME, Jan 24 (Reuters) - From the factory gates to the football pitches to the smoke-filled rooms of power and money, there was hardly an Italian who did not know who Gianni Agnelli was and what he meant for the country. The Fiat chief, who died on Friday, was a wealth-creator to many, cold capitalist to some, fellow soccer and Formula One race car f
anatic to all. "He was a colossus in Italian public life. He gave so much to Italy through Fiat, but he was also an important man on the international scene, a man we were proud of," said Gina Prosperi, 48, manager of a coffee shop in central Rome. Perhaps most of all, Agnelli was the living symbol of a country that underwent a breathless transformation from a war- devastated agricultural backwater to the world's sixth-largest economy in the space of two generations. The reaction to his death in the corridors of power and finance reflected the almost princely stature he carried with a style and class unmatched in the country. "This is certainly the end of an era," said Pierferdinando Casini, speaker of Italy's lowe
r house of parliament. "Without a doubt he was a symbol of everything we were and are. From the times of the economic boom and the (post-war) reconstruction of the country, through the dark years of terrorism -- the history of Fiat and the Agnelli family is intertwined with that of Italy," he said. Agnelli's contacts, good looks, money and pedigree put him in pole position to represent Italy as the country broadened its social and economic horizons after the devastation of the war. "He was perhaps, Italy's most unique representative in the world," said Giulio Andreotti, a seven-times former prime minister and current life-senator. SOCCER FAN Ag
nelli, who transformed the family car firm into a global name, will also be remembered on the soccer pitches, where he could curse down a referee's questionable call with the best of them. All professional soccer matches will observe a minute's silence this weekend for the man who took off his tie and went to the stadium in his trademark wool fisherman's sweater and jumped up and down like a schoolboy after every goal by Juventus, the hugely successful team his family owned. Agnelli had a style befitting the patriarch of a family dynasty whose role model was the Kennedys of the United States, with whom the Agnellis were close friends. He sold them on Italy the way he sold cars. "He deeply despised cliches about Italy," said Furio Colombo, a newspaper editor who was the Agnelli family's chief r
epresentative in the United States during the 1970s. His personal contacts with people such as President John F. Kennedy, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller had a trickle down effect to help Italy, its economy and its image. "He was a great ambassador for Italy and also a great ambassador of the outside world to Italy. He opened doors and windows for Italians. He, perhaps single-handedly, de-provincialised Italy's image in the world," Colombo said. Agnelli was not a fervent Catholic and there were aspects of his private life that the Church would not have approved. Still, even Pope John Paul sent his condolences. The Pope acknowledged that Agnelli was "an authoritative protagonist"
of Italian post-war history and praised his role in the country's economic and social progress.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 'Michelangelo of networking' Canadian acts for Annan in N. Korea 23rd January 2003 Maurice Strong 'man of influence' LYNDA HURST - FEATURE WRITER Canada's Maurice Strong is in North Korea today to assess the country's humanitarian situation on behalf of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It's almost certain he's really there to find out what's behind the isolated regime's current belligerence. As a U.N. spokesperson phrased it, "He is willing to listen to whatever the North Koreans will bring up." In throwing out U.N. nuclear-weapons inspectors last month, North Korea ignited the fury of the United States. In withdrawing Friday from the nuclear No
n-Proliferation Treaty, it has added to the disquiet of a world already unnerved by the looming war in Iraq. Someone has to try to defuse the stalemate before it escalates still further. But why has the 73-year-old Strong, albeit a man of many incarnations, been tapped to do it? The multi-millionaire businessman who made his fortune in the oil industry is best known for his rebirth as an untiring promoter of environmental globalism, a stance that's hardly endeared him to conservative elements in the U.S. How does overseeing, most famously, the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit — which kick-started the Kyoto accord — translate a decade later into mediating a political crisis that could lead to nuclear war? Observers say people forget, or don't know, that Strong has had a long-time connection to the inner reaches of the U.N. Indeed, for a man who's been described a
s the "Michelangelo of networking," who consults, advises or sits on more than 40 boards and foundations and has close friends that range from the Rockefellers and Rothschilds to Mikhail Gorbachev and Henry Kissinger, his public profile in recent years has been curiously low. He led Ethiopian famine relief in the mid-'80s and was a major player on the U.N.'s restructuring commission in the mid-'90s. But in 1996, he was appointed a special adviser by Annan, one of several, but the one widely regarded as having particular influence. His diplomatic activities on Annan's behalf are rarely reported. What is known is that Strong has been quietly involved with North Korean aid since 1995, when the country's state-run economy collapsed amidst drought, famine and several other natural disasters. In 1999, he met concerned Chinese and South Korean leaders over what can be
done with a country that spends exorbitant amounts on arms while as many as 2 million of its people have died of hunger. Before he arrived in Pyongyang late last week, he was in Beijing meeting officials. As North Korea's sole communist ally, China may have a vital role to play — if it's persuaded to do so. So, if some wonder why Strong, David Malone, president of the U.N.-monitoring International Peace Academy in New York, asks why on Earth not Strong? "He's a figure of significant influence internationally, a subtle and highly attuned operator," says the former Canadian ambassador to the U.N. "He is a good agent because he is a blank slate on the North Korea issue. He doesn't seek media attention." Malone thinks the impasse between North Korea and the U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency will end up before the Security Council within week
s. Before it gets there, Annan wants to know what exactly North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is really thinking. Strong is being counted on — at least by the U.N., if not Washington — to find out what offensive strategy, if any, has he in mind. "I doubt he's carrying any messages from the U.S.," says John McNeill, a historian at Georgetown University's school of foreign service in Washington, D.C. "Insofar as he attracts any notice in Washington, it's for international environmental action. But Strong has a maverick independence." The fact that he is Canadian, though a highly unusual one, will count in his favour, says John Polanyi, the Nobel Prize-winning University of Toronto chemist. Strong won't be seen by North Korea as a servant of the U.S., which is viewed there as the
one that's been ratcheting up the current hostility. "I'm delighted he's there, it's a marvellous step, because talking at this high level is extremely important. It should have been done in Iraq and we might not be at the stage that we're at there." Polanyi, a leading advocate of nuclear disarmament, says it is crucial to determine the reasons for North Korea's reckless actions — "presumably it has some other purpose in mind than attacking the rest of the world." There are rational arguments to be made, he says, that can be listened to, and in turn made, by Strong. If North Korea feels threatened by its own economic weakness and isolation, "that can be addressed. If the reason it is selling weapons is to get hard currency, that can be addressed." He has the ear of influential people the world over for good reason, Polanyi adds. "Wh
at most characterizes him is his belief that history is what you make it." Strong has a legion of fans in environmental circles, but skeptics as well, who don't like his business affiliations and question the depth of his passion for the cause. Though hugely admired in the business world, there are critics there who think his Father Earth-ism is either hopelessly idealistic or perilously left-wing. But both groups are intrigued by a man who was vice-president of Dome Petroleum at 25, president of the Power Corporation at 29 and the first head of Petro-Canada but who now sits on the boards of or advises alternative-energy companies. "He's a man of many parts," says Malone. "A man of action and influence." Strong himself sees no contradictions in his life's work. A childhood spent in Winnipeg during the Great Depression produced an adult who was "a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology," he once
said. "He's a puzzle to many people, including me," says Robert Bothwell, director of U of T's international relations program. "I have an uneasy feeling about his having so many interests. Sometimes I think there is less there than meets the eye." Bothwell says Strong's tenure as head of the Canadian International Development Agency in the mid-60s was "not impressive. And though he was brought in as the great miracle worker at Ontario Hydro in 1992, he did nothing to stop it spiralling further into disaster." But then, 1992 was an exceedingly busy year. Twenty years earlier, Strong had organized the first, small U.N. environmental conference in Stockholm, but the Earth Summit in Rio was a much more complex affair with disparate political interests. A green card holder who once controlled a 40,000-hectare ranch in Colorado, Strong has contrib
uted to both the Republican and Democrat parties because, as he once admitted, he "wanted influence in the U.S." He hasn't hesitated to lambaste the Bush White House for abandoning the Kyoto accord or for not attending the latest Earth Summit in Johannesburg last year. Certainly, some U.S. diplomats retain a distaste for him. The late Charles Lichenstein, deputy U.N. ambassador during the 1980s, told the conservative National Review in 1997 that Strong is "a very dangerous ideologue, way over to the left." He is regularly demonized by the American far right, which claims that underneath the save-the-Earth icing, Strong's real agenda is to transform the U.N. into a world government, in which the U.S. would lose primacy, except as a banker. Whether he's networking with power-brokers at the studiously mysterious Bilderberg Conferences or at the annual Davos Economic Summit, he is ever plotting a power grab by the U.N., they
claim. They point out that Strong was a key member of the Commission on Global Governance, which in 1996 called for an end to the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the U.S. included. But in his 2001 book Where On Earth Are We Going? Strong appears to rule out a world government. He argues that managing the technological society requires an entirely new governing structure; not a traditional hierarchy, but "a network of institutions, governmental and non-governmental, local, regional, national and international." Strong has helped a protégé or two along the way. James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, was hired by Strong straight out of Harvard to work at one of his Australian oil subsidiaries. Forty years later, Wolfensohn appointed him his special adviser at the World Bank. A long-time Liberal, Strong was also happy to start the career of former finance minister Paul Mart
in back in his days at Power Corporation. Contacts matter to Strong. And getting the job done, whatever conflicting interests are in play. "One of the great underlying truths of environmental politics is that the environment is supranational," he has written. "It transcends the nation state. At the very least, it has to be dealt with multilaterally." The same, it didn't need saying, applies to negotiating world peace. Which is why he is in North Korea as an envoy of the U.N. "And it really doesn't matter," says Polanyi, "if the U.S. likes him going in or not." In his latest incarnation as political mediator, Maurice Strong is still not prepared to let history passively happen. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035776555446&call_pageid=968332188492&col=
968793972154 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bilderberg prepares to meet Leaks from last May's Bilderberg meeting were one of the first indications in the world that Iraq had been selected for the transatlantic alliance's next military outing. Bilderberg appears to be a key place where plans for U.S. imperial adventurism are run past the handful of people powerful enough to stop them. The Quisling British are 'ideal' U.S. allies as custodians of 'the language of commerce'. As the illegal Iraq invasion 'settles down', what will be the next staging post in the global crisis being engineered by the governments of Britain, The
United States and Israel? Judging by last year's leaks, a fly on the wall in Versailles might well discover the answer. There is evidence that the lower echelons of the ruling class are being told right now that the Western world is facing total financial meltdown. The only way to save their hard earned investments, they are told, is to throw their weight behind this global crisis centred around the Middle East to replace the time-expired East-West cold war crisis.... from PEPIS #48 Date and venue of Bilderberg conference 2003 Jim Tucker at American Free Press in Washington DC, tel. (202) 544 5977, has discovered the venue this year's Bilderberg Conference to be in Versailles, Paris, France. The Trianon Palace Hotel - May 15-18 2003 to be precise. Kenneth Clarke has confirmed the venue in his reply to a letter [see HERE] See my latest email message here Website for the venue: http://www.s-h-systems.co.uk/cgi-bin/www.s-h-systems.co.uk/brochure.pl?id=129705&t=versailles&s=&c=FR Thanks Wesley for this: "Special Conditions From November 24, 2002 to April 30, 2003 the steam room will be closed. From May 15 to May 18, 2003 the hotel will be closed." http://www.hotels.travelmall.com/cgi-bin/pg_hoteldetails.pl?Code=WI%3bTRIAN
BILDERBERG TO MEET IN VERSAILLES http://www.americanfreepress.net/03_28_03/BILDERBERG_TO_MEET_/bilderberg_to_meet_.html And AFP Will Be There - also hear http://www.prisonplanet.com/tucker_04_10_03.mp3 http://www.prisonplanet.com/audio.html The world’s financial and p
olitical elite plan to hold their annual secret meeting at a posh French resort near the Palace of Versailles. By James P. Tucker Jr. Bilderberg will hold its annual secret meeting at the luxurious Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, France May 15-18. The meeting dovetails with the Group of Seven meeting of finance ministers in Paris the day after Bilderberg concludes, on May 19 in Paris. Paris is only a 20-minute drive from Versailles. International financiers and political leaders from Europe and North America will be conducting public business behind closed doors at the palatial resort. Banker David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and high officials of the government and congressional leaders will participate, all pledging absolute secrecy. Members of the Rothschild family from Europe and Britain will attend, along with high government officials. Jim Hoagland will attend for the Washington Post and keep his pledge of secrecy. Publisher Donald Graham normally attends although he missed last year’s session in Chantilly, Va. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and NBC, CBS and ABC have also been represented at Bilderberg meetings, binding themselves to a promise of secrecy. Taxpayers will pay the travel cost for U.S. officials and lawmakers. It is against federal law for administration officials to hold secret meetings with non-officials to plan public policy. American officials will again ignore this law. Central to the agenda will be planning post-war Iraq. France and Germany had extensive business rel
ationships with pre-war Iraq and opposed the U.S. invasion. But what to do with Iraq’s oil will be debated. By noon on Wednesday, May 14, the Trianon Palace Hotel will be emptied of all non-Bilderberg guests. Employees of short duration will be sent home. Employees who remain will have been sternly told they will be fired and blacklisted if they reveal anything about what transpires. They will be told not to speak to a Bilderberg participant unless spoken to and never look one in the eye. In the early afternoon on Wednesday, armed guards will begin patrolling the grounds and barriers placed at the entrance—removed only for personnel and Bilderberg staff. Bilderberg’s private security of plainclothesmen will be in evidence. The advance staff will arrive with portfolios for each Bilderberg participant showing who is attending and listing the agenda. Both uniformed guards and private security will be shown photographs of American Free Press reporter Jim Tucker and possibly others from Europe and Britain who have become “regular” at Bilderberg meetings in recent years. Reporters have been held in jail for hours for asking questions outside Bilderberg gates. In Sintra, Portugal, guards boasted of sharpshooters on high rocks who could kill trespassers at night. So far, it is not known for certain that shots have been fired. http://www.americanfreepress.net/03_28_03/BILDERBERG_TO_MEET_/bilderberg_to_meet_.html ---------------------------------------------
----------------------------------- Clues Any more thoughts - idle speculation? let this website's editor know. The G8 summit at Evians-Les-Bains, June 1st to June 3rd 2003 - details here http://www.g8.fr and Deviance This year's venue and dates are not 100% certain... so why not check them out with the Bilderbergers yourself. Either leave a message on their answerphone or have a go at finding their secret location in Leiden and ask Maja personally! Of course all th
e main Bilderberg people will know, so ask them too.
Maja Banck-Polderman (Executive Secretary) PO Box 3017 2301 DA Leiden The Netherlands Phone +31 71 5280 521 Fax +31 71 5280 522 CLUE (1) Isn't this the 50th anniversary of the Bilderberg conference? A perfect
oppurtunity to celebrate its existence and organise it where it was held for the first time, Prince Bernhard's Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek? CLUE (2) George Bush to be there? see clue 4 President Bush may be planning a visit to Norway the 26th of May. If so, after that he will move on to Russia, for attending to the St. Petersburg's 300-year jubilee celebration which take place the 27th of May. After this, it is planned that his trip will go to a little vacation city, Evian-les-Baines in the French alps, with only 7500 habitans. Presumable to avoid any demonstrations maybe from 28th of May. This is by the press here in Norway said to be a G8 meeting, could this be a Bilderberg meeting that Mr. Bush will attend to, or maybe it wil be a
place after? Of course, this is only assuming, but though I think it must be a interesting clue for were this years Bilderberg meeting will take place, of course, if he will attend this year! Clue (3) Harrogate, North Yorkshire, U.K. May 2003 anon - claiming to be "UK govmental dept." Clue (4) Translation of the following Norwegian Newspaper article http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2003/02/19/361933.html Planning Norway - visit President George W. Bush may
come to Norway in the end of May. Kristin Halvorsen (SV, Socialistic Left Party) wishes him sincere velcome. So does Jan Egeland, the general secretary of the Norwegian Red Cross. "I'm glad to meet George W. Bush. So I may say to him what we mean about his foreign politics." And he must assume he will be met by big demonstrations here in the streets of Oslo, says SV-leader Kristin Halvorsen to Dagbladet. Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed yesterday that Norwegian and American central authorities have had conversations, to put in place details regarding the American president's visit. A short working meeting is being talked about, where Bush comes in the evening, and travels on the day after. "Should Bush come if United St
ates at that time is occupying Iraq after a war that might be a bloodshed?" "That I won't speculate about today. I can only confirm that conversations are taking place, and that Bush has plans to travel on from Norway to St. Petersburgh, says press- spokesman Kartsen Klepsvik in Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Dagbladet." It is clear that the situation in Iraq will affect the visit. The worse the situation is there, the stronger the demonstrations will become. Bush should not assume to be welcomed by silent Norwegians, waving at him, says Kristin Halvorsen. Should the visit be debated or decided by the national assembly? "Visits like this is it only the government, and that alone, which decides. I hope Bush will take time to
visit the foreign committee in the national assembly. By all, I hope that during his visit here in Norway, he will learn that it is a delusion that the Norwegian people fully backs the United States, as foreign minister Jan Petersen tries to make it appear, says Kristin Halvorsen. Rights The Norweian Red Cross works these days to minimize the civilian sufferings after a war in Iraq as much as possible. General secretary Jan Egeland visited Iraq himself recently, and has encouraged the government to use resources on humanitarian efforts, instead of war. Nevertheless he also welcomes president Bush to Norway. "We should have much to to say to Bush regarding protection of human rigts, peace work and reconciliation. If the visit wi
ll be established, I would just congratulate the government and wish it good luck" Says Egeland to Dagbladet. Also about the Iraq-war, as you fear, will it be a bloodshed? "I've learned through 25 years with peace work, that conversations with the ones you most disagree with, are the most useful. If we here in Norway can contribute to development in the world, first of all we should talk to exactly nations like the United States, Russia and China", says Egeland. G8-meeting Acording to Ministry of Foreign Affairs the program for the visit is not yet ready. But if Bush comes, he will have meetings with prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, and have audience at the castle (meet the king), since he is the American president. After what Dagbladet experienced, Bush will not come to Norway on behalf of a direct invitation. The travel is a part of the so called G8-meeting, where the leaders of the worlds eight most poweful nations will be meeting, which this year is being arranged in France the 1st and second of June. The latest public opinion poll measurements in France show that more than 80% of the population is against a Iraq-war. It can mean that Bush will be met by huge demonstrations also there. But the G8-meeting shall after the schedule be arranged in Evian-les-Baines in the French Alps, a little vacations city with a population of 7500 inhabitans-presumably to exactly avoid the demonstrators. Dagbladet Wednesday the 19th of February 2003, by Arne Foss From this article we learn that the president will visit the 300 year-jubilee in St. Petersburgh. After my research, this will be the 27th of May. That gives that the visit in Norway will be monday the 26th of May. We learn by this article that the G8-meeting will be from sunday the 1st of June to Monday the 2nd of June. The anual Bilderberg meeting normally as you know take place the weekend between may and June. So if the president will attend, it will not be far away in the region. Maybe at this exactly place as it was in 1992. Anyway I think it is likely that he will attend at this years meeting, due to the actual situation in the world today! Clue (5) Kenneth Clarke has revealed that the meeting has taken place in Versailles, Paris, France. Trianon palace Hotel - May 15-18 2003
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