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PRESS RELEASE

01.06.10 :: Practicalities :: Purpose :: Press

The conference is managed by a steering committee comprised of 24 Europeans and 15 Americans including Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller. The group's permanent office is based in the Hague.

Some participants attend every year. Others may only be invited once to talk on a particular issue and are then not invited back. There are usually a large number of politicians from the host country. Journalists and executives from The New York Times, Newsweek, The Economist and The Financial Times have also attended, but never mention the meetings in their publications.

The group takes its name from the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Holland, near the city of Arnhem, where the first meeting took place from May 29-31 1954.

The host country raises the money itself to fund the lavish hospitality bill. Participants fund their own travel to the airport but transport to the hotel, often with police escorts, is paid for by the host country. Security is funded partially by the group and partially by the tax-payer in the host country.

What the group does.

The chairman of the Bilderberg group, Viscount Davignon, says that at the annual meetings: 'automatically around the table you have internationalists' and author and journalist Will Hutton calls those who attend 'the high priests of globalisation.' UK Labour party leader Hugh Gateskill in the 50s and 60s calls Bilderberg in a private letter: 'a rather special conference, very handpicked with the proceedings private.'

Documented mentions

Lord Ashdown said:
'At 2 o’clock to Heathrow to catch a flight to Santiago de Compostela for the Bilderberg Conference – described to me as ‘fifty people who run the world and twenty hangers on’. No doubt which category I am in! I discovered that the people here include Henry Kissinger, Lord Carrington, The King and Queen of Spain, The Queen of Holland, Phillipe Gonzalez the prime minister of Spain, Wilfried Martens the Prime Minister of Belgium, Dr. Franz Vranitzky the Chancellor of Austria, John Smith and too many Tory Government Ministers to name. Dinner was excellent. I ate a dozen oysters and a load of shellfish. This could be fun.'
(from The Ashdown Diaries - Volume One 1988-1997, entry 11th May, 1989)

William Rees-Mogg said:
'Last time I went to a Bilderberg conference, it was held in Athens, about three years ago. Tony Blair was there, not yet leader of the Labour Party, Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel were there, the Queen of The Netherlands was there. It was all pleasantly grand.'
(The Times, 4th March, 1996)
Bilderberg founding member, and member of the steering committee for 30 years, Denis Healey said: 
'To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.'

(The New Right and Secular Humanism Conspiracy Theory, Berlet, 1994)

How Bilderberg helped create the EU.
 
In 2003 the BBC uncovered archive documents from the second Bilderberg meeting in 1955 detailing how Bilderberg was instrumental in the creation of the EU. 
Notes from the files of the former labour leader Hugh Gaitskell (leader of the Labour party from 1955- 1963) included the quote: 'a US participant urged his European friends to go ahead with the unification of Europe with less emphasis on ideological considerations and, above all, to be practical and work fast.' 

Another note written by Gaitskell regarding the 1955 meeting includes the quote: 'Some sort of European Union has long been a utopian dream, but the conference was agreed it was now a necessity of our times only in some form of union can the freemasons of Europe achieve a moral and material strength capable of meeting any threat to their freedom.'

It is interesting to note that Gaitskell was the first to urge Britain's entry into the European Union

How Bilderberg helped create the Euro

A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group - an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr Davignon - could also "improve understanding" on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said. "When we were having debates on the euro, people [at Bilderberg events] could explain why it was worth taking risks and the others, for whom the formal policy was not to believe in it, were not obliged not to listen and had to stand up and come up with real arguments." EU Observer 16th March 2009

Questions

The Tory MP Nicholas Winston Soames told BBC radio four in 2003: 'Nobody wishes to talk about Bilderberg or their meetings. It is somewhat sinister and, bearing in mind they are such powerful people, why are they not prepared to be more open?' Talking about Kenneth Clarke who has attended many meetings he says: 'I think it's very wrong that a politician is not prepared to be more open. I don't think for a moment he would reveal to me what transpires at these gatherings.'

On May 13th 2009 Dutch MP Harry Von Bommel petitioned the Dutch prime minister regarding the Bildberberg meeting, asking whether members of the Dutch cabinet and Queen Beatrix would attend. 

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has asked both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown whether they have attended the meetings. (Tony Blair lied and said he hadn't attended when in fact it is well documented that he did in 1993). 

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