Bilderberg Conference 2016

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Airbus, Brexit, Kissinger ...

 > ... Airbus is also responsible for an elaborate arrangement of bubble 
tents and staging being put up in the courtyard of the hotel, according 
to some of the workmen.

The aerospace manufacturer and seventh biggest arms company in the world 
is a key player at Bilderberg 2016. Every year, a major corporation with 
links to the Bilderberg steering committee coordinates security for the 
event with the police: at Watford in 2013 it was Barclays. This year 
it’s Airbus. Which makes the whole conference even more obviously the 
corporate lobbying event that it is –with giant corporations handling 
everything from security to dry ice. And it makes the silence of the 
politicians who attend even more egregious.

Even a cursory comparison between the guest list and the conference 
agenda raises red flags. All those finance ministers sitting round 
discussing the “geopolitics of energy and commodity prices” with the 
group chief executive of BP, the vice-chairman of Portuguese petroleum 
giant Galp Energia, and the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. And then 
afterwards saying nothing to their respective parliaments about what 
they discussed. It’s so off-the-chart inappropriate that it beggars 
comprehension.

On the subject of Royal Dutch Shell, the king of the Netherlands is due 
to attend this year’s conference, replacing his mother, Beatrix, at the 
heart of Bilderberg. Given his family’s long-standing interest in big 
oil, King Willem-Alexander will doubtless have lots to talk about with 
the Dutch environment minister, Sharon Dijksma.

It’s great for everyone that these high-level talks between policymakers 
and the heads of transnational oil companies get to take place in 
heavily guarded privacy, with no press oversight whatsoever. Especially 
great if you’re on the board of BP.
Like, for example, Sir John Sawers. As well as being a director of BP, 
the silken, Blairish former MI6 boss is a member of Bilderberg’s 
steering committee, and the chairman of Macro Advisory Partners, a 
global advisory group with heavy links to the transatlantic intelligence 
community, very much in the style of Kissinger Associates.

And speak of the devil! The ageless 93-year-old former US secretary of 
state will be holding court at Dresden, croaking out his wisdom from the 
throne of bones he has shipped everywhere he goes. You just can’t keep a 
bad man down. Henry Kissinger still meets with George Osborne to advise 
the chancellor on geopolitics, and recently had a much publicised 
meeting with Donald Trump. I would say I’d like to have been a fly on 
the wall of that room, but I fear Kissinger’s tongue would have had me 
off the wall in seconds.

Kissinger must be thinking harder than usual about the future, which 
perhaps explains Bilderberg’s recent interest in artificial 
intelligence. Henry must be desperate to upload his consciousness into a 
Pentagon drone, so he can flit more easily between geopolitical summits, 
and drop the occasional bomb on a village for old times’ sake. In 
Dresden, Kissinger will be getting tips on where to have his USB sockets 
fitted from the AI expert Demis Hassabis, the director of Google’s 
DeepMind project, as well as the co-chairman of OpenAI, Sam Altman.

With Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, back at the buffet this 
year, it seems that Bilderberg’s love affair with Silicon Valley is 
flourishing. And with cybersecurity high on the conference agenda, we 
have to spare a mention for Alex Karp, the CEO of the surveillance and 
data-mining giant Palantir.

A rising star of big business, Karp is the qigong-loving lieutenant of 
Bilderberg regular Peter Thiel (director of Facebook, founder of 
PayPal). The steely-eyed Karp is a bit like a younger, more hippyish 
Kissinger, and was recently welcomed to the board of the Economist 
Group, a sure sign of being accepted by the establishment.

And that’s what this year’s Bilderberg looks like: the financial, 
industrial and high-tech transatlantic establishment. Still powerful 
enough to have ministers and European commissioners come running when 
they open their doors, but perhaps a bit more anxious than in recent 
decades. Russia and China are still bubbling around their agenda, and 
now there’s a new concern: Brexit.

Many of the participants at this year’s Bilderberg have spoken out 
publicly against it. And on this year’s agenda we find the intriguing 
topic: “Europe: migration, growth, reform, vision, unity”. Since it 
began back in the 1950s, Bilderberg has been pushing for the unity of 
Europe, and it’s not about to stop now.

Thomas Enders, the CEO of Airbus, said recently: “The aerospace industry 
– I think amongst others – will lobby... for a yes vote of the British 
electorate on the EU.” Whatever happens in the days leading up to the 
referendum, you can be sure Bilderberg will be lobbying hard ... <


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/07/bilderberg-conference-dresden-charlie-skelton-bilderblog


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