Name: Anonymous 2007-09-30 12:32 ID:IlHn/T4m
Few have heard of the Bilderberg Council. But its 120 members are some of the most powerful people on the global stage. It meets amid unparalleled secrecy to discuss the future of the world.
The occupants of Scotland's golfing Mecca, the Turnberry Hotel, normally have little to fear during their stay apart from an errant drive from the first tee or a tendency to overdo things in the 19th hole. For the party that checked in on May 14, however, things were obviously different. A formidable detachment of armed police was called in to turn one of the country's most prestigious hotels into a five-star fortress. Sniffer dogs prowled the dense woodland sur-rounding the hotel, while bomb-disposal experts stripped down delivery vans for traces of hidden explosive. Not even bags of frozen peas were safe in the face of this obsessive hunt for hidden Semtex, with packets picked at random being ripped open unceremoniously.
One bewildered golfer on the famous links opposite - used for three British Open championships - insisted to his playing partner that he had even seen marksmen stalking the roof of the hotel as he stood to tee off. "What the hell's going on here?" he asked. Few back in the clubhouse had any idea.
Indeed, few people in the country at large would have had much idea as to why most of the Strathclyde constabulary appeared to be earning an enviable amount of overtime guarding a large hotel on Scotland's west coast for four days. For few have heard of the Bilderberg Council.
Depending on your predisposition, the Bilderberg Council is either a jolly for self-important businessmen and up-and-coming or past-it politicians, or a gathering of 120 of the most powerful people in the world who are bent on moulding global policy to their own ends. What we do know is that this meeting of some of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the Western world is conducted in conditions of obsessive secrecy and security.
While Bill Clinton and Tony Blair attended the G8 summit of the world's foremost democratically elected leaders 250 miles to the south in Birmingham, they were accompanied by the massed ranks of the world media. In stark contrast, the comings and goings in Turnberry took place under cover of a virtual publicity black-out.
And yet the guests certainly deserved a place on the A-list of global powerbroking. These are not the sort of people one would expect to gather for the benefits of the balmy Gulf Stream climate alone. This year's attendees included Leon Brittan, vice-president of the European Commission; Conrad Black, chairman of The Telegraph plc; John Browne, group chief executive of British Petroleum; John Deutch, for-mer director-general of the CIA; Christopher Hogg, chairman of Reuters; Javier Solana Madariaga, Nato secretary-general; Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs and British Petroleum; and Martin Taylor group chief executive of Barclays Bank.
The first VIP spotted sweeping up the heavily guarded driveway to the hotel's conference halls, under the watchful gaze of large men in dark suits wearing secret service earphones, was the chairman of the Bilderberg Council for the past eight years, our very own former foreign secretary Lord Carrington. As he was shown into his £600-a-night ocean-view suite facing the Mull of Kintyre, the private jets carrying the other Bilderbergers were already circling Prestwick airport 15 miles away. Soon Carrington was joined by the billionaire American banker David Rockefeller and the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Tory leader William Hague was there, as was Defence Secretary George Robertson and the former chancellor of the exchequer Kenneth Clarke.
Quite an important get-together then, or so you would be entitled to think. And yet the reception staff at the 132-bedroom Ayrshire hotel would only say it was "closed for a private function" - It was just the sort of cloak-and-dagger affair that breeds conspiracy theories of world domination by a shadowy cabal.
The occupants of Scotland's golfing Mecca, the Turnberry Hotel, normally have little to fear during their stay apart from an errant drive from the first tee or a tendency to overdo things in the 19th hole. For the party that checked in on May 14, however, things were obviously different. A formidable detachment of armed police was called in to turn one of the country's most prestigious hotels into a five-star fortress. Sniffer dogs prowled the dense woodland sur-rounding the hotel, while bomb-disposal experts stripped down delivery vans for traces of hidden explosive. Not even bags of frozen peas were safe in the face of this obsessive hunt for hidden Semtex, with packets picked at random being ripped open unceremoniously.
One bewildered golfer on the famous links opposite - used for three British Open championships - insisted to his playing partner that he had even seen marksmen stalking the roof of the hotel as he stood to tee off. "What the hell's going on here?" he asked. Few back in the clubhouse had any idea.
Indeed, few people in the country at large would have had much idea as to why most of the Strathclyde constabulary appeared to be earning an enviable amount of overtime guarding a large hotel on Scotland's west coast for four days. For few have heard of the Bilderberg Council.
Depending on your predisposition, the Bilderberg Council is either a jolly for self-important businessmen and up-and-coming or past-it politicians, or a gathering of 120 of the most powerful people in the world who are bent on moulding global policy to their own ends. What we do know is that this meeting of some of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the Western world is conducted in conditions of obsessive secrecy and security.
While Bill Clinton and Tony Blair attended the G8 summit of the world's foremost democratically elected leaders 250 miles to the south in Birmingham, they were accompanied by the massed ranks of the world media. In stark contrast, the comings and goings in Turnberry took place under cover of a virtual publicity black-out.
And yet the guests certainly deserved a place on the A-list of global powerbroking. These are not the sort of people one would expect to gather for the benefits of the balmy Gulf Stream climate alone. This year's attendees included Leon Brittan, vice-president of the European Commission; Conrad Black, chairman of The Telegraph plc; John Browne, group chief executive of British Petroleum; John Deutch, for-mer director-general of the CIA; Christopher Hogg, chairman of Reuters; Javier Solana Madariaga, Nato secretary-general; Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs and British Petroleum; and Martin Taylor group chief executive of Barclays Bank.
The first VIP spotted sweeping up the heavily guarded driveway to the hotel's conference halls, under the watchful gaze of large men in dark suits wearing secret service earphones, was the chairman of the Bilderberg Council for the past eight years, our very own former foreign secretary Lord Carrington. As he was shown into his £600-a-night ocean-view suite facing the Mull of Kintyre, the private jets carrying the other Bilderbergers were already circling Prestwick airport 15 miles away. Soon Carrington was joined by the billionaire American banker David Rockefeller and the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Tory leader William Hague was there, as was Defence Secretary George Robertson and the former chancellor of the exchequer Kenneth Clarke.
Quite an important get-together then, or so you would be entitled to think. And yet the reception staff at the 132-bedroom Ayrshire hotel would only say it was "closed for a private function" - It was just the sort of cloak-and-dagger affair that breeds conspiracy theories of world domination by a shadowy cabal.