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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Every year since 1954, a small network of rich and powerful people has held a meeting on the state of the world.

Organised by a steering committee, the Bilderberg Group (named after the Dutch hotel in which it held its first meeting) brings together more than 100 leading businessmen and politicians, such as the heads of the World Bank and European Central Bank, chairmen or chief executives from Nokia, BP, Unilever, DaimlerChrysler and Pepsi among other multi-national corporations, editors from five major newspapers, members of parliament, ministers and European commissioners.

The names of attendees are made available to the press, but the conferences are closed to the public and the media and no press releases are issued.

For Bilderberg's critics the fact that there is almost no publicity about the annual meetings is proof that it forms a shadowy global government.

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

But the chairman of the secretive group Viscount Etienne Davignon, former European Commissioner, denies that Bilderberg is a global conspiracy secretly ruling the world.

"I don't think (we are) a global ruling class because I don't think a global ruling class exists. I simply think it is people who have influence are interested to speak to other people who have influence," said Davignon.

"Bilderberg does not try to reach conclusions -- it does not try to say 'what we should do'. Everyone goes away with their own feeling and that allows the debate to be completely open, quite frank - and to see what the differences are.

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

"Business influences society and politics influences society -- that's purely common sense. It's not that business contests the right of democratically-elected leaders to lead," he said.

And that 'common sense' is one which supports the interests of Bilderberg's main participants - in particular free trade.

Davignon said that at the annual meetings, 'automatically around the table you have internationalists' -- people who support the work of the World Trade Organization, trans-Atlantic co-operation and European integration.

Bilderberg, which has been described by Will Hutton - a past attendee and former editor of British newspaper Observer 'high priests of globalization'; meetings often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names.

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Bill Clinton went in 1991 while still governor of Arkansas, Tony Blair was there two years later while still an opposition MP.

All the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed.

This has led to accusations that the group pushes its favoured politicians into high office.

But Davignon said his steering committee is simply excellent talent spotters.

The steering committee "does its best assessment of who are the bright new boys or girls in the beginning phase of their career who would like to get known".

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

"It's not a total accident, but it's not a forecast and if they go places it's not because of Bilderberg, it's because of themselves," he said.

But its critics say Bilderberg's selection process gives an extra boost to aspiring politicians whose views are friendly to big business.

For decades, the exclusive roster of globally influential figures who have attended Bilderberg conferences has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a "new world order".

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Daniel Estulin, an investigative journalist who has written two best-selling books on the subject, said: "The Bilderberg Club is not a classic conspiracy but a potentially dangerous meeting of minds with a common goal: to centralise global economic power to benefit corporations."

He defined it as "a virtual spider web of interlocking financial, political and industrial interests".

"It isn't a secret society," he said. "No matter how powerful they are, no group sits around a table holding hands and deciding the world's future. It is an ideology."

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Estulin said the membership represents a who's who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch.

The other attendees include heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others - some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Always well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations, IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and Bank of England.

The group is now "a shadow world government....threaten(ing) to take away our right to direct our own destinies (by creating) a disturbing reality" very much harming the public's welfare, said Estulin. "In short, Bilderbergers want to supplant individual nation-state sovereignty with an all-powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by militarized enforcement," he said.

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

"Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public," said Estulin.

Along with military dominance, controlling the world's money is crucial for with it comes absolute control as the powerful 19th century Rothschild family understood.

As the patriarch Amschel Rothschild once said: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws."

Bilderbergers comprise the world's most exclusive club. No one buys their way in.

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Only the group's Steering Committee decides whom to invite, and in all cases participants are adherents to One World Order governance run by top power elites.

According to Steering Committee rules: "The invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends.

"Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. (Also) The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists" or "divulge anything that goes on in meetings".

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

Host governments provide overall security to keep away outsiders. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labour and communications.

Objectives

According to Estulin, the group's grand design is for 'a One World Government (World Company)' with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one 'World (Central) Bank' using one global currency".

He said their wish list includes:

i) One international identify (observing) one set of universal values

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

ii) Centralized control of world populations by 'mind control'; in other words, controlling world public opinion

iii) New World Order with no middle class, only rulers and servants (serfs), and, of course, no democracy

iv) A zero-growth society without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers

v) Manufactured crises and perpetual wars

vi) Absolute control of education to programme the public mind and train those chosen for various roles

v) Centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies; one size fits all globally

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Lifting the veil on high priests of globalization

vii) Using the UN as a de facto world government imposing a UN tax on world citizens

viii) Expanding NAFTA and WTO globally

ix) Making NATO a world military

x) Imposing a universal legal system

xi) Global welfare state where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination.

Whether the Bildenberg Group is a network trying to run the world or just a discussion group is hard to tell, but its secretive nature and its five-star membership does raises a lot of eyebrows.