<nettime> whatcha doing, Bilderberg?

[Pit Schultz <pit@icf.de>]

>Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 21:07:10 +0900

Weblogs to the Bilderbergers
Grammar, Rethorics, Cybernetic Folly
or:  Did you get your PhD in conspiracy theory yet? 

"You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse, 
like Captain Kirk beaming down from on high. This would
be confusing and irritating to the people around you. 
it would break the metaphor." (Neil Stevenson, Snow Crash, pp.33-4) 

Conspiracy; In common law, an agreement between two or more persons to
commit an unlawful act or to accomplish a lawful end by unlawful
means. Conspiracy is perhaps the most amorphous area in Anglo-American
criminal law. [ http://www.britannica.com - free at last. ]

For the sake of simple beginnings, the footnote where we agreed to start is
in reference to a letter: The "Prince Barnard of The Netherlands Letter",
by Marshall McLuhan, 14 May, 1969; sent to their Royal Highness, Prince
Barnard, in appreciation for McLuhan's invitation to address the Bilderberg
Conference.

How did you characterize this letter?

Well, it's the 'Ur' letter; for exposing people to thoughts of McLuhan that
are not popularized through Wired Magazine, or any other media coverage
that ever was done of McLuhan. This shows you a level of thinking that
Marshall worked from, that's just not known. So, it always initiates people
into a basic point of McLuhan; giving you a jumping off point for
understanding why he said what he said. 
[ Bob Dobbs, http://anw.com/RK/natives.htm ]

This problem has been discussed elsewhere. It is also clear that elite
networks (possibly with an associative function of significance equal to,
if not greater than, many formal bodies) escape attention. The tip of the
iceberg is signalled, for example, by the Bilderberg Group, the Club of
Rome, the Club of Dakar, etc. The problem of associative networks within
and between intergovernmental bodies [that] has not received attention. To
what extent is the associative activity behind the "Inter-Agency Games"
merely of anecdotal significance, given the problems of inter-agency
coordination ? Why has the "good" associative activity received all the
attention and never been related to the "bad": trade
associations-cum-cartels, intelligence networks, 
subversive-cum-revolutionary "organisations", international crime "rings"
and networks, etc ?  [ http://www.uia.org/uiadocs/assfut.htm ]

What goes on at Bilderberg? - It is important at the outset to distinguish
the active, on-going membership from the various people who are
occasionally invited to attend. Many of those invited to come along,
perhaps to report on matters pertaining to their expertise, have little
idea there is a formally constituted group at all, let alone one with its
own *grand* agenda. [* added] Hence the rather dismissive remarks by people
like sixties media guru Marshall McLuhan, who attended a Bilderberg meeting
in 1969 in Denmark, that he was 'nearly suffocated at the banality and
irrelevance,' describing them as 'uniformly nineteenth century minds
pretending to relate to the twentieth century'. Another of those who have
attended, Christopher Price, then Labour MP for Lewisham West, found it
'all very fatuous.... icing on the cake with nothing to do with the cake.'
(Eringer 1980, p. 26). Denis Healey, on the other hand, who was in from the
beginning and later acted as British convenor, says that 'the most valuable
[meetings] to me while I was in opposition were the Bilderberg
Conferences'. (Healey 1990, p. 195) 
[ http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/bildhist.htm ]

"For 42 years," Deverell reported, "the secretive organization has devoted
itself to strengthening the Atlantic military alliance and economies. [..]
There are no massive indiscretions, but the exchanges can be quite heated."
This is a polite way of saying that members can secretly speak their minds
about whatever grandiose schemes of world conquest they envision themselves
as having the divine right to execute, without fearing that their words
will ever be heard by the public.  This tactic is very similar to the
Non-Attribution Rule used at Council on Foreign Relations meetings, which
prevents statements made by attendees from being reported in the media.
Many media CEOs, news anchors and influential members of the press fill
seats in the CFR. [Not to speak about soon to become presidents] As far as
global politics and finance go, the Bilderberg is the top of the pyramid,
the all-seeing eye gazing upon the construction of a New World Order . This
one-world system of governance, lurking in the shadows cast by flowery
language about our new "global village," will transfer nearly all economic
and political power into the hands of a small group of the world elite.
[link got lost - search on google.com]

A few weeks previously a journalist reporting for the Daily Mail was
arrested in Ayrshire merely for knocking on a door. He was enquiring about
the secret meeting of hugely influential capitalists known as the
Bilderbergs. 
[ http://www.undercurrents.org/articles2.htm ]

History (small "h") is a kind of chaos. Within history are embedded other
chaoses, if one can use such a term. Late "democratic" Capitalism is one
such chaos, in which power and control have become exceedingly subtle,
almost alchemical, hard to locate, perhaps impossible to define. The
writings of Debord, Foucault, and Baudrillard, have broached the
possibility that "power itself" is empty, "disappeared", and been replaced
by the mere violence of the spectacle. But if history is a chaos the
spectacle can only be seen as a "strange attractor" rather than as some
sort of causative force. The idea of "force" belongs to classical physics
and has little role to play in chaos theory. And if capitalism is a chaos
and the spectacle is a strange attractor, then the metaphor can be
extended: -- we can say that the "Republican" conspiracies are like the
actual patterns generated by the strange attractor. The conspiracies are
not causal- but, then, nothing is really "causal" in the old classical
sense of the term. One useful way in which we can, so to speak, see into
the chaos that is history, is to look through the lens provided by the
conspiracies. We may or may not believe that conspiracies are mere
simulations of power, mere symptoms of the spectacle-but we cannot dismiss
them as empty of all significance. Conspiracies rise and fall, spring up
and decay, migrate from one group to another, compete, collude, collide,
implode, explode, fail, succeed, erase, forge, forget, vanish. Conspiracies
are symptoms of the great "blind forces" (and hence useful as metaphors if
nothing else), but they also feed back into those forces and sometimes even
affect or effect or infect them.  Rather than speak of conspiracy theory we
might instead try to construct a poetics of conspiracy. A conspiracy would
be treated like an aesthetic construct, or a language-construct, and could
be analyzed like a text. [...] [ http://www.t0.or.at/hakimbey/conspire.htm ]

To attract donors, large and small, as well as media attention, Nicholson,
Scott and the founding fathers of WWF wanted the royal family to lend their
name. They approached Prince Philip to be president. Philip was an avid
outdoorsman and hunter—in January 1961 he had bagged a Bengal tiger in
India—and he and Queen Elizabeth had been to Kenya, on a safari best
remembered because King George VI died while they were watching wild
animals and Princess Elizabeth had become Queen.
[ http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/bernhard.htm#Hand ]

The most provocative presentation was by Kevin Dowling, an investigative
journalist from the UK who had traced the ties between the senior board of
the World Wildlife Fund [WWF] and major intelligence agencies. He contended
that
the slaughter of elephants in southern Africa helped finance wars in that
part of the continent while it was blamed on locals serving the needs of Asian
and Arab traders and consumers. People from Greenpeace who were in the
audience
objected to his damning the work of a conservation group because of the links
and actions from many years ago. Dowling showed slides of the links between
the different people in the org. charts of various companies and
organizations.
Given what we can find out about most people, whether they sit on the board
of Shell or work in the streets of Paris trying to smash capitalism, I think
it is relatively easy to pull together network diagrams of the interests
and links within different strata of society. As Ted Nelson commented,
"Everything is deeply intertwingled." Because we move in so many different
networks, they are not necessarily deeply linked. Because many military
brass are bird watchers (as Dowling claimed), that does not mean the
Audubon Society is a paramilitary group. In fact, other kinds of
activists use "bird watching" as a front for observing industrial and
military practices.Dowling met in the Salon later to talk more fully
about his ideas. He claimed not to be trying to besmirch the reputation
of the World Wildlife Fund but a number in the room thought he was just
using his open sources to make up a conspiracy. 
[ http://home.inreach.com/cisler/n5m3.htm ]

"the Order of the Quest, the Jason Society, the 
Roshaniya, the Qabbalah, the Knights Templar, the Knights of Malta, the 
Knights of Columbus, the Jesuits, the Masons, the Ancient and Mystical 
Order of Rosae Crucis, the Illuminati, the Nazi Party, the Communist 
Party, the Executive Members of the Council on Foreign Relations, The 
Group, the Brotherhood of the Dragon, the Rosicrucians, the Royal 
Institute of International Affairs, the Trilateral Commission, the 
Bilderberg Group, the Open Friendly Secret Society (the Vatican), the 
Russell Trust, the Skull & Bones, the Scroll & Key, the Order - they are 
all the same and all work toward the same ultimate goal, a New World 
Order." [ http://a-albionic.com/lloyd/conspnation2/v3n67.txt ]

The formula "They have the power" may have its value politically; it does
not do for an historical analysis. Power is not posessed, it acts in the
very body and over the whole surface of the social field according to a
system of relays, modes of connection, transmission, distribution, etc. 
[lost link... Michel Foucault, from lecture notes as summarized in "Power
and Norm" in Michel Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy (1979). ]

Power is the condition and limit of politics, culture, and authority.
Cyberpower aims not at the immediately obvious forms of politics, culture,
and authority that course through cyberspace but at the structures that
condition and limit these. A certain complex form of power that operates
on the three levels of the individual, the social, and the imaginary now
careens through the virtual lands, directing conflict and consensus
toward certain distinctive issues and social structures.
[http://www.isoc.org/inet99/proceedings/3i/3i_1.htm ]

Prince Bernhard gave the go-ahead, but the idea for the Bilderberg belonged
to Joseph H. Retinger, a man who could make an appointment with the
President of the United States just by picking up the telephone. In 1952,
Retinger proposed a secret conference to Prince Bernhard which would
involve the NATO leaders in an open and frank discussion on international
affairs behind closed doors. The Prince thought it was a grand idea, and
they formed a committee to plan the conference. Berhhard briefed the Truman
administration about the meeting in 1952, and although the idea was warmly
embraced in the U.S., the first American counterpart group was not formed
until the Eisenhower administration.  CIA Director General Walter Bedell
Smith and C.D. Jackson were key players in organizing the American
counterpart group, heavily influenced by the Rockefeller dynasty, whose
Standard Oil holdings competed with Bernhard's Royal Dutch Petroleum.
Hence, the interests of the oil industry were well-represented at
Bilderberg meetings. [ http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/BILDER.HTM ]

I got that feeling again this afternoon. For the last few months,
in amongst my official duties, I have been reading the literature on
apocalytic social movements. I was originally inspired in this by David
Noble's book "The Religion of Technology". Noble observes, for example,
that many of the important early engineers, particularly in the United
States, were Masons, and he describes the development of a particular
kind of millennialism -- or at least a secularized form of religious
utopianism -- among engineers that became secularized and formed the
outlines of technical movements such as artificial intelligence and --
he might as well have added -- cyberspace.
[Phil Agre on RRE, http://www.tao.ca/wind/rre/0554.html] 

The Royal Consort, Prince Bernhardt, Husband of Juliana since 1937, was
previous to their marriage an active card-carrying member of Hitler's
black-shirted SS. Prince Consort Bernhardt was employed prior to, during,
and after the war by I.G.Farben's Industrial Espionage Unit "NW-7" which,
needless to say, placed him under great suspicions by both the British and
American intelligence communities. The mere fact of his employment as an
"industrial spy" for Farben places him squarely within the sphere of the
German Industrial community, links for which have already been established
with the Type XI-B U-Boat. [ http://www.mallofmaine.com/ca35/ ]

Prince Bernhard is the founder and a governor of the Prince Bernhard Fund,
which was set up in London in 1940. The original aim of the Fund was to
collect financial contributions for the Allied war effort. After the war,
it became a vehicle for the advancement of culture, science and nature
conservation in the Netherlands. The Prince's leisure pursuits include
photography and film-making. From 1954 to 1976, the Prince was Chair of the
Bilderberg Group, a debating forum for politicians, businesspeople and
other prominent figures from Europe, the United States and Canada. The
Group meets informally once a year at different venues to discuss current
political, economic and social developments. It takes its name from the
venue of its first meeting, the Bilderberg Hotel in Arnhem. Queen Beatrix
and Prince Claus still attend these meetings.
[
http://www.koninklijkhuis.nl/UK/royal_house/members.html?prinsbernhard.html ]

The name "Bilderberg" came from the group's first meeting place, the Hotel
de Bilderberg of Oosterbeek, Holland, in May 1954. Over the next 38 years
the secret meetings have included most of the top ruling-class players from
Western Europe and America. Until he was implicated in the Lockheed bribery
scandal in 1976, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands served as chairman. By
now Bilderberg is a symbol of world management by Atlanticist elites. Some
observers, particularly those on the Right, feel that it borders on the
conspiratorial, while the Left is primarily interested in its implications
for what they call "power structure research." The Bilderberg participants
from the U.S. are almost always members of the Council on Foreign
Relations, and since 1973 Japanese elites have been brought into the fold
through a third overlapping group, the Trilateral Commission. 

[ http://www.pir.org/cgi-bin/nbonlin1.cgi/RB ]

The ideological confrontations conveniently hide fundamental secular
societal transformations; in particular the emergence of the class of
meaning- producers and legitimators who attempt to gain power by controlling
the consciousness of others. A new caste of priests (the class of 'Sinn und
Heilsvermittler') is evolving in industrial societies and, with it, new forms
of authority relations, modes of organization and, most importantly, a new
message or doctrine of secular salvation. Because of the effect on the
deep structure of thought the new class is said to have, the notion of
ideology, we are told, is much too superficial to capture the nature of
these developments.[...]Thus, any sociological analysis of these
phenomena will have to reckon with the metaphysical dimension of these
intellectual and social transformations of modern society. From a social
evolutionary perspective, these changes represent a step backwards in
history because the accomplishments of the age of the enlightenment are
distinctly threatened by the new 'intellectual clergy'.

These arguments [...] are based on an extension and combination of
Max Weber's theory of authority and power relations and his sociology
of religion (as well as certain assumptions about the nature of human
nature adapted from Helmut Plessner and Arnold Gehlen's philosophical
anthropology). Schelsky maintains that there is a strict parallel between
authority/power ultimately derived from the threat of physical coercion
and authority/power, based on intellectual means, namely the creation
and control of meaning (telos) for individual or collective self-
conceptions. This kind of influence over others is but another
manifestation of control and engenders its own peculiar forms of
organization and legitimation. But 'Machtausuebung durch Sinngebung'
is by no means a phenomenon peculiar to the historical epoch of the
dark ages. In its most recent historical manifestation it takes on
the form of a secular 'doctrine of salvation' (Heilslehre) authored
by the new class of meaning-producers in contemporary society.

[ http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/fest/files/giersch.htm ]

The pure interest of the bureaucracy in power, however, is efficacious
far beyond those areas where purely functional interests make for secrecy.
The concept of the `official secret' is the specific invention of
bureaucracy, and nothing is so fantastically defended by the bureaucracy 
as this attitude, which cannot be substantially defended beyond these 
specifically qualified areas. (Max Weber) INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_cr/s981008-intell.htm

The human predispositions toward hierarchy and mimicry create needs for
compliance and conformity. These were studied prior to World War II by
German sociologist Max Weber, a proponent of bureaucracies and charismatic
leadership. More recent work has identified four motivators common within
organizations: affiliation (loyalty cliques), personal (positional) power,
institution-building power, and achievement [4]. Because the
``institutional manager'' prefers activity to reflection, but the
``achievement manager'' abhors centralization, a hybrid of these two
would be most likely to support enterprise-wide reuse of a carefully
designed and thought-out software framework. 

http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~ftp/wisr/wisr8/papers/price/price.html


To a very particular degree today, the need for leadership is widely felt,
and the sense of being bereft of it is the cause of uncertainty and
instability. It contributes to a sense of drift and powerlessness. It is at
the heart of the tendency everywhere to turn inwards. That is why we have
attached so much importance to values in this report, to the substance of
leadership and the compulsions of an ethical basis for global governance. A
neighbourhood without leadership is a neighbourhood endangered.

[ http://www.cgg.ch/ch7.htm ]


related books (please give a short review if you like/can):

Who's Who of the Elite : Members of the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign
Relations, Trilateral Commission, and Skull & Bones Society 
by Robert Gaylon Ross 

Tragedy & Hope : A History of the World in Our Time 
by Carroll Quigley 

Foundations: Their Power & Influence
by  G. William Domhoff 

Friendly Fascism (this one i started to read )
by Bertram Gross

Wall Street and the rise of Hitler
by Sutton, Antony C. 

CLICK HERE:
name base social network graph:
http://www.pir.org/cgi-bin/nbonlin6.cgi?_BILDERBERG_GROUP_
http://www.pir.org/cgi-bin/nbonlin1.cgi?_MCLUHAN_MARSHALL_

the kooks museum (frozen): 
http://www.teleport.com/~dkossy/kooksmus.html


"The action is where the gap is" (McLuhan)



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