(no subject)

[webofevil]

Charlie Skelton’s Bilderberg dispatches for the Guardian have been well worth reading, whether or not you were previously aware of the shadowy “elite” group’s existence, and he’s on splendid form in his final transmission:

I'm baffled to the point of punching tree trunks to witness the determination of some folk to throw themselves in front of these heads of corporations and presidents of banks and to wave their arms protectively, yelping: "Leave them alone! Let them strategise for the good of the world in peace! How could they possibly have a frank discussion with our politicians if we were privy to it? Stop this unseemly prying!" I mean, seriously. The day that Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, strategises for my good is the day he repays me the hundreds of pounds of bank charges he's been levying on me since my schooldays. The day that Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, sits around a table with the express concern of making the world a better, more beautiful place for all of us, is the day that my arse grows teeth and eats my hat. [Guardian]

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

"Marcus Agius"? Fo realz? Christ, webo, this is where we've all gone wrong in life. We've got the wrong names.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

We weren't to know, though, especially since by the theory of nominative determinism Marcus Agius should clearly have been governor of a province in Roman Britain.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Well, but he IS, isn't he?

I'm changing my name to Caecilius Estinhorto.

[lowlowprices.livejournal.com]

But why shouldn't the Bilderberg group be able to meet in private? Or to put it more provocatively, why do paranoics have a perfect right to disrupt its meetings?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

If they're a group of like-minded harmless codgers, what does it matter that the paranoiacs turn up? If they're not harmless but are in fact able to take world-changing decisions behind closed doors without reference to the rest of us, then we have not only the right but the imperative to blow those doors open. Transparency or get out of the fucking game, you shadowy oligarchical nurks.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Why, incidentally? Have you been invited to address the next one? Or is Bilderberg an unadvertised but luractive transcription perk? Where do I sign up?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

luractive, adj. - 1. Sensationally anticipatory; acting in a needlessly shocking way in advance of an expected event (from “lurid” and “proactive”). 2. Slapdash misprint for “lucrative”.

[lowlowprices.livejournal.com]

I'm not trolling - at least I don't think I am. I'm just not aware of any credible evidence that Bilderberg delegates do anything significant in their capacity as Bilderberg delegates that they wouldn't do otherwise. As such, I don't see why they shouldn't be left alone to get plastered together and crow about their awesome power.

[zagreb2.livejournal.com]

The day that Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, sits around a table with the express concern of making the world a better, more beautiful place for all of us, is the day that my arse grows teeth and eats my hat

He's spectacularly missing the point (or being a modern journalist probably not interested in the point so much as how many smart turns of phrases he can churn out and whether he looks enough of a smug cock in his byline photo). Bilderberg wasn't set up to make "the world a better, more beautiful place for all of us", it was set-up so that the power-players, specifically in government, in the Americas and Europe could sort out their differences in private in order to prevent future conflicts between the world's major powers, wars in particular. It was set-up in the aftermath of two planet-spanning wars which left Europe bankrupt and millions dead. It's not a Utopian project or an attempt to make the world a wonderful place, it's simply a place where Euro-American elites can sort out their differences in private rather than using their armies to sort them out in public.

Of course, the world has changed a great deal since 1945 and it's debatable how much of a purpose the group actually has any more since the issues between Europe and the Americas are unlikely to erupt in wars these days.