Bilderberg looks to the future but is stuck in the past
Bilderberg has reached out to Silicon Valley;
it’s even grappling with AI, but its media
strategy and heavy-handed policing are from another era
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/15/bilberberg-looks-to-the-future-but-is-stuck-in-the-past
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/15/http://www.theguardian.com/profile/charlie-skelton>Charlie
Skelton Monday 15 June 2015 15.14 BST
http://www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=19948#19948
Disturbing news has emerged that a bullet was
fired at a police helicopter during this year’s
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/15/http://www.theguardian.com/world/bilderberg>Bilderberg
conference. Who would do such a thing? It turns
out, the people who would do it are the police.
The bullet was fired accidentally, admits a
government spokesperson, by a member of Austria’s
elite EKO Cobra counter-terrorism squad: the
rifle went off when the officer was climbing into the helicopter.
Luckily, no one was hurt. One helicopter was
slightly injured. That’s a relief, although it
begs the question: what on earth is a crack
anti-terror unit doing flying helicopter patrols
around Telfs with live ammo and the safety off?
Last time I looked we’re in the Tyrol, not Vietnam.
It seems appropriate that the single act of
violence perpetrated towards police at Bilderberg
2015 was the direct result of their crazily heavy
policing. In fact, the only injury the police
received the entire time was when an officer
sprained his lips from going “brrrm brrrm brrrm”
while sitting in their redundant armoured
personnel carrier and pretending to drive it.
An armoured personnel carrier sits in the woods during the Bild
The police won’t spend money on a much-needed
press accreditation centre here, but they’re
happy to splash out on an armour-plated snowplough. What a joke.
In the wake of the conference, at the bar of the
Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol, I chanced upon a
lingering delegate, the Portuguese media mogul
Francisco Pinto Balsemão. In my terrible
Portuguese I asked him whether he’d had a
productive conference – uma conferência útil –
and he replied in English: “We always do.” I
managed one more question before being bustled
away by hotel staff. “Do you think next year you
might hold a press conference, like in the old
days?” Senhor Balsemão smiled, and replied in
Portuguese. “Talvez,” he said. Perhaps.
He seemed a charming man, but tired. He was
lingering, I suspect, because this was his last
Bilderberg as a member of the steering committee,
and he was savouring the memories of power. In
the runup to this year’s conference, the
Portuguese press had reported how Balsemão had
nominated his fellow countryman, José Manuel
Barroso, the former European commission
president, to replace him on the steering
committee. And midway through the proceedings,
the official website was changed to show the switch in names.
After the conference, Barroso seemed jubilant.
His grin spoke volumes as he sprang from his car
at the airport. He beamed and waved at the
cameras, and I thought for a moment he was going
to punch the air like at the end of The Breakfast
Club. He looked like the cat that got the cream,
then decided the cream was boring, and drank a bottle of champagne instead.
José Manuel Barroso. Photograph: Charlie Skelton for the Guardian
Rather less forthcoming than Barroso was the
investment banker James Wolfensohn. When asked by
reporter Dan Dicks whether he’d had a good
conference, Wolfensohn said: “I wasn’t there … I
didn’t attend.” Which is a pretty rubbish answer
to give to the press when you’ve just stepped out
of a V12 Mercedes with a massive “B” sticker in the front window.
James Wolfensohn confronted at Bilderberg
Emerging from the next limo along, with a soft
whir from its cyborg limbs, the remarkably
lifelike Peter Thiel 3000 checked its scanners
for threats, then made its way out towards its private jet.
Peter Thiel. Photograph: Charlie Skelton for the Guardian
The founder of Paypal and director of Facebook is
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/15/http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-leadership/peter-thiels-life-goal-to-extend-our-time-on-this-earth/2015/04/03/b7a1779c-4814-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html>currently
pouring money into anti-ageing research, as part
of his “immortality project”. He says: “I believe
if we could enable people to live forever, we
should do that. I think this is absolute.”
(Of course, he’s not the only Bilderberger with
an eye on immortality. David Rockefeller, the
godfather of the group, turned 100 during this
year’s conference – it’s thought he joined the
event via the huge screen they have set up in the
main conference room. And Henry Kissinger is 92.
He would have died years ago but Death is too scared to knock on his door.)
Back in 2006, Thiel was a co-founder, with Ray
Kurzweil, of the Singularity Summit. Kurzweil is
a famous futurologist, transhumanist and
currently a director of engineering at Google.
By “singularity” is meant the shift towards
smarter-than-human technology: the era of
non-biological intelligence and, by extension,
the merger of human and machine intelligence. Thiel’s ticket to immortality.
At Bilderberg this year, the executive chairman
of Google, Eric Schmidt, brought along two of his
top people to lead a session on AI. It might seem
an odd fit for Bilderberg, but over the last few
years the big shift within the group has been
towards new media and new technology. Schmidt and
Thiel both sit on the group’s steering committee,
as does Craig Mundie of Microsoft and Alex Karp,
the billionaire CEO of data analytics company
Palantir, who was Thiel’s roommate at Stanford Law School.
Bilderberg has reached out to Silicon Valley;
it’s grappling with AI. Looking forwards to the
future, always with an eye to what’s valuable. If
Bilderberg is to survive, and stay influential,
it has to merge with this new technology. It knows it can’t be left behind.
And here’s where I worry for the future of
Bilderberg. Inwardly, the group seems able to
adapt to new technology, but what about the
relationship between the group and the technology
being used by the news media? It’s not the 1950s
any more: you can’t just “have a quiet word” with
half a dozen editors and keep a story out of the
papers. You’ve got to deal with reporters like
Dan Dicks and Luke Rudkowski, with their instant
uploads and cameras hanging off every rucksack
strap. You’ve got bloggers and citizen
journalists, activists with Instagram accounts.
News articles with comments sections and buttons
to share them on social media. The news just doesn’t work the way it used to.
Thiel will tell you that, if no one else does.
Equally anachronistic is the heavy-handed
policing: the checkpoints, the armoured
snowploughs, the harassment, the helicopter
patrols with itchy-fingered cops. The obstinate
refusal to engage in proper press relations. It’s
just a physical extension of Wolfensohn’s “I
wasn’t there … I didn’t attend”. A denial of
reality, a denial of change: and it’s no kind of long-term strategy.
It’s like George Osborne keeping his head down,
dodging the cameras, and half-pretending he’s not
been at Bilderberg, then eventually declaring the
three days of meetings in his transparency data
with the two words: “general discussion”.
More is required of Osborne, and more is required
of the group in general. For its own sake as much
as ours. So will the Bilderberg group take a deep
breath, move forwards, and give us more in 2016?
In the words of Senhor Balsemão … talvez.
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"PEPIS" group. Please feel free to forward it to anyone who might be interested
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