Grupo Bilderberg
No clube para falar de paraísos fiscais.
O secretário-geral do PS confirmou ontem ter reservada na sua agenda a reunião do grupo Bilderberg. Seguro acrescentou que aproveitaria o encontro para "reafirmar as posições, quer em matéria de globalização, quer em matéria europeia". O que, traduzido, significava a defesa do "fim dos paraísos fiscais, a taxação sobre as transacções financeiras, a dimensão económica e política da União Europeia". Escusou-se depois a comentar a especial predilecção do grupo por convidar dirigentes políticos na iminência de chegar ao poder. "É verdade que pode ter várias leituras, mas a minha leitura é a seguinte: fizeram-me um convite e eu vou participar nessa reunião, como participo em dezenas ou centenas de reuniões e onde vou dizer aquilo que penso sobre a situação grave da Europa e sobre a necessidade de a globalização respeitar direitos humanos e direitos sociais", insistiu. E também não quis comentar o facto de, no seu caso, não ir sozinho, mas antes acompanhado pelo líder do CDS, Paulo Portas. Da parte desse partido, entretanto, não houve comentários. O porta-voz do CDS, João Almeida, arrumou o assunto como uma questão de agenda pessoal de Portas. Quem comentou foi o líder do PCP. Foi indisfarçável que, para Jerónimo de Sousa, a presença no encontro era motivo para causar má impressão. "Conhece-se a história dessa organização, os seus objectivos e os motivos que levaram algumas figuras nacionais a participarem nesses célebres encontros. É uma organização determinada pelos interesses do grande capital e pelos mandatários desses interesses. Cada qual escolhe os espaços onde quer participar, mas [os jornalistas que] tirem a conclusão", rematou. N.S.L.
Paulo Gaião in Expresso online
8:00 Quarta feira, 5 de junho de 2013
Nunca houve um líder do CDS presente no clube de Bilderberg. Paulo Portas é o primeiro. Só outro eminente centrista esteve no clube: Francisco Lucas Pires em 1988.
Convém recordar o contexto histórico que levou Francisco Pinto Balsemão, membro permanente de Bilderberg, a convidar Lucas Pires para melhor se perceber o significado político da presença de Portas. E, já agora, de António José Seguro.
Lucas Pires, militante do CDS desde 1974, foi um dos magníficos do partido, juntamente com Amaro da Costa, Basílio Horta e Sá Machado (para além do líder Freitas do Amaral)
Em 1983 tornou-se líder do partido, substituindo Freitas. Nas legislativas desse ano conseguiu o excelente resultado de 12,6%. Mas dois anos depois, apesar das expectativas do partido serem de subida, desceu para 10%, o que levou à sua demissão da liderança.
É um sobe e desce que Portas bem conhece. Em 2005 recuou de 8,7% nas legislativas de 2002 para 7,2%, o que levou à sua demissão da chefia do partido.
Apesar da derrota de 85, Lucas Pires manteve o élan.
Em Julho de 1987 encabeçou as listas europeias do CDS e teve 15% de votos, mais do triplo do que teve o CDS de Adriano Moreira nas legislativas que se realizaram em simultâneo (o segundo melhor resultado do CDS desde os 16% de 1976)
Um ano após surgiu o convite de Lucas Pires para Bilderberg, a que não foi alheia a maioria absoluta de Cavaco Silva.
Curiosamente, o outro convidado para Bilderberg em 1988 foi o então líder do PS, Vitor Constâncio. Foi esta a primeira e única dupla constituída por um eminente centrista e o líder do PS. Até hoje.
Balsemão tentou dar uma ajuda aos dois, contra Cavaco, que lhe fez a vida negra durante os seus governos da AD.
Tal como está hoje, objetivamente, a dar uma ajuda a Portas e Seguro levando-os a Bilderberg. É Passos quem fica mais fragilizado.
De nada valeu a ajuda a Constâncio, que já carregava o pecado capital de votar favoravelmente a censura do PRD contra o governo minoritário de Cavaco e a derrota nas legislativas de 87.
Em relação a Lucas Pires, Bilderberg foi um factor, entre outros, que o ajudou a distanciar-se do CDS, para não ficar refém do partido e poder lançar-se noutros voos...
De Lucas Pires dizia-se na altura o que hoje se diz de Paulo Portas: se estivessem no PSD onde é que eles já tinham chegado.
Lucas Pires demitiu-se do CDS em 1991 e em 1994 integrou as listas do PSD ao Parlamento Europeu. Em 1997 aderiu, por fim, ao PSD.
Se não tivesse falecido subitamente (em 1998), tinha hipóteses de chegar um dia à liderança do PSD.
E Portas hoje? Portas provavelmente também está de saída do CDS.
Sabe, tal como Lucas Pires sabia, que o partido é demasiado pequeno para mentes brilhantes com ambições políticas.
É evidente que o caminho deverá ser diferente.
Lucas era um puro (e idealista). Atirou-se de cabeça para o PSD e depois logo se via.
Portas é um principe da Renascença (sem reino), com os movimentos escrupulosamente planeados, capaz de jogos altamente sofisticados (de por de cara à banda qualquer Maquiavel moderno)
Em 2005, quando abandonou a liderança do CDS sucedeu-lhe Ribeiro e Castro (mas podia ter sido João Almeida), em circunstâncias que os historiadores das décadas seguintes um dia certamente investigarão nos arquivos do Largo do Caldas.
Hoje, se abandonar de novo o CDS, desta vez sem retormo, o que fará?
Quererá a liderança do PSD?
Ou quer chegar a Belém com o apoio laranja, numa aposta a longo prazo?
Ler mais: http://expresso.sapo.pt/portas-e-seguro-jackpot-em-bilderberg=f811866#ixzz2VKXQKuoZ
The Bilderberg Group / Wikipedia
The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual private conference of approximately 120 to 140 invited guests from North America and Europe, most of whom are people of influence. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications.
The original conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several people, including Polish politician-in-exile Józef Retinger, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting Atlanticism – better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues. Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who agreed to promote the idea, together with former Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland, and the head of Unilever at that time, Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson to deal with the suggestion. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe attended the first conference, along with 11 Americans.
The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent steering committee was established, with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957 the first U.S. conference was held on St. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.
Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of approximately 18 nations. Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General. There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". In addition to the committee, there also exists a separate advisory group, though membership overlaps.
Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel became permanent secretary in 1960, upon Retinger's death. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment, William Bundy of Princeton, Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
A 2008 press release from the 'American Friends of Bilderberg' stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group's unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
According to the 'American Friends of Bilderberg', the 2008 agenda dealt "mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran".
Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards bankers, politicians, and directors of large businesses.
Heads of state, including King Juan Carlos I of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings. Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees. In past years, board members from many large publicly traded corporations have attended, including IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler.
The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen; Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt; U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg; U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner; World Bank president Robert Zoellick; President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
In 2009 the group hosted a dinner meeting at Castle of the Valley of the Duchess in Brussels on 12 November to promote the candidacy of Herman Van Rompuy for President of the European Council.
2013 (8-9 June) at the Grove Hotel, Watford, United Kingdom
2012 (31 May – 3 June) at Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly, Virginia, USA
2011 (9–12 June) at the Suvretta House in St. Moritz, Switzerland
2010 (3–7 June) at the Hotel Dolce in Sitges, Spain
2009 (14–17 May) at the Astir Palace resort in Vouliagmeni, Greece
2008 (5–8 June) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, USA
2007 (31 May – 3 June) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, in Şişli, Istanbul, Turkey.
2006 (8–11 June) at the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
2005 (5–8 May) at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Germany
Criticism
According to chairman Étienne Davignon, a major attraction of Bilderberg group meetings is that they provide an opportunity for participants to speak and debate candidly and to find out what major figures really think, without the risk of off-the-cuff comments becoming fodder for controversy in the media. However, partly because of its working methods to ensure strict privacy, the Bilderberg group is accused of conspiracies.This outlook has been popular on both extremes of the political spectrum, even if they disagree on what the group wants to do. Some on the left accuse the Bilderberg group of conspiring to impose capitalist domination, while some on the right have accused the group of conspiring to impose a world government and planned economy.
In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, said: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing." In 2005 Davignon discussed these accusations with the BBC: "It is unavoidable and it doesn't matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion... When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves."
In a 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by the Political Research Associates, investigative journalist Chip Berlet argued that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group date back as early as 1964 and can be found in Schlafly's self-published book A Choice, Not an Echo, which promoted a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose internationalist policies would pave the way for world communism. Paradoxically, in August 2010 former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote a controversial article for the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma in which he cited Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club, which, as quoted by Castro, describes "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self."
Proponents of Bilderberg conspiracy theories in the United States include individuals and groups such as the John Birch Society, political activist Phyllis Schlafly, writer Jim Tucker, political activist Lyndon LaRouche, radio host Alex Jones, and politician Jesse Ventura, who made the Bilderberg group a topic of a 2009 episode of his TruTV series Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. Non-American proponents include Russian-Canadian writer Daniel Estulin.
Bilderberg meetings remain a mystery
By Marcus Klöckner
Stars and Stripes
Published: May 17, 2009
Ever hear of Bilderberg? If not, that’s the idea.
According to various Web sites, the Bilderberg is an “unofficial, annual, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of politics, business and banking.”
The names of alleged past participants of this secretive group include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and even former President Bill Clinton.
The Bilderberg group is currently holding its 57th annual conference at a hotel outside Athens, Greece. And while the list of the some 120 influential people is highly protected, Internet bloggers contend this year’s attendees include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who supposedly will be “taking orders from the Global Elite,” according to one Web site.
The circle got its name from the Bilderberg hotel in the Netherlands, where the first meeting took place in 1954. The group is a “broad cross section of leading citizens that are assembled for nearly three days of informal and off-the-record discussions about topics of current concern especially in the fields of foreign affairs and the international economy,” according to a brochure the group provides to interested parties.
The booklet also mentions the topics that the Bilderbergs have discussed in the past.
In 1988, one year before German re-unification, one of the topics was “The German question revisited.” At the 2007 conference in Istanbul, Turkey, the power elites talked about “The new world order: uni-polar or non-polar?”
At last year’s conference in Virginia, “Cyber-terrorism” and “After Bush: The future of U.S.-EU relations” was on the agenda.
The agendas make it clear: The Bilderbergs do not come together for a vacation. It is big-world politics that are discussed at the meetings.
But how can a group that sends out a booklet with its agenda be so secretive? For starters, the group does not have an official headquarters, and no telephone operator will be able to provide you a phone number for the group.
However, some journalists who have dealt with the group for decades claim to have inside sources. These journalists publicized the phone number of the group on the Internet. The number is consistent with telephone numbers at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. If you dial the number, Maya Banks-Poldermann, the executive secretary of Bilderberg, will pick up the phone but she will not mention the group’s name. Only after asking if you have reached the Bilderberg office, will she confirm. The secretary will offer to send out the group’s booklet, but will not answer any questions.
In addition, the members will not talk about the meetings.
Does this group of power elites accomplish anything? It depends on whom you ask.
According to the Bilderberg brochure, “at the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements issued.”
But George McGhee, a former U.S. ambassador to West Germany, reportedly told Mike Peters, a sociologist from Leeds University, that the “The Treaty of Rome … which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at Bilderberg meetings.”
What will come out of this year’s meeting, which ends Sunday?
It will be hard to find out. Britain’s Guardian newspaper carried a story from a reporter who was arrested for taking photos of the meeting site, so it is clear the group takes its secrecy seriously. However, that will not stop the meeting from being a hot topic on the Internet or from fueling bloggers’ speculation.
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