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The Systems Method

Bilderberg and Club of Rome

David Rockefeller	Henry Kissinger	Peter Carrington	James Wolfensohn

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years." He went on to explain: "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."
-attributed to David Rockefeller at the June 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden Baden, Germany (a meeting also attended by then-Governor Bill Clinton and by Dan Quayle).

Bilderberg is driven by the systems methodology. This is the methodology satirized in The Report from Iron Mountain and Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. This latter in particular is a direct and deliberate indictment of Bilderberg. Of the former, Henry Kissinger wrote "Whoever wrote it is an idiot."

The system paradigm, in a nutshell, is the precept that one can effectively control the future by a two step process: (1) analyzing the present into primitive components and their interrelations, and (2) architecting a strategy of selective manipulation, reconstruction, introduction, and abolition, of components and interrelations. Strictly speaking, this methodology is the most effective of any - though if applied unwisely or maliciously, it is also the most destructive and pernicious.

Problems - grave problems - arise in three principal areas: (1) accurate, precise, thorough ascertainment of what the components and the interrelations are, (2) the choice of goal, and (3) the development of an implementation strategy. Total accuracy, precision, and thoroughness of analysis are impossible with any system of more than modest complexity. Societies of humans are, of course, of far more than modest complexity. Systematicians tend to underestimate the complexity of natural systems, and overestimate their capacity to accommodate complexity, both in analysis and in architecture. In particular, based on an undefendable presumption of rigor of analysis, and due to mistaken ascertainment of human nature, they develop architectures that include components and relations of rigor and regimentation, where chaos-tolerant components and relations of suggestion and flexibility are requisite.

Social and economic systematicians, being institutional academics as a rule, often choose and accept goals that are noxious, particularly when the system includes people. And, often through no deliberate intent, the architectures they develop cause disastrous collateral damage, wreaking havoc on human autonomy and conflicting wildly with the prerequisites of individual human fulfillment.

An old cliché is an apt caution for all systematicians and those subject to their machinations: A little knowledge is far more dangerous than none at all.

Bilderberg is where the top conspirators broadly effect implementation of their architecture. It is ground zero for practical conspirator coordination. The conspirator systematicians exhibit all the ills detailed above. In particular, the goal they accept is perpetuation of the existing power structure. This goal is inimical to humanity, and particularly noxious to its brightest and most inventive members. In one of those examples of happenstance that smack of fate, the chief conspirator architect - Henry Kissinger - has the initials HAK.

Using data assembled by Tony Gosling, I have done a simple analysis of attendance at Bilderberg '99 (Hotel Caesar Park Penha Longa, Sintra, Portugal), '98 (Turnberry, Ayrshire, Scotland), '97 (Pine Isle resort, Lake Lanier, near Atlanta, Georgia, USA), '96 (CIBC Leadership Centre, Toronto, Canada), and '95 (Zurich, Switzerland). The nucleus of power obviously is the set of people who attended all of them - these are the people Bilderberg is built around. I separately list people who attended four of the five meetings, and end with a list of curious attendees who aren't regulars. David Rockefeller is notable in his habitual attendance not only of Bilderberg, but of CFR and TLC gatherings, making it obvious that he is indeed the Chairman of the Board of the World. Hidden behind the scenes is the House of Rothschild, which nonetheless does make personal Bilderberg appearances.

My guess is that Sir Evelyn de Rothschild (Chairman, N M Rothschild & Sons - nmrothschild.co.uk) and perhaps some other Rothschilds set the covert agenda for each Bilderberg meeting, and have final say on who will attend in a given year, and David Rockefeller mediates their agenda, though Henry Kissinger may also act as a direct mediator. Carrington likely has much direct involvement in auditing prospective invitees. The Chairman - Peter Carrington, until 2000 when Etienne Davignon assumed the chairmanship - is the one who actually sends the invitations. The Advisory Group, Steering Committee, and Honorary Secretaries-General, nominally recommend attendees, but in practice this is not quite how things work.

Conrad Black brags (or confesses, depending on one's point of view) that "After 1986, I became the co-leader of the Canadian group and effectively chose most of the Canadian participants." Presumably, Agnelli "effectively" chooses the Italian participants, Balsemao the Portuguese, Barnevik the Swedish, Davignon the Belgian, Hoegh the Norwegian, Halberstadt the Dutch, Olechowski the Polish, de Pury the Swiss, Schrempp the German, Seidenfaden the Danish, Sutherland the Irish, Vranitzky the Austrian, Collomb the French, David the Greek, Carvajal Urquijo the Spanish, and Wolfensohn, all those not otherwise included. Selection of US and UK participants is clearly more complicated.

One might assume that those officially designated as "representatives" ("REP" in the below list) would be the ones that choose participants from their respective nations, but this is clearly not the case, considering that Black is not a "representative." Status as a representative is likely indicative of a person tending to organizational and reporting responsibilities specific to his nation. The Steering Committee ("STEERING") consists of four people responsible for more general administrative and organizational responsibilities. The role of the Advisory Committee ("ADVISORY") is unclear to me, but appears to be an ultra-select aristocratic old boy's club.

Tony Gosling has assembled a treasure trove of details on Bilderberg's history and function. This is vital reading.

This is Bilderberg

95-99:

Allaire, Paul A - USA - Chairman, Xerox Corporation

Balsemao, Francisco Pinto - P - REP: PORTUGAL -

Professor of Communication Science, New University, Lisbon; Chairman, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister.

Barnevik, Percy - S - REP: SWEDEN - Chairman, ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd

Black, Conrad M. - CDN - Chairman, The Telegraph plc.

Carrington, Peter - GB - STEERING: FORMER CHAIRMAN -

Former Chairman of the Board, Christie's International plc; Former Secretary General, NATO Honorary Secretary General for Europe and Canada

Hoegh, Westye - N - REP: NORWAY -

Chairman of the Board, Leif Hoegh and Co. A.S.A.; Former President, Norwegian Shipowners Association

Holbrooke, Richard C. - USA -

Former Assistant Secretary for European Affairs; Vice Chairman, CS First Boston

Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. - USA - REP: USA -

Senior Partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP (Attorneys-at-Law)

Kissinger, Henry A. - USA - REP: USA - Former Secretary of State; Chairman, Kissinger Associates; Inc.

Netherlands, Her Majesty the Queen of the - NL

Olechowski, Andrzej - PL - Chairman, Central Europe Trust, Poland

Pury, David de - CH - REP: SWITZERLAND - Chairman, de Pury Pictet Turrettini and Co. Ltd.

Rockefeller, David - USA - ADVISORY -

Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank International Advisory Committee

Schrempp, Jurgen E. - D - Chairman of the Board of Management, Daimler-Benz AG.

Seidenfaden, Toger - DK - Editor in Chief, Politiken A/S

Taylor, J. Martin - GB - Group Chief Executive, Barclays plc.

Vranitzky, Franz - A - Former Federal Chancellor

Wolfensohn, James D. - INT - REP: USA/INT -

President, the World Bank; President, James D. Wolfensohn, Inc.

Yost, Casimir A. - USA - REP: USA -

Director, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington; Executive Director, The Asia Foundation's Center for Asian-Pacific Affairs

96-99:

Collomb, Bertrand - F - Chairman and CEO, Lafarge

David, George A. - GR - Chairman of the Board, Hellenic Bottling Company S.A.

Wolff von Amerongen, Otto - D - ADVISORY - Chairman and CEO of Otto Wolff GmbH

95-98:

Agnelli, Giovanni - I - ADVISORY - Honorary Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.

Davignon, Etienne - B - STEERING: CHAIRMAN, REP: BELGIUM -

Executive Chairman, Societe Generale de Belgique; Former Vice Chairman of the Commission of the European Communities

Levy-Lang, Andre - F - Chairman of the Board of Management, Banque Paribas.

Sutherland, Peter D. - IRL - REP: IRELAND -

Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International; Former Director General, GATT and WTO.

Wolfowitz, Paul - USA -

Dean, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (see The Challenge of Managing Uncertainty: Paul Wolfowitz on Intelligence Policy-Relations)

notables:

Spain, Her Majesty the Queen of - 96 - ES

Sweden, His Majesty the King of - 98 - S

Lipponen, Paavo - 98 - FIN - Prime Minister

Ahtisaari, Martti - 95,96 - FI - President of the Republic of Finland

Oddsson, David - 97 - ICE - Prime Minister.

Chretien, Jean - 96 - CDN - Prime Minister

Harris, Michael - 96 - CDN - Premier of Ontario

Klein, Ralph - 95 - Premier of Alberta

Brittan, Leon - 98 - INT - Vice President of the European Commission

Almunia Amann, Joaquin - 98 - E - Secretary General, Socialist Party

Rothschild, Evelyn de - 98 - GB - Chairman, N M Rothschild and Sons

Rothschild, Emma - 95 - Dir Ctr for History and Economics Cambridge

Soros, George - 96 - USA - President, Soros Fund Management

Lamont, Norman - 95 - MP, Fmr Chan Excq, Director of N.M. Rothschild

Crockett, Andrew - 98 - INT - General Manager, Bank for International Settlements

Victor, Alice - 96 - USA - RRR - Executive Assistant, Rockefeller Financial Services, Inc.

McDonough, William J. - 97,98 - USA - President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Feldstein, Martin S. - 96,98 - USA - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research Inc.

Kopper, Hilmar - 95,98 - D - REP: GERMANY - Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank A.G.

Roll, Lord of Ipsden - none - GB - ADVISORY - President, S. G. Warburg Group plc.

Deutch, John M. - 98 - USA -

Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry. Former Director General, Central Intelligence Agency; Former Deputy Secretary of Defence

Soderberg, Nancy - 95 - Dep Asst to President for NSA

Berger, Samuel R. - 97 - USA - Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

Stephanopoulos, George - 96,97 - USA -

Visiting Professor, Columbia University, Former Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy.

Beugel, Ernst H van der - 97,98 - NL - ADVISORY -

Emeritus Professor of International Relations, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings for Europe and Canada

Griffin, Anthony G.S. - 96 - CDN - ADVISORY - Honorary Chairman and Director, Guardian Group

Chubais, Anatoli B. - 98 - RUS - Former First Vice Prime Minister; Chairman RAO EES

Buckley, Jr., William F. - 96 - USA - Editor-at-Large, National Review

Ball, George W. - none - USA - ADVISORY - Former Under-Secretary of State.

Bundy, William P. - none - USA - ADVISORY - Former Editor, Foreign Affairs.

Elliott, Theodore L., Jr. - none - USA - STEERING: SECRETARY GENERAL FOR USA -

Dean Emeritus, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy; Former US Ambassador.

Jankowitsch, Peter - none - A - REP: AUSTRIA - Member of Parliament, Former Foreign Minister.

Lacharrére, Marc Lardreit de - none - F - REP: FRANCE - Chairman, Fimalac.

Carras, Costa - 96,97 - GB - REP: GREECE - Director of Companies

Monti, Mario - 96 - INT - REP: ITALY -

Commissioner, European Communities, Rector and Professor of Economics, Bocconi University, Milan.

Ruggiero, Renato - 96 - INT - REP: ITALY -

Director General, World Trade Organization; Former Minister of Trade

Knight, Andrew - 95,96 - GB - REP: UNITED KINGDOM -

Executive Chairman, News International plc.

Mathias, Charles McC. - none - USA - REP: USA -

Partner, Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue; Former US Senator (Republican, Maryland).

Whitehead, Rozanne C. - none - USA - REP: USA - Former Deputy Secretary of State.

Williams, Lynn R. - none - USA - REP: USA - International President, United Steel- Workers of America.

I have also created a complete alphabetically sorted list of all '95-'99 attendees.

from The News, 1999-May-1:

International power brokers meet to discuss global future
World's most secret society to meet in Sintra

The world's most secret society is to meet in Portugal in June. Bilderberg, one of the most secretive organisation in the world, comprising presidents, royal families, ministers, top industrialists and financial leaders are set to meet in Sintra, Portugal at the beginning of June. Francisco Pinto Balsamão, former Portuguese PM, media baron and frequent attendee of the meetings is listed as the member for Portugal. The security for the Bilderberg meetings, which are held at irregular intervals and prompted by the state of world affairs, is the responsibility of the host country. According to sources in Washington, Bilderberg will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to reimburse the Portuguese government for deploying military forces to guard their privacy and for helicopters to seek out intruders. Bilderberg have ordered the resort to be shut down for a full 48 hours before the conference. The Bilderberg delegates, comprising some of the world's most powerful decision makers, will be here to discuss highly classified issues which are not supposed to be disclosed to the public by the press, before or after the meeting.

Initially alerted to this meeting by a New York reader who requested anonymity, The News contacted the Caesar Park Penha Longa resort in Sintra to verify the information that the secret meeting will be held at their resort. The only confirmation we received was that an organization `wishing for the utmost privacy' would be in Sintra and that the hotel was fully and exclusively booked by this organisation from June 2 to June 7.

The agenda for the meeting is said to include a "globilaztion summit", during which nations which cling tenaciously to their sovereign identities will be denounced by its leadership. The principal feature of Bilderberg is that it seeks one global government, (a structure similar to the European Union), while counteracting nationalist sentiment is supposedly its greatest battle. Renewed calls for the United Nations to be able to directly tax all people of the world is said to be another major topic to be tabled for discussion in Sintra. Bilderberg meetings are only held when and where the hosts can provide the highest levels of security for their guests. All Bilderberg participants, their staff members and resort employees will wear photo identification tags. They will have separate colours to identify the wearer as participant, staff member or employee. A computer chip "fingerprint" will assure the identity of the card's wearer.

According to the Washington based investigative newsletter, Spotlight, who claims to have a contact inside Bilderberg, any intruders are to be manhandled, cuffed and jailed and if the intruders resist arrest or attempt to flee, they will be shot. International and national media are said to be welcome only when an oath of silence has been taken, news editors are held responsible if any of their journalists 'inadvertently' report on what takes place.

Bilderberg members are immune to all forms of bureaucracy that face ordinary citizens on a daily basis. No visas are required and a free and safe passage is provided by the government providing the Bilderberg rendezvous. They travel to and from the airport to the resort in armoured vehicles with a police escort. Meetings are held annually but rarely at the same locations for obvious security reasons. The first Bilderberg conference was held at the Bilderberg Hotel in Osterbeek Holland in May 1954, and the organization is said to have been established as a secret and supportive wing of NATO and the Marshall plan which was launched in the 1940s.

International conspiracy

The News having researched various sources on the Bilderberg meetings, discovered that PSD co-founder, Francisco Pinto Balsemão, allegedly attended at least the previous two Bilderberg meetings held in Scotland (1998) and Georgia in the United States (1997). Balsemão is said to be the only Portuguese representative on the Bilderberg steering committee. Other prominent figures listed to have attended previous meetings are Ricardo Salgado chief executive officer at Banco Espirito Santo, Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair (who attended the meeting held in 1995) and Giovanni Agnelli who is the owner of the Fiat Motor Corporation.

The News is Portugal's largest circulation English language newspaper. Established for over 20 years, it is the only Portuguese newspaper on the net that covers all the major news about Portugal in the English language.

from The News, 1999-May-8:

Bilderburg meeting - wall of silence?

As revealed exclusively in The News last week, the Bilderbergs, reputedly the world's most secret society, are due to meet in Sintra next month. We have received e-mails from all over the world congratulating The News on making this information public. Yet in Portugal, as we closed the paper on Thursday, the press has remained tight lipped about this meeting, in spite of the fact that Portugal's national press agency LUSA decided to distribute The News' report to all the Portuguese media.

A quick search of the internet on the single keyword Bilderberg, will bring up some of the most extraordinary claims regarding the objectives and activities of this powerful group of industrialists, financiers and ex-politicians. It will also reveal many reports of the lengths to which this organisation will go to maintain full secrecy over its meetings. Much of the information could be seen as scurrilous, even far fetched, with claims that these people are part of what is described as the New World Order. An hour or so of research will be enough to find the names of most of the members, details of their past meetings and claims of what has been discussed.

It is not for this newspaper to become part of this speculation, yet it is extraordinary that even in a democracy such as Portugal, the very presence of what can only be described as one of the most prestigious meetings of powerful men and women from around the world, could remain unreported anywhere.

Except in The News.

from The Big Issue, 1999-Nov-15, by Gibby Zobel, from http://www.bigissue.com/london/articles/0006.htm:

The Bilderberg Papers
World exclusive: Leaked minutes from confidential meeting of world's elite...

In the first of a two-part series, Gibby Zobel uncovers how the global power elite decides our future at the shadowy Bilderberg Summit each year. Documents from the secret summit - leaked to The Big Issue - reveal what they said about money and war

For nearly 50 years an elite group of the West's most powerful men and women, a shadow world government, have met in secret. Tony Blair is in the club. Every US president since Ike Eisenhower has been too. So are top members of the British Government. So are the people who control what you watch and read - the media barons. Which is why you may never have heard of Bilderberg.

"Lines of black limousines, unmarked except for a 'B' on the windscreen, swept in, sometimes accompanied by police escorts, sometimes not," says an eyewitness of this year's meeting in Portugal. "A helicopter was overhead, and other security officers were prudently patrolling the hillsides. The policy on duty at the gates made it crystal clear that they were only the tip of the security iceberg."

For two-and-a-half days, relaxing in exclusive luxury amid vast armed security, the powerful leaders discussed past and future wars, a European superstate, a global currency, genetics, and the dismantling of the welfare state. Unaccountable, untroubled and unreported, the Bilderberg meetings have formed the basis of international policy for decades.

Last year freelance journalist Campbell Thomas was arrested just for knocking on doors near the clandestine gathering in Turnberry, Scotland. He remained in custody for eight hours. Other journalists were told that even the Bilderberg menu was confidential (a move they named 'Kippergate'). A serving police officer told 'The Big Issue': "Special Branch and CIA were everywhere - they were calling the shots."

Never in its 47-year history has the content of these discussions been made public. Until now. 'The Big Issue' has uncovered the Bilderberg Papers - the secret minutes of this year's meeting in Portugal. Some of it is banal, some of it sensational. It blows the lid off the thoughts of presidents, chairmen of multinational companies, world bankers, NATO chiefs and defence ministers.

The meetings are shrouded in such secrecy that Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked last year in the House of Commons, failed to disclosed his own attendance at Bilderberg in Athens in 1993.

So, what have they been hiding?

- NATO gave Russia carte blanche to bomb Chechnya

- 'Dollarisation' could be the the next step after the single European currency

- A senior British politician thinks New Labour is "consolidating the victories of the Right". On welfare cuts he adds: "It might be easier for somebody who claimed to be a socialist to impose change."

- After Kosovo NATO is in danger of mimicking a colonial power

Although 14 media chiefs and journalists from across eight countries attended this year, none of them chose to tell their readers of the meeting. It would not serve their interests to be cut out of the elite loop. With an invite-only guest-list, covert operations and such deafening silence, it is little surprise that conspiracy theories have thrived, from the anti-semites who believe in a Jewish global elite, to the paranoid delusions of the radical left. The effect has been to leave the importance of the meetings tainted by association. It suits the Bilderbergers perfectly.

The Bilderberg meetings began in a Dutch hotel on May 29 1954, from where it gets its name. 'The Economist', in a rare reference to it in 1987, said that the importance of the meetings was overplayed but admitted: "When you have scaled the Bilderberg, you have arrived."

At last year's meeting, former defence minister George Robertson, who is now NATO secretary-general, planned strategies with the Bilderberg chair and ex- NATO chief Lord Carrington.

'Observer' editor-in-chief Will Hutton attended Bilderberg in 1997. He believes that it is the home of the "high priests of globalization". "No policy is made here," he says, "it is all talk. But the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide."

The 64-page leaked document - The Bilderberg Papers - is dated August 1999. The powerful transatlantic clique at the private hideaway included new Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson MP, environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, Kenneth Clarke MP, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, billionaire oil and banking tycoon David Rockefeller, Monsanto chief Robert B Shapiro, and the head of the World Bank, James D Wolfensohn.

Although Asian and African politics and economics were discussed the continents' countries had no seats at this summit. The official eight-strong UK delegation included bankers Martin Taylor, former chief executive of Barclay's and Eric Roll, a banker for Warburgs. They were joined by Martin Wolf of The Financial Times and two journalists from The Economist, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, who, the minutes indicate, prepared this document.

The papers are marked 'Not for Quotation'. It states: "There were 111 participants from 24 countries. All participants spoke in their personal capacity, not as representatives of their national governments or employers. As is usual at Bilderberg meetings, in order to permit frank and open discussion, no public reporting of the conference took place."

None of the quotes in each of the 10 sections are directly attributable to any named individual, but the moderator and panellists in each discussion are listed. It is made perfectly clear, however, who is saying what. It is not known who else is in the audience, but their comments are identified by their country and profession.

Over two weeks, we report on the central themes of this year's meeting. This week: money and war. Next week: genetics - what the head of Monsanto and a leading British environmentalist discussed behind closed doors.

what they said about money

Giants of the global banking world, in a debate titled 'Redesigning the International Financial Architecture', discussed the concept of 'dollarisation' which is sure to send euro-sceptics into a frenzy.

Around the table were Kenneth Clarke MP, Martin S Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanley Fisher, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ottmar Issing, board member of the European Central Bank and Jean Claude Trichet, governor of the Bank of France.

Bilderberg is understood to have been the birthplace of the single European currency. The deputy director of the IMF opens by remarking: "It is worth noting that this is the first Bilderberg meeting where the euro is fact rather than a topic for discussion."

During the discussion, "One of the panellists was sure that if the euro worked, more regional currencies would emerge. Others raised the question of dollarisation as a possible cure."

There is a dissenting voice:

"The only possible reason for surrendering control of your monetary policy to Washington (where nobody would make decisions on the basis of what mattered in Buenos Aires [or London]) is the fairly rotten financial records of the governments concerned."

what they said about war

Despite Tony Blair's presidential stance over Kosovo, NATO's historic war was pilloried at Bilderberg. "The mood at the meeting was surprisingly subdued most of the speakers concentrated on the downside of the conflict," begins the discussion on Kosovo.

Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, weighs in, saying Kosovo "could be this generation's Vietnam". NATO is in danger of replacing the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires in a series of permanent protectorates, he said. Another panellist warned that troops could be there for 25 years. Kissinger felt that this left NATO open to accusations of colonialism. "How did one persuade countries like China, Russia and India that NATO's new mandate was not just a new version of 'the white man's burden' - colonialism?" asked Kissinger.

Charles D Boyd, executive director of the US National Study Group, said Kosovo is now a wasteland, a humanitarian disaster comparable with Cambodia. " NATO used force as a substitute for diplomacy rather than as a support for it it used force in a way that minimised danger to itself but maximised danger to the people it was trying to protect."

An unnamed British politician "wondered whether the [ NATO] alliance could hang together after the end of the war. He warned that "there would be little popular enthusiasm for putting lots of resources into solving the region's gigantic problems."

Peter Mandelson told the group that "two roads stretch in front of NATO. One leads to a new division of Europe, where the continent returns to its ethnocentric ways. Under this scenario, the UN is fairly powerless, Russia and China are excluded, and NATO is little more than an enforcer. The second road is a little closer to the nineteenth century Europe, with all the great powers - not just America and the EU, but Russia, China and Japan co-operating."

The following book review, from The Economist 1999-Feb-13, is a useful introductory treatment of the systems paradigm, and particularly its strengths and weaknesses:

The systems approach

By the book

RESCUING PROMETHEUS.
By Thomas Hughes.
Pantheon Books; 416 pages; $28.50

AT AN American diplomat's home soon after Neil Armstrong had set foot on the moon in 1969, this reviewer teased a fellow guest whose firm had helped design the lunar-landing module: ``So, when the crunch came, Armstrong had to override your faulty computer and land the spacecraft manually.'' The guest was Simon Ramo, a guiding spirit behind the Atlas missile programme, the ``R'' in the aerospace firm TRW and, as a pioneer of systems engineering, one of the heroes of this book. ``Do you seriously believe,'' he replied, ``that we could allow a mere astronaut to override our lunar-landing system?''

His implication was that ``the system'' of hardware, software and communications protocols that managed the spacecraft had been programmed to allow for a very common human anxiety: the last-minute conviction that the machine has got it wrong. Had NASA engineers anticipated this and built in enough ``feedback'' to give the astronauts an illusion of control when they panicked? Shades of the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's ``2001''. The truth of Mr. Ramo's boast is not the issue. The fact is that already 30 years ago there were large technical systems smart enough to do their assigned tasks while taking care of emergencies, errors and expediencies - even unpredictable ``wetware'' (humans) trying to mess things up.

Big engineering systems existed, to be sure, before systems engineering. The pyramids involved meticulous co-ordination. The cathedral builders of medieval Europe melded technology, utility and artistic skill into a form of religious architecture yet to be surpassed. For its day, Brunel's construction of the Great Western Railway was no less challenging than the Manhattan Project which produced the atom bomb nearly a century later.

By the mid-1950s, however, something had changed. The sheer scale of projects demanded a new approach. With its 18,000 academic researchers plus 70,000 workers spread around more than 200 firms, the Atlas project to build America's first intercontinental ballistic missile did more than change the cold war. It produced a new sort of management that spread through the military and industrial worlds to alter forever how the United States earned its keep.

As teams of engineers and scientists polarised around problems rather than technologies, new cross-disciplinary bodies such as Rand, Mitre, and Ramo-Wooldridge (later TRW) emerged in America to apply theories of queuing, games, decisions, information and control as well as statistics, operations research and linear programming in a wholly integrated way. As American industry inched into the systems era, its prowess evolved, from stamping out gadgets by the million to creating smaller numbers of much pricier and more complex things - airliners, fancy weapons, telecoms satellites, chemical plants, air-traffic controls. These, today, are among America's main exports.

In ``Rescuing Prometheus'', an industrial historian, Thomas Hughes, seeks to give the large technological undertakings of the cold-war era their due. His ode to systems engineering includes a detailed look at three large defence projects and one civilian one. The first, the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) project to build a radar-based air-defence system, is the most instructive - in large part because it was a flop.

As an air-raid defence system, SAGE worked well. Unfortunately, by the time it was deployed in 1958, missiles had replaced bombers as the big threat. But SAGE pioneered a new form of collaboration, in which a university (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) worked with the Pentagon during the design and development stage. Like the troublesome Erie Canal in the early 19th century, SAGE was one of technology's big learning experiences.

As chapters of post-war history, the author's three other examples provide a rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale. His account of the Atlas missile programme is an eye-opener on how efficient the military-industrial complex really was when seriously competent people were in charge. The description of Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet that the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency backed so that university researchers could easily communicate amongst themselves, explains a lot of what the web-surfers nowadays take for granted. The one purely civilian system Mr. Hughes considers, Boston's central artery and tunnel-road project, makes much the same point as his other case histories, and with more or less equal force: no matter how much computational power is assembled or data collected, there is no substitute for managerial genius.

If this excellent book has a fault, it is the over-defensive tone that Mr. Hughes adopts towards critics of the systems approach. When, in the 1960s and 1970s, this was applied to social problems such as poverty, healthcare and crime, the results were usually disappointing. Systems enthusiasts woefully underestimated the complexity of human behaviour and the great quantities of computing power needed to model it in any meaningful way. Misuse in the Vietnam war did not help. A reaction set in and ``the systems approach'' became a term of abuse. Yet, in its proper place - an industrial or military context with clear lines of command - systems engineering remains to this day the most powerful tool yet devised for problem-solving on a giant scale. As such, it needs no defence.

from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, System Dynamics Group, by Jay W. Forrester, Germeshausen Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, D-4224-4 1991-Apr-29 (download in its entirety, in PDF format with graphics, from ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/papers/D-4224-4.pdf):

System Dynamics and the Lessons of 35 Years

1. INTRODUCTION

The professional field known as system dynamics has been developing for the last 35 years and now has a world-wide and growing membership. System dynamics combines the theory, methods, and philosophy needed to analyze the behavior of systems in not only management, but also in environmental change, politics, economic behavior, medicine, engineering, and other fields. System dynamics provides a common foundation that can be applied wherever we want to understand and influence how things change through time.

The system dynamics process starts from a problem to be solved-a situation that needs to be better understood, or an undesirable behavior that is to be corrected or avoided. The first step is to tap the wealth of information that people possess in their heads. The mental data base is a rich source of information about the parts of a system, about the information available at different points in a system, and about the policies being followed in decision making. The management and social sciences have in the past unduly restricted themselves to measured data and have neglected the far richer and more informative body of information that exists in the knowledge and experience of those in the active, working world.

System dynamics uses concepts drawn from the field of feedback control to organize available information into computer simulation models. A digital computer as a simulator, acting out the roles of the operating people in the real system, reveals the behavioral implications of the system that has been described in the model. The first articles based on this work appeared in the Harvard Business Review (Forrester, 1958). From over three decades in system dynamics modeling have come useful guides for working toward a better understanding of the world around us.

The continued search for better understanding of social and economic systems represents the next great frontier. Frontiers of the past have included creating the written literatures, exploring geographical limits of earth and space, and penetrating mysteries of physical science. Those are no longer frontiers; they have become a part of everyday activity. By contrast, insights into behavior of social systems have not advanced in step with our understanding of the natural world. To quote B. F. Skinner:

"Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of his world... Today he is the thing he understands least. Physics and biology have come a long way, but there has been no comparable development of anything like a science of human behavior... Aristotle could not have understood a page of modern physics or biology, but Socrates and his friends would have little trouble in following most current discussions of human affairs." (Skinner, 1971, p. 3)

The great challenge for the next several decades will be to advance understanding of social systems in the same way that the past century has advanced understanding of the physical world.

2. DESIGNING MANAGERIAL AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS

Everyone speaks of systems: computer systems, air traffic control systems, economic systems, and social systems. But few realize how pervasive are systems, how imbedded in systems we are in everything we do, and how influential are systems in creating most of the puzzling difficulties that confront us.

People deal differently with different kinds of systems. Engineering systems are designed using the most advanced methods of dynamic analysis and computer modeling to anticipate behavior of a system when finally constructed. On the other hand, although political, economic, and managerial systems are far more complex than engineering systems, only intuition and debate have ordinarily been used in building social systems. But, powerful system-design methodologies have evolved over the last 50 years.

In designing an engineering system, say a chemical plant, engineers realize that the dynamic behavior is complicated and that the design can not successfully be based only on rules of thumb and experience. There would be extensive studies of the stability and dynamic behavior of the chemical processes and their control. Computer models would be built to simulate behavior before construction of even a pilot plant. Then, if the plant were of a new type, a small pilot plant would be built to test the processes and their control.

But observe how differently social systems are designed. We change laws, organizational forms, policies, and personnel practices on the basis of impressions and committee meetings, usually without any dynamic analysis adequate to prevent unexpected consequences.

"Designing" social systems or corporations may seem mechanistic or authoritarian. But all governmental laws and regulations, all corporate policies that are established, all computer systems that are installed, and all organization charts that are drawn up constitute partial designs of social systems. Such redesigns are then tested experimentally on the organization as a whole without dynamic modeling of the long-term effects and without first running small-scale pilot experiments. For example, bank deregulation and the wave of corporate mergers in the 1980s constituted major redesigns of our economy with inadequate prior consideration for the results. All systems within which we live have been designed. The shortcomings of those systems result from defective design, just as the shortcomings of a power plant result from inappropriate design.

Consider the contrast between great advances during the last century in understanding technology, and the relative lack of progress in understanding economic and managerial systems. Why such a difference? Why has technology advanced so rapidly while social systems continue to exhibit the same kinds of misbehavior decade after decade? I believe the answer lies in failing to recognize that countries and corporations are indeed systems. There is an unwillingness to accept the idea that families, corporations, and governments belong to the same general class of dynamic structures as do chemical refineries and autopilots for aircraft.

There is a reluctance to accept the idea that physical systems, natural systems, and human systems are fundamentally of the same kind, and that they differ primarily in their degree of complexity. To admit the existence of a social system is to admit that the relationships between its parts have a strong influence over individual human behavior.

The idea of a social system implies sources of behavior beyond that of the individual people within the system. Something about the structure of a system determines what happens beyond just the sum of individual objectives and actions. In other words, the concept of a system implies that people are not entirely free agents but are substantially responsive to their surroundings.

To put the matter even more bluntly, if human systems are indeed systems, it implies that people are at least partly cogs in a social and economic machine, that people play their roles within the totality of the whole system, and that they respond in a significantly predictable way to forces brought to bear on them by other parts of the system. Even though this is contrary to our cherished illusion that people freely make their individual decisions, I suggest that the constraints implied by the existence of systems are true in real life. As an example, we see the dominance of the political system over the individual in the evolution of the Federal budget deficit. Every presidential candidate since 1970 has campaigned with the promise to reduce the federal deficit. But the deficit has on the average doubled every four years. The social forces rather than the president have been controlling the outcome. How to harness those social forces has not been effectively addressed.

[...]

The Club of Rome offers the standard fare - disarmament, population control, fear of unbridled technology, macroeconomic modelling and management, etc. There is much more about the Club of Rome below. But in a fascinating twist, a member of the executive committee - Ilya Prigogine - has written a short paper that is at odds with much of the Club's traditional views - indeed, wonderfully dismissive of a core premise of the entire world government paradigm: the Bilderberger mentality, the Harvard Model, the whole bloody nine yards. Here it is in its entirety (hand-converted from RTF to HTML), from http://www.clubofrome.org/public/prigogi_txt_sat12.rtf:

Uncertainty: the key to the science of the future?

By Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate, Director of the International Solvay Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Brussels and the I. Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems at the University of Texas at Austin; member of The Club of Rome.

In a world where little seems predictable, where every day brings news of further political and economic upheavals, where we are even threatened with radical changes in the global climate, certainty is a rare commodity. Yet in his best selling book, A Brief History of Time ⁽¹⁾, Stephen Hawking argues that we are close to the certainty which will come from understanding the full complexity of the universe. Once the "complete theory" of the universe is discovered, Hawking says the only remaining question would be "why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason...", for then we would know the mind of God.

This quest for total understanding has been the ultimate goal of physics, from Leibniz three centuries ago to contemporary writers such as Steven Weinberg ⁽²⁾.

It is indeed a grandiose project. To quote Leibniz: "In the least of substances, eyes as piercing as those of God could read the whole course of the universe." There would be no distinction between past, present and future; we would share the certainty of God.

We can perhaps take comfort from the fact, recently pointed out by Stephen Toulmin ⁽³⁾, that the religious wars and political instability of the 17th century formed the background for Descartes to formulate his quest for certainty - a certainty that all human beings could share, irrespective of religion. Descartes' programme proved to be immensely successful : it influenced Leibniz's concept of "laws of nature" and found concrete expression in Newton's work which provided the model for physics for over 300 years.

For Einstein, also, science was a way of going beyond the turmoil of everyday existence. He compared scientific activity to the "longing that irresistibly pulls the town-dweller away from his noisy, cramped quarters and toward the silent, high mountains" ⁽⁴⁾. He, too, considered certainty to be the supreme ideal of science.

The problem with this ideal of certainty is that it is associated with a denial of time and of novelty which leads to feelings of alienation. As Weinberg has said, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless." Indeed, the ideas of certainty forces us to give up the notion of events and eliminates the novelty and creativity without which our own lives would be pointless.

The logical consequence is dualism. In Descartes' system, matter follows deterministic laws and is radically separated from intellectual activity.

Certainty is, however, beginning to be challenged - quite rightly, in my opinion. We are witnessing the start of a timely reappraisal of the fundamental laws of physics. In 1986, the then president of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Sir John Lighthill, was moved to apologize collectively for physicists spreading ideas about determinism, based on their forebears' enthusiasm for the achievements of Newtonian mechanics - ideas which had since 1960 been proved false ⁽⁵⁾. This is a quite unusual confession. Certainty, for three centuries the key symbol of scientific intelligibility, is being put into question.

Lighthill was referring to developments in chaos theory, a topic too complex to explain here. I want only to make a remark based mainly on the recent work of my groups in Austin and Brussels. Chaos changes the formulation of the laws of physics: instead of expressing certainties, they express possibilities. At its beginning "the universe was like a newborn baby who can become a lawyer, an astronaut - but not all at the same time." As W. Thirring has written, "Our formulation of the laws of nature cannot contradict experience ... but they will be far from determining everything. As the universe evolves, the circumstances create new laws." ⁽⁶⁾

Some people may feel that giving up the ideal of certainty marks a defeat for human reason, but I do not agree.

Once we replace the deterministic description with one involving probability, we can introduce the arrow of time into our basic equations and start to describe an evolutionary universe, in agreement with the important place of evolution in describing everything from cosmology to human history.

We can now make predictions, going far beyond classical theory, about complex systems such as the stability of our planetary system and our ecosystem.

Once we include time, we begin to understand the variety of the physical world - both the order of living systems and the disorder existing in the universe. The distinction is basically due to the arrow of time: over time, non-equilibrium processes generate complex structures that cannot be achieved in an equilibrium situation. The result is a whole new physics and a new biology of non-equilibrium processes.

Since evolutionary events related to self-organization play an essential role in both living and non-living sytems, science is no longer deterministic. Nor is it reductionist as new properties of matter appear in non-equilibrium processes that cannot be expressed in terms of individual particles.

Even the direction of time itself becomes linked to global properties of ensembles, whether elementary particles, living cells or human populations. For example, societies evolve not because individuals become older, but because the relations between individuals change.

Far from coming to the end of science, as Hawking suggests, in my opinion we are only just beginning to be able to produce a coherent view of the universe. We come from a past of conflicting certainties - be they related to science, ethics or social systems - to a present of questioning. This will mean finding a type of scientific rationality more appropriate to our times.

The future is uncertain, but this uncertainty is at the heart of human creativity. Time becomes "construction" and creativity a way to participate in this construction. As Aurelio Peccei, the founder of the Club of Rome, said, "Inventing the future is the most important and most difficult human invention."

Hopefully, just as in the 17th century, our present turmoil is stimulating scientific developments which will contribute to inventing the future.

1 Bantam Books, New York 1988.
2 Dreams of a Final Theory (publication details to be supplied)
3 Cosmopolis The University of Chicago Press, 1990
4 Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, New York 1954, p. 225.
5 Proceedings of the Royal Society 402 1986, p. 35.
6 (to be supplied)

from http://www.icom.net/~nexus/Bilderbergers.html:

The Bilderberg Group
- The Invisible Power House -

With its membership selected from the power élite of Europe and North America, many wonder if the Bilderbergers are conspiring to establish a 'new world order'.

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Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 3, #1 (Dec '95-Jan '96).
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. nexus@peg.apc.org
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: http://www.peg.apc.org/~nexus/

© 1994 by Armen Victorian,
PO Box 99, West PDO,
Nottingham, NG8 3NT UK

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The conspiracy theory writers have repeatedly linked one powerful global elite, the Bilderberg Group, with the ultimate take-over of the world. Members of the Bilderberg together with their 'sister' organizations-the Trilateral Commission (known also as the "Child of Bilderberg")(1) and the Council on Foreign Relations(2)-are charged with the post-war take-over of the democratic process. The measures implemented by this group so far prove the control of the world economy through indirect political means.

The constitution of several democratic monarchies of the Western Europe bans members of their royal families from playing an active role in the political process. However, the Bilderberg meetings provide this exact forum and platform for them.
"This unprecedented period of European cooperation is more than a product of simple nation-state diplomacy. One of the key institutions that has fostered unity and cooperation with the Atlantic Community beyond the old concepts has been the Bilderberg Group."(3)
"I tell you frankly that I am deeply alarmed today over the possibility that a right-wing reaction may draw some sections of capital so far away from our traditions as to imperil the entire structure of American life as we know it."(4)

These comments by Pasymowski and Gilbert(3) two decades ago may seem out of phase with the current events in former Yugoslavia, but, in terms of the continued stability of the "European State", they have proven to be largely accurate. Warfare has been removed from the intra-European systems as a means of controlling and directing nationalistic goals and ideas. Even in the case of former Yugoslavia, one observes that the current state of war has resulted from Tito's and the Soviet Union's demise. Consequently, the lid has been lifted on rivals and racial memories which had been artificially kept in place for previous decades. The several proto-states which make up the former Yugoslavia were not part of the economic and social development programs which evolved in Western Europe. As we would see, the way in which the rest of Europe evolved and developed was very different, and for very particular reasons.

Whether co-incidence or not, it is equally ironic that the current Chairman of the Bilderberg, Lord Carrington, was the first UN-appointed representative to bring peace to the war-torn Yugoslavia.

ORIGINS
The single most important personality connected with the birth and creation of the Bilderberg Group is Joseph H. Retinger (also known as L'Eminence-His Grey Eminence). Retinger had a colourful, lifelong career that raised him to the top of the world power élites. At his funeral in 1960, Sir Edward Bedington-Behrens said:
"I remember Retinger in the United States picking up the telephone and immediately making an appointment with the President, and in Europe he had complete entrée in every political circle as a kind of right acquired through trust, devotion and loyalty he inspired."

Retinger, as a Catholic, was viewed by many as an agent of the Vatican, acting in liaison between the Pope and the Father-General of the Jesuit order.

One of Retinger's renowned achievements in European politics was the founding of the European Movement, leading to the establishment of the Council of Europe on 5th May 1949. With its headquarters in Strasbourg, the Council Executive Committee provided Retinger his first major platform for his expansive ideology. From his earlier days at the Sorbonne, Retinger believed in greater European unity, both in military and economic terms. It was also at the same time when his interest in the guidance of the Jesuit order manifested itself. He spent a great deal of his time fulfilling these ambitions. He suggested to Premier Georges Clemenceau a plan to unite Eastern Europe-involving the merging of Austria, Hungary and Poland as a tripartite monarchy under the guidance of the Jesuit order. Clemenceau, doubtful of the Vatican-inspired plan, rejected Retinger's proposal outright. This plan labeled Retinger, thereafter, as a Vatican agent.

Retinger's activities were not limited to uniting Europe. Through his several trips to Mexico he played a key role in the creation of a trade union movement in the 1920s. Due to his unprecedented success, and by gaining the Mexican Government's trust, Retinger convinced them to nationalize the US oil interest in Mexico. In the process, Retinger conducted the secret negotiations with Washington for the Mexican Government.

Retinger also had an active war career. He was the political aide to General Sikorski, and served for the London-based Polish Government-in-exile. In addition, at the age of 58, he parachuted into German-occupied territory outside Warsaw for some sabotage missions.

Due to his high-profile career, in the 1950s he was able to create contacts with numerous high-ranking military officials and political leaders. His main aim was to unite the world in peace. His peace dividend was to be under the control of supernational, powerful organizations. He believed that such organizations would be immune from short-term ideological conflicts erupting between governments. To Retinger, it was insignificant what dominated the economic ideology of a country. He believed these differences could be brought into line by powerful multinational organizations dictating and applying powerful economic and military policies, thereby creating a union and a bond between the nations.

Retinger's personal 'left-wing' views from his heady days convinced him that many leaders of newly born socialist and communist nations would be prepared to talk to him. Additionally, his Church background gave him an arena for dialogue with people from the middle-ground connections in international relations.

Nevertheless, Retinger knew that control of the world affairs cannot be achieved without US participation. In pursuit of this ideology, he began a campaign for the creation of an Atlantic Community. This would make the development of Europe an important political aim for the American politicians, thereby preventing their retreat into political isolation.

Retinger, with this in mind, set out his carefully calculated move by involving one of his close and powerful friends, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Prince Bernhard, at the time, was an important figure in the oil industry and held a major position in Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell Oil), as well as Société Générale de Belgique-a powerful global corporation.

In 1952 Retinger approached Bernhard with a proposal for a secret conference to involve the NATO leaders in an open and frank discussion on international affairs behind closed doors. The meeting would allow each participant to speak his mind freely because no media representative would be permitted inside; nor would there be any news bulletin about the meeting or the topics discussed. Furthermore, if any leaks occurred, the journalists would be discouraged from writing about it.

Prince Bernhard fully supported Retinger's proposal for an international meeting. Consequently, they formed a committee to organize a plan. In 1952, Bernhard approached the Truman administration and briefed them about the meeting. Despite a positive reception, it was not until the Eisenhower administration when the first American counterpart group was formed. The two key role-players in the US group were General Walter Bedell Smith (Director of the CIA) and C. D. Jackson. Both (European-American) groups working interactively set out to fulfill Retinger's initial plan. From the outset, the American group was heavily influenced by the Rockefeller family, the owners of Standard Oil-competitors of Bernhard's Royal Dutch Petroleum. From then on, the Bilderberg business reflected the concerns of the oil industry in its meetings.

According to Bilderberg's draft document of 1989:
"Bilderberg takes its name from the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, where the first meeting took place in May 1954. That pioneering meeting grew out of the concern expressed by many leading citizens on both sides of the Atlantic that Western Europe and North America were not working together as closely as they should on matters of critical importance. It was felt that regular, off-the-record discussions would help create a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult post-war period."(5)

Retinger's main aim in creating Bilderberg had other more important, inherent aspects than an informal gathering of a group of the world's élite. It has been suggested that Bilderberg meetings ultimately would have implemented group dynamics techniques in the shape of a low- key international thinking group with the purpose of sensitizing the less enlightened of its membership towards the new transitional diplomacy of the Cold War.

The first meeting witnessed the gathering of ideologies, poles apart. The issue of McCarthyism was reaching its peak in the United States. European participants, exasperated with the McCarthy propaganda, saw in their American counterparts a clear political shift towards an ultra-right-wing fascist state. Memories of World War II still fresh in their minds, the Europeans found the concept rather repulsive.

C. D. Jackson (a member of the CFR), in an attempt to regain the international delegates' confidence, stated:
"Whether McCarthy dies by an assassin's bullet or is eliminated in the normal American way of getting rid of boils on body politics, I prophesy that by the time we hold our next meeting he will be gone from the American scene."(6)

Nevertheless, McCarthyism proved to be a source of embarrassment for the US delegate.

OTHER GROUPS
The concept of Bilderberg was not new. Although similar groups were already in existence at the time, none attracted and provoked global myths the way Bilderberg has.

Groups such as Bohemian Grove, established in 1872 by San Franciscans, played an equally significant role in shaping post-war politics in the US.
"It was at the Grove, it is said, that the Manhattan Project was set up and that Eisenhower was selected as the Republicans' candidate for 1952."(7)

The Ditchley Park Foundation was established in 1953 in Britain with the same aim.(8)

Two years earlier, in 1952, Britain's Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had suggested the idea of a NATO command-post exercise (a paper drill; no movement of forces) to train army divisional commanders. General Eisenhower, who was then NATO's European Commander, accepted it. As a result, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe Exercise-SHAPEX-was created. Ever since, an annual meeting has been held in SHAPE headquarters near Mons, Belgium, and the subject has been broadened to incorporate a wide array of topics.

The historical review of these groups reflects a sudden flourishing trend, and the realization by the world's leaders of the need for creation of, at times, such overt concepts. The idea of establishing such élite groups did not die with the birth of Bilderberg.

In 1957, the first of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs took place.9 Pandit Nehru offered to host the first meeting. The founder members were personalities such as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein. Scientists from the United States and Soviet Union were regular participants in this East-West gathering of élites. Britain is known for its active participation and role in this group.
"The best feature of Pugwash is that it brings together people from East, West and non-aligned countries."(9)

Pugwash proved particularly valuable at the time when the relation between East and West was at a stalemate. Many significant topics were discussed in this forum. Ways of monitoring arms control agreements, nuclear disarmament, and reduction of East-West tensions were always on the top of the agenda. In the 1970s Pugwash embraced a range of issues including biological, chemical and conventional arms control, environment and development problems as well as conflicts around the world.

One of the latest groups is the Williamsburg, better known as the Asian Window. Its first meeting was financed by the late John D. Rockefeller in 1971, and continues to date. It brings together the Asian leaders and the Americans. Williamsburg has been particularly effective for discussing Vietnam, or the Indonesian corruption, or supposedly non-existent Japanese exchange controls. Different experiences of trade with China and Russia, or how Singapore has a lower infant mortality than America, have been some of the topics in the Williamsburg forum.

Nonetheless, none of these groups-including the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilaterals-commands the influence the Bilderberg has obtained in shaping and dictating global policies.

CHAIRMAN
"The first [Bilderberg] meeting was convened under the chairmanship of H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who served as chairman for twenty-two years. He was succeeded by Lord Home of the Hirsel, former Prime Minister for the United Kingdom, who chaired the meetings for four years. At the 1980 meeting, Lord Home turned over the chairmanship to Walter Scheel, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1985, Mr. Scheel resigned, and was succeeded by Lord Roll of Ipsden, President of S. G. Warburg Group plc. At 1989 meeting, Lord Roll turned over the chairmanship to Lord Carrington,"(10) who still chairs the meetings.

CHARACTER OF BILDERBERG MEETINGS
"What is unique about Bilderberg as a forum is (1) the broad cross-section of leading citizens, in and out of government, that are assembled for nearly three days of informal discussion about topics of current concern especially in the fields of foreign affairs and the international economy; (2) the strong feeling among participants that, in view of the differing attitudes and experiences of the Western nations, there is a clear need to develop an understanding in which these concerns can be accommodated; and (3) the privacy of these meetings, which has no purpose other than to allow leading citizens to speak their minds openly and freely.

"In short, Bilderberg is recognized, flexible and informal international leadership forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced."(11)

In further recognition of this aspect, Paddy Ashdown, the Leader of the Liberal Party and a participant in the 1989 Bilderberg meeting, wrote to me:

"In view of the recent events right across Europe, this has turned out to have been an exceptionally useful opportunity to meet and discuss with many of the most expert people in the world on international relations. I found it a very stimulating and informative gathering."(12)

But others, such as Prince Charles, Lord Callaghan and Sir Edward Heath, were rather shy in their responses.(13)

PARTICIPANTS
There are usually 115 participants in each annual meeting. Eighty are from Western Europe and the remainder from North America. From this mixture, one-third are from government and politics, and the remaining two-thirds from industry, finance, education and communications. All the participants claim to attend the meeting in their private capacity and not as officials-though this claim, in the wake of the outcome of subsequent meetings, has proven to be highly questionable.

Participants are invited to the Bilderberg meeting by the Chairman, following his consultations and recommendations by the Steering Committee membership, the Advisory Group and the Honorary Secretaries-General. This approach ensures a full, informed and balanced discussion of the agenda items. The individuals are chosen based on their knowledge, standing and experience. The previous participants maintain that, at the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken and no policy statements are made.

FUNDING
The costs of the annual meetings are usually the responsibility of the Steering Committee members of the host country. But, the expenses of maintaining the Bilderberg meetings are covered entirely by private subscriptions. Although the meeting reports are published, nevertheless they are strictly for the participating members only. No reports are made available to the media.

[link to committee membership, venue history, and footnotes]

FOOTNOTES

[only one available - all were missing from my source, and one of the co-authors of the following provided this one himself -Ed.]

(3) "Bilderberg: The Cold War Internationale" by Eugene Pasymowski and Carl Gilbert, Congressional Record - Extension of Remarks in the US House of Representatives, September 15, 1971 Pages E9616 to E-9624

from The Nationalist Times, 1998-Oct, by Uri Dowbenko:

Th