Dominique Baettig: Swiss Peoples Party- Bilderberg 2011

WakeUp

I would be interested in hearing people’s opinions on the above man’s comments in relation to this year’s annual get together of some of the most powerful & influential movers and shakers in both the political and business world including some people from Ireland. A meeting we know very little about or what gets decided behind close doors.

Considering Baettig is a member of the Swiss Peoples Party, the largest party in government in Switzerland, I believe this thread fully belongs in the politics forum and is a relevant topic that should not be dismissed outright or demoted to the “conspiracy” theory forum. This meeting happens every year. That’s a fact. It is starting to get more and more main stream coverage and rightly so but I’ve yet to see a serious discussion on this forum and I don’t understand why. Surely people are curious as to what is being discussed behind closed doors by such powerful and influential people. Do they formulate policy? Do they have an agenda? Does what they discuss affect us? All relevant questions if you ask me questions that should be asked and questions that should be answered.

The above video contains Baettig’s comments. From my own point of view I would like to see an attendee list officially published every year with a list of topics they intend to discuss. I would like a statement clarifying as to whether or not policy is formulated and indeed implemented at a future date. I would also like a statement clarifying whether or not people from my own country are there in official capacity or for some other reason. I also think a video and a few microphones inside the building would be a good idea and would give us some much needed insight into the goings on of this meeting.

I would like to add more to the thread but I’m a little hesitant to do so at the moment I would like to wait and see what reaction this will get from the mod’s and indeed if they will leave the thread open and encourage discussion.

So what do people think? Surely a meeting of such magnitude with influential people from so many separate countries in attendance deserves our attention and its content/discussion deserve to be put in the public domain?....

Scofflaw

The reason that discussions on the Bilderberg meetings regularly get transferred to the CT forum is that people very rapidly jump from "it's a confidential meeting of powerful and influential people which presumably has dicsussions for political interest and impact" to "it's the secret meeting of the shadow world government of the NWO".

And the issue with the former part is that when one says that, one has said all there is to say, really - the meetings are behind closed doors, an agenda is not published, a participant list is not published, we don't know if policy is formulated, and we don't know what is discussed and therefore cannot know whether it affects us.

From the perspective of a political discussion forum, then, all that remains is speculation...and that speculation tends to lead in specific directions, and without proof. Fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but stony soil for political discussions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

pog it

OP,

The reason we have stopped commenting on it is as you have said, it gets moved to conspiracy theories almost immediately.

I discuss this on other political forums like politics.ie and politicalworld.org where there is more freedom of speech and where moderators are not trying to dogmatically push their own agendas on members.

I suggest you contact the owners of this site who depend on advertising (and traffic) to keep it going if you have a problem with any moderator. The more of us who do so, the better.

I myself use this site less than others because of the way the political forum is moderated.

whatstherush

pog it wrote: »

OP,

The reason we have stopped commenting on it is as you have said, it gets moved to conspiracy theories almost immediately.

Who is 'we'?

jmayo

Scofflaw wrote: »

The reason that discussions on the Bilderberg meetings regularly get transferred to the CT forum is that people very rapidly jump from "it's a confidential meeting of powerful and influential people which presumably has dicsussions for political interest and impact" to "it's the secret meeting of the shadow world government of the NWO".

And the issue with the former part is that when one says that, one has said all there is to say, really - the meetings are behind closed doors, an agenda is not published, a participant list is not published, we don't know if policy is formulated, and we don't know what is discussed and therefore cannot know whether it affects us.

From the perspective of a political discussion forum, then, all that remains is speculation...and that speculation tends to lead in specific directions, and without proof. Fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but stony soil for political discussions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Reminds me of the discussion thread on the IMF coming to town. :rolleyes:
Speculation wasn't allowed on that thread either until we saw Mr Chopra strolling down to the Central Bank.

BTW unless you are an insider, political discussion will always involve some amount of speculation and ruling out speculation in a political discussion forum does severily limit it. :rolleyes:

meglome

pog it wrote: »

OP,

The reason we have stopped commenting on it is as you have said, it gets moved to conspiracy theories almost immediately.

I discuss this on other political forums like politics.ie and politicalworld.org where there is more freedom of speech and where moderators are not trying to dogmatically push their own agendas on members.

I suggest you contact the owners of this site who depend on advertising (and traffic) to keep it going if you have a problem with any moderator. The more of us who do so, the better.

I myself use this site less than others because of the way the political forum is moderated.

As someone who has posted in the CT forum extensively it is often just wild speculation. I like that the politics forum requires evidence. Horses for courses.

Scofflaw

jmayo wrote: »

Reminds me of the discussion thread on the IMF coming to town. :rolleyes:
Speculation wasn't allowed on that thread either until we saw Mr Chopra strolling down to the Central Bank.

BTW unless you are an insider, political discussion will always involve some amount of speculation and ruling out speculation in a political discussion forum does severily limit it. :rolleyes:

Speculation without any possibility of proof is an almost entirely useless activity - but all that was required of you was that speculation be noted as such.

You'll note, perhaps, that this thread has not (yet) been moved to CT. I'm interested to see if the topic can be discussed in somethng approaching a rational manner (the OP has made a good start) - but it's not a discussion of people's issues about discussing Bilderberg in CT rather than Politics.

moderately,
Scofflaw

WakeUp

pog it wrote: »

OP,

The reason we have stopped commenting on it is as you have said, it gets moved to conspiracy theories almost immediately.

I discuss this on other political forums like politics.ie and politicalworld.org where there is more freedom of speech and where moderators are not trying to dogmatically push their own agendas on members.

I suggest you contact the owners of this site who depend on advertising (and traffic) to keep it going if you have a problem with any moderator. The more of us who do so, the better.

I myself use this site less than others because of the way the political forum is moderated.

jmayo wrote: »

Reminds me of the discussion thread on the IMF coming to town.
Speculation wasn't allowed on that thread either until we saw Mr Chopra strolling down to the Central Bank.

BTW unless you are an insider, political discussion will always involve some amount of speculation and ruling out speculation in a political discussion forum does severily limit it.

I would prefer really not to get involved with a blame game so to speak maybe other threads have been started in the past and have been either moved or locked but I think we should just take this thread on its own merit and deal with the here and now. In fairness the mod's seem to be prepared to give this thread a chance which is all that we can really ask for so lets see where it takes us.

Jmayo I think you make a fair point about political discussion and the possibilty of speculation but I think Scofflaw makes some fair points too about the same thing. Maybe we can find some middle ground in between and strike a balance. I cant really reply in any detail at the moment but will be able to apply myself more to the thread this evening when I get in which I plan to do. In the mean time the Bildeberg official site makes for some interesting reading.

According to the website..."In short, Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced".

The have an elected commitee you can see who sits on it here

An offcial attendee list is apparently available this year which I will post in full later on, Just to give people an idea as to some of the topics discussed at last years meeting in Spain-

• Current Events: North Korea, Iran and Non-Proliferation
• Global Cooling: Implications of Slow Economic Growth
• The Growing Influence of Cyber Technology
• Is Financial Reform Progressing?
• US and European Fiscal and Financial Challenges
• The European Union and the Crisis of the Euro
• Promises of Medical Science
• Energy's Promises and Challenges
• Security in a Proliferated World
• Social Networking: From the Obama Campaign to the Iranian Revolution
• Europe-US: A New Approach
• Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Region
• Can We Feed the World?

Important stuff discussed by important people Im sure everyone can agree on that. I have more information I would like to post which I will do later on when I get a chance:)

steelcityblues

Scofflaw wrote: »

The reason that discussions on the Bilderberg meetings regularly get transferred to the CT forum is that people very rapidly jump from "it's a confidential meeting of powerful and influential people which presumably has dicsussions for political interest and impact" to "it's the secret meeting of the shadow world government of the NWO".

And the issue with the former part is that when one says that, one has said all there is to say, really - the meetings are behind closed doors, an agenda is not published, a participant list is not published, we don't know if policy is formulated, and we don't know what is discussed and therefore cannot know whether it affects us.

From the perspective of a political discussion forum, then, all that remains is speculation...and that speculation tends to lead in specific directions, and without proof. Fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but stony soil for political discussions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

How is it speculation, and how do 'we' not know? It is an established fact (see link below) that many figures from the worlds of business, royalty and politics converge together at a given location every year.

Predicting on threads how many seats the political parties were going to get at the recent election was speculation, was it not?

Given the people involved in politics are of course politicians, then this is the obvious forum to discuss these matters - either positively or negatively.

If you think moving this to the same section where people discuss whether aliens are amongst us (which is speculative) is fine, then don't be surprised if some members will seriously question why this is happening.


http://bilderberg2011.com/dolce-hotel-2010-location-sitges-spain/leaked-attendee-list-bilderberg-conference-june-3-6-2010-in-hotel-dolce-sitges-spain/

Scofflaw

steelcityblues wrote: »

How is it speculation, and how do 'we' not know? It is an established fact (see link below) that many figures from the worlds of business, royalty and politics converge together at a given location every year.

Predicting on threads how many seats the political parties were going to get at the recent election was speculation, was it not?

Given the people involved in politics are of course politicians, then this is the obvious forum to discuss these matters - either positively or negatively.

If you think moving this to the same section where people discuss whether aliens are amongst us (which is speculative) is fine, then don't be surprised if some members will seriously question why this is happening.


http://bilderberg2011.com/dolce-hotel-2010-location-sitges-spain/leaked-attendee-list-bilderberg-conference-june-3-6-2010-in-hotel-dolce-sitges-spain/

Re-read my post, and check it off against the points made by the OP. We don't know the agenda, we don't know what happens, we don't know if policy is made, we don't know how the discussions go and therefore cannot know whether we've been affected by those discussions.

It's not so much, therefore, that it's speculation - the point is that it's speculation in an almost complete absence of facts, and without any hope of anybody's speculations being confirmed or disproved. That makes it pointless speculation, as opposed to speculating on how many seats a party may get in an election. And that's how it winds up in CT - because if there's virtually no constraint on the conclusions one can reach through such speculation, then there's no real way of differentiating utterly groundless speculation from more rational speculation, because neither can be checked against the non-existent facts.

If you choose to speculate that a Bilderberg meeting decided on a "no bank left behind" policy for the world, and that this is being implemented globally, that seems on the face of it a reasonable speculation. Unfortunately, it has no more of an anchor in evidence than does speculation that the group met to receive instructions from the Devil. Whether you choose to believe one over the other is entirely a matter of taste.

If, on the other hand, you chose to speculate that Fine Gael was going to win all 166 Dáil seats in a general election, people can pull in evidence of other votes, opinion polls, transfer distributions, and a whole range of other evidence in order to assign a probability to your speculation. That's not possible here, which makes it just a silly opinion-airing exercise where absolutely every opinion advanced is equal in merit (bar the scientifically impossible, and not entirely even then).

And that some posters believe that discussion on the subject is "suppressed" for reasons as opaque as the Bilderberg meetings themselves tells us nothing other than that some people believe their opinions trump reality. And that, in turn, indicates the natural home for such discussions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

steelcityblues

Scofflaw wrote: »

Re-read my post, and check it off against the points made by the OP. We don't know the agenda, we don't know what happens, we don't know if policy is made, we don't know how the discussions go and therefore cannot know whether we've been affected by those discussions.

It's not so much, therefore, that it's speculation - the point is that it's speculation in an almost complete absence of facts, and without any hope of anybody's speculations being confirmed or disproved. That makes it pointless speculation, as opposed to speculating on how many seats a party may get in an election. And that's how it winds up in CT - because if there's virtually no constraint on the conclusions one can reach through such speculation, then there's no real way of differentiating utterly groundless speculation from more rational speculation, because neither can be checked against the non-existent facts.

If you choose to speculate that a Bilderberg meeting decided on a "no bank left behind" policy for the world, and that this is being implemented globally, that seems on the face of it a reasonable speculation. Unfortunately, it has no more of an anchor in evidence than does speculation that the group met to receive instructions from the Devil. Whether you choose to believe one over the other is entirely a matter of taste.

If, on the other hand, you chose to speculate that Fine Gael was going to win all 166 Dáil seats in a general election, people can pull in evidence of other votes, opinion polls, transfer distributions, and a whole range of other evidence in order to assign a probability to your speculation. That's not possible here, which makes it just a silly opinion-airing exercise where absolutely every opinion advanced is equal in merit (bar the scientifically impossible, and not entirely even then).

And that some posters believe that discussion on the subject is "suppressed" for reasons as opaque as the Bilderberg meetings themselves tells us nothing other than that some people believe their opinions trump reality. And that, in turn, indicates the natural home for such discussions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Though, bear in mind that politicians can be great publicly at hiding their agenda, like Pres. Nixon saying 'I am not a crook', despite what else emerged in regards to WaterGate.

As for opinions trumping reality, the reality is that these influential people meet every year, yet many media outlets choose not to extensively report on this. Human beings - many being curious - are naturally going to pose the 'why' question, in relation as to what could be discussed and the lack of media attention. No different if someone can present a decent case as to why FG can mop up in seats (166? Exaggeration?) in an election, and then be argued with constructively.

We will agree to disagree on this, I suppose.

Scofflaw

steelcityblues wrote: »

Though, bear in mind that politicians can be great publicly at hiding their agenda, like Pres. Nixon saying 'I am not a crook', despite what else emerged in regards to WaterGate.

True - unfortunately, again, if we start from the premise that politicians are so good at hiding their agenda that we never know what their real agenda is, then we're back in the realms of "believe whatever you want".

steelcityblues wrote: »

As for opinions trumping reality, the reality is that these influential people meet every year, yet many media outlets choose not to extensively report on this. Human beings - many being curious - are naturally going to pose the 'why' question, in relation as to what could be discussed and the lack of media attention. No different if someone can present a decent case as to why FG can mop up in seats (166? Exaggeration?) in an election, and then be argued with constructively.

We will agree to disagree on this, I suppose.

The "why doesn't it get reported" and "shouldn't we be told" questions are entirely valid, but unfortunately are almost inevitably answered by people claiming that it's because the agenda is so awful that it couldn't possibly be made public. Other possible answers (discussions being perhaps more fruitful when politicians don't have to constantly posture for the benefit of their national press, for example) don't usually get a look in - and, to be fair, don't lead anywhere particularly interesting.

cordially,
Scofflaw

My name is URL

WakeUp wrote: »

An offcial attendee list is apparently available this year which I will post in full later on, Just to give people an idea as to some of the topics discussed at last years meeting in Spain-

• Can We Feed the World?

Important stuff discussed by important people Im sure everyone can agree on that. I have more information I would like to post which I will do later on when I get a chance:)

I wonder what Kissinger had to say about that one! The man who headed the drawing up of NSSM 200, which involved, amongst other stuff, plans to curb population growth in less developed countries by effectively allowing millions of people to die due to famine.

Scofflaw

My name is URL wrote: »

I wonder what Kissinger had to say about that one! The man who headed the drawing up of NSSM 200, which involved, amongst other stuff, plans to curb population growth in less developed countries by effectively allowing millions of people to die due to famine.

OK, let me make another point with respect to the Politics forum, while this thread is here. When you're talking about something like NSSM 200, you don't link to someone's article about it it rather than primary source, or at least a neutral source like Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Study_Memorandum_200

Second point - nothing written on Larouche websites counts as evidence.

Third point, what is the relevance of NSSM 200 to the Bilderberg meeting this year? Answer - absolutely nothing.

So, zero points there.

moderately,
Scofflaw

phantom_lord

WakeUp wrote: »

From my own point of view I would like to see an attendee list officially published every year with a list of topics they intend to discuss. I would like a statement clarifying as to whether or not policy is formulated and indeed implemented at a future date. I also think a video and a few microphones inside the building would be a good idea and would give us some much needed insight into the goings on of this meeting.

What makes you entitled to such information?

southsiderosie

WakeUp wrote: »

So what do people think? Surely a meeting of such magnitude with influential people from so many separate countries in attendance deserves our attention and its content/discussion deserve to be put in the public domain?....

I think the attention that is paid to this one large annual event overlooks the fact that there are many, many smaller meetings like this that happen all over the world, all the time, particularly in universities. To give two examples, the Institute of Politics at Harvard and the Center for International Studies at MIT regularly have closed-door meetings involving high level government officials, CEOs, and faculty with experience in government. These are not public and, yes, policy is often discussed. The point of them is to allow policymakers to talk freely about different problems and options, something that would simply not be possible at a public event.

I agree that such a large, high-profile meeting raises a number of questions about transparency and accountability. But this group does not have the right to impose laws, so it is not clear who exactly they are supposed to be accountable to. If the fear is that institutions like banks which have business before the state are able to score some kind of advantage through these meetings with government representatives acting in an official capacity, then perhaps there is a case to be made that meeting agendas should be distributed, or that at least government officials should disclose who they met with. But so much of this kind of activity happens informally that I'm not sure this would be more than a feel-good exercise anyway.