By Mark Anderson —
COPENHAGEN, Denmark— The Copenhagen Marriott Hotel is under total lockdown for the meeting of the infamous secret society known as Bilderberg. AMERICAN FREE PRESS was the first media on the scene and the only established media surveying the scene even up until the morning of May 29—the first day of this year’s Bilderberg meeting.
The 2014 meeting marks the elite confab’s 62nd gathering in 60 years and the third in Denmark. It runs through June 1.
CURRENT LIST OF BILDERBERG PARTICIPANTS
What’s disturbing as of the morning of Bilderberg’s first day is that one is hard pressed to find any news on the reclusive group in any European print media.
This striking lack of advance news about Bilderberg in the European papers is rather unusual—since European media have traditionally afforded Bilderberg heavy coverage, especially compared to the virtual blackout by U.S. media.
So, this AFP writer took to the streets to distribute copies of AFP’s front-page story from edition # 21, dated May 26. The “Bilderberg Meeting Site Confirmed” story was placed at Copenhagen’s busy Central Train Station less than a mile from the Bilderberg gathering at the Marriott.
Copies of that and other AFP stories are being distributed at various hotels, among other places, throughout Bilderberg 2014.
This writer, having seen about 12 blue Danish state police vans arrive before 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, was told by the lieutenant in charge that 300 Danish officers will work over the weekend. He confirmed Danish taxpayers would foot the bill to supplement Bilderberg’s own armed private security.
When informed that Bilderberg consists of billionaires who perhaps should foot their own bill, the officer smiled and accepted copies of AFP’s May 26 article to pass around among his officers. Meanwhile, high, temporary fencing now rings the normally open hotel, with even the main sidewalk on the hotel’s side of the wide street closed off. Bicyclists, in a city awash in bike riders, cannot even pause in front of the hotel.
But beyond the confines of this “lockdown” is the forced “lockdown” against Europe that founding Bilderberg members helped launch in the 1950s—an increasingly suffocating merger of formerly independent nations that has many Europeans crying “tyranny.”
It’s gotten so bad that voters across Europe in just-concluded elections sent pro-European Union politicians packing and replaced them with nationalist-populists in scores of European parliament and local offices.
A European citizen on area TV remarked, “All our laws are coming from the EU rather than our own parliament. We want our own monetary system.” The man added that he’s a fan of UKIP—the United Kingdom Independent Party.
Yet one also is hard-pressed to find comments about the 2014 Bilderberg Meeting from UKIP’s colorful leader Nigel Farage, from French National Party leader Marie Le Pen and from other nationalist winners in the late-May elections. This is the case despite the fact that the sweeping election results—which put both left wing and right wing anti-establishment candidates into office—gives a black eye to Bilderberg.
And Bilderberg is notorious for constantly advancing EU centralization in Brussels, Belgium—the very process that’s angering and riling voters.
As this story was put to bed, AFP had reached out to Farage thru Facebook and other means. The same goes for Ms. Le Pen. Neither had yet responded as this story was finished early on May 29 on the eve of Bilderberg.
AFP reached out to regular Bilderberg media participant Martin Wolf of The Financial Times. Asked whether Bilderberg members shared his view that sometimes governments need to stop protecting banks and pushing bankers’ financial gambling onto taxpayers, Wolf replied:
“I have no idea what ‘BB’ members think of the financial risk matters. They have no collective view. This is not a policy-making group, whatever people might fantasise about it. I will be unable to meet you. Sorry.”
Wolf was not asked if Bilderberg had a collective view. He was simply asked if any, or some, Bilderberg attendees shared his personal view. And like most attendees, he misses the point that Bilderberg members share a common worldview toward consolidation of power, with only minor exceptions—differences on details notwithstanding.
When this writer first visited the Copenhagen Marriott Hotel upon arriving on Monday, May 26, preparatory security measures already were being taken inside—three days before a summit that the general press is forbidden to cover in terms of inside access.
The hotel’s staff members were screened as well, as one of them told AFP in confidence.
As this writer got to know some staff and surveyed the hotel May 26, the managers had even closed off the main stairwell up to the conference wing of this waterfront 5-star facility—well before any Bilderbergers showed up. By the afternoon of May 28, the hotel’s regular guests had to leave, as none were allowed to book a room between that date and June 1.
Since 1954, the Bilderberg Meetings have involved closing off an entire high-dollar hotel for three days of insider global planning.
Bilderberg attendees include past and present legislators, prime ministers, finance ministers, royalty, central bankers, oil barons, think-tank policy fellows—as well as select editors and reporters who attend by don’t report.
Top corporate captains such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates have frequently attended as well.
Furthermore, big-media owners such as new Washington Post owner and Amazon.com, Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, have attended. Bezos may have been spotted early at the Marriott before this year’s Bilderberg meeting, but that was unconfirmed as this first AFP Bilderberg dispatch was written.
Bezos’ predecessor at the post, Donald Graham, attended Bilderberg for decades but kept the Post’s news pages silent.
The Post mildly broke its Bilderberg silence in 2012 when this summit of 140 influential jet-setters from North America and Europe huddled in Chantilly, Virginia near Washington.
AFP, coming out of its world-exclusive coverage of the Trilateral Commission (TC) meeting in late April in Washington, filed this story as the very first media on the scene at Bilderberg 2014—among any media, anywhere—despite the vast resources that most media possess, especially Bilderberg-connected media.
A Danish citizen told AFP Wednesday morning, on the eve of this year’s summit, that most Danes don’t have a clue what Bilderberg is, nor are most Danish people even aware that Bilderberg is meeting in their historic city.
Anti-Bilderberg activists and citizen journalists are expected to soon gather across from the Marriott. And there is unconfirmed word of some kind of festival or other public gathering 1.5 miles from the Marriott. And the usual significant European media coverage is expected, but clearly not assured. European media so far do not seem to be in a hurry to give advance notice of Bilderberg.
It cannot be overstated that this is rather strange, considering that scores of anti-EU populist parties just upset the pro-EU establishment by winning a number of European Parliament and local government seats. And considering that key Bilderberg members from the secret society’s early days founded the Common Market that evolved into the EU, the relevance of Bilderberg is greater than ever.
For it is Bilderberg that has helped fuel the European centralization of power that now has many European citizens crying “tyranny” and voting for nationalist parties. But core Bilderberg members and their TC brethren, relatively minor differences aside, evidently want to tighten the screws even further through even more economic controls.
That includes:
- A U.S.-EU free trade deal, which likely would a job-killer like the North American Free Trade Agreement accord. That accord is called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
- And a contemplated fiscal union, in which each EU member nation would surrender its national taxing and budgeting and hand all of that power over to the European central regime in Brussels.
Mark Anderson is roving editor for AMERICAN FREE PRESS. He will be in Denmark this year to cover the Bilderberg Meeting. Call 202-544-5977, Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET, to see how you can help.
