UK Officials Speak Out As Bilderberg-Linked Plans Emerge

• Elite seeks deals on world tax, U.S. of Europe, austerity, nationalism at 2013 meeting

By Mark Anderson

WATFORD, U.K.—A revolutionary “United States of Europe” proposal being floated in conjunction with the 2013 Bilderberg summit in the United Kingdom, was given more credence June 11—just two days after the Bilderbergers concluded their secretive annual meeting—when the BBC’s morning TV news program “Hardtalk” welcomed Lord Nigel Lawson to the show.

Lawson, a former Conservative Party House of Lords member, and a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was asked by Hardtalk host Stephen Sackur whether the world was on the brink of a “full-blooded United States of Europe,” which could only result from further consolidating the European Union.

Lawson, who’s considered a Euro-skeptic—he says he supports getting the UK out of the EU—replied to Sackur: “I don’t think they’re going to do that.”  Yet, despite offering such a verbal buffer, it’s not altogether clear if Lawson would really put up strong resistance to the U.S. of Europe concept—a concept that seemed to come out of nowhere, just two days after the 2013 Bilderberg summit concluded.

Prior to that, this concept appeared May 3, just over one month before Bilderberg, when the Bilderberg-linked Brookings Institution welcomed European Parliament Vice President Gianni Pittella to a public program in Washington, D.C.

 
 
 

There, Pittella called not only for a U.S. of Europe in order to save the euro currency—a critical concern among the Bilderbergers and related groups—but also for a North American-European free trade agreement, among other things.

And, interestingly, the Hardtalk host also noted that British Prime Minister David Cameron “supports a trade agreement with the U.S,” even as Cameron had departed Bilderberg and began preparing for the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland. The UK chaired that meeting this year.

After some initial stalling, Cameron’s office admitted at the last minute that he would in fact attend this year’s Bilderberg meeting at the Grove Hotel near Watford, even after he had told the mainstream UK press that he wants to go after major corporations, tooth and nail, for parking their profits in overseas tax havens and avoiding UK taxes—a strange stance to take when  Bilderberg meetings allow him to break bread, off the record and out of public view, with the heads of some of the world’s largest and most influential corporations and banks.

Cameron also previously stated he was pursuing an unrivaled degree of governmental transparency while decrying the intense lobbying that influences British policy, yet many Bilderberg critics, such as MP Michael Meacher of the Labour Party, define the annual Bilderberg meetings as deal-making, in essence lobbying, summits, at least in part. This is due to the crossing of paths between members of top corporations and banks with government officials at the meetings.

Notably, the BBC itself has strong Bilderberg ties. Marcus Agius, former group chairman of Barclays Bank, is a frequent Bilderberg attendee and serves on the BBC’s new executive board as a senior non-executive director.

Bilderberg Wheeling & Dealing

On June 6, MP Michael Meacher visited reporters covering Bilderberg, at the actual site reserved and patrolled by Hertfordshire police for alternative press and protesters to use.

Meacher was seconded by the , a Member of the European Parliament, in openly criticizing Bilderberg—and this appears to be an unprecedented development for elected officials to do this. Batten basically said that his party opposes the EU itself and wants to get out of it, thus forming a new U.S. of Europe is out of the question.

Reporters from the Times of London, The Daily Telegraph and other mainstream media were briefly on hand at the same site to get some quotes, mainly from Meacher. Yet, oddly, these “mainstreamers” reported very little on what Meacher actually had to say. To its limited credit, the Telegraph around June 8 reported in a small snippet that Meacher was intent on pressing Cameron’s administration to answer the House of Commons about his role at, and the intent of, the Bilderberg Meetings.

Not only did Meacher generally corroborate this writer’s recent story in AFP—that a a global tax may be developing under Bilderberg guidance—he  also said of this year’s Bilderberg summit: “They will have come prepared, seeking to get the cooperation of others and to get the best deal they can—this is a deal-making conference.”

He also told AFP: “And it’s because those deals are things that they wish to conceal from the public, that they keep it secret.”

When a Times reporter asked if this collaboration among the super-rich is rather normal—saying to Meacher, “That’s capitalism, isn’t it?—Meacher replied, “First of all . . . they meet all over the place, they don’t just meet here. But this [Bilderberg] is very unusual. I would say unique. This is 130 very rich people in positions of great power in their own market organizations or government organizations. . . . This is something for which there is no similar opportunity. And if there is going to be one opportunity for them really to settle the future of capitalism . . . this is it.”

While noting that he means the specific kind of “neo-liberal capitalism” that rejects public accountability and often does great harm, he added: “It [this Bilderberg meeting] is going to involve some very tough decisions, like whether we’re going to carry on with austerity.” Meacher feels that most of the Bilderbergers prefer to keep austerity going because it weakens the lower classes and suppresses “social-democratic” institutions and tendencies—in essence, populism. “But there are consequences to this, such as social unrest,” he said.

That may tie in with a stated Bilderberg 2013 agenda item, as listed on their official website, entitled “Nationalism and Populism.”

Moreover, two of Bilderberg’s other claimed topics for this year, “Politics of the European Union” and “Can the U.S., Europe Grow Faster, Create Jobs?” clearly could encompass the topics of further EU consolidation and the possible U.S.-European free trade pact.