Dr. Alexander von Paleske 29.12. 2010 --- Two weeks ago, on 15th December 2010, an article appeared in CBC news of British Columbia / Canada:

“Campbell`’s Bilderberg trip no conflict: official”

The outgoing Premier of British Columbia Gordon Campbell attended the secret Bilderberg Conference in Sitges/ Spain in June this year, and used taxpayer's money for the trip to the tune of 8700 Canadian Dollar.

The conference was also attended – among others – by Bill Gates, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former US -Secretary for State Henry Kissinger, and US Diplomat Richard Holbrooke.

Campbell was accused by Chris Delaney from the HST campaign of using public money for attending a private meeting.

Campbell was cleared from any wrongdoing by British Columbia’s conflict of interest commissioner, Paul Fraser, who stated:

"The intellectual stimulation and benefit that the premier received by attending the meeting was, given his position as the head of the government, also a benefit to the citizens of this province. Information is the currency of democracy and the source of knowledge that informs public policy,"

Unfortunately putting the quote “information is the currency of democracy” to this conference, Bilderberg-conferences turn out to be an insult to information and thus to democracy, as this privately organized conferences are not a private meeting in the strict sense at all, and therefore the exclusion of press and public is - and should be - completely unacceptable for any democrat.

Furthermore, any democratically elected premier, like Campbell, is supposed to uphold the principles of information and democracy, which this conference is blatantly violating.

Let’s have a closer look
The Bilderberg conferences, which are an annual event and attended by top Western decision makers, were founded by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and named after the castle Bilderberg,, that belonged to him and where the first conference took place.

Participants were nobles, high ranking army officers, politicians and top business people.

Press and public were barred from the conference straight away from the beginning.

Bernhard, a former follower of Adolf Hitler who became member of the SS, however managed in time to jump off the brown bandwagon, was the Bilderberg Conference Chairperson from 1954-1976. He then had to resign, because it became public, that he was corrupt to the core by promoting the sale of Lockheed aircrafts to the Dutch army in exchange for money.

The conferences now attract not only the invited guests, but also quite a number of protesters from several countries.

Access to information and Press Freedom
The battle for access to information is - and always has been - part of the fight for press freedom.

Many democratically elected parliamentarians and parliaments have voted for "access to information" rights. This applies not only to state institutions, but also to gatherings of public interest, may they be state organized or privately organized.
This does certainly not apply to private meetings as such, i.e. if, let me say, Kissinger invites a few public figures to his house.

However, an institutionalized gathering (meeting, conference) of a larger amount of public figures, that is taking place on a regular basis, where a lot of the attendees participate at the expense of taxpayers money, can certainly not be called a “private meeting” at all.
Best Example: World Economic Forum Davos/Switzerland..

Thus, to call the Bilderberg conference with his 100 + attendees a private meeting means basically to fool the public, and using a cheap and misleading excuse for not letting the press in.

The public has a basic democratic right to know, not only who attended, but also what was discussed, and what decisions have been made.

No democrat should therefore attend these meetings, as long as the precondition for participation is to keep quite about it.

Secret trials, secret gatherings, censorship and denial of access to information were all part and parcel of times gone by, against which the French revolution once was staged. Openness, press freedom, public trials, access to information are all essential parts of any democracy.

Not an Honour
It is deeply regrettable, that a lot of people in high places still think, that it is an honour to get an invitation for this secret meeting, instead of realizing, that by attending the Bilderberg- Conference and adhering to the conditions, they are becoming complicit in violating and - worse - insulting fundamental principles of democracy.

Furthermore, it is regrettable, that Matthias Nass, the deputy editor of Germany’s leading liberal weekly paper “DIE ZEIT”, has become one of the key organizers of the conference, thus trampling on the principles of press freedom, instead of upholding them, most likely simply for the benefit of rubbing shoulders with the rich and mighty.

The Bilderberg conference has to come out of the shroud of secrecy, or should be boycotted by democrats, and no public funds should be made available, as long as access of the press to the meetings is denied.

Let me close with the saying:

You can fool some people for some time. However, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.