Bilderberg Concerned about Opposition

• A major focus of the recent Bilderberg gathering in the nation's capital was the rise of a solid America First bloc that threatens Bilderberg's plans for increased, forced globalization of America's resources.

Bilderberg devoted much of a day-long meeting of its steering committee in Washington to expressing fears over growing "isolationism," which it blames on growing populist and nationalist sentiment (long cultivated by Liberty Lobby and The SPOTLIGHT) and which is being successfully harvested by Pat Buchanan's burgeoning Reform Party presidential candidacy.

Bilderberg's committee gathered for dinner on the evening of Nov. 4 and worked all day Nov. 5. The dinner and meetings were held in sealed-off, guarded areas of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.

In addition to the regulars -- David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) -- former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger also attended.

The steering committee always gathers months in advance of the full membership meeting of Bilderberg for routine housekeeping, such as approving the location of their next hiding place, preparing an agenda and giving another shove to its long-term goal of world government.

What was unusual this year was giving so much attention to its concern about growing "isolationism" in the United States.

In a speech by Samuel Berger, President Clinton's national security advisor, and in a book entitled New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, which was assigned to each participant, fears of "isolationism" and "nationalism" were expressed repeatedly.

SANDY SAYS ...

The text of Berger's speech and a copy of the book were obtained by The SPOTLIGHT on site at the Library of Congress, although the White House actually posted Berger's published remarks on its own Internet web site [www.whitehouse.gov].

"After 50 years of building alliances for collective security, common prosperity and wider freedom, we now have an unparalleled opportunity to shape, with others, a better, safer more democratic world," Berger told his Bilderberg colleagues.

Berger objected to "isolationism" among Republicans and Democrats that "isolates" America.

"Over the last six and a half years, the administration has worked with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to enlarge NATO and bolster "democracy" in Central Europe, to ex tend NAFTA to Mexico and create the World Trade Organization, to ratify START II and the Chemical Weapons Convention, to support our troops in en gagements from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf and to launch a host of other international initiatives," Berger boasted.

He blamed isolationists for the rejection of the test ban treaty in the Senate.

"That same small but increasingly powerful group is responsible for the steady decline in our international affairs budget -- to the point where the gulf between America's aspirations in the world and our ability to realize them is growing," Berger said.

He complained about congressional cutbacks to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- the two major conduits for shipping American tax dollars overseas -- and cutting the request for United Nations "peacekeeping" funds by 60 percent.

"These congressional actions do not result from simple differences over policy or from partisanship," Berger said. "They reflect the coherent philosophy of a dominant minority, which sees international spending as inherently op posed to America's interests," Berger said.

"It is urgent that internationalists find common ground around a common agenda of our own," Berger said. "We must learn to recognize when our beliefs are being threatened. And we must defend them together."

Bilderberg participants expressed concern over institutions such as Liberty Lobby promoting "isolationism" -- a Bilderberg synonym for a policy of non-intervention -- and fear that Buchanan may be nominated by the Reform Party, picking up $11 million in campaign cash, making the ballot in all 50 states and participating in a three-way debate among presidential nominees in the fall of 2000.

In such a debate, most agreed, Buchanan would mop up the Republican and Democratic nominees, whether their names are George W. Bush, John McCain, Al Gore or Bill Bradley. For Buchanan to have the opportunity to educate millions of Americans, who watch TV but rarely read, strikes fear in Bilderberg hearts.

RISING TIDE OF PATRIOTISM

The book assigned to Bilderberg participants to read was prepared by the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century, headed by Hart and former Sen. Warren Rudman. It reflects much of the Bilderberger concerns about a rising tide of patriotism in America.

The book worried that isolationists "sense conspiracy" and make it difficult to "stand together in an era of dissolving borders," warning that, as a result, "further global economic integration is not a certainty."

There is "nothing immutable about the present arrangements wherein certain peoples are ruled within certain fixed territorial units ... the changes ahead have the potential to undermine the authority of states, and the political identities and loyalties of citizens" will be in doubt, the book says. "The principle of state sovereignty and of the state system is wasting away."

It says "globalization is basically good ... because it may be a vehicle to transcend the system of state sovereignty." But it warned of isolationists who argue that "globalization is being used by the corporate rich to grow still richer at nearly everyone else's ex pense."

The "ideal of universal human rights will also challenge the traditional concept of state sovereignty," it says, citing the case of Augusto Pinochet as illustrating "the evolution of international law toward views that undermine sovereignty." It also cited the invasion of Yugoslavia as another giant leap toward the end of nationhood.

"The campaign in Kosovo was the clearest example in modern times of a major power or alliance intervening militarily in the internal affairs of another sovereign state avowedly on behalf of minority rights," the book approvingly says. Leaders "applaud the erosion of sovereignty over such questions, as well as others."

GLOBAL GOVERNMENT

The book also follows the Bilderberg program for global government by dividing the world into three great regions for the administrative convenience of the UN, which is to emerge as a de jure, as well as de facto, world government. Each region -- the European Union, the American Union and the Asian-Pacific Union -- is to evolve into a single state with a common currency.

The book reports with approval the giant steps taken toward each of the goals of regionalization and celebrates the "dollarization" of the Western Hemisphere, which Bilderberg called for at its meeting in Sintra, Portugal, last June.

"In addition to trade integration, the Americas will experience greater monetary integration," the book said. "Proposals for dollarization are being debated by the public and/or private sectors in Argentina, Mexico and El Salvador. Currently, Latin Americans hold a majority of their savings in dollars and 70 percent of banking assets and liabilities are dollar-denominated in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Uruguay."

Global trends "indicate that a regional currency bloc is a strong possibility," the book concludes.