Investigation Reveals:
Bilderbergers Want Taxes Up, War in Iraq Over

By James P. Tucker Jr.
June 6, 2004

Stresa, Italy-At this year's secret Bilderberg meeting, some of the world's most powerful elite focused on U.S. taxes and foreign giveaways, as well as the increasingly violent Iraq occupation and the role the United Nations should play in all future similar outbreaks of violence.

Prior to the meeting, a Bilderberg memo promised that its members would deal mainly with European-American relations and in that context, with U.S politics, Iraq, the Middle East, European geopolitics, NATO, China, energy and economic problems.

During the conference, Britain came in for harsh criticism for supporting the invasion of Iraq. It was also lambasted for failing to embrace the euro, despite Prime Minister Tony Blair's promise to do so at a Bilderberg meeting some years ago in the Scottish resort of Turnberry.

Bilderberg members also expressed frustration with the rising clamor in Britain to quit the European Union.

As expected, the United States was heavily criticized for the fact that its foreign aid was a smaller percentage of gross domestic product than that of other nations. That marked the third straight meeting at which Bilderbergers' decades of almost total congeniality was marred by hostility among the Americans, Britons, and continental Europeans.

The first evidence of division in the ranks was apparent in 2002 when Bilderbergers met at Chantilly, Va., near Washington. Then, Europeans were angry that the United Sates was preparing for an invasion of Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to placate them with a promise not to invade "this year." Instead, the war began in March 2003.

Bilderbergers, however, remain united in their long-term goal to strengthen the role the UN plays in regulating global relations. Aside from that objective, other matters on this year's conference agenda included the following:

- British elites are to press on with membership in the European Union despite growing domestic opposition.

- The Free Trade Area of the Americas should be enacted and include the entire Western Hemisphere except for Cuba until Fidel Castro is gone. It should then evolve into the "American Union" as a carbon copy of the European Union.

- An "Asian-Pacific Union" is to emerge as the third great superstate, neatly dividing the world into three great regions for the administrative convenience of banking and corporate elites. The United States and other international financial institutions should facilitate and administrate these global trade pacts.

Bilderbergers have, for some time, argued for three global currencies-the euro for Europe, the dollar for the American Union and another for the "Asian-Pacific Union."

One Bilderberger, Kenneth Clarke, a former chancellor of the British exchequer, saw the consolidation of currencies as an ideal strategy when he spoke to this reporter several years ago in Portugal. At that time, Clarke told me that "dollarization" would dominate the globe and "our children will laugh at all the petty currencies we have now."

Another much-discussed subject at this year's conference was the concept of imposing a direct UN tax on people worldwide. In order to achieve it, some Bilderbergers presented two proposals: a tax on oil at the wellhead and a tax on international financial transactions.

Bilderberg leaders tilted strongly toward the oil tax because everyone who drives a car, rides public transportation or flies in a plane will end up paying the tax. That will represent more people than those engaged in international financial transactions across the globe.

On the issue of Iraq, European Bilderbergers were more upset that the United States invaded without the UN's blessing than the fact that over 800 American soldiers have died and thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens have been killed.

Editor's note: By some accounts, 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.

Word reached the conference from Rumsfeld, who was unable to attend this year's meeting, that the U.S. military would assume a more defensive stance in Iraq, rather than the more provocative operations of door-to-door searches and widespread detention.

Rumsfeld was, however, represented in Stresa by Douglas Feith, his undersecretary for policy, and William Luti, deputy undersecretary for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. Former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle, one of the major architects of the war in Iraq, was also present. It had been Perle, Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz who, from the mid 1990s, had fashioned the Middle East policy later adopted by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

European Bilderbergers also protested the fact that the Pentagon was considering reducing troop levels in Germany and tried hard to convince their American counterparts to resist the move. They argued it would "undermine unity" and, irrespective of the military implications, the German economy benefited annually from the millions of dollars spent by U.S. servicemen there.

Resistance in Britain to the euro, and to membership in the European Union, caused much concern and was deemed an obstacle to the solidification of the superstate.

It was noted that many Europeans were unaware of the European Parliament elections scheduled for June 10 and should there be a low turnout, it could be attributed to a protest boycott of the elections by EU opposition groups.

Four former Conservative members of Parliament have endorsed the United Kingdom Independence Party, which demands British withdrawal from the European Union. And, if allowed to vote in a referendum, it has been reported that Britons would reject membership in the European Union by strong proportions. A YouGov survey, taken at the end of May, showed 48 percent would vote to get out of the European Union and 36 percent would vote to stay in.

As it stands, Europeans can only select members for the European Parliament but not the EU Commission, the bureaucratic powerhouse of the union.

Bilderberg 3-6 June 2004 List of Participants:

Davignon, Etienne - Honorary Chairman

Taylor, Martin - Honorary Secretary General

Auser, Svein
Ackermann, Josef
Ambrosetti, Alfredo
Babacan, Ali
Balsemao, Francisco Pinto
Barnavie, Elie
Benedetti, Rodolfo
Bernabe, Franco
Beytout, Nicolas
Bolkestein, Frits
Boot, Max
Borel, Daniel
Bortoli, Ferrucio de
Brock, Gunnar
Browne, John
Burgmans, Antony
Camus, Phillipe
Caracciolo, Lucio
Castries, Henri de
Cebrian, Juan Luis
Cemal, Hasan
Clarke, Kenneth
Collins, Timothy
Corzine, Jon (U.S. Senator)
Couchepin, Pascal
David, George
Dehaene, Jean-Luc
Dervis, Kemal
Diamantopoulou, Anna
Donilon, Thomas
Draghi, Mario
Edwards, John (2004 Democratic Party V.P. candidate)
Eldrup, Anders
Federspiel, Ulrik
Feith, Douglas
Galateri, Gabriele
Gates, Melinda (Bill Gates' wife)
Geithner, Timothy
Giavazzi, Francesco
Gleeson, Dermot
Graham, Donald
Haas, Richard
Halberstadt, Victor
Hansen, Jean-Pierre
Heikensten, Lars
Holbrooke, Richard
Hubbard, Allan
Issacson, Walter
Janow, Merit
Jordan, Vernon
Kagan, Robert
Kerr, John
Kissinger, Henry
Koc, Mustafa
Koenders, Bert
Kovner, Bruce
Kravis, Henry
Kravis, Marie Josee
Lehtomaki, Paula
Lipponen, Paavo
Long, Yongtu
Lopes, Pedro
Luti, William
Lynch, Kevin
Mathews, Jessica
McDonough, William
McKenna, Frank
Merlini, Cesare
Montbrial, Thierry de
Monti, Mario
Mundie, Craig
Myklebust, Egil
Naas, Matthias
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
Neville-Jones, Pauline
Nooyi, Indra
Olechowski, Andrzej
Ollila, Jorma
Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso
Pantelides, Leonidas
Passera, Corrado
Perle, Richard
Prince Phillipe
Reed, Ralph
Reisman, Heather
Riotta, Gianni
Rockefeller, David
Riodriguez Inearte, Matias
Ross, Dennis
Sandschneider, Eberhard
Scaroni, Paolo
Schily, Otto
Schnabel, Rockwell
Scholten, Rudolf
Schrempp, Jurgen
Serra Rexach, Eduardo
Shevtsova, Lilia
Sikora, Slawomir
Siniscalo, Domenico
Socrates, Jose
Strmecki, Marin
Struye de Swielande
Sutherland, Peter
Thornton, John
Tremonti, Giulio
Trichet, Jean-Claude
Tronchetti Provera, Marco
Underdal, Arild
Vasella, Daniel
Veer, Jeroen van der
Verwaayen, Ben
Visco, Ignazio
Vitorino, Antonio
Vries, Gijs
Wallenberg, Jacob
Weber, Jurgen
Weinberg, Peter
Wijers, Hans
Wissmann, Matthias
Wolf, Martin
Wolfenson, James
Yavlinsky, Grigory
Yergin, Daniel
Zumwinkel, Klaus

Rachman, Gideon - Rapporteur
Wooldridge, Adrian - Rapporteur