Bilderberg-- The Secret Group That Runs The World?

The word "Bilderberg" immediately conjures up New World Order conspiracy theories. Wikipedia has a thorough explanation of what the group, which has been meeting annually since Holland's Nazi Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld convened it in 1954, is really all about. The basic wiki-intro:

The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 140 guests, most of whom are people of influence in the fields of politics, banking, business, the military and news media. The names of attendees are made available to the press, but the conferences are closed to the public and the media, and no press releases are issued.

Because of its exclusivity and privacy, the Bilderberg group is frequently accused by conspiracy theorists from both extremes of the political spectrum of being an all-powerful secret society fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors.

Critics of Bilderberg conspiracy theories counter that it is nothing more than a policy discussion forum and social club which only serves as a means to brainstorm, reach consensus, and create social cohesion within the power elite of Western European and North American nations, to better promote Atlanticism and neoliberalism.

The Bilderberg Group has been denounced as a conspiracy from left and right, from everyone from crackpots like Alex Jones, Lyndon LaRouche, Phyllis Schlafly to Jesse Ventura (see video above) and Fidel Castro, who described "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self" in an article he wrote for Granma.

The latest meeting was this past weekend in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Ancillary news stories included the violent expulsion of an Italian parliamentarian, Mario Borghezio, from the Swiss Canton, the non-violent exclusion of a Swiss Parliament member, and a lurid male prostitution scandal, but all were sideshows. Time gave some tame background last week and the Guardian was less circumspect. In the last few weeks we saw how the American and European ruling elites were-- and are-- ardent fascists. They haven't let the little mishap they had with their boy Hitler get in their way. The Rockefellers were huge fascists in the 1930s and '40s and David Rockefeller's power inside the Bilderberg Group, along with the power of the other transnational elites-- Henry Kravis, head of private equity giant KKR, and his wife, Marie-Josée (Hudson Institute; International Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve), "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle (Hudson Institute; PNAC; Hollinger; former Gaddafi adviser), Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Robert Gates, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Peter Thiel of Calrium Capital, Edmund Clarke, the queens of Holland and Spain, President & CEO of Canada's second largest bank, Toronto-Dominion, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Eric Schmidt of Google, EU President Herman Van Rompuy, Peter Orszag, Robert Rubin-- gives reason for pause... even if two masters of the universe not invited-- or at least not able to attend-- this year were Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Houston-based Adley Abdulwahab of A&O Resource Management. Enough pause to watch the clip below?