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NWO for the people

The Bilderberg's 1998 meeting was held alongside the G8 summit from May 15-17 in Birmingham, England. Immediately afterwards, the World Trade Organization hosted its 50th anniversary celebrations in Geneva from May 18-20.

While the elite celebrated their domination of the world economy, an estimated 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets in Geneva to peacefully protest a free trade system which they blamed for increasing global poverty and financial instability. The demonstrators equated the cause of these problems with the WTO's efforts to lower trade barriers and usher in the exploitative free markets of the New World Order.

Following the march, enraged youths burned cars and broke store windows. According to police and eyewitnesses, these youths were "casseurs," or "smashers" -- agents provocateur who used the peaceful march as an excuse to go on a violent rampage. Masked youths reportedly hurled stones at cars and restaurants, at one point overturning a limousine belonging to a WTO envoy. After the demonstrators dispersed, these "casseurs" continued their rampage throughout the city, smashing more storefronts, looting a supermarket and hurling Molotov cocktails.

Police responded with a tear gas assault and tightened a barricade-and-barbed-wire blockade around Geneva's international sites, which would be visited by various world leaders the following week. Police in full riot gear stood ready to quell any further insurrections.

Meanwhile, in Prague, Czech Republic, a demonstration turned ugly which started out as a protest against the impact of multinational corporations on the environment. An estimated 2,000 radical youths took part in "Global Street Party 98." Many turned to violence to express their dissent, overturning a police car, throwing stones into two fast-food restaurants, and injuring 22 of the riot police called in to disperse the crowd.

Obviously, just because the global elite is shoving the New World Order down our throats doesn't mean we have to like it. The policies of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization are causing real harm to real people. It is not the elite who bear the burdens of globalization; those at the bottom of the pyramid carry its weight. "Informal" forums such as the Bilderberg Group may not literally decide and implement policy, but the ideas test-marketed at the Bilderberg are often sold wholesale to international organs which do create and implement policy.

"With such an array of the wealthy and powerful in the same place, these issues could be dealt with and decisions made that would bring hope and life to millions of poverty-stricken and dying people the world over," writes Bilderberg critic Tony Gosling, a volunteer land rights worker and former BBC Radio reporter. "But instead this time they were believed to be discussing ways to increase the groups secrecy, possibly by changing its name; fast tracking austerity measures and EMU; and extending the influence of the transnational corporations and banks over Western politicians."

"The unhappy result," Gosling writes, "is a picture of Western democracy subverted, with decision makers getting together not for reasons important to ordinary people -- social justice, common interest, and quality of life -- but to strengthen economic austerity and bring even more private gain for the world's political and corporate elite. Bilderbergers talk openly of centralizing power in their own interests, which leaves the man in the street ever further away from controlling his own destiny.

"So what vision, if any, is being pursued? We all have a right, indeed in an age of mass-starvation and with the continued threat of global destruction, a need to know."

But what is the best way to assert the rights of the world's citizenry in the New World Order? Among critics of global neo-colonialism, there is an ongoing debate over the actual significance of groups like the Bilderberg in the grand scheme of things.

Peoples Global Action Secretariat Sergio Hernandez recently wrote, "If international capitalism would exist only because of the Trilateral Commission, all what you would need would be applying the "final solution" to the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and similar capitalists (funny enough, many of them Jew or Mason) and that would be all. Unfortunately things are not so easy, as we know, but anti-corporate-rule activism often seems to convey this message.... It is neither the Bilderberg nor the Trilaterals that can impose patents on life almost all over the world." (Hernandez stated that his personal opinions do not speak for the opinions of Peoples Global Action.)

Tony Gosling, who views secretive elite groups as a powerful forces in global politics, noted, "Nationalism is certainly not an alternative, but it is only one of the voices that criticize the world elites. Nationalism is equally narrow minded as globalization. International solidarity around a charter of human and environmental rights -- such as access to culture through radio and TV, and the right to land -- seems like a common sense way forward."

Norio Hayakawa, webmaster of the online magazine Groomwatch and outspoken critic of the Bilderberg and other elitist groups, made a lot of sense in a recent Internet post: "We can turn things around by learning to fight smart using the system our forefathers gave us that has held us for so long. Violence is not the answer: unity, dedication and commitment are our weapons."

Well said, Norio. Our own government has not completely slipped out of our grasp, and people are starting to figure it out. In 1997, bipartisan protectionist forces in Congress scored a major victory by denying President Clinton's request for "fast-track authority" to negotiate global trade agreements. Resistance is still possible. But progress is a neglected issue.

The New World Order is happening; nothing will stop it at this point. But we can still influence it. There is nothing to stop us from creating a "Bilderberg for the People" to address the issues that the global elite ignore. We can still assert our rights, and expand them in ways we may never have conceived of before. And while the future may at times seem uncertain, just think of how boring it would be if you already knew how it would all turn out. We've got to at least give the global puppetmasters a run for their money, right?