If You Can Read This I Still Have A Job

The Globe and Mail's Patricia Best, who recently launched a gossipy column (but ya gotta pay unless you know the Google News trick) in the paper's "Report on Business," yesterday noted that Robert Prichard, chief executive officer of Torstar, which owns the Toronto Star, which owns this blog (but not me!), was on the guest list of the uber elite Bilderberg Group.

Conspiracy buffs are fond of tracking the Bilderberg Group, a largely European, very exclusive body of bankers, businessmen, pundits and politicians.

Outsiders are convinced the secretive organization yields enormous influence on world events. The group meets annually and the guest list -- a who's who of clout -- is usually a well-kept secret.

As for the press, although the occasional top editor is included, the proceedings are strictly off the record.

However, Nobody's Business can tell you that at the recent -- May 5-8 -- meeting in Rottach-Egern, Germany, a number of Canadians were there, including Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books & Music Inc., hot design guru Bruce Mau, radical Islamic reformer Irshad Manji, Marie-Josee Kravis, senior fellow at Hudson Institute Inc., and Robert Prichard, chief executive officer of Torstar Corp. (Prichard and Reisman have seen a lot of each other recently -- they both attended the annual meeting of Onex Corp. 10 days ago, where the two were re-elected to the board, chaired by Reisman's husband Gerry Schwartz.)

But hold on -- what would Toronto Star newspaper founder Joseph Atkinson, who proselytized the rights and interests of the common person, say about the paper's corporate leader hobnobbing with royalty and the chairmen of multinational giants such as Coca-Cola, Lafarge Cement, global insurer AXA and others?

BTW: Best does not mention that former Liberal New Brunswick premier (and chair of CanWest Global's board) Frank McKenna, now ambassador to the U.S., and Heather Munroe-Blum, principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, rounded out the Canadian contingent.

I must admit, that over the years, I have received the occasional paranoid email connecting the dots between Bilderberg and major world events. As Best notes, Bilderberg brings out the tin foil hat brigade.

Whatever.

My attitude is, the rich and powerful already run the world, most of them openly. Money always talked. People like this have connections and influence even if they don't get together for a behind-closed-doors chowdown and chatfest once a year. And I am not sure how shadowy this bunch can be if what appears to be its guest list is published.

Here's the Financial Times' (subscription required) recent take on the conference:

(T)he aim of the group's organisers is more modest than the hectic cyber-chatter might suggest. They see it as a forum in which officials, academics and businessmen from both sides of the Atlantic can speak frankly and come to understand each other a little more.

They have wrestled with many of the world's biggest topics - from the rise of south-east Asia in 1956, to the technological gap between the US and Europe in 1967, to corporate fraud in 2004.

"It's not a capitalist plot to run the world," says Etienne Davignon, Bilderberg's unpaid chairman and a former vice-president of the European Commission. "If we really believed we were running the world, we would immediately resign in complete despair."

And:

This year's event will open with a discussion chaired by Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on the meaning of "freedom" - a hot topic since President George W. Bush's liberal use of the word in his inauguration speech sparked off speculation about a worldwide US agenda for regime change.

Natan Sharansky, the author of Mr. Bush's favourite book on democracy, will participate, as will Bernard Kouchner, the founder of the charity Medecins sans Frontieres and former United Nations envoy to Kosovo.

Other panels during the long weekend that stretches from Thursday dinner to Sunday lunch will address issues such as non-proliferation, the role of Russia, Israel-Palestine, US attempts at social security reform and Europe's benighted Lisbon agenda for economic liberalisation.

At least one blogger believes the Star won't touch the story of Prichard being there.

Well, I just did.

Just for the record, in 1996, when then-media mogul Conrad Black hosted the Bilderberg hoedown here, we reported on it. On the front page. With an aerial shot of the venue.

Today, Black turns to his duties as a permanent Canadian member of the Bilderberg. For 42 years the secretive
organization has devoted itself to strengthening the Atlantic
military alliance and economies.
  Bilderberg's movers and shakers will be holed up behind heavy
security at the King Ranch on north Jane St., a luxurious $60
million resort created by the Koffler family and later ceded to
the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which uses it as a
"leadership centre."

In fact, the Star was the first mainstream paper ever, at least according to my data base searches, to spill the beans on the Bilderberg bunfest, complete with the guest list. Unfortunately, the story is not online but you can read about it here.

I am just trying to keep up with our proud tradition.