> There was nothing politically hapless about Eric Schmidt. I had been too eager to see a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast. But that is not the sort of person who attends the Bilderberg conference four years running, who pays regular visits to the White House, or who delivers “fireside chats” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.<p>My Grandmother had a subscription to <i>American Free Press</i>, a weekly/biweekly/monthly (?) newspaper. One of their reporters had covered the annual Bilderberg conference for decades.<p>The regular media did not discuss the Bilderburgers' activities. The organization kept a very tight lid on the existence of their group and where they'd be meeting, but that reporter successfully figured out what they'd discussed year after year. Future presidents tended to show up -- it was a part of the vetting process I guess, "will this 'Bill Clinton' fellow be useful to us?" and so forth. Both parties' candidates would tend to make an appearance, so they'd be up to date on the Agenda for the years to come.<p>The Bilderberg group was named after their first meeting location, "Bilderberg Hotel, a hotel in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands, namesake of the Bilderberg Group" (wikipedia disambiguation page).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_meeting" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_meeting</a>
I recall reading this long ago, but had forgotten about it.<p>Meanwhile since 2016 I have been wondering why in the world Assange would have so obviously been in the bag for Donald Trump. Was he Russian intelligence? I always was skeptical of the Russia thing, or thought it was exaggerated at least. Did Assange go fascist along with so many others in the former hacktivist subculture? Maybe but I didn’t see any overt proof of that.<p>Then I see this again and wonder if it was less about being in the bag for Trump than being against Hillary Clinton and the people around her. It seems like Assange and I’m sure others were determined that Hillary Clinton should be kept out of the presidency at any cost.<p>I feel like there has got to be a story here that hasn’t been told.<p>My own opinion is this:<p>I get wanting change and there are a lot of bad things you can say about the current powers that be, but if you want revolution you have to offer something better than the status quo. Fascism and race nationalism are things that are decidedly worse than the status quo. I don’t support nihilistic revolution for the sake of revolution either. It almost always ends up in something as bad or worse than what existed before. Revolution only works when there are better ideas or at least better people, and I see neither.