Image: looking north west over Turin

“The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual meeting designed to foster dialogue and discussion between Europe and North America … bringing together individuals who share an active interest in affairs relevant to the relationship between [them]. There is no desired outcome, there is no closing statement, there are no resolutions proposed or votes taken.”

“An invitation to this group [supervenes on] whether participants can bring an interesting perspective to the discussions and invited by virtue of the different point of view they offer.”

“The first meeting took place in Hotel De Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. Representatives from economic, social, political and cultural fields were invited to hold informal discussions to help create a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult post-war period.”

So, plus ça change.

Fostering dialogue and understanding is a Good on any measure. Participants are figures on the kind of global stage where the curtains rarely open and whose actors move quietly behind the scenes as well.

Here’s the list of the delegates.

Were the shroud of privacy to be lifted, it’d be interesting to listen to how the recent introduction of business brinkmanship to North American politics is discussed by this distillation of Davos.

Mebbie, it’s precisely the ingredient needed to ignite fresh thinking? Mebbie, in Turin this week, the dialogue fostered within The Bilderberg Meeting might sift to the surface the largest stone to polish it a bit?

* text in “inverted commas” is lifted from the Bilderberg site