Google is currently engaged in a battle over unpaid taxes in the UK, which has led political commentators to now call for a new system of global taxation. Not surprisingly, this has become the chief topic of discussion at a series of global summits taking place during May and June.
Here’s how this major issue rose out of the Google debate, and how it will be folded into Bilderberg’s 2013 agenda, and later to the G8 Summit shortly thereafter…
Google’s Big Tent: ‘A Digital-Davos’
This past week witnessed another major global conference held at the very same Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire. The parallels to Bilderberg are striking – they share the same guests, the same venue, observe similar codes of conduct, and no doubt have similar items on their agenda. Google’s ‘Zeitgeist’ Global Summit, or “Big Tent” event, is effectively the internet’s version of a ‘Digital Davos’, where ‘the best and the brightest’ are invited to hear the latest ‘big ideas’, with debates and keynote speeches from the likes of Bill Clinton (Bilderberg member), UK Chancellor George Osborne, UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and other celebrities including Stephen Hawking.
It’s worth pointing out here that both Osborne and Miliband have played the role of Google’s adversary in public during their corporation tax row, yet they are the corporation’s VIP guests in private.
Beyond the high-profile talks and entertainment, there were of course, some serious discussion about ‘big ideas’ taking place under the big tent. This year’s event also required participants to observe ‘Chatham House Rules’, meaning key conversations should be held in the strictest of confidence and not be leaked to the outside world. As with Bilderberg, Google’s Big Tent discusses serious global changes that affect present and future generations – all behind closed doors.
Other persons of note at this year’s Google retreat were former US attorney general and Bush legal brain, Alberto Gonzales, alongside former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ‘innovation’ adviser, Alec Ross, key Putin advisor Arkady Dvorkovich, and Swedish foreign affairs minister, Carl Bildt (Bilderberg attendee 2006-2012). The profile of Google and Bilderberg guests has seen an incredible overlap in recent years, which is a testament to the corporation’s own stated ambition to achieve a global dominion, not only over its marketplace, but over cultural and political life as well. The reality in 2013 is that Google is poised to manage nearly every aspect of our lives – our communications, our work, our social life and even our history.
Bilderberg’s Digital Tycoons
As Google’s global summit runs smoothly into Bilderberg this year, so have the two meeting agendas. Recent years have seen an increase in the influx of digital tycoons present at Bilderberg. Alongside software moguls like Craig Mundie, Head of Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft (Bilderberg attendee 2006-2012), and Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Bilderberg attendee 2007-2011), the social media kingpins have also moved in to occupy key positions in Bilderberg’s top steering committees.
A key player in amongst them is Peter Thiel (left), head of Clarium Capital, the digital investment house that provided the financial clout which allowed for online ventures like Paypal, Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster to dominate their digital marketplaces.
Thiel was promoted to Bilderberg committee head in 2011 and has emerged as a key player not only in the online industries, but also influential in US political spheres, gaining attention recently as a prominent backer of Kentucky’s Republican junior Senator Rand Paul.
New global ‘Google Tax’ already in the works
The convergence of the Google Summit, its tax battle, and Bilderberg 2013 may seem innocent enough on its surface, but the timing is no mere coincidence. UK leadership have whipped up a frenzy in the media over Google’s alleged tax sins, leaving the public clamoring for a solution. The words “never let a good crisis go to waste” certainly chime in well here.
Two weeks ago, a major UK clash erupted between No. 10 Downing Street and Google over the issue of corporate tax evasion. Google’s Matt Brittin was grilled by the UK’s Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and its chair, Margaret Hodge, who accused Google “doing evil” by using an elaborate array of offshore entities in a “smoke and mirrors” financial maze designed to avoid paying any significant tax into UK coffers. Both PM David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne also came out loudly in public accusing Google of being ‘immoral’. Google is said to have only chipped in 6 million GBP in 2011 out of its 3 billion GBP turnover in that same year. Google’s Peter Baron claims it's in full compliance with UK law, issuing the public statement last week that, “None of the allegations put to us change the fact that Google pays the corporate tax due on its UK activities and complies fully with UK law.”
Will Google throw in the towel and submit to a British tax resolution?
The fact of the matter is that Google is powerful, and has a net worth that trumps some countries. These days much of the world’s commerce runs through Google in some way, and their brand recognition and money buys influence in Britain, and everywhere else it seems. So it’s doubtful that any British politico could strong-arm Google. Behind the scenes, both Google and Britain’s political elite share a place at central planning’s top round table – as members of the Bilderberg Group - and that’s where the really ‘big ideas’ are not just discussed, but actually transmitted into policy.
As the public feud between Google and Downing Street takes centre stage, backstage both UK Chancellor George Osborne and Google CEO Eric Schmidt – both committed fellow Bilderberg members, are said to have met in private at the Google event, and are poised to do so again at Bilderberg 2013. Both have attended the annual meeting almost continuously since 2006.
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George Osborne: Attacks Google in public, but is a VIP guest
and fellow Bilderberger to Google CEO Schmidt in private |
So this apparent Punch ‘n Judy match between Google and Downing Street appears just three weeks before this year’s Bilderberg summit, and four weeks before the G8, and suddenly the UK government and media outlets have become infested with a the new talking point: "we need a new ‘global profit tax’".
While addressing the Google tax loophole, the UK’s Independent newspaper led by its liberal-leaning economics editor, Ben Chu, goes on to essentially lay out what is likely to be at the top of the agenda at Bilderberg 2013:
The cascade of revelations in recent months showing multinational companies doing a huge amount of business here and yet paying virtually no corporation tax has provoked widespread public demands for something to be done.
National governments could and should try to put a stop to this egregious “profit shifting” on their own. But a unilateral approach is plainly second best.
The natural solution is to secure an agreement by all the world’s governments to tax the profits of multinational firms collectively and to divide up the revenues fairly between them. This division could be based on the amount of business done by the multinational in their various territories as revealed by their turnover and number of employees.
Global tax means global government
So is Google supplying the Trojan horse needed to implement a global taxation system that many have been warning about for so many years? Maybe.
Will Bilderberg’s global elite use this perfect crisis moment as a pretext to build the framework for global taxation? Most likely.
If the idea passes through Bilderberg in June, will it then be rubber stamped later at the G8? Highly likely.
Although happy to float such a revolutionary idea in the media in advance of back-to-back Google and Bilderberg summits at the Grove Hotel, and later at the G8, one thing which global taxation advocates fail to mention here is that if you institute a global taxation system then you would need a global government to administrate it. Yes, you heard that right: global taxation = global government.
It would be naive to think that any tax could be levied without a government standing behind it. That is, after all, part of the definition of a tax. Campaigners will deny it exists, but the reality is that global governing bodies have already been put into place long ago.
UK Column Editor Mike Robinson explains,
I think that the embryonic global institutions are already in place, and we’re going to see them being given more and more real ‘jobs’ to do as time goes on, and collecting corporation tax is clearly going to be one of those.
History can certainly prove one thing: that the world’s wealthiest individual corporations have consistently exploited all international tax loopholes for years now. Whatever commentators like Ben Chu and others are proposing will obviously be much easier to enforce on small- to medium-size businesses, as well as individual traders – all of whom have significantly less political leverage (and no invitations to Bilderberg) than the Googles and Facebooks of the world.
Post-Bilderberg: G8 Summit
Following the ratification of Bilderberg’s 2013 agenda in Watford on June 6–9th, the next step is normally to disseminate this same agenda onto the G8 heads of state. Conveniently, this year’s G8 summit will held June 17-18 at the Lough Erne golf resort in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. David Cameron and George Osborne’s new plan for Google is already expected to be very high on the agenda at the G8 meeting, where world leaders including Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin will be in attendance. Henceforth, ahead of the G8, the UK government is expected to play their key role in promoting the new global tax system, by publicly advocating, “new strong international standards to make sure that global companies pay the tax they owe.”
Coincidentally, this year’s G8 in Northern Ireland will be the biggest police operation in country’s history (and that’s saying a lot), with an estimated 8,000 officers from the surrounding counties, and from as far as England and Wales, all drafted in to secure the area for what many now believe has essentially become a global government operations meeting in all but name.
Other recent attempts at a global tax
The financial component of this global tax and government equation is actually already in place, and that is the World Bank. The first administrative working model for a global taxation structure was originally unveiled in 2009 at the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Delegates at that event floated their plan for a global carbon tax that would be collected and then deposited into a slush fund which was to be administered by the World Bank. Their plan also entailed the poorer, developing nations footing most of the bill for this operation, while the wealthier nations would receive a free pass. The secret plan was thwarted at the last minute thanks to the infamous Danish Text Leak, which was serialized in the Guardian newspaper at the time.
Although popular in socialist circles, few have dared reveal the true picture of a global tax regime for fear of triggering a public backlash. Other such tax proposals have been pushed into the public sphere through the Occupy Movement in 2011, which called for a global tax on financial transactions, or a global “Robin Hood Tax”. As was the case in Copenhagen two years earlier, proponents called for a tax structure without borders, yet few dared mention who would be in charge of administering and distributing the revenues. Such plans pose the very real danger of further centralizing power into the international banking community who would be asked to handle and perhaps hypothecate on these enormous slush funds.
Which brings us back to this latest global ‘Google Tax’ proposal, which ultimately begs the question: when will their global government structure be unveiled?
Serving the global collective
The media and political elite will have the public believe that there are not enough laws and regulations already in place to deal with apparent problems like large multinationals avoiding corporation tax. The fact is there are regulations in place, and all that is needed is to tighten them. So why jump ahead to insist a global tax system is necessary to solve the issue?
Plans for erecting an entirely new global tax system should worry anyone who values the concept of national sovereignty, because any solution that entails the collection of tax by way of an elite international “collective” of nations, and where “revenues are to divided up fairly between them” is suggesting a form of global collectivism, or communism. This is also the fundamental problem with EU plans to levy new taxes on member nations – for any citizen it’s simply another master to serve.
It starts with corporate tax, and once that door is opened, it’s anyone’s guess how wide their new regime will stretch.
Shocking as that may be, these issues are exactly what is being discussed behind closed doors at each of these global summits taking place in May and June of 2013.
What’s worse, is that this entire construct could be ushered in without any vote being cast by citizens in the individual countries – which is about as undemocratic as it gets. This remains one of the fundamental flaws at the heart of the ultra-liberal utopian ideal which is global government.
