How to Assign a Static IP Address in Windows 7, 8, 10, XP, or Vista

*I often go back and look at my posts and wonder how I even remember all this shit but can't remember birthdays, holidays or peoples names.

When organizing your home network it’s easier to assign each computer it’s own IP address than using DHCP. Here we will take a look at doing it in XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.x, and Windows 10.

RELATED ARTICLE

How and Why All Devices in Your Home Share One IP Address

If you have a home network with several computes and devices, it’s a good idea to assign each of them a specific address. If you use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), each computer will request and be assigned an address every time it’s booted up. When you have to do troubleshooting on your network, it’s annoying going to each machine to figure out what IP they have.

Using Static IPs prevents address conflicts between devices and allows you to manage them more easily. Assigning IPs to Windows is essentially the same process, but getting to where you need to be varies between each version.

Windows 7 or Windows 8.x or Windows 10

To change the computer’s IP address in Windows, type network and sharing into the Search box in the Start Menu and select Network and Sharing Center when it comes up. If you are in Windows 8.x it will be on the Start Screen itself, like the screenshot at the top of this article. If you’re in Windows 7 or 10 it’ll be in the start menu.

Then when the Network and Sharing Center opens, click on Change adapter settings. This will be the same on Windows 7 or 8.x or 10.

Right-click on your local adapter and select Properties.

In the Local Area Connection Properties window highlight Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) then click the Properties button.

Now select the radio button Use the following IP address and enter in the correct IP, Subnet mask, and Default gateway that corresponds with your network setup. Then enter your Preferred and Alternate DNS server addresses. Here we’re on a home network and using a simple Class C network configuration and Google DNS.

Check Validate settings upon exit so Windows can find any problems with the addresses you entered. When you’re finished click OK.

Now close out of the Local Area Connections Properties window.

Windows will run network diagnostics and verify the connection is good. Here we had no problems with it, but if you did, you could run the network troubleshooting wizard.

Now you can open the command prompt and do an ipconfig  to see the network adapter settings have been successfully changed.

RELATED ARTICLES

How to Find Your Private and Public IP Addresses

How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference

Windows Vista

Changing your IP from DHCP to a Static address in Vista is similar to Windows 7, but getting to the correct location is a bit different. Open the Start Menu, right-click on Network, and select Properties.

The Network and Sharing Center opens…click on Manage network connections.

Right-click on the network adapter you want to assign an IP address and click Properties.

Highlight Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) then click the Properties button.

Now change the IP, Subnet mask, Default Gateway, and DNS Server Addresses. When you’re finished click OK.

You’ll need to close out of Local Area Connection Properties for the settings to go into effect.

Open the Command Prompt and do an ipconfig to verify the changes were successful.

Windows XP

In this example we’re using XP SP3 Media Center Edition and changing the IP address of the Wireless adapter.

To set a Static IP in XP right-click on My Network Places and select Properties.

Right-click on the adapter you want to set the IP for and select Properties.

Highlight Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Properties button.

Now change the IP, Subnet mask, Default Gateway, and DNS Server Addresses. When you’re finished click OK.

You will need to close out of the Network Connection Properties screen before the changes go into effect.

Again you can verify the settings by doing an ipconfig in the command prompt. In case you’re not sure how to do this, click on Start then Run.

In the Run box type in cmd and click OK.

Then at the prompt type in ipconfig and hit Enter. This will show the IP address for the network adapter you changed.

If you have a small office or home network, assigning each computer a specific IP address makes it a lot easier to manage and troubleshoot network connection problems.

Shocking Facts: 23 Statistics on Illiteracy in America

FREE @ http://manybooks.net/

Reading is an invaluable skill that's important to just about every aspect of our daily lives, from communications to the way we work to the food we eat. The ability to read and understand text is something that children typically begin to pick up on beginning around age five or six, but for some, reading doesn't click right away. If kids struggle with reading in their younger years, it increases the odds that they'll do so as adults.

Despite being a global economic and political leader, illiteracy continues to be a pervasive problem in the U.S. For adults who struggle with reading, the impact is felt in a number of ways, but the most obvious one is in the workplace. While researchers have pinpointed some of the causes behind the illiteracy crisis, including poverty, learning disabilities and a lack of parental participation, finding a solution has proven difficult. To put the severity of the issue into perspective, CreditDonkey has assembled a list of 23 startling statistics on illiteracy in America.

ADULT ILLITERACY RATES

We consulted a number of sources to generate the most accurate picture possible of just how widespread illiteracy is here at home. We used the data to break the numbers down into relevant categories, beginning with how widespread illiteracy is among adults.

1. How many people in the U.S. are illiterate? 
Approximately 32 million adults in America are considered to be illiterate; about 14% of the entire adult population cannot read.

2. How does that compare to the rest of the world? 
On a global scale, illiteracy affects 774 million adults aged 15 or older. Among developed nations, the U.S. ranks 16th for adult reading skills.

3. How many adults only read at the lowest proficiency level? 
Between 40 and 44 million adults, or roughly 20 to 23% of adults in the U.S., are limited to reading at the basic or below basic proficiency levels.

4. Are men or women more likely to be illiterate? 
Women are more likely to develop solid reading skills. Around 38% of men report reading at the lowest proficiency levels, compared to 33% for women.

5. How many adults read at or below a fifth grade level? 
Reading material becomes more complex for students around the fifth grade, and some 30 million adults aren't able to comprehend texts that are appropriate for 10-year-olds.

6. How many adults aren't able to read above an eighth grade level? 
An estimated 63 million adults read between a sixth and eighth grade level. Just 11% of men and 12% of women make the grade as proficient readers.

7. What age group has lowest literacy rate? 
Surprisingly, it's actually older Americans who most frequently lack adequate reading skills. Approximately one-third of adults who struggle with illiteracy are aged 65 or older.

8. What city has the worst illiteracy problem? 
The Golden State has a lot to offer if you like surfing the waves or spotting celebrities, but it falls short when it comes to reading. Bakersfield earned the title of the least literate city in the U.S. in 2013, with only about 20% of residents calling themselves college graduates.

9. What city boasts the strongest readers? 
While adults struggle with literacy in California, it's a different story on the other side of the country. Washington, D.C., ranks as the most literacy-minded city in America, with 53% of adults holding a college degree.

ILLITERACY AND YOUTH

While the difficulties that go along with being unable to read typically manifest themselves in adulthood, their roots can be traced back to the elementary and secondary school years. The next component we were interested in was how reading skills (or a lack thereof) during a child's early life translate to illiteracy rates later on.

10. What percentage of high school graduates can't read? 
Making it to graduation day is a major milestone for teens, but many of them struggle to decipher the words on their diploma. Just under 20% of high school grads haven't developed basic reading proficiency by the time they don their cap and gown.

11. Does living in a two-parent home improve literacy rates?
Single parent families are increasingly common these days, but children's literacy skills may be suffering. Research shows that kids who grow up with both parents at home score roughly 45 points higher on literacy reading assessments.

12. Can reading to children make a difference? 
Reading to kids early on can help to boost literacy rates over the long term. An estimated 77% of children who are read to are more likely to read or attempt to read on their own, versus 57% of kids who don't have regular story time at home.

13. How often do young people read? 
A combined 56% of middle and high school students say they read 10 or more books per year. At the middle school level, 70% of kids do so, while just 49% of high school students make the same claim.

14. Are challenged readers more likely to drop out of school? 
If solid reading skills aren't formed during a child's early years, the odds of dropping out down the road increase significantly. Kids who aren't successfully reading at grade level by the third grade are four times less likely to finish high school.

15. How does illiteracy correlate to teen pregnancy rates? 
Poor reading skills may also increase the chances of becoming a teen mom. In one study, 21% of girls with below average reading skills had a child in their early teens, compared to 5% of girls who rated above average.

ILLITERACY AND CRIME

Illiteracy can be a major barrier to young adults who might be interested in going to college or finding a stable job. Without a goal to work towards or a means of earning money, engaging in criminal behavior may become a real possibility. We've included some statistics on illiteracy rates among juvenile and adult offenders to demonstrate how important a solid education is.

16. Are reading skills an indicator of criminal tendencies? 
The issue of whether illiteracy can predict future behavior has been hotly debated. Studies suggest that two-thirds of students who struggle with reading by fourth grade will run into trouble with the law at some point.

17. What percentage of juvenile offenders are illiterate? 
Illiteracy is widespread among juveniles who find themselves in trouble with the law. Approximately 85% of youth who come into contact with the juvenile court are considered to be functionally illiterate, meaning they read at a basic or below basic level.

18. What percentage of adult inmates struggle with reading?
Literacy rates aren't much improved among the adult prison population. About 70% of male and female inmates score at the lowest proficiency level for reading.

19. Does illiteracy influence recidivism rates? 
Inmates who take advantage of education programs in prison may be less likely to commit a subsequent crime once they're released. In one study, the recidivism rate for offenders who participated in literacy programs was 27%, but it jumped to 60% among those who received no additional education while incarcerated.

FINANCIAL IMPACT OF ILLITERACY

Finally, we looked at statistics linking illiteracy to lower levels of financial achievement. While the impact is most immediately felt at the individual level, there is a trickle-down affect that touches the economy as a whole.

20. How many welfare recipients aren't proficient readers? 
Research has also linked illiteracy to poverty as an adult. As many as 75% of welfare recipients struggle to read even the simplest texts.

21. How does illiteracy impact the economy? 
In terms of lost productivity, it's estimated that the portion of the population that can't read costs the nation a staggering $225 billion each year.

22. How does it affect health care costs? 
Being able to read is important to maintaining good health, particularly if you have a serious illness or condition that requires medication or ongoing treatment. When patients lack basic reading skills, it can impact the health care system to the tune of $100 billion annually.

23. What does illiteracy cost workers? 
Poor reading proficiency often translates to a smaller paycheck, especially for women. Men with lower literacy skills are twice as likely to earn $650 or more per week than women at the same reading level. On the other hand, women with low literacy skills are twice as likely to earn only $300 or less per week than their comparable male counterparts.

FINAL WORD

Illiteracy often takes a backseat to more pressing issues but based on the statistics we've uncovered, it's clear that it's no less important. Closing the education gap is easier said than done but if reading rates could be improved, the research suggests that the end result would be a win-win for the country as a whole.

Sources and References

• National Center for Education Statistics
• UNESCO
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
• Literacy Partners
• Central Connecticut State University
• World Family Map
• National Education Association
• American Educational Research Association
• Contraception Journal
• Begin To Read
• Federal Bureau of Prisons
• George Washington University
• Institute for Women's Policy Research

Server Farm Basics

(Archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy. Content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist)

Note: 
All Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in this paper are fictitiousand are listed as examples only. The public IP address of theInternet Space network used in this paper is not the IP address ofthe actual deployment described. For the purpose of this paper, theIP address of the Internet Space network will be 200.100.1.0, theIP address of the Front End network will be 172.16.1.0, and the IPaddress of the Back End network will be 10.1.1.0.The storage area network (SAN) is one physical unit, but ispartitioned so that each of the two Microsoft SQL Server clustersuses distinct SAN partitions.For details about the hardware and software used in this serverfarm, see the first white paper in this series, Windows SharePoint Services Hosting Configuration and Experience .

The following terms are used in this paper and may be unfamiliarto some users:

• Edge network A network that connectsan Internet data center and a corporate network.
• NAT (Network Address Translation) Analias IP address that identifies a specific node managed by theBIG-IP controller to the external network.
• Predictive mode A dynamic loadbalancing mode that bases connection distribution on a combinationof two factors: number of connections and response time. Serversthat currently host the fewest connections and also have thefastest response times will be assigned more connections.Predictive mode also ranks server performance over time, and passesconnection to servers that exhibit an improvement rather than adecline.
• SNAT (Secure Network AddressTranslation) A routable alias IP address thatone or more nodes can use as a source IP address when makingconnections to hosts on the external network.

Figure 1: Server Farm Configuration

1. Public DNS servers
2. Internet
3. Router (Cisco Systems)
4. Load balancer (F5 Networks BIG-IP)
5. Load balancer (F5 Networks BIG-IP)
6. Front-end Web server farm (six servers)
7. SMTP and DNS server
8. Terminal services, debugging, and administration server
9. SQL Server server 1
10. SQL Server server 2
11. SQL Server server 3
12. SQL Server server 4
13. SAN unit (Hewlett Packard)
14. Active Directory domain controller 1
15. Active Directory domain controller 2
16. MOM server
17. Backup server (Veritas software)
18. Backup tape device
19. HTML transformation server
20. Imaging and installation server (Altiris deploymentserver)
21. Router (Cisco Systems)
22. Edge network

Data Center Architecture Overview

Data Center Architecture Overview

Data Center Architecture Overview

Data Center Design Models

Multi-Tier Model

Server Cluster Model

HPC Cluster Types and Interconnects

Logical Overview

Physical Overview

Web farms in .NET and IIS part 1: a general introduction

Introduction

In this series I’ll try to give you an overview of web farms in the context of IIS and .NET. The target audience is programmers who want to get started with web farms and the MS technologies built around them. I used IIS 7.5 and .NET4.5 in all demos but you should be fine with IIS7.0 and .NET4.0 as well and things should not be too different in IIS8.0 either.

What is a web farm?

A web farm is when you have two servers that perform the same service. You make an exact copy of an existing web server and put a load balancer in front of them like this:

It is the load balancer that catches all web requests to your domain and distributes them among the available servers based on their current load.

The above structure depicts the web farm configuration type called Local Content. In this scenario each web farm machine keeps the content locally. It is up to you or your system administrator to deploy the web site to each node after all the necessary tests have been passed. If the web site writes to a local file then the contents of that file should be propagated immediately to every node in the web farm.

With Local Content the servers are completely isolated. If something goes wrong with one of them then the system can continue to function with the other servers up and running. This setup is especially well suited for distributing the load evenly across the servers.

Disadvantages include the need for an automated content replication across servers which may become quite complicated if you have many elements to replicate: web content, certificates, COM+ objects, GAC, registry entries etc. Also, as mentioned above, if the web site writes to disk then the contents of that file must be propagated to the other nodes immediately. You can alternatively have a file share but that introduces a single point of failure so make sure it is redundant.

Local Content is probably the most common solution for many high traffic websites on the Internet today. There are other options though:

• Shared network content, which uses a central location to manage the content where all web servers in the farm point to that location
• Shared Storage Area Network (SAN) or Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012, which allow the storage space to be attached as a local volume so that it can be mounted as a drive or a folder on the system

We’ll concentrate on the Local Content option as it is the easiest to get started with and it suits most web farm scenarios out there. If you’re planning to build the next Google or Facebook then your requirements are way beyond the scope of this post anyway: take a look at the web farming frameworks by Microsoft mentioned at the very end of this post. They are most suitable for large websites, especially Windows Azure Services.

Why use a web farm?

The main advantage is reliability. The load balancer “knows” if one of the web servers is out of service, due to maintenance or a general failure, it doesn’t matter, and makes sure that no web request is routed to that particular server. If you need to patch one of the servers in the farm you can simply temporarily remove it from the farm, perform the update and then bring the server up again:

You can even deploy your web deployment package on each server one after the other and still maintain a continuous service to your customers.

The second main advantage of a web farm is to be able to scale up the web tier. In case you have a single web server and you notice that it cannot handle the amount of web traffic you can copy the server so that the load will be spread out by the load balancer. The servers don’t have to be powerful machines with a lot of CPU and RAM. This is called scaling out.

By contrast scaling out the data tier, i.e. the database server has been a lot more difficult. There are available technologies today that make this possible, such as NoSql databases. However, the traditional solution to increase the responsiveness of the data tier has been to scale up – note ‘up’, not ‘out’ – which means adding more capacity to the machine serving as the data tier: more RAM, more CPU, bigger servers. This approach is more expensive than buying more smaller web machines, so scaling out has an advantage in terms of cost effectiveness:

Load balancers

How do load balancers distribute the web traffic? There are several algorithms:

• Round-robin: each request is assigned to the next server in the list, one server after the other. This is also called the poor man’s load balancer as this is not true load balancing. Web traffic is not distributed according to the actual load of each server.
• Weight-based: each server is given a weight and requests are assigned to the servers according to their weight. Can be an option if your web servers are not of equal quality and you want to direct more traffic to the stronger ones.
• Random: the server to handle the request is randomly selected
• Sticky sessions: the load balancer keeps track of the sessions and ensures that return visits within the session always return to the same server
• Least current request: route traffic to the server that currently has the least amount of requests
• Response time: route traffic to the web server with the shortest response time
• User or URL information: some load balancers offer the ability to distribute traffic based on the URL or the user information. Users from one geographic location region may be sent to the server in that location. Requests can be routed based on the URL, the query string, cookies etc.

Apart from algorithms we can group load balancers according to the technology they use:

• Reverse Proxy: a reverse proxy takes an incoming request and makes another request on behalf of the user. We say that the Reverse Proxy server is a middle-man or a man-in-the-middle in between the web server and the client. The load balancer maintains two separate TCP connections: one with the user and one with the web server. This option requires only minimal changes to your network architecture. The load balancer has full access to the all the traffic on the way through allowing it to check for any attacks and to manipulate the URL or header information. The downside is that as the reverse proxy server maintains the connection with the client you may need to set a long time-out to prepare for long sessions, e.g. in case of a large file download. This opens the possibility for DoS attacks. Also, the web servers will see the load balancer server as the client. Thus any logic that is based on headers like REMOTE_ADDR or REMOTE_HOST will see the IP of the proxy server rather than the original client. There are software solutions out there that rewrite the server variables and fool the web servers into thinking that they had a direct line with the client.
• Transparent Reverse Proxy: similar to Reverse Proxy except that the TCP connection between the load balancer and the web server is set with the client IP as the source IP so the web server will think that the request came directly from the client. In this scenario the web servers must use the load balancer as their default gateway.
• Direct Server Return (DSR): this solution runs under different names such as nPath routing, 1 arm LB, Direct Routing, or SwitchBack. This method forwards the web request by setting the web server’s MAC address. The result is that the web server responds directly back to the client. This method is very fast which is also its main advantage. As the web response doesn’t go through the load balancer, even less capable load balancing solutions can handle a relatively large amount of web requests. However, this solution doesn’t offer some of the great options of other load balancers, such as SSL offloading – more on that later
• NAT load balancing: NAT, which stands for Network Address Translation, works by changing the destination IP address of the packets
• Microsoft Network Load Balancing: NLB manipulates the MAC address of the network adapters. The servers talk among themselves to decide which one of them will respond to the request. The next blog post is dedicated to NLB.

Let’s pick 3 types of load balancers and the features available to them:

• Physical load balancers that sit in front of the web farm, also called Hardware
• ARR: Application Request Routing which is an extension to IIS that can be placed in front of the web tier or directly on the web tier
• NLB: Network Load Balancing which is built into Windows Server and performs some basic load balancing behaviour

No additional failure points:

This point means whether the loadbalancing solution introduces any additional failure points in the overall network.

Physical machines are placed in front of your web farm and they can of course fail. You can put a multiple of these to minimise the possibility of a failure but we still have this possible failure point.

With ARR you can put the load balancer in front of your web farm on a separate machine or a web farm of load balancers or on the same web tier as the web servers. If it’s on a separate tier then it has some additional load balancing features. Putting it on the same tier adds complexity to the configuration but eliminates additional failure points, hence the -X sign in the appropriate cell.

NLB runs on the web server itself so there are no additional failure points.

Health checks

This feature means whether the load balancer can check whether the web server is healthy. This usually means a check where we instruct the load balancer to periodically send a request to the web servers and expect some type of response: either a full HTML page or just a HTTP 200.

NLB is only solution that does not have this feature. NLB will route traffic to any web server and will be oblivious of the answer: can be a HTTP 500 or even no answer at all.

Caching

This feature means the caching of static – or at least relatively static – elements on your web pages, such as CSS or JS, or even entire HTML pages. The effect is that the load balancer does not have to contact the web servers for that type of content which decreases the response times.

NLB does not have this feature. If you put ARR on your web tier then this feature is not available really as it will be your web servers that perform caching.

SSL offload

SSL Offload means that the load balancer will take over the SSL encryption-decryption process from the web servers which also adds to the overall efficiency. SSL is fairly expensive from a CPU perspective so it’s nice to relieve the web machine of that responsibility and hand it over to the probably lot more powerful load balancer.

NLB doesn’t have this feature. Also, if you put ARR on your web tier then this feature is not available really as it will be your web servers that perform SSL encryption and decryption.

A benefit of this feature is that you only have to install the certificate on the load balancer. Otherwise you must make sure to replicate the SSL certificate(s) on every node of the web farm.

If you go down this path then make sure to go through the SSL issuing process on one of the web farm servers – create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and send it to a certificate authority (CA). The certificate that the CA generates will only work on the server where the CSR was generated. Install the certificate on the web farm server where you initiated the process and then you can export it to the other servers. The CSR can only be used on one server but an exported certificate can be used on multiple servers.

There’s a new feature in IIS8 called Central Certificate Store which lets you synchronise your certificates across multiple servers.

Geo location

Physical loadbalancers and ARR provide some geolocation features. You can employ many load balancers throughout the world to be close to your customers or have your load balancer point to different geographically distributed data centers. In reality you’re better off looking at cloud based solutions or CDNs such as Akamai, Windows Azure or Amazon.

Low upfront cost

Hardware load balancers are very expensive. ARR and NLB are for free meaning that you don’t have to pay anything extra as they are built-in features of Windows Server and IIS. You probably want to put ARR on a separate machine so that will involve some extra cost but nowhere near what hardware loadbalancers will cost you.

Non-HTTP traffic

Hardware LBs and NLB can handle non-HTTP traffic whereas ARR is a completely HTTP based solution. So if you’re looking into possibilities to distribute other types of traffic such as for SMTP based mail servers then ARR is not an option.

Sticky sessions

This feature means that if a client returns for a second request then the load balancer will redirect that traffic to the same web server. It is also called client affinity. This can be important for web servers that store session state locally so that when the same visitor comes back then we don’t want the state relevant to that user to be unavailable because the request was routed to a different web server.

Hardware LBs and ARR provide a lot of options to introduce sticky sessions including cookie-based solutions. NLB can only perform IP-based sticky sessions, it doesn’t know about cookies and HTTP traffic.

Your target should be to avoid sticky sessions and solve your session management in a different way – more on state management in a future post. If you have sticky sessions then the load balancer is forced to direct traffic to a certain server irrespective of its actual load, thus beating the purpose of load distribution. Also, if the server that received the first request becomes unavailable then the user will lose all session data and may receive an exception or unexpected default values in place of the values saved in the session variables.

Other types of load balancers

Software

With software load balancers you can provide your own hardware while using the vendor-supported software for load balancing. The advantage is that you can provide your own hardware to meet your load balancing needs which can save you a lot of money.

We will in a later post look at Application Request Routing (ARR) which is Microsoft’s own software based reverse proxy load balancer which is a plug-in to IIS.

Another solution is HAProxy but it doesn’t run on Windows.

A commercial solution that runs on Windows is KEMP LoadMaster by KEMP Technologies.

Frameworks

There are frameworks that unite load balancers and other functionality together into a cohesive set of functions. Web Farm Framework and Windows Azure Services are both frameworks provided by Microsoft that provide additional functionality on top of load balancing. We’ll look at WFF in a later post in more depth.

Multiple sources.

19 Shocking Facts And Theories About The Bilderberg Group

The Bilderberg Group meets once every year. The last meeting, at the time of this writing, was held in June 2016 at the Taschenbergpalais hotel that is located in Dresden. Up to 150 of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful political leaders attend the annual event. The attendees include royalty, presidents, prime ministers, chief executives of major international conglomerates, media moguls, and world bankers.

The first Bilderberg meeting was held during 1954. The organization was founded with the intent to create powerful connections between European countries and North Americans. The meeting is a secretive, informal discussion about global trends with open communication between the elite members of the world who have massive influence in world affairs.

No statements of any kind are allowed to be made to the press regarding the proceedings or what is talked about at the meeting. There are no meeting minutes taken and no reports of the discussions or official statement about the discussions is produced or made. Anything learned at the meeting can be freely used by any of the members; however, no one is permitted to talk about it.

More than 400 heavily armed guards are there protect the attendees. The event space is hardened with physical barricades and high levels of security. It is this level of high security combined with the extreme secrecy, which makes the conspiracy theorists go wild with speculation about what they actually do at the Bilderberg meetings.

Only those who are invited are permitted to attend the meeting. Everyone invited sees a major career boost after attending a Bilderberg meeting. Bill Clinton attended while he was the Governor of Arkansas and within a year he was President of the United States. Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK, four years after going to his first Bilderberg meeting.

19.

FOUNDED BY AN EX-NAZI AND AN AGENT OF THE VATICAN

The co-founders of the Bilderberg Group were two historical figures with checkered backgrounds. They were Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands and Józef Retinger who was a political advisor, originally from Poland, who worked with the Vatican.

Even though throughout his later adult life, up until his death in 1984, Prince Bernhard claimed he was never a Nazi. A historian, Annejet van der Zijl, found documents at the Humboldt University in Berlin, which prove Prince Bernhard was indeed a Nazi Party member until 1934 when he left school to work for the huge German chemical company named IG Farben. IG Farben did atrocious things in support of the Nazis including making the poisonous gas used to kill people in the German death camps.

Józef Retinger was a secret spy for the Vatican. He was expelled from allied countries for his activities in association with the Jesuits. He later went on to create the Council of Europe during 1949, which became part of the foundational movement, which eventually led to the formation of the European Union.

18.

SERIOUS CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The Bilderberg Group publishes on its website a simple list of the items that will be discussed at an upcoming meeting, without giving any further details.

For the 2016 meeting here is the list of the topics up for discussion:

China, current events, cybersecurity, Europe (growth, immigrants, reform, unity and vision), geopolitics of energy and commodities, lower classes and the middle class, Middle East, Russia, technological innovation, US political climate, economy, debt, growth, and reform.

The Bilderberg Group also publishes a list of the attendees. By comparing the attendees with the proposed agenda is it easy to see the potential conflicts of interest. A high probability must exist of shady “back-room” deals and influence peddling. Hilary Clinton always attends and she has received millions of dollars in “speaker’s fees” from other attendees.

The Chairman of BP, Carl-Henric Svanberg, and the group chief executive of BP, Robert Dudley, the vice-chairman of Galp Energia from Portugal, and the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell all met with finance ministers and top political leaders. After the Bilderberg Group meeting, they do not report back to their respective governments about what happened.

Other attendees of the 2016 meeting included former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Christine Lagarde who is the Director of the International Monetary Fund, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, a former head of the CIA, General David Petraeus, and a former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers.

17.

THE WHO’S WHO OF THE WORLD

*I consider this a "must read, book mark, mull it over and read the full article again" type of deal > http://tinyurl.com/yc6f43cb