by Patrick Wood

Speaking of his Tri­lat­eral Commission’s influ­ence in the orig­inal cre­ation of the Euro­pean Union, David Rock­e­feller wrote in 1998,

“Back in the early Sev­en­ties, the hope for a more united EUROPE was already full-blown – thanks in many ways to the indi­vidual ener­gies pre­vi­ously spent by so many of the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s ear­liest mem­bers.” [Cap­i­tals in orig­inal] (Rock­e­feller, David; In the Begin­ning; The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion at 25, 1998, p.11)

Some argued that “that was then and this is now,” and that the Commission’s influ­ence had waned with the passing of the older generation.

Non­sense. It was Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioner Vallery d’Estaing who authored the EU’s Con­sti­tu­tion in 2002 – 2003 when he was Pres­i­dent of the Con­ven­tion on the Future of Europe.

On November 10, 2011, Robert Wenzel, Editor & Pub­lisher of the Eco­nomic Policy Journal, wrote the fol­lowing short report:

And the Big Time Banksters Come Marching In

“Here’s what you need to know about the cur­rent crisis in the Euro­zone. The big time banksters are get­ting direct hands on control:

“Mario Drgahi has become pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank as of November 1. He was vice chairman and man­aging director of Goldman Sachs Inter­na­tional and a member of the firm-wide man­age­ment com­mittee. He was the Italian Exec­u­tive Director at the World Bank. He has been a Fellow of the Insti­tute of Pol­i­tics at the John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard University.

“Lucas Papademos takes over today as Prime Min­ister of Greece. He was an econ­o­mist at the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Boston. He was a vis­iting pro­fessor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. And, he was pre­vi­ously a vice pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank. He has been a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion since 1998.

“Indi­ca­tions are that Mario Monti will suc­ceed Silvio Berlus­coni as prime min­ister of Italy, within in days. Monti com­pleted grad­uate studies at Yale Uni­ver­sity, where he studied under James Tobin (see the Tobin Tax). He is a member of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. He is Euro­pean Chairman of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and and member of the Bilder­berg Group.

“If you get the sense that the elitist banksters are going to take this finan­cial crisis and push it in what­ever direc­tion they want, you are prob­ably very right.”

As you can see, little has changed since 1973, and the same Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship keeps pop­ping up in the most hal­lowed posi­tions of power and influ­ence. The Commission’s defense is that it was simply coin­ci­dental for their mem­bers to be picked for var­ious high-level posi­tions because of their supe­rior tal­ents and abil­i­ties. This is not hearsay: I have had this spoken directly to me by mem­bers of the Commission.

Con­sid­ering that the mem­ber­ship hovers around 300 – 350 at any given time,  it is sta­tis­ti­cally impos­sible that they could have been ran­domly picked at such a high fre­quency over such a long period of time. In the U.S. alone since 1973, Com­mis­sion mem­bers held

• 8 out of 10 U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive appointments
• 6 our of 8 World Bank presidencies
• 6 out of 7 President/Vice Pres­i­dent elections

Could any sane person think that they Tri­lat­erals just stum­bled into all of these posi­tions?  Of course not.

The his­tor­ical evi­dence declares that the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion hijacked the global polit­ical system for the exact pur­poses it stated in 1973. That is, to “foster a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order.”

Just who rules the world economy?

When Antony Sutton and myself studied the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1978, one ana­lyt­ical tech­nique we used was a deriv­a­tive of soci­ology called “net­work topology.” We assem­bled names of direc­tors, exec­u­tives and major share­holders of com­pa­nies asso­ci­ated with the Tri­lat­erals and then dia­grammed them to show over­laps and other non-obvious asso­ci­a­tions. Our results were stun­ning. We found a tight inter­locking net­work that was far stronger than a bunch of inde­pen­dent com­pa­nies. In graph­ical form, the net­work was clearly vis­ible. (See Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington, Volume I)

Recently, three researchers in Switzer­land (S. Vitali, J.B. Glat­tfelder, and S. Bat­tiston) have released a sim­ilar and modern study called “The net­work of global cor­po­rate con­trol.” In the abstract they state,

“We find that transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions form a giant bow-tie struc­ture and that a large por­tion of con­trol flows to a small tightly-knit core of finan­cial insti­tu­tions. This core can be seen as an eco­nomic “super-entity” that raises new impor­tant issues both for researchers and policy makers.”

This is an under­state­ment. In Table S1 buried in the appendix, they list the “top 50 control-holders,” where share­holders are ranked according to their level of net­work con­trol. These are the com­pa­nies who com­prise the inner-core of global control.

Of the 50 com­pa­nies, 45 are banks, insur­ance or other finan­cial insti­tu­tions. From the U.S. we see the usual: State Street, JP Morgan Chase, B of A, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others.

In short, this core of banks/financials are the real rulers of the world economy. There is no spec­u­la­tion here: This is hard and com­pelling evidence.

This is also the exact same con­clu­sion that Sutton and I reached in 1978 with more rudi­men­tary, non-computerized analysis.

The report concludes,

“This is the first time a ranking of eco­nomic actors by global con­trol is pre­sented. Notice that many actors belong to the finan­cial sector (NACE codes starting with 65,66,67) and many of the names are well-known global players. The interest of this ranking is not that it exposes unsus­pected pow­erful players. Instead, it shows that many of the top actors belong to the core. This means that they do not carry out their busi­ness in iso­la­tion but, on the con­trary, they are tied together in an extremely entan­gled web of con­trol. This finding is extremely impor­tant since there was no prior eco­nomic theory or empir­ical evi­dence regarding whether and how top players are con­nected. Finally, it should be noted that gov­ern­ments and nat­ural per­sons are only fea­tured fur­ther down in the list.” [emphasis added]

Zbig­niew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion with David Rock­e­feller in 1973, summed up the “net­work” in his 1970 Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era:

“The nation-­state as a fun­da­mental unit of man’s orga­nized life has ceased to be the prin­cipal cre­ative force: Inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state.” [emphasis added]

Unfor­tu­nately, this is the reality of the matter. With inter­na­tional banks at the center and var­ious multi­na­tional com­pa­nies in the periphery, the net­work con­tinues to dom­i­nate and con­trol the course of world events. The cit­i­zens of the respec­tive coun­tries are little more than objects to be taxed and manipulated.

In Europe, the finan­cial demise of Italy and Greece threatens to melt down the Euro­pean region, if not the entire global economy. That Tri­lat­eral bankers Papademos and Monti, respec­tively, would take the helm as Prime Min­ister of their own nation-state should be likened to be a receiver­ship move designed to pro­tect the assets of the banks (the “Net­work”) they rep­re­sent. If nothing else, it cer­tainly shows that the Tri­lat­eral hege­mony over Europe is alive and well.

Until this hege­mony is somehow dis­solved, the game of national polit­ical elec­tions (In the U.S. or Europe) is largely an exer­cise in futility. Elec­tors are simply deceived when they fail to rec­og­nize and address the real power behind the political/economic system.

By Patrick Wood

Obama’s slick 2010 Labor Day speech that promised an addi­tional Fed­eral stim­ulus for a sick economy, was a ringer. Here’s why — buried in the $50 bil­lion infra­struc­ture stim­ulus promise is the fol­lowing statement:

“It sets up an Infra­struc­ture Bank to leverage fed­eral dol­lars and focus on the smartest invest­ments.”

Infra­struc­ture Bank? Smartest investments?

Obama would have you think that this was his brain­child, but it is not. It will, how­ever, effec­tively cen­tralize another key area of our economy, namely infra­struc­ture, into a gov­ern­ment run enter­prise that mostly ben­efits the pri­vate cap­ital of the global elite, and in par­tic­ular, mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

For a his­tor­ical per­spec­tive, we need to look back to August 2007 during the Bush admin­is­tra­tion when S.1926 was intro­duced (National Infra­struc­ture Bank Act of 2007) by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE).

The failed bill pro­vided for an inde­pen­dent gov­ern­ment entity (think FDIC, for instance) with a five-member board appointed by the Pres­i­dent and con­firmed by the Senate.

In 2009, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion pro­moted sim­ilar leg­is­la­tion intro­duced into the House as H.R.2521 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)  to “facil­i­tate effi­cient invest­ments and financing of infra­struc­ture projects and new job cre­ation through the estab­lish­ment of a National Infra­struc­ture Devel­op­ment Bank, and for other pur­poses.” [Emphasis added] The Admin­is­tra­tion was so cer­tain that this would pass (it has not) that the 2010 budget included appro­pri­a­tions for a National Infra­struc­ture Bank. (See Investing for Suc­cess, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, p.11)

Dodd him­self called S.1926 a “unique and pow­erful public-private part­ner­ship” that would offer a “fresh solu­tion to the chal­lenge of rebuilding the nation’s infra­struc­ture.” It was orig­i­nally to be funded by a $60 bil­lion bond issue which would be then lever­aged with pri­vate cap­ital. Obama’s new twist is to forget the bond and just give $50 bil­lion of tax­payer money directly to kick­-start the NIB.

A public-private part­ner­ship in this con­text is rem­i­nis­cent of the World Bank’s Public-Private Part­ner­ship in Infra­struc­ture pro­gram (PPPI) whose objec­tive “is to pro­vide capacity building to help client gov­ern­ments create the proper envi­ron­ment to develop suc­cessful and sus­tain­able PPPs, as well as to pro­vide tech­nical assis­tance to client coun­tries in issues related to PPP pro­gram design, devel­op­ment, and implementation.” 

How­ever, the World Bank explains their agenda more fully: “The pro­gram ini­tially focuses on core infra­struc­ture sec­tors– energy, water, trans­port, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions– and will pro­gres­sively cover the main social sec­tors such as edu­ca­tion, health and housing.” This may sug­gest the intended meaning of “other pur­poses” men­tioned above in H.R.2421.

Obama made no men­tion of NIB rev­enue bonds that would be used to pay back loans with by tolls, fees, etc. Most impor­tantly, all infra­struc­ture spending/lending/appropriations would cir­cum­vent Con­gress for­ever more. In fact, the whole affair would be off-agency, meaning that the accounting for it would not show up in the national budget, but would poten­tially create a huge con­tin­gent lia­bility for tax­payers down the road.

So, who were the policy wonks behind the NIB and S.1926 in 2007? (You know it wasn’t Dodd or Hagel!)

For­tu­nately, the press release on Dodd’s own web­site gives full credit:

“Last year, Sen­a­tors Dodd and Hagel signed on to a set of ‘Guiding Prin­ci­ples for Strength­ening America’s Infra­struc­ture’ devel­oped by the Center for Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies (CSIS) Com­mis­sion on Public Infra­struc­ture,” said CSIS Pres­i­dent and CEO John Hamre.  “These prin­ci­ples were estab­lished to rec­om­mend changes to rebuild America’s decaying infra­struc­ture. CSIS is proud to have helped stim­u­late this impor­tant initiative.

Proud, indeed!

This trai­torous and glob­alist think tank was orig­i­nally estab­lished by a founding member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, David Abshire. The cur­rent CSIS board is stacked with noto­rious Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers like Zbig­niew Brzezinski, William Brock, Harold Brown, Richard Armitage, Carla Hills (archi­tect of NAFTA), Henry Kissinger, Joseph Nye, James Schlesinger and Brent ScowÂcroft.

This sup­pos­edly “bi-partisan” S.1926 was sub­se­quently co-sponsored by twelve other sen­a­tors including Hillary Clinton and, you guessed it, then-Senator Bar­rack Hus­sein Obama. This is one more piece of evi­dence that both Clinton and Obama operate solidly within the TriÂlatÂeral orbit.

There is no argu­ment that the U.S. infra­struc­ture is a sham­bles. The Amer­ican Society of Civil Engi­neers esti­mates that it would take $1.6 tril­lion to fix it. The final tab will be much higher.

Of course, nei­ther the Feds nor the states have that kind of money but the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has repeat­edly proven its ability to sucker the tax­payers into paying for the Commission’s global trade schemes… in this case, the final imple­men­ta­tion of NAFTA (North Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment) trade routes throughout the U.S.

As reported in my detailed 2005 report, Toward a North Amer­ican Union, NAFTA was cre­ated in the first place exclu­sively by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion: George H.W. Bush, Carla Hills, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

In recent years, NAFTA’s infra­struc­ture grid has been devel­oped and plotted by an orga­ni­za­tion known as the North America Cor­ridor Coali­tion, Inc. (NASCO).

The recently updated NASCO web site shows a plethora of infra­struc­ture plans that are tightly inte­grated with the imple­men­ta­tion of NAFTA, which will undoubt­edly be brought into play through the new National Infra­struc­ture Bank.

Cit­izen revolts in Texas and Okla­homa in 2007 – 2008 were suc­cessful at smacking down the infa­mous Trans-Texas NAFTA Super-Corridor along I-35. This likely will not happen again.

Such pesky cit­i­zens and their state gov­ern­ments will be ren­dered irrel­e­vant with deci­sions being made at the national level by a pri­vate board that will operate behind closed doors with little or no public input or recourse. The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion explains it this way:

“Multi-jurisdictional projects are neglected in the cur­rent fed­eral invest­ment process in sur­face trans­porta­tion, due to the insuf­fi­cient insti­tu­tional coor­di­na­tion among state and local gov­ern­ments that are the main deci­sion makers in trans­porta­tion. The NIB would pro­vide a mech­a­nism to cat­alyze local and state gov­ern­ment coop­er­a­tion and could result in higher rates of return com­pared to the local­ized infra­struc­ture projects.” (ibid, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion)

Thus, where local and state gov­ern­ment coop­er­a­tion is lacking, the NIB would “cat­alyze” projects and make them happen in spite of such “insuf­fi­cient insti­tu­tional coordination”.

In short, the NIB scheme sets up the Amer­ican tax­payer for yet another pil­lage and plunder oper­a­tion at the hands of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and their global elite cronies. When projects fail, tax­payers will pay for that as well.

S.1926 did not pass in 2008 and H.R. 2521 did not pass in 2009, but now that Obama has put it at the top of his agenda, it will likely pass before December 31, 2010. Or… Obama could simply create it by fiat through an Exec­u­tive Order!

How much more Tri­lat­eral abuse can the taxpayer’s Trea­sury endure before the whole eco­nomic system in the U.S. just col­lapses from exhaus­tion? No one can say for sure, but it seems awfully close to this writer!

Unfor­tu­nately, mid-term elec­tions will do absolutely nothing to reduce the influ­ence of this nefar­ious and unelected group that qui­etly hijacked the U.S. Exec­u­tive Branch as far back as 1976 with the elec­tion of James Earl Carter and Walter Mon­dale, both of whom were early mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. That and every admin­is­tra­tion since then has been stocked full of Com­mis­sion mem­bers, all eager to pro­mote Trilateral-style glob­alism and demote U.S. sov­er­eignty and prosperity.

Other resources:

CSIS Com­mis­sion on Public Infrastructure

North America’s Cor­ridor Coali­tion, Inc.

World Bank: Public-Private Part­ner­ship in Infrastructure

National Infra­struc­ture Bank Act of 2007 (S.1926 

Investing for Suc­cess, Brook­ings Institution

Toward a North Amer­ican Union, The August Review

Editor’s note: mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and com­pa­nies with Com­mis­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tion appear in bold type.]

Since 1973, this writer has made inquiry as to the loca­tion and own­er­ship of the vast stores of mon­e­tary gold (400 oz., .999 pure bars) in the world. There has not been a formal audit on Fort Knox, for instance, since the Eisen­hower admin­is­tra­tion. Offi­cial sta­tis­tics on gold hold­ings are often con­tra­dic­tory. Get­ting plain answers from any Cen­tral Bank in the world, including the Fed, is vir­tu­ally impossible.

This paper points out a pat­tern of manip­u­la­tion that has been clearly observed by many people. How­ever, pat­terns do not exist in a vacuum, but rather they are evi­dence of the exis­tence of a stable and con­sis­tent method­ology. Clearly, more study needs to be done in iden­ti­fying the finer parts of the method­ology and its designers, but this is a good start!

When Richard Nixon can­celed the Bretton Woods system in 1971, exchange­ability of paper dol­lars for gold was ter­mi­nated. In 1970 alone, avail­able gold vs. dol­lars out­standing had shrunk from 55 to 22 per­cent, thus exerting pres­sure for investors to switch to gold to avoid fur­ther dilu­tion of dollar assets.

Although the eco­nomic and finan­cial experts swore that gold was an out­moded, inef­fec­tive and use­less finan­cial asset, cooler heads knew better. In recent years, these same experts have reversed field and are now pro­claiming that gold is still, and always has been, a con­sis­tent mon­e­tary asset. Why the flip-flop?

The eco­nomic chaos in the world today is a direct result of poli­cies set in motion to foster a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order (NIEO). The NIEO was the explicit cre­ation of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973, and their early papers and task force reports clearly asserted their NIEO plans.

Mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion were instru­mental in cre­ating the Euro­pean Union as well. The EU is the pro­to­type of global gov­er­nance that will soon exert its influ­ence to reshuffle world relationships.

Since 1973, Tri­lat­er­al­ists have dom­i­nated the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment with politi­cians like Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Dick Cheney. This has led to dom­i­na­tion of the world trade mech­a­nisms like the World Bank and nego­ti­a­tion of free trade agreements.

Six out of eight pres­i­dents of the World Bank have been mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion. Eight out of ten of the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (USTR) have been Commissioners.

Indeed, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has had undue influ­ence and con­trol over the devel­op­ment of glob­al­iza­tion, and it was self-interested at best.

With today’s total melt­down in eco­nomic and global finan­cial mar­kets, one must ask, “Are these people just plain stupid?”

The answer has to be “No”, con­sid­ering their great suc­cess at con­sis­tently dom­i­nating polit­ical and eco­nomic processes over a span of thirty-five years.

So what else is going on?

There is mounting evi­dence that there has been a larger plan underway to corner the global supply of gold, thus laying the ground­work for a global cur­rency exclu­sively con­trolled by Tri­lat­erals and their friends. By exten­sion, eco­nomic and polit­ical mech­a­nisms would be con­trolled to the same extent.

From a Tri­lat­eral per­spec­tive, the Bretton Woods system had two flaws:

• Gold was rapidly being decen­tral­ized into non-Trilateral hands
• It lim­ited the arbi­trary cre­ation of paper money to finance projects launched by Trilateral-related global com­pa­nies.  (Read Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington (Sutton & Wood) for detailed doc­u­men­ta­tion on this process)

The breakup of Bretton Woods and the resulting oppor­tu­ni­ties may have been the prin­cipal ratio­nale for the cre­ation of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in the first place.

Since 1973, there has been an over­ar­ching plan to qui­etly cen­tralize gold into pri­vate hands, using incre­men­tally cre­ated wealth made pos­sible by rapidly inflating paper currencies.

This theory must be explored and tested, because if true, it rep­re­sents not just the hijacking of America (already thor­oughly demon­strated else­where in this writer’s papers), but the hijacking of an entire planet!

In 1976, Antony Sutton wrote,

“The assault on gold today is an inte­gral part of a planned move into a new eco­nomic order under the dom­i­nance of a single country. It was Nazi Ger­many in the 1940′s; it is the United States in the 1970′s. In brief, the war on gold that we observe today, and dis­cuss below, is dollar impe­ri­alism, designed to main­tain the U.S. dollar as the only world cur­rency without com­peti­tors. The pur­pose is the for­ma­tion of a world total­i­tarian state under Wall Street dom­i­nance.” (The War on Gold, Antony C. Sutton, 1976, p. 63)

Sutton’s view was lim­ited because he had not yet dis­cov­ered the Tri­lat­eral frame­work just cre­ated three years ear­lier in 1973. We can see now that the total­i­tarian state is still clearly in view, but the self-proposed rulers of this new arrange­ment will be mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and their mon­e­tary “enforcer” will be gold.

2008 Gold Hegemony

Bill Murphy is the chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Com­mittee (GATA), which has asserted for almost 10 years that a con­cen­trated gold cartel has been manip­u­lating the price of gold. Murphy and GATA are highly regarded around the world on their work to expose this cartel.

On Sep­tember 10, 2008, Murphy made an opening state­ment at the 2008 Las Vegas Hard Assets Invest­ment Con­fer­ence, reprinted in full below. Murphy’s per­spec­tive and argu­ment does not include the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but the players in his nar­ra­tive are largely mem­bers or former mem­bers of the Commission.

This leads this writer to con­nect some dots between 1973 – 1976 and 1998 – 2008.

In Murphy’s com­ments, note that the famous bul­lion banks of 2008 include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Cit­i­group and Deutsche Bank, all of which have at least one director or senior offi­cial sit­ting on the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. In addi­tion, the players Murphy names are mem­bers of the Commission.

As Sutton did in 1976, to imply a “war on gold” neces­si­tates an even­tual vic­tory, a victor and a loser. It is already painfully obvious that the cit­i­zens of America are the losers: The middle class is being wiped out and we all hold a debased paper cur­rency that is headed toward destruction.

The ques­tion is, who will the winner be? And what is the victor’s intent over the conquered?

Bill Murphy’s Opening Statements

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee’s basic asser­tion for the past 9 ½ years is that there is a Gold Cartel out there sup­pressing the price of gold. It con­sists of the US Gov­ern­ment, including the Fed and Trea­sury, var­ious other cen­tral banks, and bul­lion banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.

The motives of “the cabal” are to give sup­port to the dollar, keep US interest rates lower than they should be, and to tone down the widely watched US barom­eter of US finan­cial market health, that being the gold price. After all, when­ever the price of gold soars, it con­gers up talk of too much infla­tion, a sinking dollar, or a crisis of some sort … all neg­a­tive for Wall Street and the incum­bent administration.

There­fore, “Shoot the Mes­sen­ger” is The Gold Cartel’s key mission.

The sup­pres­sion of the price of gold was the essence of Robert Rubin’s Strong Dollar Policy. What else did the US do to effect that policy? Talk? Jawbone?

It seems to have all started with Robert Rubin…

Before he was CEO of Goldman Sachs and then US Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, Robert Rubin worked in London for Goldman Sachs. One of his duties was to oversee their gold trading oper­a­tions. We know this because the CEO of Kirk­land Lake Gold, Brian Hinch­cliffe, a staunch GATA sup­porter, worked in London back then for Goldman Sachs and reported directly to Robert Rubin.

This was many years ago and interest rates in the US were very high, say from 6 to 12%. Rubin had Goldman Sachs borrow gold from the cen­tral banks to fund their basic oper­a­tions. They could do so at about a 1 % interest rate. This was like FREE money, as long as the price of gold did not rise to any sus­tained degree for any length of time.

Soon other major finan­cial insti­tu­tions real­ized what GS was doing and copied them. Rubin con­tinued these oper­a­tions as the Goldman Sachs CEO and then took it to a new level as US Sec­re­tary Trea­surer. That is how the gold price sup­pres­sion became the lynchpin of his widely acclaimed “Strong Dollar Policy.” GATA’s Reg Howe caught on to this notion in a paper titled, “Gibson’s Paradox and The Gold Stan­dard,” co-authored by Lawrence Sum­mers in 1988. Sum­mers, a pro­fessor at Har­vard at the time, suc­ceeded Rubin as US Trea­sury Sec­re­tary. The bottom line of Summer’s analysis is that “gold prices in a free market should move inversely to real interest rates.”  Con­trol gold and it will help to con­trol interest rates.

Bul­lion banks such as Goldman and Morgan became The Gold Cartel’s hit men, trading the gold market from the short side and bombing the market in coor­di­nated anti-trust fashion at the beck and call of our gov­ern­ment, making a great deal of money in the process … as you have all wit­nessed the past couple of months.

In a bril­liant piece a few weeks ago Ted Butler reported 3 U.S. banks held a short posi­tion of 7,787 con­tracts (778,700 ounces) of gold in July, and, aston­ish­ingly the same 3 U.S. banks held a short posi­tion of 86,398 con­tracts (8,639,800 ounces) in August, an eleven-fold increase. Gold then declined more than $150 per ounce once Sec­re­tary Paulson (note: Paulson is ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs) gave the order, just as he did in May 2006 when a sim­ilar order was given, according to a US Sen­ator from the state of Wash­ington. Both times, var­ious bul­lion banks made vast amounts of money quickly as the US gov­ern­ment facil­i­tated their short posi­tions by feeding con­sid­er­able clan­des­tine cen­tral bank gold into the phys­ical market.

It was the con­certed, con­cen­trated action of cer­tain BULLION BANKS, which tipped off GATA what was going on nearly a decade ago now.

It was this clan­des­tine feeding of cen­tral bank gold into the mar­ket­place which clued GATA into the gold price sup­pres­sion scheme. Three GATA con­sul­tants, Reg Howe, Frank Ven­eroso and James Turk, using inde­pen­dent, sophis­ti­cated method­olo­gies, came to the same con­clu­sion years ago … that the cen­tral banks have far less gold than the 30,000 tonnes of gold they say they have. The GATA camp research shows they have less than half that amount in their vaults, the dif­fer­ence being the amount that has been fed into the phys­ical market to sup­press the price. Since demand for phys­ical gold exceeds mine and scrap supply by well over than 1,000 tonnes per year, this cen­tral bank gold is vital to pre­vent the price from exploding.

GATA is not alone in rec­og­nizing the cen­tral banks are not accounting for their gold prop­erly. GATA revealed an IMF paper which cor­rob­o­rates GATA’s claims that much of the cen­tral bank gold has been double counted and that the cen­tral banks are not prop­erly accounting for the gold no longer in their possession.

ISSUES PAPER (RESTEG) # 11

TREATMENT OF GOLD SWAPS AND GOLD DEPOSITS (LOANS)

“14. Regarding the sta­tis­tical treat­ment of gold swaps, its treat­ment should be con­sis­tent with that of other reverse trans­ac­tions, as pre­sented in para­graph 7 above. Thus, swapped gold should be excluded from both reserve assets and IIP (demon­e­ti­za­tion). This is a log­ical con­se­quence, and over­stating of reserve assets can be avoided. On the other hand, this results in a decrease in the finan­cial assets of the mon­e­tary authorities.”

Gold swaps and gold leasing are at the heart of the gold price sup­pres­sion scheme. For example, the US cannot sell its 8,133.5 tonnes of gold without an Act of Con­gress, but they could lease or swap it. In 2006 the Pres­i­dent of the Bun­des­bank made an aston­ishing state­ment for a cen­tral banker: “We have been asked to nego­tiate with other cen­tral banks’ about poten­tial swap deals involving gold.”

Is this stuff hush hush? I guess so. in Jan­uary 1995, the Fed­eral Reserve’s gen­eral counsel, J. Virgil Mat­tingly, told the Fed­eral Open Market Com­mittee, according to the committee’s min­utes, that the U.S. Trea­sury Department’s Exchange Sta­bi­liza­tion Fund had under­taken “gold swaps.” When the GATA camp had Ken­tucky Sen­ator Jim Bun­ning inquire Alan Greenspan what that was all about, Mat­tingly came back and said the Fed tes­ti­mony was GARBLED … Right…

Recently GATA filed Freedom of Infor­ma­tion Act requests to the Fed and Trea­sury about US gold swaps. The Fed redacted 300 pages of infor­ma­tion and refused to send another 400 pages. Now, think about it … if the US gold is, and has been, just sit­ting in our vaults, without a true inde­pen­dent audit since the Eisen­hower Admin­is­tra­tion, what is their to withhold?

As for GATA’s request to the Trea­sury about any Exchange Sta­bi­liza­tion Fund activity into the gold market, they answered in the neg­a­tive by refer­ring to the Exchange STABILITY Fund. Can they be that lame?

Is the gold price manip­u­lated? You don’t need to read through GATA’s count­less evi­dence to appre­ciate what is going on. It is on the public record…

begin­ning with Alan Greenspan’s tes­ti­mony before Con­gress in 1998:

“Cen­tral banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quan­ti­ties should the price rise” … which is just what they have done!

The Reserve Bank of Aus­tralia con­fessed to the gold price sup­pres­sion scheme in its annual report for 2003. “For­eign cur­rency reserve assets and gold,” the RBA’s report said, “are held pri­marily to sup­port inter­ven­tion in the for­eign exchange market.

Maybe the most brazen admis­sion of the Western cen­tral bank scheme to sup­press the gold price was made by the head of the mon­e­tary and eco­nomic depart­ment of the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments, William S. White, in a speech to a BIS con­fer­ence in Basel, Switzer­land, in June 2005. There are five main pur­poses of cen­tral bank coop­er­a­tion, White announced, and one of them is “the pro­vi­sion of inter­na­tional credits and joint efforts to influ­ence asset prices (espe­cially gold and for­eign exchange) in cir­cum­stances where this might be thought useful.”

Bar­rick Gold, then the largest gold-mining com­pany in the world, con­fessed to the gold price sup­pres­sion scheme in U.S. Dis­trict Court in New Orleans on Feb­ruary 28, 2003. On that date Bar­rick filed a motion to dis­miss Blan­chard & Co.’s anti-trust law­suit against Bar­rick and its bul­lion banker, JP Morgan Chase, for rig­ging the gold market.

Barrick’s motion said that in bor­rowing gold from cen­tral banks and selling it, the com­pany had become the agent of the cen­tral banks in the gold market, and, as the agent of the cen­tral banks, Bar­rick should share their sov­er­eign immu­nity and be exempt from suit.

Is the gold price manip­u­lated today? Former Fed­eral Reserve Chairman Paul Vol­cker wrote the fol­lowing in his memoirs:

“Joint inter­ven­tion in gold sales to pre­vent a steep rise in the price of gold (in the 1970s), how­ever, was not under­taken. That was a mistake.” …

Robert Rubin and gang took heed … as are more and more in the main­stream finan­cial world. Just last week, the highly regarded Don Coxe of the Bank of Mon­treal stated the fol­lowing in an audio pre­sen­ta­tion last about recent market action to the bank’s clients:

“The Most Mas­sive Inter­ven­tion Of Gov­ern­ment Into The Cap­ital Mar­kets, Or The Finan­cial Mar­kets, Since Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt Closed The Banks Back In 1933,”

It’s wake up time, finally.

Recently, there has been talk about the Working Group on Finan­cial Mar­kets (more com­monly known as The Plunge Pro­tec­tion Team), which con­sists of the Pres­i­dent, Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, and heads of the CFTC and SEC. Think about it … why are bureau­crats included in meet­ings about the mar­kets except to look the other way regarding gov­ern­ment intervention?

To give you an idea just how per­va­sive and insid­ious our mar­kets have become, I bring your atten­tion to the Coun­ter­party Risk Man­age­ment Group. Ever hear of it?

It con­sists of major players in the invest­ment banking/hedge fund com­mu­nity in New York, including Goldman Sachs. Cit­i­group, JPMorgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank (all defen­dants in GATA’s Reg Howe’s suit against The Gold Cartel in 2001).  There are a number of other par­tic­i­pants such as the famed hedge fund of Paul Tudor Jones.

On July 27, 2005, E. Gerald Cor­rigan, former Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York, and now a Man­aging Director of Goldman Sachs, wrote:

The Report of the Coun­ter­party Risk Man­age­ment
Policy Group II

Addressing it to:

Mr. Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer
Goldman, Sachs & Co.

(all roads always lead back to Goldman Sachs)

He stated; “since we know that finan­cial dis­tur­bances and even finan­cial shocks will occur in the future, and we know that no approaches to risk man­age­ment or offi­cial super­vi­sion are fail-safe, we also know that we must pre­serve and strengthen the insti­tu­tional arrange­ments whereby, at the point of crisis, industry groups and industry leaders, as well as super­vi­sors, are pre­pared to work together in order to serve the larger and shared goal of finan­cial stability.”

This Orwellian shared goal of finan­cial sta­bility, which began with the serious rig­ging of the gold price under Robert Rubin, has led us to the finan­cial market mess we have today.  It is wrong and must be stopped!

Is the cat out of the bag?

In the 2007 May/June issue of For­eign Affairs, Benn Steil pre­sented his paper, The End of National Cur­rency. Steil is Director of Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics at the Council on For­eign Rela­tions. In his report, Steil stated,

“So what about gold? A revived gold stan­dard is out of the ques­tion. In the nine­teenth cen­tury, gov­ern­ments spent less than ten per­cent of national income in a given year. Today, they rou­tinely spend half or more, and so they would never sub­or­di­nate spending to the strin­gent require­ments of sus­taining a commodity-based mon­e­tary system. But pri­vate gold banks already exist, allowing account holders to make inter­na­tional pay­ments in the form of shares in actual gold bars. Although clearly a niche busi­ness at present, gold banking has grown dra­mat­i­cally in recent years, in tandem with the dollar’s decline. A new gold-based inter­na­tional mon­e­tary system surely sounds far-fetched. But so, in 1900, did a mon­e­tary system without gold. Modern tech­nology makes a revival of gold money, through pri­vate gold banks, pos­sible even without gov­ern­ment support.”

This is hardly far-fetched. Zbig­niew Brzezinski noted in 1972 that “the nation-state as a fun­da­mental unit of man’s orga­nized life has ceased to be the prin­cipal cre­ative force: Inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state.”

Cracks in the dam

Noted Romanian econ­o­mist, Pro­fessor Antal Fekete, released a crit­ical report on December 5, 2008, enti­tled “Red Alert: Gold Backwardation.”

For the first time in his­tory, gold futures sold below spot price and cre­ates a poten­tial crisis in gold delivery at the end of December. Fekete states,

“According to the December 3rd Comex delivery report, there are 11,759 notices to take delivery. This rep­re­sents 1.1759 mil­lion ounces of gold, while the Comex-approved ware­houses hold 2.9 mil­lion ounces. Thus 40% of the total amount will have to be deliv­ered by December 31^st. Since not all the gold in the ware­houses is avail­able for delivery, Comex supply of gold falls far short of the demand at present rates. Futures mar­kets in gold are breaking down. Paper gold is pro­gres­sively being discredited…”

 “Gold going to per­ma­nent back­war­da­tion means that gold is no longer for sale at any price, whether it is quoted in dol­lars, yens, euros, or Swiss francs. The sit­u­a­tion is exactly the same as it has been for years: gold is not for sale at any price quoted in Zim­babwe cur­rency, how­ever high the quote is. To put it dif­fer­ently, all offers to sell gold are being with­drawn, whether it con­cerns newly mined gold, scrap gold, bul­lion gold or coined gold. I dubbed this event that has cast its long shadow for­ward for many a year, the last con­tango in Wash­ington ― con­tango being the name for the con­di­tion oppo­site to back­war­da­tion (namely, that of a pos­i­tive basis), and Wash­ington being the city where the Paper-mill of the Potomac, the Fed­eral Reserve Board, is located. This is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that the jig in Wash­ington is up. The music has stopped on the players of ‘musical chairs’. Those who have no gold in hand are out of luck. They won’t get it now through the reg­ular chan­nels. If they want it, they will have to go to the black market.”

Con­clu­sion

If Fekete is cor­rect, and he has seldom been wrong, then the trap is snap­ping shut on who will own the gold in 2009. Free-market sup­plies of gold are drying up, but the price is being kept low as global insti­tu­tions sop up what­ever crumbs are left.

Sev­eral very serious impli­ca­tions can be drawn:

• The mas­sive amounts of gold leased to bul­lion banks will ulti­mately be seized by these same banks as col­lat­eral against worth­less paper loans made to the Cen­tral Banks.
• Cen­tral Banks (including the Fed­eral Reserve) could well be left to dis­in­te­grate in order to give way to a single global cen­tral bank con­trolled and fueled by the bul­lion banks who have monopoly con­trol over the world’s gold.
• These super­banks are all closely tied to the goals and mem­ber­ship of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, whose mem­bers have method­i­cally car­ried out a mon­e­tary policy designed to bring about this eventuality.
• For all prac­tical intent, indi­vid­uals will be frozen out of the gold market at any price.

Indeed, a global total­i­tarian state may be closer than we think; as the globalist’s golden rule states, “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

The Tri­lat­eral Commission

Exec­u­tive Committee

Europe	North America	Pacific Asian
Peter Suther­land, Chairman	Joseph S. Nye, Jr, Chairman	Yotaro Kobayashi, Chairman
Herve De Carmoy, Deputy Chairman	Allan E. Gotlieb, Deputy Chairman	Han Sung-Joo, Deputy Chairman
Andrezej Ole­chowski, Deputy Chairman	Lorenzo H. Zam­brano, Deputy Chairman	Shi­juro Ogata, Deputy Chairman

 

North Amer­ican Group

Richard L. Armitage, Pres­i­dent,
Armitage Inter­na­tional LLC, Wash­ington,
DC; former U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of
State

James L. Bal­sillie,
Co-Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Research in Motion, Ltd., Waterloo, ON

Alan R. Batkin, Vice
Chairman, Eton Park Cap­ital Man­age­ment, New York, NY

Nani Beccalli-Falco, Pres­i­dent
and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, GE Inter­na­tional, Brus­sels, Belgium

*C. Fred Berg­sten, Director, Peterson Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional
Eco­nomics, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury for
Inter­na­tional Affairs

Catherine
Bertini, Pro­fessor of Public
Admin­is­tra­tion, Maxwell School of Cit­i­zen­ship and Public Affairs, Syra­cuse
Uni­ver­sity, Syra­cuse, NY; Senior Fellow, Agri­cul­tural Devel­op­ment, Bill &
Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion; former Under Secretary-General for Man­age­ment, United
Nations; former Exec­u­tive Director, UN World Food Program.

Robert D.
Black­will, Pres­i­dent, BGR
Inter­na­tional, Wash­ington, DC; former Deputy Assis­tant to Pres­i­dent George W.
Bush and Deputy National Secu­rity Advisor for Strategic Plan­ning; former
Ambas­sador to India

Adm.
Dennis C. Blair, U.S. Navy
(retired), John M. Sha­likashvili Chair in
National Secu­rity Studies, National Bureau of Asian Research; Omar Bradley
Chair of Strategic Leadership, Army War Col­lege and Dick­inson Col­lege, Carlisle, PA; former Com­mander
in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command

Her­minio Blanco Men­doza, Founder
and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Solu­ciones Estratégicas, Mexico City, NL; former
Mex­ican Sec­re­tary of Com­merce and Indus­trial Development

David G. Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic
Media Com­pany, Wash­ington, DC

Lael Brainard,Vice
Pres­i­dent and Founding Director, Global Economy and Devel­op­ment Center,
The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion,
Wash­ington, DC

Harold Brown, Coun­selor and Trustee, Center for
Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies, Wash­ington, DC; former Gen­eral Partner,
War­burg Pincus & Com­pany, New York, NY; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense

*Zbig­niew Brzezinski, Coun­selor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and Inter­na­tional
Studies, Wash­ington, DC; Robert Osgood Pro­fessor of Amer­ican For­eign Affairs,
Paul Nitze School of Advanced Inter­na­tional Studies, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity;
former U.S. Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for National Secu­rity Affairs

Sylvia Mathews Bur­well,
Pres­i­dent, Global Devel­op­ment Pro­grams, Bill & Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion,
Seattle, WA

Louis C. Camil­leri,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Altria Group, Inc., New York, NY

Kurt
Camp­bell,  Chief Exec­u­tive
Officer, Center for a New Amer­ican Secu­rity (CNAS), Wash­ington, DC; Director of
the Aspen Strategy Group; former Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense for Asia
and the Pacific

Ray­mond Chrétien, Strategic Advisor,
Fasken Mar­tineau DuMoulin LLP, Mon­treal, QC; Chairman of the Board of Direc­tors
of the Center for Inter­na­tional Studies of the Uni­ver­sity of Mon­treal; former
Asso­ciate Under-Secretary of State of External Affairs; former Ambas­sador of
Canada to the Congo, Bel­gium, Mexico, the United States and France

William T. Coleman, Jr.,
Senior Partner and the Senior Coun­selor, OÂ’Melveny & Myers, Wash­ington, DC;
former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion; Life­time Trustee, Tri­lat­eral Commission

      Richard N. Cooper, Mau­rits C. Boas Pro­fessor of Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics,
Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; former
Chairman, U.S. National Intel­li­gence Council; former U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State for Eco­nomic Affairs

E. Gerald Cor­rigan, Man­aging Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co., New York,
NY;  former Pres­i­dent, Fed­eral
Reserve Bank of New York

Lee Cullum,
former reg­ular com­men­tator, “New­sHour with Jim Lehrer,” and
colum­nist, Dallas, TX

H. Lawrence Culp, Jr.,
Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Danaher Cor­po­ra­tion, Wash­ington, DC

Gerald L. Curtis,
Burgess Pro­fessor of Polit­ical Sci­ence, Columbia Uni­ver­sity, New York, NY;
Vis­iting Pro­fessor, Grad­uate Research Insti­tute for Policy Studies, Tokyo

Lynn Davis, Director,
Wash­ington Office, The RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under
Sec­re­tary of State for Arms Con­trol and Inter­na­tional Security

Arthur A. DeFehr, Pres­i­dent
and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Pal­liser Fur­ni­ture, Win­nipeg, MB

André Des­marais, Pres­i­dent and Co-Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Power
Cor­po­ra­tion of Canada, Montréal, QC; Deputy Chairman, Power Finan­cial
Corporation

John M. Deutch,
Insti­tute Pro­fessor, Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nology, Cam­bridge, MA;
former Director of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence; former U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of
Defense

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief
Exec­u­tive Officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co., New York, NY

Peter C. Dobell, Founding Director, Par­lia­men­tary Centre, Ottawa, ON

Wendy K. Dobson, Pro­fessor and Director, Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional
Busi­ness, Rotman School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, Toronto, ON;
former Cana­dian Asso­ciate Deputy Min­ister of Finance

Thomas Donilon, Partner,
OÂ’Melveny & Myers, LLP, Wash­ington, DC

      Ken­neth
M. Duber­stein, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, The Duber­stein Group,
Wash­ington, DC; former Chief of Staff to
Pres­i­dent Ronald Reagan

Peggy
Dulany, Founder and Chair, Syn­ergos Insti­tute, New York, NY

Robert Eckert, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer,
Mattel, Inc., El Segundo, CA

Jes­sica
P. Ein­horn,
Dean, Paul Nitze School of Advanced Inter­na­tional Studies, The Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity,
Wash­ington, DC; former Man­aging Director for
Finance and Resource Mobi­liza­tion, World Bank

Diana
Far­rell, Director, McK­insey Global
Insti­tute, San Fran­cisco, CA

Dianne Fein­stein, Member (D-CA), U.S. Senate

Martin S. Feld­stein, George F. Baker Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics, Har­vard
Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; Pres­i­dent Emer­itus, National Bureau of Eco­nomic
Research; former Chairman, U.S. PresidentÂ’s Council of Eco­nomic Advisors

Roger W. Fer­guson, Jr., Pres­i­dent and Chief
Exec­u­tive Officer, TIAA-CREF, New York, NY; former Member
of the Exec­u­tive Com­mittee, Head of Finan­cial Ser­vices Prod­ucts, and Chairman
of Swiss Re America Holding Cor­po­ra­tion; former Vice Chairman, Board of
Gov­er­nors, U.S. Fed­eral Reserve System

Stanley Fis­cher,
Gov­ernor of the Bank of Israel, Jerusalem; former Pres­i­dent, Cit­i­group
Inter­na­tional and Vice Chairman, Cit­group, New York, NY; former First Deputy
Man­aging Director, Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund

*Thomas S. Foley, former U.S. Ambas­sador to Japan; former Speaker of the U.S.
House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; former North Amer­ican Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion,
Wash­ington, DC

Kristin J. Forbes, Asso­ciate Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics, MIT Sloan
School of Man­age­ment, Cam­bridge, MA; former Member of the U.S. Council of
Eco­nomic Advisors

Michael B.G. Froman, Man­aging Director, Head of Infra­struc­ture and
Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, Citi Alter­na­tive Invest­ments, Cit­i­group Inc., New
York, NY

Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L. Schwartz Pro­fessor Inter­na­tional
Polit­ical Economy, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced Inter­na­tional Studies, The
Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, Wash­ington, DC

Dion­isio Garza Medina, Chairman
of the Board and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, ALFA, Garza Garcia, NL

Richard A. Gephardt,
Senior Counsel, DLA Piper, Wash­ington, DC; former Member (D-MO), U.S. House of Representatives

David Gergen, Pro­fessor
of Public Ser­vice and Director of the Center for Public Lead­er­ship, John F.
Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA;
Editor-at-Large, U.S. News and World Report

Tim­othy F. Gei­thner,
Pres­i­dent, Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York, New York, NY

Fran­cisco
Gil-Díaz,Exec­u­tive Pres­i­dent,
Telefónica de España-México and Cen­tral América, Mexico City, DF

Peter
C. Godsoe,
retired Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer of Sco­tia­bank, Toronto, ON

*Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Advisor, Ben­nett Jones LLP, Toronto, ON;
Chairman, SothebyÂ’s, Canada; former Cana­dian Ambas­sador to the United States;
North Amer­ican Deputy Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission

Bill Graham, Chan­cellor, Trinity Col­lege, Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, Toronto,
ON;  former Member of  Cana­dian House of Com­mons; former Min­ister of For­eign
Affairs and former Min­ister of Defence

Donald E. Graham, Chairman
and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, The Wash­ington Post Company,

Wash­ington, DC

Richard N. Haass, Pres­i­dent, Council on For­eign Rela­tions, New
York, NY; former Director, Policy Plan­ning, U. S. Depart­ment of State; former
Director of For­eign Policy Studies, The Brook­ings Institution

James T.
Hackett, Chairman, Pres­i­dent, and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer,
Anadarko Petro­leum Corp., The Wood­lands, TX

John J. Hamre, Pres­i­dent, Center for Strategic and
Inter­na­tional Studies, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S.
Deputy Sec­re­tary of Defense and Under Sec­re­tary of Defense (Comptroller)

Richard F. Haskayne, Board
Chairman Emer­itus, Uni­ver­sity of Cal­gary, AB; past Chairman of the Board
of  Tran­sCanada Corporation

Carlos Heredia, Econ­o­mist, Mexico City, DF;
Advisor to the Gov­ernor of Michoacán

*Carla A. Hills, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Hills &
Com­pany, Inter­na­tional Con­sul­tants, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Trade
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Housing and Urban Devel­op­ment

*Karen Elliott House,
Writer, Princeton, NJ; Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Sci­ence and
Inter­na­tional
Affairs, John F. Kennedy School
of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; former Senior Vice Pres­i­dent,
Dow Jones & Com­pany, and Pub­lisher, The
Wall Street Journal

Gen.
James L. Jones, U.S.
Marine Corps (Ret.), Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, U.S. Chamber of Com­merce Insti­tute for 21^st
Cen­tury Energy, Wash­ington, DC

Ale­jandro Junco de la Vega, Pres­i­dent
and Director, Grupo Reforma,
Mon­terrey, NL

Robert Kagan, Senior Asso­ciate,
Carnegie Endow­ment for Inter­na­tional Peace, Wash­ington, DC

Arnold Kanter, Prin­cipal and Founding
Member, The Scow­croft Group, Wash­ington, DC; former
U.S. Under
Sec­re­tary of State

Charles R. Kaye,
Co-President, War­burg Pincus LLC, New York, NY

James Kimsey,
Pres­i­dent and Exec­u­tive Director, The Kimsey Foun­da­tion, Wash­ington, DC

Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Asso­ciates, Inc., New York, NY;
former U.S. Sec­re­tary of State; former U.S. Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for
National Secu­rity Affairs; Life­time Trustee, Tri­lat­eral Commission

Michael Klein, Chairman and Co-Chief
Exec­u­tive Officer, Citi Mar­kets & Banking; Vice Chairman, Citibank
Inter­na­tional plc; New York, NY

Steven
E. Koonin, Chief Sci­en­tist, BP, London, UK

Enrique
Krauze, Gen­eral Director, Edi­to­rial Clio Libros
y Videos, S.A. de C.V., Mexico City, DF

Robert W. Lane,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Deere & Com­pany, Moline, IL

Fred Lang­hammer, Chairman, Global
Affairs, The Estée Lauder Com­pa­nies, Inc., New York, NY

Win­ston Lord, Chairman Emer­itus and former Co-Chairman of the Board,
Inter­na­tional Rescue Com­mittee, New York, NY; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary
of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; former U.S. Ambas­sador to China

E. Peter Lougheed, Counsel, Ben­nett Jones, Bar­ris­ters & Solic­i­tors,
Cal­gary, AB; former Pre­mier of Alberta

*Roy MacLaren, former Cana­dian High Com­mis­sioner to the United
Kingdom; former Cana­dian Min­ister of Inter­na­tional Trade; Toronto, ON

John A. Mac­Naughton, Chairman, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Bank of
Canada, and Chairman of Cana­dian Trading and Quo­ta­tion System Inc., Toronto,
ON

Antonio Madero, Chairman of the Board and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, San
Luis Cor­po­ra­cion, S.A. de C.V., Mexico City, DF

John Manley,
Senior Counsel, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Ottawa, ON; former Cana­dian Deputy Prime
Min­ister and Min­ister of Finance

*Sir Deryck C. Maughan, Man­aging Director and
Chairman, KKR Asia, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., New York, NY; former
Vice Chairman, Citigroup

Jay Mazur, Pres­i­dent
Emer­itus, UNITE (Union of Needle­trades, Indus­trial and Tex­tile Employees, and
Pres­i­dent, ILGWU’s 21^st Cen­tury Her­itage Foun­da­tion, New York, NY

Robert S. McNa­mara, former
Pres­i­dent, World Bank; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense; former Pres­i­dent, Ford
Motor Com­pany; Life­time Trustee, Tri­lat­eral Commission

James Moore, Member from British Columbia, Cana­dian
Par­lia­ment, Ottawa, ON; Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary to the Min­ister of Public Works
and Gov­ern­ment Ser­vices Canada and the Pacific Gateway and Van­couver 2010
Olympics

Marc H. Morial,
Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, National Urban League, New York, NY;
former Mayor, New Orleans, LA

Heather Munroe-Blum,
Prin­cipal and Vice-Chancellor, McGill Uni­ver­sity, Mon­treal, QC

*Indra K. Nooyi,
Chairman of the Board and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Pep­siCo, Inc., Pur­chase, NY

*Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Uni­ver­sity
Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Pro­fessor and former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of
Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA;
former Chair, National Intel­li­gence Council and former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary
of Defense for Inter­na­tional Secu­rity Affairs;
North
Amer­ican Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission

Meghan
O’Sullivan, Lec­turer in Public Policy,
Belfer Center for Sci­ence and Inter­na­tional Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA;
former Spe­cial Assis­tant to Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and Deputy National
Secu­rity Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, National Secu­rity Council, The White
House

Thomas R. Pick­ering, Vice Chairman, Hills & Com­pany,
Inter­na­tional Con­sul­tants, Wash­ington, DC; former Senior Vice Pres­i­dent,
Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, The Boeing Com­pany, Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under
Sec­re­tary of State for Polit­ical Affairs; former U.S. Ambas­sador to the Russian
Fed­er­a­tion, India, Israel, El Sal­vador, Nigeria, the Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan, and the United Nations

Martha C. Piper, former Pres­i­dent and Vice-Chancellor, The
Uni­ver­sity of British Columbia, Van­couver, BC

Richard Ple­pler,
Co-president, HBO, New York, NY

Gen. Joseph W. Ral­ston,  U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Vice Chairman,
The Cohen Group, Wash­ington, DC; former Com­mander, U.S. Euro­pean Com­mand, and
Supreme Allied Com­mander NATO; former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff,
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense

Charles B. Rangel, Member (D-NY), U.S. House
of Representatives

Fed­erico Reyes Heroles, Writer and Polit­ical
Ana­lyst, Chairman of the Board of Este
Pais Mag­a­zine,  and Chairman of
the Board, Trans­parencia Mex­i­cana, Mexico City, DF

*Susan Rice, Senior Fellow, For­eign Policy Studies and Global Economy and
Devel­op­ment Pro­grams, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion,
Wash­ington, DC; former Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for African Affairs; former
Spe­cial Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent and Senior Director for African Affairs,
National Secu­rity Council

Hartley Richardson, Pres­i­dent, James Richardson & Sons, Ltd.,
Win­nipeg, MB

Joseph E. Robert, Jr.,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Office, J.E. Robert Com­pa­nies, McLean, VA

David Rock­e­feller, Founder,
Hon­orary Chairman, and Life­time Trustee, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion,
New York, NY

John D. Rock­e­feller IV,  Member (D-WV), U.S. Senate

Ken­neth Rogoff,
Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics and Thomas D. Cabot Pro­fessor of Public Policy, Har­vard
Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; former Chief Econ­o­mist, Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund,
Wash­ington, DC

Charles Rose, Host
of the Charlie Rose Show and Charlie Rose Spe­cial Edi­tion, PBS, New York, NY

Irene B. Rosen­feld,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Kraft Foods, Inc., North­field, IL

Dennis Ross,
Coun­selor and Ziegler Dis­tin­guished Fellow, The Washingon Insti­tute for Near
East Policy, Wash­ington, DC; former Spe­cial Middle East Coor­di­nator in
Pres­i­dent ClintonÂ’s Administration

*Luis Rubio, Pres­i­dent, Center of Research for Devel­op­ment (CIDAC), Mexico
City, DF

Arthur
F. Ryan,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Pru­den­tial
Finan­cial, Inc., Newark, NJ

Jaime Serra, Chairman, SAI
Con­sulting, Mexico City, DF; former Mex­ican
Min­ister of Trade and Industry

Dinakar Singh,
Founder and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, TPG-Axon Cap­ital, New York, NY;

former Co-head, Prin­cipal
Strate­gies Depart­ment, Goldman Sachs

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean,
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and Inter­na­tional Affairs, Princeton
Uni­ver­sity, Princeton, NJ

Gordon Smith, Director, Centre for Global Studies, Uni­ver­sity of
Vic­toria, Vic­toria, BC; Chairman, Board of Gov­er­nors, Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment
Research Centre; former Cana­dian Deputy Min­ister of For­eign Affairs and
Per­sonal Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Prime Min­ister to the Eco­nomic Summit

Donald R. Sobey,
Chairman Emer­itus, Empire Com­pany Ltd., Hal­ifax, NS

Ronald D. Southern, Chairman, ATCO Group, Cal­gary, AB

James B. Stein­berg, Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs, Uni­ver­sity
of Texas, Austin, TX; former Vice Pres­i­dent and Director of the For­eign Policy
Studies Pro­gram, The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Deputy
National Secu­rity Advisor

Jes­sica Stern, Aca­d­emic Director,
Pro­gram on Ter­rorism and the Law, Har­vard Law School, and Lec­turer on Law and
Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA

Bar­bara Stymiest, Chief Oper­ating Officer, RBC Finan­cial Group,
Toronto, ON

John J. Sweeney,
Pres­i­dent, AFL-CIO, Wash­ington, DC

George J. Tenet,
Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor, Edmund A. Walsh School of For­eign Ser­vice, George­town
Uni­ver­sity, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Director of Cen­tral Intelligence

*Paul A. Vol­cker, former Chairman, Wolfen­sohn & Co., Inc., New York;
Fred­erick H. Schultz Pro­fessor Emer­itus, Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Policy,
Princeton Uni­ver­sity; former Chairman, Board of Gov­er­nors, U.S. Fed­eral Reserve
System; Hon­orary North Amer­ican Chairman and former North Amer­ican Chairman,
Tri­lat­eral Commission

William H. Web­ster, Senior Partner, Mil­bank, Tweed, Hadley &
McCloy LLP, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Director of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence;
former Director, U.S. Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion; former Judge of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

Fareed Zakaria, Editor,
Newsweek Inter­na­tional, New York, NY

*Lorenzo H. Zam­brano, Chairman of the Board and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer,
CEMEX, Mon­terrey, NL; North Amer­ican Deputy Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission

Ernesto Zedillo, Director, Yale Center
for the Study of Glob­al­iza­tion, Yale Uni­ver­sity, New Haven, CT; former Pres­i­dent of Mexico

Mor­timer B. Zuck­erman,
Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, U.S. News
&  World Report, and
Pub­lisher, New York Daily
News; Founder and Chairman of Boston Prop­er­ties, Inc.; New York, NY

Former Mem­bers In Public Ser­vice

Richard
B. Cheney, Vice Pres­i­dent of the United States

Paula
J. Dobri­ansky,
U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State for Global Affairs

Luis Téllez, Sec­re­tary of
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Trans­port of Mexico

Robert B. Zoel­lick,
Pres­i­dent, World Bank

 

Euro­pean
Group

Paul Adams, Chief Exec­u­tive, British Amer­ican Tobacco, London

Urban Ahlin, Member of the Swedish Par­lia­ment and Deputy Chairman
of the Com­mittee on For­eign Affairs, Stockholm

*Edmond Alphandéry, Chairman, Caisse Nationale de Prévoyance, Paris;
former Chairman, Elec­tricité de France (EDF); former Min­ister of the Economy
and Finance

Jacques Andréani, Ambas­sadeur de France, Paris; former Ambas­sador to
the United States

Jorge Armindo, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Amorim
Tur­ismo, Lisbon

Jerzy Baczynski, Editor-in-Chief, Poli­tyka, Warsaw

Patricia Bar­bizet, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer and Member of the Board of
Direc­tors, Artémis Group, Paris

Estela Barbot, Director, AGA; Director, Bank San­tander Nego­cios;
Member of the Gen­eral Council, AEP — Por­tuguese Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion, Porto;
Gen­eral Hon­orary Consul of Guatemala, Lisbon

*Erik Bel­frage, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Skan­di­naviska Enskilda Banken;
Director, Investor AB, Stockholm

Marek Belka, Exec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, United Nations Eco­nomic
Com­mis­sion for Europe (UNECE), Geneva; former Prime Min­ister and Min­ister of
Finance of Poland, Warsaw; former Ambassador-at-Large and Chairman, Council for
Inter­na­tional Coor­di­na­tion, Coali­tion Pro­vi­sional Authority, Baghdad

Baron Jean-Pierre
Bergh­mans, Chairman of the
Exec­u­tive Board, Lhoist Group, Limelette, Belgium

*Georges Berthoin, Inter­na­tional Hon­orary Chairman, Euro­pean Move­ment;
Hon­orary Chairman, The Jean Monnet Asso­ci­a­tion; Hon­orary Euro­pean Chairman, The
Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Paris

Nicolas Beytout, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, D.I. Group;
Former Editor of Le Figaro and Les Echos, Paris

Carl Bildt, Min­ister of For­eign Affairs of Sweden; former
Chairman, Kreab Group of public affairs com­pa­nies; former Chairman, Nordic
Ven­ture Net­work, Stock­holm; former Member of the Swedish Par­lia­ment, Chairman
of the Mod­erate Party and Prime Min­ister of Sweden; former Euro­pean Union High
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Bosnia-Herzegovina & UN Spe­cial Envoy to the Balkans

Man­fred Bischoff, Chairman of the Super­vi­sory Board, Daimler AG,
Munich; former Member of the Board of Man­age­ment, Daimler AG; former Chairman,
EADS

Antonio Borges, Inter­na­tional Advisor and former Man­aging Director
and Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Inter­na­tional, London

Ana Patricia Botin, Exec­u­tive Chairman, Banesto;  Vice Chairman, Urbis; Member of the
Man­age­ment Com­mittee, San­tander Group, Madrid

Jean-Louis Bourlanges, Member, State Audit Court (Cour des Comptes), Paris;
Asso­ci­ated Pro­fessor, Insti­tute for Polit­ical Studies in Paris; former Member
of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, Brus­sels; former
Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Move­ment in France, Paris

*Jorge Braga de Macedo, Pres­i­dent, Trop­ical Research Insti­tute, Lisbon;
Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics, Nova Uni­ver­sity at Lisbon; Chairman, Forum Por­tugal
Global; former Min­ister of Finance

Lord Brittan of
Spen­nithorne, Vice Chairman,
UBS Invest­ment Bank, London; former Vice Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Commission

Jean-Louis Bruguière, EU High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the United States on the
Ter­rorist Finance Tracking Pro­gramme (TFTP/SWIFT); Judge, Paris

Robin Buchanan, Dean, London Busi­ness School; former Senior Partner,
Bain & Com­pany, London

*François Bujon de
l’Estang, Ambas­sadeur de
France; Chairman, Citi France, Paris; former Ambas­sador to the United States

Edel­gard Bul­mahn, Member of the German Bun­destag and Chair­woman of the
Com­mittee on Eco­nomic Affairs; former Fed­eral Min­ister, Berlin

Sven Burmester, Writer and Explorer, Den­mark; former Rep­re­sen­ta­tive,
United Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNFPA), Bei­jing; former World Bank Deputy
Sec­re­tary and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Cairo

Richard Bur­rows, Gov­ernor, Bank of Ire­land; Director, Pernod Ricard;
Chairman, the Scotch Whisky Asso­ci­a­tion; former Pres­i­dent, IBEC (The Irish
Busi­ness and Employers Con­fed­er­a­tion), Dublin

*Hervé de Carmoy, Chairman, Almatis, Frankfurt-am-Main; former
Partner, Rhône Group, New York & Paris; Hon­orary Chairman, Banque
Indus­trielle et Mobilière Privée, Paris; former Chief Exec­u­tive, Société
Générale de Belgique

Sal­va­tore Car­rubba, Director of Strate­gies and Colum­nist, Il Sole 24
Ore, Milan; former Cul­ture Alderman, Munic­i­pality of Milan

Carme Chacon Piqueras, Min­ister for Defence; former Min­ister of Housing;
former First Vice-President of the Spanish Par­lia­ment, Madrid

Jürgen Chrobog, Chairman, BMW Her­bert Quandt Foun­da­tion, Munich;
former German Deputy For­eign Min­ister and Ambas­sador to the United States

Luc Coene, Min­ister of State; Deputy Gov­ernor, National Bank of Bel­gium, Brussels

Sir Ronald Cohen, Chairman, Port­land Cap­ital & The Port­land Trust;
former Founding Partner and Exec­u­tive Chairman, Apax Part­ners World­wide, London

Bertrand Col­lomb, Hon­orary Chairman, Lafarge; Chairman, Institut des
Hautes Etudes pour la Sci­ence et la Tech­nologie (IHEST); Chairman, Institut
Français des Rela­tions Inter­na­tionales (IFRI); Member of the Institut de
France, Paris

Iain Conn, Member of the Board of Direc­tors and of the
Exec­u­tive Man­age­ment Team, BP, London

Richard Conroy, Conroy Dia­monds & Gold, Dublin; Member of Senate, Republic of Ire­land 

Eck­hard Cordes, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer and Chairman of the
Man­age­ment Board, Franz Haniel & Cie., Duis­burg; Chief Exec­u­tive Officer
and Chairman of the Man­age­ment Board, Metro; former Member of the Board,
Daim­ler­Chrysler, Stuttgart

Alfonso Cortina, Chairman, Colo­nial; former Chairman, Repsol-YPF
Foun­da­tion, Madrid

Eduardo Costa, Exec­u­tive Vice Chairman, Banco Finantia, Lisbon;
Member, Forum Por­tugal Global

Enrico Tomaso Cuc­chiani, Member of the Board of Man­age­ment, Allianz SE,
Munich; Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Allianz S.p.A., Trieste

Michel David-Weill, Former Chairman, Lazard LLC, world­wide; Chairman of
the Super­vi­sory Board, EURAZEO, Paris

*Vladimir Dlouhy, Senior Advisor, ABB; Inter­na­tional Advisor, Goldman
Sachs; former Czechoslovak Min­ister of Economy; former Czech Min­ister of
Industry & Trade, Prague

*Bill Emmott, Former Editor, The Econ­o­mist, London

Pedro Miguel Echenique, Pro­fessor of Physics, Uni­ver­sity of the Basque
Country; Pres­i­dent, Foun­da­tion Donostia Inter­na­tional Physic Center (DIPC);
former Basque Min­ister of Edu­ca­tion, San Sebastian

Oscar Fanjul, Vice Chairman, Omega Cap­ital, Madrid

Grete Faremo, Director of Law and Cor­po­rate Affairs for Western
Europe, Microsoft Norway; former Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Store­brand; former
Nor­we­gian Min­ister of Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion, Min­ister of Jus­tice and Min­ister
of Oil and Energy, Oslo

*Nemesio
Fernandez-Cuesta, Exec­u­tive
Director of Upstream, Repsol-YPF; former Chairman, Prensa Española, Madrid

Jürgen Fitschen, Member of the Group Exec­u­tive Com­mittee, Deutsche Bank,
Frankfurt-am-Main

Klaus-Dieter Franken­berger, For­eign Editor, Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung,
Frank­furt am Main

Louise Fresco, Uni­ver­sity Pro­fessor, Uni­ver­sity of Ams­terdam;
Member of the Board of non-executive Direc­tors, RABO Bank, Utrecht; former Assis­tant Director-General, Head of Agri­cul­ture Depart­ment, Food and
Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion of the United Nations in Rome

Hugh Friel, Chairman, Tourism Ire­land; former Chief Exec­u­tive
Officer, Kerry Group, Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland

Lykke Friis, Pro-Rector, Uni­ver­sity of Copenhagen

*Michael Fuchs, Member of the German Bun­destag, Berlin; former
Pres­i­dent, National Fed­er­a­tion of German Whole­sale & For­eign Trade

Lord Garel-Jones, Man­aging Director, UBS Invest­ment Bank, London;
Member of the House of Lords; former Min­ister of State at the For­eign Office
(Euro­pean Affairs)

*Antonio Gar­rigues
Walker, Chairman,
Gar­rigues Abo­gados y Asesores Trib­u­tarios, Madrid

Wolf­gang Ger­hardt, Member of the German Bun­destag; Chairman of the
Friedrich-Naumann Foun­da­tion; former Chairman of the Free Demo­c­ratic Party,
Berlin

Lord Gilbert, Member of the House of Lords; former Min­ister for
Defence, London

Esther Giménez-Salinas, Rector, Ramon Llull Uni­ver­sity; Pro­fessor of
Crim­inal Law, ESADE Law School, Ramon Llull Uni­ver­sity, Barcelone

Dermot Gleeson, Chairman, AIB Group, Dublin

Elis­a­beth Guigou, Member of the French National Assembly; former
Min­ister for Euro­pean Affairs, Paris

Gen­eral The Lord Guthrie, Director, N M Roth­schild & Sons, London; Member
of the House of Lords; former Chief of the Defence Staff, London

Antti Herlin, Chairman of the Board, KONE Cor­po­ra­tion, Helsinki

Helga Hernes, Senior Advisor, PRIO (Inter­na­tional Peace Research
Insti­tute Oslo); Chair, Nor­we­gian Par­lia­men­tary Intel­li­gence Over­sight
Com­mittee, Oslo; former Nor­we­gian Ambassador

Nigel Hig­gins, Co-Head of
Global Invest­ment Banking,
N M Roth­schild & Sons, London

Wolf­gang Ischinger, Global Head of Gov­ern­ment
Rela­tions, Allianz SE, Munich; Chairman, the Munich Secu­rity Con­fer­ence on
Secu­rity Policy; former Euro­pean
Member of the Troïka on the Kosovo Status Deter­mi­na­tion and German Ambas­sador
to the United Kingdom

*Mugur Isarescu, Gov­ernor, National Bank of Romania, Bucharest;
former Prime Minister

*Baron Daniel Janssen, Hon­orary Chairman, Solvay, Brussels

Trinidad Jiménez, Inter­na­tional Rela­tions Sec­re­tary of the Socialist
Party (PSOE) & Member of the Fed­eral Exec­u­tive Com­mittee; Sec­re­tary of
State for Latin America, Madrid

Lady Bar­bara Judge, Chairman, UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy
Authority); former US Secu­ri­ties Exchange Com­mis­sioner

*Béla Kadar, Member of the Hun­garian Academy, Budapest; Member of
the Mon­e­tary Council of the National Bank; Pres­i­dent of the Hun­garian Eco­nomic
Asso­ci­a­tion; Former Ambas­sador of Hun­gary to the O.E.C.D., Paris; former
Hun­garian Min­ister of Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Rela­tions and Member of Parliament

Robert Kassai, Gen­eral Vice Pres­i­dent, The National Asso­ci­a­tion of
CraftmenÂ’s Cor­po­ra­tions, Budapest

*Lord Kerr of Kin­lochard, Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc; Member of the House of Lords,
London; former British Ambas­sador to the United States; former Sec­re­tary
Gen­eral, Euro­pean Convention

*Sixten Korkman, Man­aging Director, The Research Insti­tute of the
Finnish Economy (ETLA) & Finnish Busi­ness and Policy Forum (EVA), Helsinki

Arpad Kovacs, Pres­i­dent, State Audit Office of Hun­gary, Budapest

Gabor Kovacs, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Bankar
Holding; Founder, KOGART (the Kovacs Gabor Art Foun­da­tion), Budapest

Jerzy Kozminski, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Polish-American
Freedom Foun­da­tion; former Ambas­sador to the United States; former First Deputy
Min­ister of For­eign Affairs, Warsaw

Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Board and Pro­gramme Director for
Polit­ical Research, Centre for Lib­eral Strate­gies, Sofia; Editor-in-Chief,
Bul­garian Edi­tion, For­eign Policy

Jiri Kunert, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Uni­Credit Bank
Czech Republic; Pres­i­dent of the Czech Asso­ci­a­tion of Banks, Prague

Ulysses Kyr­i­a­copoulos, Chairman, S&B Group; former Chairman, Fed­er­a­tion
of Greek Indus­tries, Athens

*Count Otto Lamb­s­dorff, Partner, Wessing Lawyers, Düsseldorf; former
Chairman, Friedrich Nau­mann Foun­da­tion, Berlin; former Member of German
Bun­destag; Hon­orary Chairman, Free Demo­c­ratic Party; former Fed­eral Min­ister of
Economy; former Pres­i­dent of the Lib­eral Inter­na­tional; Hon­orary Euro­pean
Chairman, The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Paris

Kurt Lauk, Member of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (EPP Group-CDU);
Chairman, Globe Cap­ital Part­ners, Stuttgart; Pres­i­dent, Eco­nomic Council of the
CDU Party, Berlin; Former Member of the Board, Daim­ler­Chrysler, Stuttgart

Anne Lau­ver­geon, Chair­person of the Exec­u­tive Board, Areva;
Chair­person and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Cogema, Paris

Ulrich Lehner, Chairman of the
Board, Henkel, Düsseldorf

Pierre Lel­louche, Member of the French National Assembly and of the
For­eign Affairs Com­mittee, Paris; former Pres­i­dent, NATO Par­lia­men­tary Assembly

Enrico Letta, Under State Sec­re­tary, Office of the Prime Min­ister,
Italy; former Min­ister of Euro­pean Affairs, Industry, and of Industry and
Inter­na­tional Trade, Rome

Thomas Leysen, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Umi­core, Brussels

*Mar­i­anne Lie, former Director Gen­eral, Nor­we­gian ShipownerÂ’s
Asso­ci­a­tion, Oslo

Erkki Liikanen, Chairman of the Board, Bank of Fin­land, Helsinki;
former Finnish Min­ister of Finance; former Euro­pean Commissioner

Count Mau­rice Lip­pens, Chairman, Fortis, Brussels

Peter Löscher, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Siemens, Munich

Helge Lund, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer of the Nor­we­gian Oil
Com­pany, Sta­toil, Oslo

*Cees Maas, Hon­orary Vice Chairman of the ING Group and former
Chief Finan­cial Officer, Ams­terdam; former Trea­surer of the Dutch Government

Peter Man­delson, Member of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion (Trade), Brus­sels;
former Member of the British Par­lia­ment; former Sec­re­tary of State to Northern
Ire­land and for Trade and Industry

Abel Matutes, Chairman, Empresas Matutes, Ibiza; former Member of
the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, Brus­sels; former Min­ister of For­eign Affairs, Madrid

Francis Maude, Member of the British Par­lia­ment; Shadow
Min­ister for the Cab­inet Office and Shadow Chan­cellor of the Duchy of Lan­caster; Director, Ben­field Group; former
Shadow For­eign Sec­re­tary, London

Friedrich Merz, Member of the German Bun­destag; former Member of the
Euro­pean Par­lia­ment; former Chairman of the Par­lia­men­tary Group of the CDU/CSU
in the Bun­destag, Berlin

Peter Mit­ter­bauer, Hon­orary Pres­i­dent, The Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­trian
Industry, Vienna; Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Miba, Laakirchen

Pietro Modiano, Gen­eral Man­ager & Deputy Chief Exec­u­tive Officer,
Intesa San­paolo, Turin

Dominique Moïsi, Spe­cial Advisor to the Director Gen­eral of the
French Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Rela­tions (IFRI), Paris

Mario Monti, Pres­i­dent and Pro­fessor Emer­itus, Boc­coni
Uni­ver­sity, Milan; Chairman of BRUEGEL and of ECAS, Brus­sels; former Member of
the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion (Com­pe­ti­tion Policy)

Luca Cordero di
Mon­teze­molo, Chairman, Fiat,
Turin; former Chairman, Con­find­us­tria (Italian Con­fed­er­a­tion of Industry), Rome

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Chairman, The Global Busi­ness Coali­tion on HIV/AIDS,
Tuber­cu­losis and Malaria;Chairman, Anglo Amer­ican; former Chairman, Royal
Dutch/Shell Group, London

Klaus-Peter Müller, Chairman of the Board, Com­merzbank,
Frankfurt-am-Main; Pres­i­dent, Asso­ci­a­tion of German Banks (BDB), Berlin

Harald Norvik, Chairman and Partner, ECON Man­age­ment; former
Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive, Sta­toil, Oslo

 

Ewald Nowotny, former Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, BAWAG P.S.K., Vienna

 

 

Arend Oetker, Pres­i­dent, German Council on For­eign Rela­tions
(DGAP); Vice Chairman, Fed­er­a­tion of German Indus­tries; Man­aging Director, Dr.
Arend Oetker Holding, Berlin

 

*Andrzej Ole­chowski, Founder, Civic Plat­form; Former Chairman, Bank
Hand­lowy; former Min­ister of For­eign Affairs and of Finance, Warsaw

Richard Olver, Chairman, BAE Sys­tems, London

Janusz Palikot, Chairman of the Super­vi­sory Board, Polmos, Lublin;
Vice Pres­i­dent, Polish Con­fed­er­a­tion of Pri­vate Employers; Co-owner, Pub­lishing
House slowo/obraz tery­toria; Member of the Board of Direc­tors, Polish Busi­ness
Council, Warsaw

Dim­itry Pan­itza, Founding Chairman, The Free and Demo­c­ratic Bul­garia
Foun­da­tion; Founder and Chairman, The Bul­garian School of Pol­i­tics, Sofia

Lucas Papademos, Vice Pres­i­dent, Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank,
Frankfurt-am-Main; former Gov­ernor of the Bank of Greece

Lord Patten of Barnes, Chan­cellor of the Uni­ver­sity of Oxford; Chairman,
Inter­na­tional Crisis Group, Brus­sels; former Member of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion
(External Rela­tions), Brus­sels; former Gov­ernor of Hong Kong; former Member of
the British Cab­inet, London

Volker Perthes,Chairman
and Director, German Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional and Secu­rity Affairs,
Stiftung Wis­senschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin
Carlo Pesenti, Man­aging Director, Ital­cementi, Bergamo

Dieter Pfundt, Per­son­ally Liable Partner, Sal. Oppen­heim Bank,
Frankfurt-am-Main

Josep Piqué, Chairman of the Pop­ular Party of Catalunya,
Barcelona; Member of the Par­lia­ment of Catalunya; Member of the Spanish Senate;
former Min­ister of For­eign Affairs

Benoît Potier, Chairman of the Man­age­ment Board, Air Liq­uide, Paris

Alessandro Pro­fumo, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Uni­Credit Group, Milan

Luigi Ram­poni, Member of the Italian Senate; former Chairman of the
Defence Com­mittee of the Chamber of Deputies, Rome; former Deputy Chief of the
Defence Staff (Italian Army)

Denis Ranque, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Thales, Paris

Juha Rantanen, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Out­okumpu
Group, Espoo, Finland

Wanda Rapaczynski, Advisor to the Super­vi­sory Board and former
Pres­i­dent of the Man­age­ment Board, Agora, Warsaw

Heinz Riesen­huber, Member of the German Bun­destag; former Fed­eral
Min­ister of Research and Tech­nology, Berlin; Chairman of the Super­vi­sory Boards
of Kabel Deutsch­land and of Evotec

Gian­fe­lice Rocca, Chairman, Techint Group of Com­pa­nies, Milan; Vice
Pres­i­dent, Con­find­us­tria, Rome

H. Onno Ruding, Chairman, Centre for Euro­pean Policy Studies (CEPS),
Brus­sels; For­mer  Vice Chairman,
Citibank; former Dutch Min­ister of Finance

Fer­di­nando Salleo, Vice Chairman, MCC (Mediocre­dito Cen­trale), Rome;
former Ambas­sador to the United States

Jacques Santer, Hon­orary State Min­ister, Lux­em­bourg; former Member
of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment; former Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion; former
Prime Min­ister of Luxembourg

*Silvio Scaglia, Founder, Chairman and Finan­cial backer, Babelgum,
London; Chairman, S.M.S. Finance S.A., Lux­em­bourg; former Chairman, Fastweb,
Milan

Paolo Sca­roni, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, ENI, Rome

*Guido Schmidt-Chiari, Chairman of the Super­vi­sory Board, Con­stantia Group;
former Chairman, Cred­i­tanstalt Bankverein, Vienna

Hen­ning Schulte-Noelle, Chairman of the Super­vi­sory Board and former Chief
Exec­u­tive Officer, Allianz, Munich

Karel Schwarzen­berg, Min­ister of For­eign Affairs; Founder and Director,
Nadace Bohemiae, Prague; former Member of the Czech Senate; former Chan­cellor
to Pres­i­dent Havel; former Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Helsinki Fed­er­a­tion
for Human Rights

*Carlo Secchi, Pro­fessor of Euro­pean Eco­nomic Policy and former
Rector, Boc­coni Uni­ver­sity; Vice Pres­i­dent, ISPI, Milan; former Member of the
Italian Senate and of the Euro­pean Parliament

*Tøger Sei­den­faden, Editor-in-Chief, Poli­tiken, Copen­hagen

Mau­r­izio Sella, Chairman, Gruppo Banca Sella, Biella; former Chairman,
Asso­ci­a­tion of Italian Banks (A.B.I.), Rome

Sla­womir S. Sikora, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer and Cit­i­group Country
Officer for Poland, Bank Hand­lowy w Warszawie, Warsaw

Ste­fano Sil­vestri, Pres­i­dent, Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Affairs (IAI),
Rome; Com­men­tator, Il Sole 24 Ore; former Under Sec­re­tary of State for
Defence, Italy

Lord Simon of High­bury,Member of the House of Lords, Deputy Chairman of
Unilever; Non-Executive Director of Suez Group; Senior Adviser of Morgan
Stanley Europe;  former Min­ister for Trade & Com­pet­i­tive­ness in
Europe;  former Chairman of BP, London

Nicholas Soames, Member of the British Par­lia­ment, London

Sir Martin Sor­rell, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, WPP Group, London

*Petar Stoy­anov, Former Pres­i­dent of the Republic of
Bul­garia; Member of Bulgarian

Par­lia­ment; Chairman
of Par­lia­men­tary Group of United Demo­c­ratic Forces; Chairman of Union of
Demo­c­ratic Forces, Sofia

Peter Straarup, Chairman of the Exec­u­tive Board, Danske Bank,
Copen­hagen; Chairman, the Danish Bankers Association

*Peter Suther­land, Chairman, BP p.l.c.; Chairman, Goldman Sachs
Inter­na­tional; Chairman of the London School of Eco­nomics; UN Spe­cial
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Migra­tion and Devel­op­ment; former Director Gen­eral,
GATT/WTO; former Member of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion; former Attorney Gen­eral of
Ireland

Pavel Telicka, Partner, BXL-Consulting, Prague

Jean-Philippe Thierry, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, AGF
(Assur­ances Générales de France), Paris

*Harri Tiido, Under­sec­re­tary for Polit­ical Affairs, Estonian
Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, Tallinn; former Ambas­sador of Estonia and Head of
the Estonian Mis­sion to NATO

Andreas Tre­ichl, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Erste Bank der
Oester­re­ichis­chen Sparkassen, Vienna

Marco Tronchetti Provera, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Pirelli &
C., Milan; Deputy Chairman, Con­find­us­tria, Rome; former Chairman, Telecom Italia

Els­beth Tron­stad, Exec­u­tive Director, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Nor­we­gian
Enter­prise (NHO); former Vice Pres­i­dent, ABB, Oslo

Loukas Tsoukalis,  Spe­cial
Adviser to the Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion; Pro­fessor at the
Uni­ver­sity of Athens and the Col­lege of Europe; Pres­i­dent of the Hel­lenic
Foun­da­tion for Euro­pean and For­eign Policy (ELIAMEP), Athens

Mario Vargas Llosa, Writer and Member of the Royal Spanish Academy,
Madrid

*George Vas­siliou, Former Head of the Nego­ti­ating Team for the
Acces­sion of Cyprus to the Euro­pean Union; former Pres­i­dent of the Republic of
Cyprus; Former Member of Par­lia­ment and Leader of United Democ­rats, Nicosia

Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Exec­u­tive, Royal Dutch Shell, The Hague

Franco Ven­turini, Senior Edi­to­rial Com­men­tator on For­eign Affairs, Cor­riere della Sera, Rome

Janne Virkkunen, Senior Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat,
Helsinki

*Marko Voljc, Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, K & H Bank Zrt,
Budapest; former Gen­eral Man­ager of Cen­tral Europe Direc­torate, KBC Bank
Insur­ance Holding, Brus­sels; former Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Nova Ljubl­janska
Banka, Ljubljana

Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Min­ister for Euro­pean Affairs; former
Min­ister of For­eign Affairs, Prague

Joris Voorhoeve, Member of the Council of State; former Member of the
Dutch Par­lia­ment; former Min­ister of Defence, The Hague

*Panagis Vour­loumis, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Hel­lenic
Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Orga­ni­za­tion (O.T.E.), Athens

Marcus Wal­len­berg, Chairman of the Board, Skan­di­naviska Enskilda Banken
(SEB), Stockholm

Serge Wein­berg, Chairman of the Super­vi­sory Board, Accor; Chairman
and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Wein­berg Cap­ital Part­ners; former Chairman of the
Man­age­ment Board, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute; former Pres­i­dent, Insti­tute of
Inter­na­tional and Strategic Studies (IRIS), Paris

*Hein­rich Weiss, Chairman, SMS,
Düsseldorf; former Chairman, Fed­er­a­tion of German Indus­tries, Berlin

Nout Wellink, Pres­i­dent, Dutch Cen­tral Bank, Amsterdam

Hans Wijers, Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Akzo Nobel,
Arnhem

Emilio Ybarra, former Chairman, Banco Bilbao-Vizcaya, Madrid

Former Mem­bers in Public Service

John Bruton, Euro­pean
Union Ambas­sador & Head, Del­e­ga­tion of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion to the
United States

Lene
Espersen, Min­ister of
Jus­tice, Denmark

Toomas Hen­drik Ilves, Pres­i­dent of the Republic of Estonia, Tallinn

Pedro Solbes, Deputy Prime Min­ister and Min­ister of the Economy
and Finances, Spain; former Member of the Euro­pean Commission

Karsten D. Voigt, Coor­di­nator of German-American Coop­er­a­tion, Fed­eral
For­eign Min­istry, Berlin

 

Pacific
Asian Group

 

Note: Those without city
names are Japanese Mem­bers.
Korean names
are shown with sur­name first.

Narongchai Akrasanee, Director
and Chairman of Board of Exec­u­tive Direc­tors, Export Import Bank of Thai­land;
former Min­ister of Com­merce of Thai­land; Bangkok

Ali Alatas,
Advisor and Spe­cial Envoy of the Pres­i­dent of the Republic of Indonesia; former
Indone­sian Min­ister for For­eign Affairs; Jakarta

Philip Burdon,
Former Chairman, Asia 2000 Foun­da­tion; New Zealand Chairman, APEC; former New
Zealand Min­ister of Trade Nego­ti­a­tions; Wellington

Fujio Cho, Chairman,
Toyota Motor Cor­po­ra­tion

Cho Suck-Rai,
Chairman, Hyosung Group, Seoul

Chung Mong-Joon,
Member, Korean National Assembly; Vice Pres­i­dent, Fed­er­a­tion Inter­na­tionale de
Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (FIFA); Seoul

Barry Desker,
Dean, S. Rajaratnam School of
Inter­na­tional Studies; Vice Chairman, Sin­ga­pore Busi­ness
Fed­er­a­tion; Hon­orary Advisor to the Min­ister for Trade and Industry, Singapore

Takashi Ejiri,
Lawyer, Nishimura Asahi
Law Office

Jesus P. Estanislao,
Chairman, Insti­tute of Cor­po­rate Direc­tors; Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive
Officer, Insti­tute of Sol­i­darity in Asia, Manila; former Philip­pine Sec­re­tary of Finance

Hugh Fletcher,
Chan­cellor, The Uni­ver­sity of Auck­land; former Chief Exec­u­tive Officer,
Fletcher Challenge

Hiroaki Fujii,
Advisor, The Japan Foun­da­tion; Chairman, Mori Arts Center; former Japanese
Ambas­sador to the United Kingdom

Shinji Fukukawa,
Chairman, TEPIA, The Machine Industry Memo­rial Foundation

Yoichi Fun­abashi,
Chief Diplo­matic Cor­re­spon­dent and Colum­nist, The Asahi Shimbun

Car­rillo Gantner,
Director,
The Myer Foun­da­tion; Melbourne

Ross Gar­naut,
Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Aus­tralian National Uni­ver­sity, Canberra

*Toyoo Gyohten, Pres­i­dent, Insti­tute for
Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Affairs; Senior Advisor, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
UFJ, Ltd.

*Han Sung-Joo, Chairman, The Asan Insti­tute for Policy Studies;
former Pres­i­dent, Korea Uni­ver­sity, Seoul; former Korean
Min­ister of For­eign Affairs; former Korean Ambas­sador to the United States;
Pacific Asia Deputy Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission

*Stuart Harris, Pro­fessor of Inter­na­tional
Rela­tions, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Aus­tralian National
Uni­ver­sity, Can­berra; former Aus­tralian Vice Min­ister of For­eign Affairs

Azman Hashim,
Chairman, AmBank Group, Kuala Lumpur

John R. Hewson,
Exec­u­tive Chairman, Elder­slie Finance Cor­po­ra­tion, Ltd.; Chairman, The John Hewson Group, Sydney; Former Leader of the
Fed­eral Oppo­si­tion, Aus­tralia; Spe­cial Adviser to the Under Sec­re­tary of
UNESCAP

Ernest M. Higa,
Pres­i­dent and CEO, Higa Industries

Hong Seok Hyun, former
Chairman and CEO, Joong Ang Ilbo;
former Korean Ambas­sador to the United States; Seoul

Shin­taro Hori,
Chairman, Bain Cap­ital
Japan, Inc.

Murray Horn,
Man­aging Director, Insti­tu­tional Banking, ANZ (NZ) Ltd., Sydney; Chairman, ANZ
Invest­ment Bank; former Par­lia­ment Sec­re­tary, New Zealand Treasury

Hyun Hong-Choo,
Senior Partner, Kim & Chang, Seoul; former Korean Ambas­sador to the United
Nations and to the United States, Seoul

Hyun Jae-Hyun,
Chairman, Tong Yang Group, Seoul

ShinÂ’ichi Ichimura,
Pro­fessor Emer­itus, Kyoto Uni­ver­sity; former Director, Inter­na­tional Centre for
the Study of East Asian Devel­op­ment, Kitakyushu

Nobuyuki Idei, Chairman of the Advi­sory Board of Sony Cor­po­ra­tion; Board of Direc­tors, Baidu

Noriyuki Inoue,
Chairman and CEO, Daikin Indus­tries, Ltd.

Dato Seri Mohamed
Jawhar, Chairman and CEO,
Insti­tute of Strategic Inter­na­tional Studies (ISIS), Malaysia

Motoo Kaji,
Pro­fessor Emer­itus, Uni­ver­sity of Tokyo

Kasem Kasemsri,
Hon­orary Chairman, Thailand-U.S. Busi­ness Council, Bangkok; Chairman, Advi­sory
Board, Chart Thai Party; Chairman, Thai-Malaysian Asso­ci­a­tion; former Deputy
Prime Min­ister of Thailand

Koichi Kato,
Member, Japanese House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; former Secretary-General, Lib­eral
Demo­c­ratic Party

K. Kesava­pany,
Director, Insti­tute of South­east Asian Studies, Singapore

Kim Kihwan,
Inter­na­tional Advisor, Goldman Sachs, Asia, Seoul; Chair, Seoul Finan­cial
Forum; former Korean Ambassador-at-Large for Eco­nomic Affairs

Kim Kyung-Won,
Pres­i­dent Emer­itus, Seoul Forum for Inter­na­tional Affairs, Seoul; former Korean
Ambas­sador to the United States and the United Nations; Senior Advisor, Kim
& Chang Law Office

Kaku­taro Kitashiro,
Senior Advisor,
IBM Japan, Ltd.; Chairman, KEIZAI DOYUKAI (Japan Asso­ci­a­tion of Cor­po­rate
Exec­u­tives)

Shoichiro Kobayashi,
Advisor, Kansai Elec­tric Power Com­pany, Ltd.

*Yotaro Kobayashi, Chief Cor­po­rate
Advisor, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.; Pacific Asia Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission

Akira Kojima,
Chairman, Japan Center for Eco­nomic Research ( JCER )

Koo John,
Chairman, LS Cable Ltd.; Chairman, LS Indus­trial Sys­tems Co.; Seoul

Kenji Kosaka,
Member, Japanese House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; former Min­ister of Edu­ca­tion,
Cul­ture, Sports, Sci­ence and Technology

*Lee Hong-Koo, Chairman, Seoul Forum for
Inter­na­tional Affairs, Seoul; former Korean Prime Min­ister; former Korean
Ambas­sador to the United Kingdom and the United States

Lee In-ho,
Uni­ver­sity Pro­fessor, Myongji Uni­ver­sity, Seoul; former Pres­i­dent, Korea
Foun­da­tion; former Korean Ambas­sador to Fin­land and Russia

Lee Jay Y.,
Vice Pres­i­dent, Cor­po­rate Strategy Office, Sam­sung Elec­tronics Co. Ltd., Seoul

Lee Kyung­sook Choi,
Pres­i­dent, Sook­myung Women’s Uni­ver­sity, Seoul

Lee Shin-wha,
Pro­fessor & Director of PEL
(Pol­i­tics, Eco­nomics and Law) Pro­gram, Depart­ment of
Polit­ical Sci­ence and Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, Korea Uni­ver­sity, Seoul

Adrianto Machribie,
Chairman, PT Freeport Indonesia, Jakarta

*Minoru Mak­i­hara, Senior Cor­po­rate
Advisor, Mit­subishi Corporation

Hiroshi Mik­i­tani,
Chairman, Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Rakuten, Inc.

Yoshi­hiko Miyauchi,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, ORIX Corporation

Isamu Miyazaki,
Hon­orary Advisor, Daiwa Insti­tute of Research, Ltd.; former Director-General of
the Japanese Eco­nomic Plan­ning Agency

Yuz­aburo Mogi,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Kikkoman Corporation

Mike Moore,
former Director-General, World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion, Geneva; Member, New Zealand
Privy Council, Auck­land; former Prime Min­ister of New Zealand

Hugh Morgan, Prin­cipal, First Charnock, Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia

Moriyuki Motono,
former Pres­i­dent,
For­eign Affairs Society; former Japanese Ambas­sador to France

Jiro Murase,
Man­aging Partner, Bingham McCutchen Murase, New York

*Minoru Muro­fushi, Coun­selor, ITOCHU
Corporation

Osamu Nagayama, Pres­i­dent
and CEO, Chugai Phar­ma­ceu­tical Co., Ltd.

Masao Naka­mura,
Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, NTT Docomo Inc.

Masashi Nishi­hara,
Pres­i­dent, Research Insti­tute for Peace and Security

Roberto F. de Ocampo,Chairman,
Board of Advi­sors, RFO Center for Public Finance & Regional Eco­nomic
Coop­er­a­tion, Manila; former Philip­pine Sec­re­tary of Finance

Sadako Ogata,
Pres­i­dent, Japan Inter­na­tional Coop­er­a­tion Agency (JICA); former United Nations
High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees

*Shi­juro Ogata, former Deputy Gov­ernor,
Japan Devel­op­ment Bank; former Deputy Gov­ernor for Inter­na­tional Rela­tions,
Bank of Japan; Pacific Asia Deputy Chairman, Tri­lat­eral  Commission

Soz­aburo Oka­matsu,
Pres­i­dent, Indus­trial Prop­erty Coop­er­a­tion Center; former Chairman, Research
Insti­tute of Economy, Trade & Industry (RIETI)

*Yoshio Okawara, Pres­i­dent, Insti­tute
for Inter­na­tional Policy Studies; former Japanese Ambas­sador to the United
States

Yoichi Okita,
Pro­fessor, National Grad­uate Insti­tute for Policy Studies

Ariyoshi Oku­mura,
Chairman, Lotus Cor­po­rate Advi­sory, Inc.

Anand Pan­yara­chun,
Chairman, Thai Indus­trial Fed­er­a­tion; Chairman, Saha-Union Public Com­pany,
Ltd.; former Prime Min­ister of Thai­land; Bangkok

Ryu Jin Roy,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Poongsan Corp., Seoul

Eisuke Sakak­ibara,
Pro­fessor, Waseda Uni­ver­sity; former Japanese Vice Min­ister of Finance for
Inter­na­tional Affairs

SaKong Il,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Insti­tute for Global Eco­nomics, Seoul;
former Korean Min­ister of Finance

Yoshiyasu Sato, Advisor,
Tokyo Elec­tric Power Co. Ltd.; former Japanese Ambas­sador to China

Yukio Satoh,
Pres­i­dent, The Japan Insti­tute of Inter­na­tional Affairs; former Japanese
Ambas­sador to the United Nations

Sachio Sem­moto,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, EMOBILE, Ltd.

Masahide Shibu­sawa,
Pres­i­dent, Shibu­sawa EiÂ’ichi Memo­rial Foundation

Yasuhisa Shiozaki,
Former Chief
Cab­inet Sec­re­tary; former Senior Vice Min­ister for For­eign Affairs; Member,
Japanese House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; former Par­lia­men­tary Vice Min­ister for
Finance

Arifin Siregar,
Chairman of the Gov­erning Board, Indone­sian Council on World Affairs (ICWA);
former Inter­na­tional Advisor, Goldman Sachs (Pacific Asia) LLC; former
Ambas­sador of Indonesia to the United States; Jakarta

Jacob Soe­toyo, Director
and Share­holder of P.T.Gesit Maju Cor­po­ra­tion; Jakarta

Shigemitsu Sug­isaki, Vice
Chairman, Goldman Sachs Japan Co., Ltd.; former Deputy Man­aging Director of the
Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF)

Tsuyoshi Takagi,
Pres­i­dent, JTUC-Rengo (Japanese Trade Union Confederation)

Keizo Takemi,Former Member,
Japanese House of Coun­cil­lors; former State Sec­re­tary for For­eign Affairs; former Vice Min­ister for Health, Labour and Wel­fare,
Tokyo; Research Fellow, Har­vard School of Public

Aki­hiko Tanaka,
Pro­fessor, Uni­ver­sity of Tokyo

Hitoshi Tanaka, Senior
Fellow, Japan Center for Inter­na­tional Exchange; former Deputy Min­ister for
For­eign Affairs

Naoki Tanaka,
Pres­i­dent, Center for Inter­na­tional Public Policy Studies

Teh Kok Peng,
Pres­i­dent, GIC Spe­cial Invest­ments Pri­vate Ltd., Singapore

Kiyoshi Tsugawa,
Exec­u­tive Adviser & Member of Japan Advi­sory Board, Lehman Brothers Japan,
Inc.; Member of the Board, Aozora Bank

Junichi Ujiie,
Chairman, Nomura Hold­ings, Inc.

Sarasin Viraphol,
Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Charoen Pokp­hand Co., Ltd., Bangkok; former Deputy
Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of For­eign Affairs of Thailand

Cesar E. A. Virata,
Cor­po­rate Vice Chairman and Acting Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Rizal Com­mer­cial
Banking Cor­po­ra­tion (RCBC), Manila; former Prime Min­ister of Philippines

*Jusuf Wanandi, Vice Chairman, Board of
Trustees, Centre for Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies, Jakarta

Etsuya Washio,
Pres­i­dent, The Foun­da­tion for Workers Wel­fare and Coop­er­a­tive Insur­ance; former
Pres­i­dent, Japanese Trade Union Con­fed­er­a­tion (RENGO)

Koji Watanabe,
Senior Fellow, Japan Center for Inter­na­tional Exchange; former Japanese
Ambas­sador to Russia

Osamu Watanabe, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Japan Petro­leum
Explo­ration Co., Ltd.

Taizo Yakushiji,
Exec­u­tive Member, Council for Sci­ence and Tech­nology Policy of the Cab­inet
Office of Japan

Tadashi Yamamoto,
Pres­i­dent, Japan Center for Inter­na­tional Exchange; Pacific Asia Director,
Tri­lat­eral Commission

Noriyuki Yone­mura,
Chairman, Japan Small and Medium Enter­prise Man­age­ment Con­sul­tants Association

Former Mem­bers
in Public Service

Hisashi Owada,
Judge, Inter­na­tional Court of Justice

 

 

Par­tic­i­pants from Other
Areas

“Tri­en­nium Par­tic­i­pants”

André
Azoulay, Adviser to H.M.
King Mohammed VI, Rabat, Morocco

Morris Chang,
Chairman, Taiwan Semi­con­ductor Man­u­fac­turing
Co., Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan

Omar Davies, Member of the Jamaican Par­lia­ment and Oppo­si­tion Spokesman
on Finance, Kingston, Jamaica; former Min­ister of Finance and Planning

Hüsnü Dogan,
Gen­eral Coor­di­nator, Nurol Holding; former Chairman
of the Board of Trustees, Devel­op­ment Foun­da­tion of Turkey; former Min­ister of
Defence, Ankara, Turkey

Ale­jandro Foxley,
Chilean Min­ister of For­eign Affairs, Val­paraiso, Chile

Jacob A. Frenkel,
Vice Chairman, Amer­ican Inter­na­tional Group, Inc. (AIG) and Chairman, AIG’s
Global Eco­nomic Strate­gies Group, New York, NY; Chairman, Group of Thirty;
former Chairman, Mer­rill Lynch Inter­na­tional London; former Gov­ernor, Bank of
Israel

Victor
K. Fung, Chairman, Li
& Fung; Chairman, Pru­den­tial Asia Ltd., Hong Kong

Frene Gin­wala,
former Speaker of the National Assembly,
Par­lia­ment of the Republic of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

H.R.H. Prince El Hassan
bin Talal, Pres­i­dent, The Club of Rome; Mod­er­ator of the
World Con­fer­ence on Reli­gion and Peace; Chairman, Arab Thought Forum, Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Ricardo Haus­mann, Pro­fessor of the Prac­tice of Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment, Center
for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment, John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard
Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA;  former
Chief Econ­o­mist, Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank; former Venezuelan Min­ister of
Plan­ning and Member of the Board of the Cen­tral Bank of Venezuela

Sergei Karaganov,
Dean, School of World Eco­nomics and Inter­na­tional Affairs, State
Uni­ver­sityÂ – Higher School of Eco­nomics; Chairman,
Pre­sidium of the Council on For­eign and Defense Policy; Chairman, Edi­to­rial
Board, “Russia in Global Affairs,” Moscow

Jef­frey L.S. Koo,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Chi­na­trust
Invest­ment, Bank, Taipei, Taiwan

Richard Li,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Pacific
Cen­tury Group Hold­ings Ltd., Hong Kong

Ricardo Lopez Murphy, Vis­iting Research Fellow, Latin Amer­ican Eco­nomic Research
Foun­da­tion, Buenos Aires, Argentina; former Argen­tinian Finance Min­ister and
Defence Minister

Andrónico Luksic Craig, Vice Chairman, Banco de Chile, San­tiago, Chile

Qin Yaqing, Vice Pres­i­dent, China
For­eign Affairs Uni­ver­sity, Bei­jing, China; Vice Pres­i­dent, China National
Asso­ci­a­tion for Inter­na­tional Studies

Itamar Rabi­novich, Ettinger Chair of Con­tem­po­rary Middle Eastern His­tory, Tel
Aviv Uni­ver­sity, Tel Aviv, Israel; Charles and Andrea Bronfman Dis­tin­guished
Fellow at the Saban Center, The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion; Dis­tin­guished Global
Pro­fessor at New York Uni­ver­sity; Vis­iting Pro­fessor, Kennedy School of
Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity; former Ambas­sador to the United States

Rüsdü Saracoglu,
Pres­i­dent of the Finance
Group, Koç Holding; Chairman, Makro Con­sulting, Istanbul, Turkey; former State
Min­ister and Member of the Turkish Par­lia­ment; former Gov­ernor of the Cen­tral
Bank of Turkey

Roberto
Egydio Setubal, Pres­i­dent and
Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Banco Itaú S.A. and Banco Itaú Holding Finan­ceira
S.A., Sao Paulo, Brazil

Stan Shih,
Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, The Acer
Group, Taipei, Taiwan

Wang Jisi, Dean, School of Inter­na­tional Studies, Peking
Uni­ver­sity, Bei­jing, China

Gordon Wu,
Chairman and Man­aging Director, Hopewell
Hold­ings Ltd., Hong Kong

Wu
Jianmin, Pres­i­dent, China For­eign Affairs
Uni­ver­sity; Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, China National Asso­ci­a­tion for
Inter­na­tional Studies, Bei­jing, China

Grigory A. Yavlinsky,
Chairman and Co-Founder of the Russian Demo­c­ratic Party “Yabloko” and former Member of the State Duma; Chairman of the Center for
Eco­nomic and Polit­ical Research, Moscow, Russian Federation

Yu Xintian, Pres­i­dent, Shanghai Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional
Studies, Shanghai, China

Yuan Ming, Vice
Dean, School of Inter­na­tional Studies, Peking Uni­ver­sity, Bei­jing, China

Zhang Yun­ling, Director,
Aca­d­emic
Divi­sion of Inter­na­tional Studies, Chi­nese Academy of Social Sci­ences (CASS), Bei­jing, China

 

By Patrick Wood, Editor
August 5, 2008

Will it matter if Obama or McCain are elected in November? Hardly.

Both are rigidly backed by impor­tant mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion who hijacked the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment starting in 1976 with the elec­tion of Jimmy Carter.

In Obama’s case, Zbig­niew Brzezinski (co-founder of the Com­mis­sion in 1973) is emerging as his prin­cipal advisor on for­eign policy. Ex-Fed Chairman Paul Volker has made a once-in-a-lifetime, glowing endorse­ment of Obama. Madelyn Albright is seen sit­ting next to Obama in sev­eral con­fer­ences. Shoot, even Jimmy Carter him­self endorses Obama. All are top mem­bers of the Commission.

John McCain is being sup­ported by sev­eral Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion giants including: Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Lawrence Eagle­burger and Alexander Haig. All of these are ex-Secretaries of State who issued a joint endorse­ment of McCain early-on in his campaign.

And, unless Obama shoots both of his own feet (or…?) before the gen­eral pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in November, he is most likely to be the next pres­i­dent of the United States.

You would think that Amer­i­cans would want to know who the “spe­cial inter­ests” are that are embodied by this Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and what they intend to do or not do with America.

What is the Tri­lat­eral Commission?

The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was founded by the per­sis­tent maneu­vering of David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973. Rock­e­feller was chairman of the ultra-powerful Chase Man­hattan Bank, a director of many major multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions and “endow­ment funds” and had long been a cen­tral figure in the Council on For­eign Rela­tions (CFR). Brzezinski, a bril­liant prog­nos­ti­cator of one-world ide­alism, was a pro­fessor at Columbia Uni­ver­sity and the author of sev­eral books that have served as “policy guide­lines” for the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

Brzezinski served as the Commission’s first exec­u­tive director from its incep­tion in 1973 until late 1976 when he was appointed by Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter as Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for National Secu­rity Affairs.

The ini­tial Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship was approx­i­mately three hun­dred, with roughly one hun­dred each from Europe, Japan and North America. Mem­ber­ship was also roughly divided between aca­d­e­mics, politi­cians and cor­po­rate mag­nates; these included inter­na­tional bankers, leaders of promi­nent labor unions and cor­po­rate direc­tors of media giants.

The word com­mis­sion was puz­zling since it is usu­ally asso­ci­ated with instru­men­tal­i­ties set up by gov­ern­ments. It seemed out of place with a so-called pri­vate group unless we could deter­mine that it really was an arm of a gov­ern­ment – an unseen gov­ern­ment, dif­ferent from the vis­ible gov­ern­ment in Wash­ington. Euro­pean and Japanese involve­ment indi­cated a world gov­ern­ment rather than a national gov­ern­ment. We hoped that the con­cept of a sub-rosa world gov­ern­ment was just wishful thinking on the part of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners. The facts, how­ever, lined up quite pessimistically.

If the Council on For­eign Rela­tions could be said to be a spawning ground for the con­cepts of one-world ide­alism, then the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was the “task force” assem­bled to assault the beach­heads. Already the Com­mis­sion had placed its mem­bers in the top posts the U.S. had to offer.

Jimmy Carter: The first Tri­lat­eral president

Pres­i­dent James Earl Carter, the country politi­cian who promised, “I will never lie to you,” was chosen to join the Commission by Brzezinski in 1973. It was Brzezinski, in fact, who first iden­ti­fied Carter as pres­i­den­tial timber, and sub­se­quently edu­cated him in eco­nomics, for­eign policy, and the ins-and-outs of world pol­i­tics. Upon Carter’s elec­tion, Brzezinski was appointed assis­tant to the pres­i­dent for national secu­rity mat­ters. Com­monly, he was called the head of the National Secu­rity Council because he answered only to the pres­i­dent – some said Brzezinski held the second most pow­erful posi­tion in the U.S.

Carter’s run­ning mate, Walter Mon­dale, was also a member of the Com­mis­sion. (If you are trying to cal­cu­late the odds of three vir­tu­ally unknown men, out of over sixty Com­mis­sioners from the U.S., cap­turing the three most pow­erful posi­tions in the land, don’t bother. Your cal­cu­la­tions will be meaningless.)

On Jan­uary 7, 1977 Time Mag­a­zine, whose editor-in-chief, Hedley Donovan was a pow­erful Tri­lat­eral, named Pres­i­dent Carter “Man of the Year.” The sixteen-page article in that issue not only failed to men­tion Carter’s con­nec­tion with the Com­mis­sion but also stated the following:

“As he searched for Cab­inet appointees, Carter seemed at times hes­i­tant and frus­trated dis­con­cert­ingly out of char­acter. His lack of ties to Wash­ington and the Party Estab­lish­ment – qual­i­ties that helped raise him to the White House – carry poten­tial dan­gers. He does not know the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment or the pres­sures it cre­ates. He does not really know the politi­cians whom he will need to help him run the country.”

Was this por­trait of Carter as a polit­ical inno­cent simply inac­cu­rate or was it delib­er­ately mis­leading? By December 25, 1976 – two weeks before the Time article appeared – Carter had already chosen his cab­inet. Three of his cab­inet mem­bers – Cyrus Vance, Michael Blu­men­thal, and Harold Brown – were Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners; and the other non-Commission mem­bers were not unsym­pa­thetic to Com­mis­sion objec­tives and oper­a­tions. In addi­tion, Carter had appointed another four­teen Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners to top gov­ern­ment posts, including:

• C. Fred Berg­sten (Under Sec­re­tary of Treasury)
• James Schlesinger (Sec­re­tary of Energy)
• Elliot Richardson (Del­e­gate to Law of the Sea)
• Leonard Wood­cock (Chief envoy to China)
• Andrew Young (Ambas­sador to the United Nations).

As of 25 December 1976, there­fore, there were nine­teen Tri­lat­erals, including Carter and Mon­dale, holding tremen­dous polit­ical power. These pres­i­den­tial appointees rep­re­sented almost one-third of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers from the United States. The odds of that hap­pening “by chance” are beyond calculation!

Real­i­ties of the New World Order

In 1972, Brzezinski’s wrote that “nation-state as a fun­da­mental unit of man’s orga­nized life has ceased to be the prin­cipal cre­ative force: Inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state.”
The late Sen­ator Barry Gold­water (R-AZ) was one of a very few people who under­stood what Brzezinski was alluding to, when he issued a clear and pre­cise warning in his 1979 book, With No Apologies:

“The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is inter­na­tional and is intended to be the vehicle for multi­na­tional con­sol­i­da­tion of the com­mer­cial and banking inter­ests by seizing con­trol of the polit­ical gov­ern­ment of the United States. The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion rep­re­sents a skillful, coor­di­nated effort to seize con­trol and con­sol­i­date the four cen­ters of power – polit­ical, mon­e­tary, intel­lec­tual and ecclesiastical.”

Tri­lat­eral Entrench­ment: 1980 – 2008

Every Admin­is­tra­tion since Carter has had top-level Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tion through the Pres­i­dent or Vice-President, or both! George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Dick Cheney are all members.

In turn, these have appointed their Tri­lat­eral cronies to top posi­tions in their Administrations.

For instance, six out of seven World Bank pres­i­dents have been mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion. Eight out of ten USTR’s (U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive) have been members.

Sec­re­taries of State include Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, Alexander Haig, George Schultz, Lawrence Eagle­burger, Warren Christo­pher and Madeleine Albright. Yep, all mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

Follow the money, follow the power

You decide which is scarier: Obama and Brzezinski or McCain and Henry Kissinger?

Either way, Amer­i­cans will con­tinue to lose…

Every major crisis we face today is directly attrib­ut­able to poli­cies put forth and exe­cuted by mem­bers of this Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion: Banking/lending/mortgage crisis, energy/gas price crisis, food/shortage/price crisis.

In addi­tion, in the last fif­teen to twenty years we have lost of mil­lions of prime man­u­fac­turing jobs to China, India and Mexico. Our prime assets are being pur­chased by sov­er­eign wealth funds and for­eign investors. Our cur­rency has all but been destroyed throughout the world.

Remember Brzezinski’s vision that “inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state”?

Well, that’s been true enough. But, for all their acting and plan­ning at the expense of our own pros­perity and sov­er­eignty, who wants or needs more of the same under Obama or McCain? With friends like this, who needs enemies?

For sev­eral Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions now, this writer has voted according to the phi­los­ophy of voting for the “lesser of two evils.” Never again!

A vote for either Obama or McCain is a vote for the com­plete destruc­tion of America!

By Patrick Wood

[Editor’s note: For ease of reading, all mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion appear in bold type]

“Pres­i­dent Reagan ulti­mately came to under­stand Trilateral’s value and invited the entire mem­ber­ship to a recep­tion at the White House in April 1984″
 – David Rock­e­feller, Mem­oirs, 2002¹

---

According to each issue of the offi­cial Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion quar­terly mag­a­zine Tri­a­logue:

“The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was formed in 1973 by pri­vate cit­i­zens of Western Europe, Japan and North America to foster closer coop­er­a­tion among these three regions on common prob­lems. It seeks to improve public under­standing of such prob­lems, to sup­port pro­posals for han­dling them jointly, and to nur­ture habits and prac­tices of working together among these regions.²

Fur­ther, Tri­a­logue and other offi­cial writ­ings made clear their stated goal of cre­ating a “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order.” Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush later talked openly about cre­ating a “New World Order”, which has since become a syn­ony­mous phrase.

This paper attempts to tell the rest of the story, according to offi­cial and unof­fi­cial Com­mis­sion sources and other avail­able documents.

The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was founded by the per­sis­tent maneu­vering of David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski. Rock­e­feller was chairman of the ultra-powerful Chase Man­hattan Bank, a director of many major multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions and “endow­ment funds” and had long been a cen­tral figure in the Council on For­eign Rela­tions (CFR). Brzezinski, a bril­liant prog­nos­ti­cator of one-world ide­alism, was a pro­fessor at Columbia Uni­ver­sity and the author of sev­eral books that have served as “policy guide­lines” for the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Brzezinski served as the Commission’s first exec­u­tive director from its incep­tion in 1973 until late 1976 when he was appointed by Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter as Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for National Secu­rity Affairs.

The ini­tial Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship was approx­i­mately three hun­dred, with roughly one hun­dred each from Europe, Japan and North America. Mem­ber­ship was also roughly divided between aca­d­e­mics, politi­cians and cor­po­rate mag­nates; these included inter­na­tional bankers, leaders of promi­nent labor unions and cor­po­rate direc­tors of media giants.

The word com­mis­sion was puz­zling since it is usu­ally asso­ci­ated with instru­men­tal­i­ties set up by gov­ern­ments. It seemed out of place with a so-called  pri­vate group unless we could deter­mine that it really was an arm of a gov­ern­ment – an unseen gov­ern­ment, dif­ferent from the vis­ible gov­ern­ment in Wash­ington. Euro­pean and Japanese involve­ment indi­cated a world gov­ern­ment rather than a national gov­ern­ment. We hoped that the con­cept of a sub-rosa world gov­ern­ment was just wishful thinking on the part of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners. The facts, how­ever, lined up quite pessimistically.

If the Council on For­eign Rela­tions could be said to be a spawning ground for the con­cepts of one-world ide­alism, then the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was the “task force” assem­bled to assault the beach­heads. Already the Com­mis­sion had placed its mem­bers in the top posts the U.S. had to offer.

Pres­i­dent James Earl Carter, the country politi­cian who promised, “I will never lie to you,” was chosen to join the Com­mis­sion by Brzezinski in 1973. It was Brzezinski, in fact, who first iden­ti­fied Carter as pres­i­den­tial timber, and sub­se­quently edu­cated him in eco­nomics, for­eign policy, and the ins-and-outs of world pol­i­tics. Upon Carter’s elec­tion, Brzezinski was appointed assis­tant to the pres­i­dent for national secu­rity mat­ters. Com­monly, he was called the head of the National Secu­rity Council because he answered only to the pres­i­dent – some said Brzezinski held the second most pow­erful posi­tion in the U.S.

Carter’s run­ning mate, Walter Mon­dale, was also a member of the Com­mis­sion. (If you are trying to cal­cu­late the odds of three vir­tu­ally unknown men, out of over sixty Com­mis­sioners from the U.S., cap­turing the three most pow­erful posi­tions in the land, don’t bother. Your cal­cu­la­tions will be meaningless.)

On Jan­uary 7, 1977 Time Mag­a­zine, whose editor-in-chief, Hedley Donovan was a pow­erful Tri­lat­eral, named Pres­i­dent Carter “Man of the Year.” The sixteen-page article in that issue not only failed to men­tion Carter’s con­nec­tion with the Com­mis­sion but also stated the following:

“As he searched for Cab­inet appointees, Carter seemed at times hes­i­tant and frus­trated dis­con­cert­ingly out of char­acter. His lack of ties to Wash­ington and the Party Estab­lish­ment – qual­i­ties that helped raise him to the White House – carry poten­tial dan­gers. He does not know the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment or the pres­sures it cre­ates. He does not really know the politi­cians whom he will need to help him run the country.”³

Is this por­trait of Carter as a polit­ical inno­cent simply inac­cu­rate or is it delib­er­ately mis­leading? By December 25, 1976 – two weeks before the Time article appeared – Carter had already chosen his cab­inet. Three of his cab­inet mem­bers – Cyrus Vance, Michael Blu­men­thal, and Harold Brown – were Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners; and the other non-Commission mem­bers were not unsym­pa­thetic to Com­mis­sion objec­tives and oper­a­tions. In addi­tion, Carter had appointed another four­teen Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioners to top gov­ern­ment posts, including:

• C. Fred Berg­sten (Under Sec­re­tary of Treasury)
• James Schlesinger (Sec­re­tary of Energy)
• Elliot Richardson (Del­e­gate to Law of the Sea)
• Leonard Wood­cock (Chief envoy to China)
• Andrew Young (Ambas­sador to the United Nations)

As of 25 December 1976, there­fore, there were nine­teen Tri­lat­erals, including Carter and Mon­dale, holding tremen­dous polit­ical power. These pres­i­den­tial appointees rep­re­sented almost one-third of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers from the United States. The odds of that hap­pening “by chance” are beyond calculation!

Nev­er­the­less, was there even the slightest evi­dence to indi­cate any­thing other than col­lu­sion? Hardly! Zbig­niew Brzezinski spelled out the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of a 1976 pres­i­den­tial winner in 1973:

“The Demo­c­ratic can­di­date in 1976 will have to empha­size work, the family, reli­gion and, increas­ingly, patriotism…The new con­ser­vatism will clearly not go back to laissez faire. It will be a philo­soph­ical con­ser­vatism. It will be a kind of con­ser­v­a­tive sta­tism or man­agerism. There will be con­ser­v­a­tive values but a reliance on a great deal of co-determination between state and the cor­po­ra­tions.”⁴

On 23 May 1976 jour­nalist Leslie H. Gelb wrote in the not-so-conservative New York Times, “(Brzezinski) was the first guy in the Com­mu­nity to pay atten­tion to Carter, to take him seri­ously. He spent time with Carter, talked to him, sent him books and arti­cles, edu­cated him.”⁵ Richard Gardner (also of Columbia Uni­ver­sity) joined into the “edu­ca­tional” task, and as Gelb noted, between the two of them they had Carter vir­tu­ally to them­selves. Gelb con­tinued: “While the Com­mu­nity as a whole was looking else­where, to Sen­a­tors Kennedy and Mon­dale…it paid off. Brzezinski, with Gardner, is now the leading man on Carter’s for­eign policy task force.”⁶

Although Richard Gardner was of con­sid­er­able aca­d­emic influ­ence, it should be clear that Brzezinski was the “guiding light” of for­eign policy in the Carter admin­is­tra­tion. Along with Com­mis­sioner Vance and a host of other Com­mis­sioners in the State Depart­ment, Brzezinski had more than con­tinued the poli­cies of befriending our ene­mies and alien­ating our friends. Since early 1977 we had wit­nessed a mas­sive push to attain “nor­mal­ized” rela­tions with Com­mu­nist China, Cuba, the USSR, Eastern Euro­pean nations, Angola, etc. Con­versely, we had with­drawn at least some sup­port from Nation­alist China, South Africa, Zim­babwe (for­merly Rhodesia), etc. It was not just a trend – it was an epi­demic. Thus, if it could be said that Brzezinski had, at least in part, con­tributed to cur­rent U.S. for­eign and domestic policy, then we should briefly ana­lyze exactly what he was espousing.

Needed: A More Just and Equi­table World Order

The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion held their annual ple­nary meeting in Tokyo, Japan, in Jan­uary 1977. Carter and Brzezinski obvi­ously could not attend as they were still in the process of reor­ga­nizing the White House. They did, how­ever, address per­sonal let­ters to the meeting, which were reprinted in Tri­a­logue, the offi­cial mag­a­zine of the Com­mis­sion:

“It gives me spe­cial plea­sure to send greet­ings to all of you gath­ering for the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion meeting in Tokyo. I have warm mem­o­ries of our meeting in Tokyo some eigh­teen months ago, and am sorry I cannot be with you now.

“My active ser­vice on the Com­mis­sion since its incep­tion in 1973 has been a splendid expe­ri­ence for me, and it pro­vided me with excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties to come to know leaders in our three regions.

“As I empha­sized in my cam­paign, a strong part­ner­ship among us is of the greatest impor­tance. We share eco­nomic, polit­ical and secu­rity con­cerns that make it log­ical we should seek ever-increasing coop­er­a­tion and under­standing. And this coop­er­a­tion is essen­tial not only for our three regions, but in the global search for a more just and equi­table world order (emphasis added). I hope to see you on the occa­sion of your next meeting in Wash­ington, and I look for­ward to receiving reports on your work in Tokyo.

“Jimmy Carter”⁷

Brzezinski’s letter, in a sim­ilar vein, follows:

“The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has meant a great deal to me over the last few years. It has been the stim­ulus for intel­lec­tual cre­ativity and a source of per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion. I have formed close ties with new friends and col­leagues in all three regions, ties which I value highly and which I am sure will continue.

“I remain con­vinced that, on the larger archi­tec­tural issues of today, col­lab­o­ra­tion among our regions is of the utmost neces­sity. This col­lab­o­ra­tion must be ded­i­cated to the fash­ioning of a more just and equi­table world order (emphasis added). This will require a pro­longed process, but I think we can look for­ward with con­fi­dence and take some pride in the con­tri­bu­tion which the Com­mis­sion is making.

“Zbig­niew Brzezinski”⁸

The key phrase in both let­ters was “more just and equi­table world order.” Did this emphasis indi­cate that some­thing was wrong with our present world order, that is, with national struc­tures? Yes, according to Brzezinski, and since the present “frame­work” was inad­e­quate to handle world prob­lems, it must be done away with and sup­planted with a world government.

In Sep­tember 1974 Brzezinski was asked in an inter­view by the Brazilian news­paper Vega. “How would you define this new world order?” Brzezinski answered:

“When I speak of the present inter­na­tional system I am refer­ring to rela­tions in spe­cific fields, most of all among the Atlantic coun­tries; com­mer­cial, mil­i­tary, mutual secu­rity rela­tions, involving the inter­na­tional mon­e­tary fund, NATO etc. We need to change the inter­na­tional system for a global system in which new, active and cre­ative forces recently devel­oped – should be inte­grated. This system needs to include Japan. Brazil, the oil pro­ducing coun­tries, and even the USSR, to the extent which the Soviet Union is willing to par­tic­i­pate in a global system.”⁹

When asked if Con­gress would have an expanded or dimin­ished role in the new system, Brzezinski declared “…the reality of our times is that a modern society such as the U.S. needs a cen­tral coor­di­nating and ren­o­vating organ which cannot be made up of six hun­dred people.”¹⁰

Brzezinski devel­oped back­ground for the need for a new system in his book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era (1969). He wrote that mankind has moved through three great stages of evo­lu­tion, and was in the middle of the fourth and final stage. The first stage he described as “reli­gious,” com­bining a heav­enly “uni­ver­salism pro­vided by the accep­tance of the idea that man’s des­tiny is essen­tially in God’s hands” with an earthly “nar­row­ness derived from mas­sive igno­rance, illit­eracy, and a vision con­fined to the imme­diate environment.”

The second stage was nation­alism, stressing Chris­tian equality before the law, which “marked another giant step in the pro­gres­sive rede­f­i­n­i­tion of man’s nature and place in our world.” The third stage was Marxism, which, said Brzezinski, “rep­re­sents a fur­ther vital and cre­ative stage in the maturing of man’s uni­versal vision.” The fourth and final stage was Brzezinski’s Tech­netronic Era, or the ideal of rational humanism on a global scale – the result of American-Communist evo­lu­tionary trans­for­ma­tions.¹¹

In con­sid­ering our struc­ture of gov­er­nance, Brzezinski stated:

‘Ten­sion is unavoid­able as man strives to assim­i­late the new into the frame­work of the old. For a time the estab­lished frame­work resiliently inte­grates the new by adapting it in a more familiar shape. But at some point the old frame­work becomes over­loaded. The newer input can no longer be rede­fined into tra­di­tional forms, and even­tu­ally it asserts itself with com­pelling force. Today, though, the old frame­work of inter­na­tional pol­i­tics – with their spheres of influ­ence, mil­i­tary alliances between nation-states, the fic­tion of sov­er­eignty, doc­trinal con­flicts arising from nine­teenth cen­tury crises – is clearly no longer com­pat­ible with reality.”¹²

One of the most impor­tant “frame­works” in the world, and espe­cially to Amer­i­cans, was the United States Con­sti­tu­tion. It was this doc­u­ment that out­lined the most pros­perous nation in the his­tory of the world. Was our sov­er­eignty really “fic­tion”? Was the U.S. vision no longer com­pat­ible with reality? Brzezinski fur­ther stated:

“The approaching two-hundredth anniver­sary of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could jus­tify the call for a national con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion to reex­amine the nation’s formal insti­tu­tional frame­work. Either 1976 or 1989 – the two– hun­dredth an anniver­sary of the Con­sti­tu­tion – could serve as a suit­able target date cul­mi­nating a national dia­logue on the rel­e­vance of existing arrange­ments… Realism, how­ever, forces us to rec­og­nize that the nec­es­sary polit­ical inno­va­tion will not come from direct con­sti­tu­tional reform, desir­able as that would be. The needed change is more likely to develop incre­men­tally and less overtly…in keeping with the Amer­ican tra­di­tion of blur­ring dis­tinc­tions between public and pri­vate insti­tu­tion.¹³

In Brzezinski’s Tech­netronic Era then, the “nation-state as a fun­da­mental unit of man’s orga­nized life has ceased to be the prin­cipal cre­ative force: Inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state.”¹⁴

Brzezinski’s phi­los­ophy clearly pointed for­ward to Richard Gardner’s Hard Road to World Order that appeared in For­eign Affairs in 1974, where Gardner stated,

“In short, the ‘house of world order’ would have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing con­fu­sion,’ to use William James’ famous descrip­tion of reality, but an end run around national sov­er­eignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accom­plish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”¹⁵

That former approach which had pro­duced few suc­cesses during the 1950′s and 1960′s was being traded for a velvet sledge-hammer: It would make little noise, but would still drive the spikes of glob­al­iza­tion deep into the hearts of many dif­ferent coun­tries around the world, including the United States. Indeed, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was the chosen vehicle that finally got the nec­es­sary trac­tion to actu­ally create their New World Order.

Under­standing the phi­los­ophy of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was and is the only way we can rec­on­cile the myriad of apparent con­tra­dic­tions in the infor­ma­tion fil­tered through to us in the national press. For instance, how was it that the Marxist regime in Angola derived the great bulk of its for­eign exchange from the off­shore oil oper­a­tions of Gulf Oil Cor­po­ra­tion? Why did Andrew Young insist that “Com­mu­nism has never been a threat to Blacks in Africa”? Why did the U.S. funnel bil­lions in tech­no­log­ical aid to the Soviet Union and Com­mu­nist China? Why did the U.S. appar­ently help its ene­mies while chastising its friends?

A sim­ilar and per­plexing ques­tion is asked by mil­lions of Amer­i­cans today: Why do we spend tril­lions on the “War on Terror” around the world and yet ignore the Mexican/U.S. border and the tens of thou­sands of illegal aliens who freely enter the U.S. each and every month?

These ques­tions, and hun­dreds of others like them, cannot be explained in any other way: the U.S. Exec­u­tive Branch (and related agen­cies) was not anti-Marxist or anti-Communist – it was and is, in fact, pro– Marxist. Those ideals which led to the heinous abuses of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mus­solini were now being accepted as nec­es­sary inevitability by our elected and appointed leaders.

This hardly sug­gests the Great Amer­ican Dream. It is very doubtful that Amer­i­cans would agree with Brzezinski or the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. It is the Amer­ican public who is paying the price, suf­fering the con­se­quences, but not under­standing the true nature of the situation.

This nature how­ever, was not unknown or unknow­able. Sen­ator Barry Gold­water (R-AZ) issued a clear and pre­cise warning in his 1979 book, With No Apologies:

“The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is inter­na­tional and is intended to be the vehicle for multi­na­tional con­sol­i­da­tion of the com­mer­cial and banking inter­ests by seizing con­trol of the polit­ical gov­ern­ment of the United States. The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion rep­re­sents a skillful, coor­di­nated effort to seize con­trol and con­sol­i­date the four cen­ters of power – polit­ical, mon­e­tary, intel­lec­tual and ecclesiastical.”

Unfor­tu­nately, few heard and even fewer understood.

Follow the Money, Follow the Power

What was the eco­nomic nature of the dri­ving force within the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion? It was the giant multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions – those with Tri­lat­eral rep­re­sen­ta­tion – which con­sis­tently ben­e­fited from Tri­lat­eral policy and actions. Pol­ished aca­d­e­mics such as Brzezinski, Gardner, Allison, McCracken, Henry Owen etc., served only to give “philo­soph­ical” jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to the exploita­tion of the world.

Don’t under­es­ti­mate their power or the dis­tance they had already come by 1976. Their eco­nomic base was already estab­lished. Giants like Coca-Cola, IBM, CBS, Cater­pillar Tractor, Bank of America, Chase Man­hattan Bank, Deere & Com­pany, Exxon, and others vir­tu­ally dwarf what­ever remains of Amer­ican busi­nesses. The market value of IBM’s stock alone, for instance, was greater than the value of all the stocks on the Amer­ican Stock Exchange. Chase Man­hattan Bank had some fifty thou­sand branches or cor­re­spon­dent banks throughout the world. What reached our eyes and ears was highly reg­u­lated by CBS, the New York Times, Time mag­a­zine, etc.

The most impor­tant thing of all is to remember that the polit­ical coup de grace pre­ceded the eco­nomic coup de grace. The dom­i­na­tion of the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment pro­vided all the nec­es­sary polit­ical leverage needed to skew U.S. and global eco­nomic poli­cies to their own benefit.

By 1977, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion had notably become expert at using crises (and cre­ating them in some instances) to manage coun­tries toward the New World Order; yet, they found men­acing back­lashes from those very crises.

In the end, the biggest crisis of all was that of the Amer­ican way of life. Amer­i­cans never counted on such pow­erful and influ­en­tial groups working against the Con­sti­tu­tion and freedom, either inad­ver­tently or pur­pose­fully, and even now, the prin­ci­ples that helped to build this great country are all but reduced to the sound of mean­ing­less babblings.

Tri­lat­eral Entrench­ment: 1980 – 2007

It would have been dam­aging enough if the Tri­lat­eral dom­i­na­tion of the Carter admin­is­tra­tion was merely a one-time anomaly; but it was not!

Sub­se­quent pres­i­den­tial elec­tions brought George H.W. Bush (under Reagan), William Jef­ferson Clinton, Albert Gore and Richard Cheney (under G. W. Bush) to power.

Thus, every Admin­is­tra­tion since Carter has had top-level Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tion through the Pres­i­dent or Vice-president, or both!

It is impor­tant to note that Tri­lat­eral dom­i­na­tion has tran­scended polit­ical par­ties: they dom­i­nated both the Repub­lican and Demo­crat par­ties with equal aplomb.

In addi­tion, the Admin­is­tra­tion before Carter was very friendly and useful to Tri­lat­eral doc­trine as well: Pres­i­dent Gerald Ford took the reins after Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon resigned, and then appointed Nelson Rock­e­feller as his Vice Pres­i­dent. Nei­ther Ford nor Rock­e­feller were mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but Nelson was David Rockefeller’s brother and that says enough. According to Nelson Rockefeller’s mem­oirs, he orig­i­nally intro­duced then-governor Jimmy Carter to David and Brzezinski.

How has the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion effected their goal of cre­ating a New World Order or a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order? They seated their own mem­bers at the top of the insti­tu­tions of global trade, global banking and for­eign policy.

For instance, the World Bank is one of the most crit­ical mech­a­nisms in the engine of glob­al­iza­tion.¹⁷ Since the founding of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973, there have been only seven World Bank pres­i­dents, all of whom were appointed by the Pres­i­dent. Of these seven, six were pulled from the ranks of the Tri­lat­eral Commission!

• Robert McNa­mara (1968 – 1981)
• A.W. Clausen (1981 – 1986)
• Barber Conable (1986 – 1991)
• Lewis Pre­ston (1991 – 1995)
• James Wolfenson (1995 – 2005)
• Paul Wol­fowitz (2005 – 2007)
• Robert Zoel­lick (2007-present)

Another good evi­dence of dom­i­na­tion is the posi­tion of U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (USTR), which is crit­i­cally involved in nego­ti­ating the many inter­na­tional trade treaties and agree­ments that have been nec­es­sary to create the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order. Since 1977, there have been ten USTR’s appointed by the Pres­i­dent. Eight have been mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission!

• Robert S. Strauss (1977 – 1979)
• Reubin O’D. Askew (1979 – 1981)
• William E. Brock III (1981 – 1985)
• Clayton K. Yeutter (1985 – 1989)
• Carla A. Hills (1989 – 1993)
• Mickey Kantor (1993 – 1997)
• Char­lene Barshefsky (1997 – 2001)
• Robert Zoel­lick (2001 – 2005)
• Rob Portman (2005 – 2006)
• Susan Schwab (2006-present)

This is not to say that Clayton Yeuter and Rob Portman were not friendly to Tri­lat­eral goals, because they clearly were.

The Sec­re­tary of State cab­inet posi­tion has seen its share of Tri­lat­erals as well: Henry Kissinger (Nixon, Ford), Cyrus Vance (Carter), Alexander Haig (Reagan), George Shultz (Reagan), Lawrence Eagle­burger (G.H.W. Bush), Warren Christo­pher (Clinton) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton) There were some Acting Sec­re­taries of State that are also note­worthy: Philip Habib (Carter), Michael Arma­cost (G.H.W. Bush), Arnold Kantor (Clinton), Richard Cooper (Clinton).

Lastly, it should be noted that the Fed­eral Reserve has like­wise been dom­i­nated by Tri­lat­erals: Arthur Burns (1970 – 1978), Paul Volker (1979 – 1987), Alan Greenspan (1987 – 2006). While the Fed­eral Reserve is a privately-owned cor­po­ra­tion, the Pres­i­dent “chooses” the Chairman to a per­petual appoint­ment. The cur­rent Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is not a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but he clearly is fol­lowing the same glob­alist poli­cies as his predecessors.

The point raised here is that Tri­lat­eral dom­i­na­tion over the U.S. Exec­u­tive Branch has not only con­tinued and but has been strength­ened from 1976 to the present. The pat­tern has been delib­erate and per­sis­tent: Appoint mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion to crit­ical posi­tions of power so that they can carry out Tri­lat­eral policies.

The ques­tion is and has always been, do these poli­cies orig­i­nate in con­sensus meet­ings of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion where two-thirds of the mem­bers are not U.S. cit­i­zens? The answer is all too obvious.

Trilateral-friendly defenders attempt to sweep crit­i­cism aside by sug­gesting that mem­ber­ship in the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is inci­dental, and that it only demon­strates the oth­er­wise high quality of appointees. Are we to believe that in a country of 300 mil­lion people only these 100 or so are qual­i­fied to hold such crit­ical posi­tions? Again, the answer is all too obvious.

Where Does the Council on For­eign Rela­tions Fit?

While vir­tu­ally all Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers from North America have also been mem­bers of the CFR, the reverse is cer­tainly not true. It is easy to over-criticize the CFR because most of its mem­bers seem to fill the bal­ance of gov­ern­ment posi­tions not already filled by Trilaterals.

The power struc­ture of the Council is seen in the makeup of its board of direc­tors: No less than 44 per­cent (12 out of 27) are mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion! If director par­tic­i­pa­tion reflected only the gen­eral mem­ber­ship of the CFR, then only 3 – 4 per­cent of the board would be Tri­lat­erals.¹⁸

Fur­ther, the pres­i­dent of the CFR is Richard N. Haass, a very promi­nent Tri­lat­eral member who also served as Director of Policy Plan­ning for the U.S. Depart­ment of State from 2001 – 2003.

Tri­lat­eral influ­ence can easily be seen in policy papers pro­duced by the CFR in sup­port of Tri­lat­eral goals.

For instance, the 2005 CFR task force report on the Future of North America was per­haps the major Tri­lat­eral policy state­ment on the intended cre­ation of the North Amer­ican Union. Vice-chair of the task force was Dr. Robert A. Pastor, who has emerged as the “Father of the North Amer­ican Union” and has been directly involved in Tri­lat­eral oper­a­tions since the 1970′s. While the CFR claimed that the task force was “inde­pen­dent,” careful inspec­tion of those appointed reveal that three Tri­lat­erals were care­fully chosen to oversee the Tri­lat­eral posi­tion, one each from Mexico, Canada and the United States: Luis Rubio, Wendy K. Dobson and Carla A. Hills, respec­tively.¹⁹ Hills has been widely hailed as the prin­cipal archi­tect of the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA) that was nego­ti­ated under Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush in 1992.

The bottom line is that the Council on For­eign Rela­tions, thor­oughly dom­i­nated by Tri­lat­erals, serves the inter­ests of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, not the other way around!

Tri­lat­eral Glob­al­iza­tion in Europe

The con­tent of this paper thus far sug­gests ties between the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and the United States. This is not intended to mean that Tri­lat­erals are not active in other coun­tries as well. Recalling the early years of the Com­mis­sion, David Rock­e­feller wrote in 1998,

“Back in the early Sev­en­ties, the hope for a more united EUROPE was already full-blown – thanks in many ways to the indi­vidual ener­gies pre­vi­ously spent by so many of the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s ear­liest mem­bers.” [Cap­i­tals in orig­inal]²⁰

Thus, since 1973 and in par­allel with their U.S. hege­mony, the Euro­pean mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion were busy cre­ating the Euro­pean Union. In fact, the EU’s Con­sti­tu­tion was authored by Com­mis­sion member Valary Gis­card d’Estaing in 2002 – 2003, when he was Pres­i­dent of the Con­ven­tion on the Future of Europe. [For more on the EU, see The Globalization Strategy: America and Europe in the Crucible]

The steps that led to the creation of the European Union are unsurprisingly similar to the steps being taken to create the North American Union today. As with the EU, lies, deceit and confusion are the principal tools used to keep an unsuspecting citizenry in the dark while they forge ahead without mandate, accountability or oversight. [See Toward a North Amer­ican Union]

Con­clu­sion

It is clear that the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. was lit­er­ally hijacked in 1976 by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, upon the elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter and Vice-President Walter Mon­dale. This near-absolute dom­i­na­tion, espe­cially in the areas of trade, banking, eco­nomics and for­eign policy, has con­tinued unchal­lenged and unabated to the present.

Wind­fall profits have accrued to inter­ests asso­ci­ated with the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but the effect of their “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” on the U.S. has been nothing less than dev­as­tating. (See America Plun­dered by the Global Elite for a more detailed analysis)

The philo­soph­ical under­pin­nings of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion are pro-Marxist and pro-socialist. They are solidly set against the con­cept of the nation-state and in par­tic­ular, the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States. Thus, national sov­er­eignty must be dimin­ished and then abol­ished alto­gether in order to make way for the New World Order that will be gov­erned by an unelected global elite with their self-created legal framework.

If you are having neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment against Trilateral-style glob­al­iza­tion, you are not alone. A 2007 Finan­cial Times/Harris poll revealed that less than 20 per­cent of people in six indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries (including the U.S.) believe that glob­al­iza­tion is good for their country while over 50 per­cent are out­right neg­a­tive towards it.²¹ (See Global Back­lash Against Glob­al­iza­tion?) While cit­i­zens around the world are feeling the pain of glob­al­iza­tion, few under­stand why it is hap­pening and hence, they have no effec­tive strategy to counter it.

The Amer­ican public has never, ever con­ceived that such forces would align them­selves so suc­cess­fully against freedom and lib­erty. Yet, the evi­dence is clear: Steerage of America has long since fallen into the hands of an actively hos­tile enemy that intends to remove all ves­tiges of the very things that made us the greatest nation in the his­tory of mankind.

End­notes

1. Rock­e­feller, David, Mem­oirs (Random House, 2002), p.418
2. Tri­a­logue, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion (1973)
3. Time Mag­a­zine, Jimmy Carter: Man of the Year, Jan­uary 7, 1977
4. Sutton & Wood, Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington (1979), p. 7
5. New York Times, Jimmy Carter, Leslie Gelb, May 23, 1976
6. ibid.
7. Tri­a­logue, Looking Back…And For­ward, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, 1976
8. ibid.
9. Sutton & Wood, Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington (1979), p. 4
10. ibid. p. 5
11. Brzezinski, Zbig­niew, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 246.
12. ibid.
13. ibid.
14. ibid.
15. Gardner, Richard, The Hard Road to World Order, (For­eign Affairs, 1974) p. 558
16. Gold­water, Barry, With No Apolo­gies, (Morrow, 1979), p. 280
17. Global Banking: The World Bank, Patrick Wood, The August Review
18. Board of Direc­tors, Council on For­eign Rela­tions website
19. Building a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity, Council on For­eign Rela­tions, 2005
20. Rock­e­feller, David, In the Begin­ning: The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion at 25, 1998, p.11
21. FT/Harris poll on Glob­al­iza­tion, FT.com website

By: Patrick Wood

Good evening, every­body. Tonight, an aston­ishing pro­posal to expand our bor­ders to incor­po­rate Mexico and Canada and simul­ta­ne­ously fur­ther diminish U.S. sov­er­eignty. Have our polit­ical elites gone mad?
Lou Dobbs on Lou Dobbs Tonight, June 9, 2005

Intro­duc­tion

The global elite, through the direct oper­a­tions of Pres­i­dent George Bush and his Admin­is­tra­tion, are cre­ating a North Amer­ican Union that will com­bine Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into a super­state called the North Amer­ican Union (NAU). The NAU is roughly pat­terned after the Euro­pean Union (EU). There is no polit­ical or eco­nomic man­date for cre­ating the NAU, and unof­fi­cial polls of a cross-section of Amer­i­cans indi­cate that they are over­whelm­ingly against this end-run around national sovereignty.

To answer Lou Dobbs, “No, the polit­ical elites have not gone mad”, they just want you to think that they have.

The reality over appear­ance is easily cleared up with a proper his­tor­ical per­spec­tive of the last 35 years of polit­ical and eco­nomic manip­u­la­tion by the same elite who now bring us the NAU.

This paper will explore this his­tory in order to give the reader a com­plete pic­ture of the NAU, how it is made pos­sible, who are the insti­ga­tors of it, and where it is headed.

It is impor­tant to first under­stand that the impending birth of the NAU is a ges­ta­tion of the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, not the Con­gress. This is the topic of the first dis­cus­sion below.

The next topic will examine the global elite’s strategy of sub­verting the power to nego­tiate trade treaties and inter­na­tional law with for­eign coun­tries from the Con­gress to the Pres­i­dent. Without this power, NAFTA and the NAU would never have been possible.

After this, we will show that the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA) is the imme­diate genetic and nec­es­sary ancestor of the NAU.

Lastly, throughout this report the NAU per­pe­tra­tors and their tac­tics will be brought into the lime­light so as to affix blame where it prop­erly belongs. The reader will be struck with the fact that the same people are at the center of each of these subjects.

The Best Gov­ern­ment that Money Can Buy

Modern day glob­al­iza­tion was launched with the cre­ation of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973 by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski. Its mem­ber­ship con­sisted of just over 300 pow­erful elit­ists from North America, Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was to foster a “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” that would sup­plant the his­tor­ical eco­nomic order.

In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion nonethe­less estab­lished a head­lock on the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment with the elec­tion of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date by Brzezinski, Carter was per­son­ally tutored in glob­alist phi­los­ophy and for­eign policy by Brzezinski him­self. Sub­se­quently, when Carter was sworn in as Pres­i­dent, he appointed no less than one-third of the U.S. mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion to his Cab­inet and other high-level posts in his Admin­is­tra­tion. Such was the gen­esis of the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s dom­i­na­tion of the Exec­u­tive Branch that con­tinues to the present day.

With the elec­tion of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion member George H.W. Bush was intro­duced to the White House as vice-president. Through Bush’s influ­ence, Reagan con­tinued to select key appoint­ments from the ranks of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush began his four-year term as Pres­i­dent. He was fol­lowed by fellow Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion member William Jef­ferson Clinton, who served for 8 years as Pres­i­dent and appointed four­teen fellow Tri­lat­eral mem­bers to his Administration.

The elec­tion of George W. Bush in 2000 should be no sur­prise. Although Bush was not a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, his vice-president Dick Cheney is. In addi­tion, Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, is also a member of the Com­mis­sion in her own right.

The hege­mony of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion over the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment is unmis­tak­able. Critics argue that this sce­nario is merely cir­cum­stan­tial, that the most qual­i­fied polit­ical “talent” quite nat­u­rally tends to belong to groups like the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in the first place. Under exam­i­na­tion, such expla­na­tions are quite hollow.

Why would the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion seek to dom­i­nate the Exec­u­tive Branch? Quite simply – Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would have been impos­sible to accom­plish through the only mod­er­ately suc­cessful lob­bying efforts of the past; power to use the gov­ern­ment as a bully plat­form to modify polit­ical behavior throughout the world.

Of course, the obvious corol­lary to this hege­mony is that the influ­ence and impact of the cit­i­zenry is vir­tu­ally eliminated.

Modern Day “World Order” Strategy

After its founding in 1973, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers wasted no time in launching their glob­alist strategy. But, what was that strategy?

Richard Gardner was an orig­inal member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and one of the promi­nent archi­tects of the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order. In 1974, his article “The Hard Road to World Order” appeared in For­eign Affairs mag­a­zine, pub­lished by the Council on For­eign Rela­tions. With obvious dis­dain for anyone holding nation­al­istic polit­ical views, Gardner proclaimed,

“In short, the ‘house of world order’ would have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing con­fu­sion,’ to use William James’ famous descrip­tion of reality, but an end run around national sov­er­eignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accom­plish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.“¹ [emphasis added]

In Gardner’s view, using treaties and trade agree­ments (such as Gen­eral Agree­ment on Trade and Tar­iffs or GATT) would bind and supercede con­sti­tu­tional law piece by piece, which is exactly what has hap­pened. In addi­tion, Gardner highly esteemed the role of the United Nations as a third-party legal body that could be used to erode the national sov­er­eignty of indi­vidual nations.

Gardner con­cluded that “the case-by-case approach can pro­duce some remark­able con­ces­sions of ‘sov­er­eignty’ that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis”²

Thus, the end result of such a process is that the U.S. would even­tu­ally capit­u­late its sov­er­eignty to the newly pro­posed world order. It is not specif­i­cally men­tioned who would con­trol this new order, but it is quite obvious that the only ‘players’ around are Gardner and his Tri­lat­eral cronies.

It should again be noted that the for­ma­tion of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion by Rock­e­feller and Brzezinski was a response to the gen­eral frus­tra­tion that glob­alism was going nowhere with the status quo prior to 1973. The “frontal assault ” had failed, and a new approach was needed. It is a typ­ical mindset of the global elite to view any road­block as an oppor­tu­nity to stage an “end-run” to get around it. Gardner con­firms this frustration:

“Cer­tainly the gap has never loomed larger between the objec­tives and the capac­i­ties of the inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions that were sup­posed to get mankind on the road to world order. We are wit­nessing an out­break of short­sighted nation­alism that seems obliv­ious to the eco­nomic, polit­ical and moral impli­ca­tions of inter­de­pen­dence. Yet never has there been such wide­spread recog­ni­tion by the world’s intel­lec­tual lead­er­ship of the neces­sity for coop­er­a­tion and plan­ning on a truly global basis, beyond country, beyond region, espe­cially beyond social system.”³

The “world’s intel­lec­tual lead­er­ship” appar­ently refers to aca­d­e­mics such as Gardner and Brzezinski. Out­side of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and the CFR, the vast majority of aca­d­emic thought at the time was opposed to such notions as men­tioned above.

Laying the Ground­work: Fast Track Authority

In Article 1, Sec­tion 8 of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, authority is granted to Con­gress “To reg­u­late com­merce with for­eign nations.” An end-run around this insur­mount­able obstacle would be to con­vince Con­gress to vol­un­tarily turn over this power to the Pres­i­dent. With such authority in hand, the Pres­i­dent could freely nego­tiate treaties and other trade agree­ments with for­eign nations, and then simply present them to Con­gress for a straight up or down vote, with no amend­ments pos­sible. This again points out elite dis­dain for a Con­gress that is elected to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

So, the first “Fast Track” leg­is­la­tion was passed by Con­gress in 1974, just one year after the founding of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. It was the same year that Nelson Rock­e­feller was con­firmed as Vice Pres­i­dent under Pres­i­dent Gerald Ford, nei­ther of whom were elected by the U.S. public. As Vice-President, Rock­e­feller was seated as the pres­i­dent of the U.S. Senate.

According to Public Cit­izen, the bottom line of Fast Track is that…

“…the White House signs and enters into trade deals before Con­gress ever votes on them. Fast Track also sets the para­me­ters for con­gres­sional debate on any trade mea­sure the Pres­i­dent sub­mits, requiring a vote within a cer­tain time with no amend­ments and only 20 hours of debate.”⁴

When an agree­ment is about to be given to Con­gress, high-powered lob­by­ists and polit­ical hammer-heads are called in to manip­u­late con­gres­sional hold-outs into voting for the leg­is­la­tion. (*See CAFTA Lob­bying Efforts) With only 20 hours of debate allowed, there is little oppor­tu­nity for public involvement.

Con­gress clearly under­stood the risk of giving up this power to the Pres­i­dent, as evi­denced by the fact that they put an auto­matic expi­ra­tion date on it. Since the expi­ra­tion of the orig­inal Fast Track, there been a very con­tentious trail of Fast Track renewal efforts. In 1996, Pres­i­dent Clinton utterly failed to re-secure Fast Track after a bitter debate in Con­gress. After another con­tentious struggle in 2001/2002, Pres­i­dent Bush was able to renew Fast Track for him­self in the Trade Act of 2002, just in time to nego­tiate the Cen­tral Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment (CAFTA) and insure its pas­sage in 2005.

It is star­tling to realize that since 1974, Fast Track has not been used in the majority of trade agree­ments. Under the Clinton pres­i­dency, for instance, some 300 sep­a­rate trade agree­ments were nego­ti­ated and passed nor­mally by Con­gress, but only two of them were sub­mitted under Fast Track: NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round. In fact, from 1974 to 1992, there were only three instances of Fast Track in action: GATT Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agree­ment and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agree­ment. Thus, NAFTA was only the fourth invo­ca­tion of Fast Track.

Why the selec­tivity? Does it sug­gest a very narrow agenda? Most cer­tainly. These trade and legal bam­boo­zles didn’t stand a ghost of a chance to be passed without it, and the global elite knew it. Fast Track was cre­ated as a very spe­cific leg­isla­tive tool to accom­plish a very spe­cific exec­u­tive task — namely, to “fast track” the cre­ation of the “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” envi­sioned by the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973!

Article Six of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion states that “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Con­sti­tu­tion or Laws of any State to the Con­trary notwith­standing.” Because inter­na­tional treaties super­sede national law, Fast Track has allowed an enor­mous restruc­turing of U.S. law without resorting to a Con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion (Ed. note: Both Henry Kissinger and Zbig­niew Brzezinski called for a con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion as early as 1972, which could clearly be viewed as a failed “frontal assault”). As a result, national sov­er­eignty of the United States has been severely com­pro­mised – even if some Con­gressmen and Sen­a­tors are aware of this, the gen­eral public is still gen­er­ally ignorant.

North Amer­ican Free Trade Agreement

NAFTA was nego­ti­ated under the exec­u­tive lead­er­ship of Repub­lican Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush. Carla Hills is widely cred­ited as being the pri­mary archi­tect and nego­tiator of NAFTA. Both Bush and Hills were mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission!

With Bush’s first pres­i­den­tial term drawing to a close and Bush desiring polit­ical credit for NAFTA, an “ini­tialing” cer­e­mony of NAFTA was staged (so Bush could take credit for NAFTA) in October, 1992. Although very offi­cial looking, most Amer­i­cans did not under­stand the dif­fer­ence between ini­tialing and signing; at the time, Fast Track was not imple­mented and Bush did not have the authority to actu­ally sign such a trade agreement.

Bush sub­se­quently lost a pub­licly con­tentious pres­i­den­tial race to demo­crat William Jef­ferson Clinton, but they were hardly polar oppo­sites on the issue of Free Trade and NAFTA: The reason? Clinton was also a sea­soned member of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

Imme­di­ately after inau­gu­ra­tion, Clinton became the cham­pion of NAFTA and orches­trated its pas­sage with a mas­sive Exec­u­tive Branch effort.

Some Unex­pected Resis­tance to NAFTA

Prior to the 1992 elec­tion, there was a fly in the elite’s oint­ment — namely, pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and bil­lion­aire Ross Perot, founder and chairman of Elec­tronic Data Sys­tems (EDS). Perot was polit­i­cally inde­pen­dent, vehe­mently anti-NAFTA and chose to make it a major cam­paign issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge sums of money to over­come the neg­a­tive pub­licity that Perot gave to NAFTA.

At the time, some polit­ical ana­lysts believed that Perot, being a bil­lion­aire, was somehow put up to this task by the same elit­ists who were pushing NAFTA. Pre­sum­ably, it would accu­mu­late all the anti-globalists in one tidy group, thus allowing the elit­ists to deter­mine who their true ene­mies really were. It’s moot today whether he was sin­cere or not, but it did have that out­come, and Perot became a light­ning rod for the whole issue of free trade.

Perot hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nation­ally tele­vised cam­paign speeches:

“If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for fac­tory workers and you can move your fac­tory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young — let’s assume you’ve been in busi­ness for a long time and you’ve got a mature work­force – pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care – that’s the most expen­sive single ele­ment in making a car – have no envi­ron­mental con­trols, no pol­lu­tion con­trols, and no retire­ment, and you didn’t care about any­thing but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south…”⁵ [emphasis added]

Perot’s mes­sage struck a nerve with mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, but it was unfor­tu­nately cut short when he entered into public cam­paign debates with fellow can­di­date Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot’s lunch, not so much on the issues them­selves, but on having supe­rior debating skills. As orga­nized as Perot was, he was no match for a polit­i­cally and glob­ally sea­soned politi­cian like Al Gore.

The Spin Machine gears up

To counter the public rela­tions damage done by Perot, all the stops were pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite, the Pres­i­dent unleashed the biggest and most expen­sive spin machine the country had ever seen.

Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar nation­wide ad cam­paign that praised the ben­e­fits of NAFTA. The mantra, car­ried con­sis­tently throughout the many spin events: “Exports. Better Jobs. Better Wages”, all of which have turned out to be empty promises

Bill Clinton invited three former pres­i­dents to the White House to stand with him in praise and affir­ma­tion NAFTA. This was the first time in U.S. his­tory that four pres­i­dents had ever appeared together. Of the four, three were mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Com­mis­sioner, but was nev­er­the­less a con­firmed glob­alist insider. After Ford’s acces­sion to the pres­i­dency in 1974, he promptly nom­i­nated Nelson Rock­e­feller (David Rockefeller’s oldest brother) to fill the Vice Pres­i­dency that Ford had just vacated.

The aca­d­emic com­mu­nity was enlisted when, according to Harper’s Mag­a­zine pub­lisher John MacArthur,

…there was a pro-NAFTA peti­tion, orga­nized and written my MIT’s Rudiger Dorn­busch, addressed to Pres­i­dent Clinton and signed by all twelve living Nobel lau­re­ates in eco­nomics, and exer­cise in aca­d­emic logrolling that was expertly con­verted by Bill Daley and the A-Team into PR gold on the front page of The New York Times on Sep­tember 14. ‘Dear Mr. Pres­i­dent,’ wrote the 283 sig­na­to­ries…”⁶

Lastly, promi­nent Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers them­selves took to the press to pro­mote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Com­mis­sioners Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated:

“[NAFTA] would be the most con­struc­tive mea­sure the United States would have under­taken in our hemi­sphere in this cen­tury.”⁷

Two months later, Kissinger went further,

“It will rep­re­sent the most cre­ative step toward a new world order taken by any group of coun­tries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemi­sphere.” [NAFTA] is not a con­ven­tional trade agree­ment, but the archi­tec­ture of a new inter­na­tional system.“⁸ [emphasis added]

It is hardly fan­ciful to think that Kissinger’s hype sounds quite sim­ilar to the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s orig­inal goal of cre­ating a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order.

On Jan­uary 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track pro­ce­dures, the house had passed it by 234 – 200 (132 Repub­li­cans and 102 Democ­rats voting in favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61 – 38.

That Giant Sucking Sound Going South

To under­stand the poten­tial impact of the North Amer­ican Union, one must under­stand the impact of NAFTA.

NAFTA promised greater exports, better jobs and better wages. Since 1994, just the oppo­site has occurred. The U.S. trade deficit soared and now approaches $1 tril­lion dol­lars per year; the U.S. has lost some 1.5 mil­lion jobs and real wages in both the U.S. and Mexico have fallen significantly.

Patrick Buchanan offered a simple example of NAFTA’s dele­te­rious effect on the U.S. economy:

“When NAFTA passed in 1993, we imported some 225,000 cars and trucks from Mexico, but exported about 500,000 vehi­cles to the world. In 2005, our exports to the world were still a shade under 500,000 vehi­cles, but our auto and truck imports from Mexico had tripled to 700,000 vehicles.

“As McMil­lion writes, Mexico now exports more cars and trucks to the United States than the United States exports to the whole world. A fine end, is it not, to the United States as “Auto Cap­ital of the World”?

“What hap­pened? Post-NAFTA, the Big Three just picked up a huge slice of our auto industry and moved it, and the jobs, to Mexico.“⁹

Of course, this only rep­re­sents the auto industry, but the same effect has been seen in many other indus­tries as well. Buchanan cor­rectly noted that NAFTA was never just a trade deal: Rather, it was an “enabling act – to enable U.S. cor­po­ra­tions to dump their Amer­ican workers and move their fac­to­ries to Mexico.” Indeed, this is the very spirit of all out­sourcing of U.S. jobs and man­u­fac­turing facil­i­ties to over­seas locations.

Respected econ­o­mist Alan Tonelson, author of The Race to the Bottom, notes the smoke and mir­rors that cloud what has really hap­pened with exports:

“Most U.S. exports to Mexico before, during and since the (1994) peso crisis have been pro­ducer goods – in par­tic­ular, parts and com­po­nents sent by U.S. multi­na­tionals to their Mex­ican fac­to­ries for assembly or for fur­ther pro­cessing. The vast majority of these, more­over, are reex­ported, and most get shipped right back to the United States for final sale. In fact, by most esti­mates, the United States buys 80 to 90 per­cent of all of Mexico’s exports.”¹⁰

Tonelson con­cludes that “the vast majority of Amer­ican workers have expe­ri­enced declining living stan­dards, not just a handful of losers.”

Mex­ican econ­o­mist and scholar Miguel Pickard sums up Mexico’s sup­posed ben­e­fits from NAFTA:

“Much praise has been heard for the few ‘win­ners’ that NAFTA has cre­ated, but little men­tion is made of the fact that the Mex­ican people are the deal’s big ‘losers.’ Mex­i­cans now face greater unem­ploy­ment, poverty, and inequality than before the agree­ment began in 1994.”¹¹

In short, NAFTA has not been a friend to the cit­i­zenry of the United States or Mexico. Still, this is the back­drop against which the North Amer­ican Union is being acted out. The glob­al­iza­tion players and their promises have remained pretty much the same, both just as disin­gen­uous as ever.

Pre­lude to the North Amer­ican Union

Soon after NAFTA was passed in 1994, Dr. Robert A. Pastor began to push for a “deep inte­gra­tion” which NAFTA could not pro­vide by itself. His dream was summed up in his book, Toward a North Amer­ican Union, pub­lished in 2001. Unfor­tu­nately for Pastor, the book was released just a few days prior to the 9/11 ter­rorist attacks in New York and thus received little atten­tion from any sector.

How­ever, Pastor had the right con­nec­tions. He was invited to appear before the ple­nary ses­sion (held in Ontario, Canada) of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion on November 1 – 2, 2002, to deliver a paper drawing directly on his book. His paper, “A Modest Pro­posal To the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion”, made sev­eral recommendations:

• “… the three gov­ern­ments should estab­lish a North Amer­ican Com­mis­sion (NAC) to define an agenda for Summit meet­ings by the three leaders and to mon­itor the imple­men­ta­tion of the deci­sions and plans.
• A second insti­tu­tion should emerge from com­bining two bilat­eral leg­isla­tive groups into a North Amer­ican Par­lia­men­tary Group.
• “The third insti­tu­tion should be a Per­ma­nent Court on Trade and Investment
• “The three leaders should estab­lish a North Amer­ican Devel­op­ment Fund, whose pri­ority would be to con­nect the U.S.-Mexican border region to cen­tral and southern Mexico.
• The North Amer­ican Com­mis­sion should develop an inte­grated con­ti­nental plan for trans­porta­tion and infrastructure.
• “…nego­tiate a Cus­toms Union and a Common External Tariff
• “Our three gov­ern­ments should sponsor Cen­ters for North Amer­ican Studies in each of our coun­tries to help the people of all three under­stand the prob­lems and the poten­tial of North America and begin to think of them­selves as North Amer­i­cans“¹² [emphasis added]

Pastor’s choice of the words “Modest Pro­posal” are almost com­ical con­sid­ering that he intends to reor­ga­nize the entire North Amer­ican continent.

Nev­er­the­less, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion bought Pastor’s pro­posals hook, line and sinker. Sub­se­quently, it was Pastor who emerged as the U.S. vice-chairman of the CFR task force that was announced on October 15, 2004:

“The Council has launched an inde­pen­dent task force on the future of North America to examine regional inte­gra­tion since the imple­men­ta­tion of the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment ten years ago… The task force will review five spheres of policy in which greater coop­er­a­tion may be needed. They are: deep­ening eco­nomic inte­gra­tion; reducing the devel­op­ment gap; har­mo­nizing reg­u­la­tory policy; enhancing secu­rity; and devising better insti­tu­tions to manage con­flicts that inevitably arise from inte­gra­tion and exploit oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion.”¹³

Inde­pen­dent task force, indeed! A total of twenty-three mem­bers were chosen from the three coun­tries. Each country was rep­re­sented by a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion: Carla A. Hills (U.S.), Luis Rubio (Mexico) and Wendy K. Dobson (Canada). Robert Pastor served as the U.S. vice-chairman.

This CFR task force was unique in that it focused on eco­nomic and polit­ical poli­cies for all three coun­tries, not just the U.S. The Task Force stated pur­pose was to

“… iden­tify inad­e­qua­cies in the cur­rent arrange­ments and sug­gest oppor­tu­ni­ties for deeper coop­er­a­tion on areas of common interest. Unlike other Council-sponsored task forces, which focus pri­marily on U.S. policy, this ini­tia­tive includes par­tic­i­pants from Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States, and will make policy rec­om­men­da­tions for all three coun­tries.“¹⁴ [Emphasis added]

Richard Haass, chairman of the CFR and long-time member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, point­edly made the link between NAFTA and inte­gra­tion of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.:

“Ten years after NAFTA, it is obvious that the secu­rity and eco­nomic futures of Canada, Mexico, and the United States are inti­mately bound. But there is pre­cious little thinking avail­able as to where the three coun­tries need to be in another ten years and how to get there. I am excited about the poten­tial of this task force to help fill this void,”¹⁵

Haass’ state­ment “there is pre­cious little thinking avail­able” under­scores a repeat­edly used elitist tech­nique. That is, first decide what you want to do, and sec­ondly, assign a flock of aca­d­e­mics to jus­tify your intended actions. (This is the crux of aca­d­emic funding by NGO’s such as Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion, Ford Foun­da­tion, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.) After the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion process is com­plete, the same elites that sug­gested it in the first place allow them­selves to be drawn in as if they had no other log­ical choice but to play along with the “sound thinking” of the experts.

The task force met three times, once in each country. When the process was com­pleted, it issued its results in May, 2005, in a paper titled “Building a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity” and sub­ti­tled “Report of the Inde­pen­dent Task Force on the Future of North America.” Even the sub-title sug­gests that the “future of North America” is a fait accompli decided behind closed doors.

Some of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the task force are:

• “Adopt a common external tariff.”
• “Adopt a North Amer­ican Approach to Regulation”
• “Estab­lish a common secu­rity perimeter by 2010.”
• “Estab­lish a North Amer­ican invest­ment fund for infra­struc­ture and human capital.”
• “Estab­lish a per­ma­nent tri­bunal for North Amer­ican dis­pute resolution.”
• “An annual North Amer­ican Summit meeting” that would bring the heads-of-state together for the sake of public dis­play of confidence.
• “Estab­lish minister-led working groups that will be required to report back within 90 days, and to meet regularly.”
• Create a “North Amer­ican Advi­sory Council”
• Create a “North Amer­ican Inter-Parliamentary Group.”¹⁶

Sound familiar? It should: Many of the rec­om­men­da­tions are ver­batim from Pastor’s “modest” pre­sen­ta­tion to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion men­tioned above, or from his ear­lier book, Toward a North Amer­ican Union.

Shortly after the task force report was issued, the heads of all three coun­tries did indeed meet together for a summit in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The spe­cific result of the summit was the cre­ation of the Secu­rity and Pros­perity Part­ner­ship of North America (SPPNA). The joint press release stated

“We, the elected leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, have met in Texas to announce the estab­lish­ment of the Secu­rity and Pros­perity Part­ner­ship of North America.

“We will estab­lish working par­ties led by our min­is­ters and sec­re­taries that will con­sult with stake­holders in our respec­tive coun­tries. These working par­ties will respond to the pri­or­i­ties of our people and our busi­nesses, and will set spe­cific, mea­sur­able, and achiev­able goals. They will out­line con­crete steps that our gov­ern­ments can take to meet these goals, and set dates that will ensure the con­tin­uous achieve­ment of results.

“Within 90 days, min­is­ters will present their ini­tial report after which, the working par­ties will submit six-monthly reports. Because the Part­ner­ship will be an ongoing process of coop­er­a­tion, new items will be added to the work agenda by mutual agree­ment as cir­cum­stances war­rant.“¹⁷

Once again, we see Pastor’s North Amer­ican Union ide­ology being con­tinued, but this time as an out­come of a summit meeting of three heads-of-states. The ques­tion must be raised, “Who is really in charge of this process?”

Indeed, the three pre­miers returned to their respec­tive coun­tries and started their “working par­ties” to “con­sult with stake­holders.” In the U.S., the “spe­cific, mea­sur­able, and achiev­able goals” were only seen indi­rectly by the cre­ation of a gov­ern­ment web­site billed as “Secu­rity and Pros­perity Part­net­ship of North America.” (www.spp.gov) The stake­holders are not men­tioned by name, but it is clear that they are not the public of either of the three coun­tries; most likely, they are the cor­po­rate inter­ests rep­re­sented by the mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission!

The second annual summit meeting took place on March 30 – 31, 2006, in Cancun, Mexico between Bush, Fox and Cana­dian prime min­ister Stephen Harper. The Secu­rity and Pros­perity Part­ner­ship agenda was summed up in a state­ment from Mex­ican pres­i­dent Vicente Fox:

“We touched upon fun­da­mental items in that meeting. First of all, we car­ried out an eval­u­a­tion meeting. Then we got infor­ma­tion about the devel­op­ment of pro­grams. And then we gave the nec­es­sary instruc­tions for the works that should be car­ried out in the next period of work… We are not rene­go­ti­ating what has been suc­cessful or open the Free Trade Agree­ment. It’s going beyond the agree­ment, both for pros­perity and secu­rity.“¹⁸ [emphasis added]

Reg­u­la­tions instead of Treaties

It may not have occurred to the reader that the two SPP sum­mits resulted in no signed agree­ments. This is not acci­dental nor a failure of the summit process. The so-called “deeper inte­gra­tion” of the three coun­tries is being accom­plished through a series of reg­u­la­tions and exec­u­tive decrees that avoid cit­izen watch­dogs and leg­isla­tive over­sight.¹⁹

In the U.S., the 2005 Cancun summit spawned some 20 dif­ferent working groups that would deal with issues from immi­gra­tion to secu­rity to har­mo­niza­tion of reg­u­la­tions, all under the aus­pices of the Secu­rity and Pros­perity Part­ner­ship (www.spp.gov). The SPP in the U.S. is offi­cially placed under the Depart­ment of Com­merce, headed by Sec­re­tary Carlos M. Gutierrez, but other Exec­u­tive Branch agen­cies also have SPP com­po­nents that report to Commerce.

After two years of mas­sive effort, the names of the SPP working group mem­bers have not been released. The result of their work have also not been released. There is no con­gres­sional leg­is­la­tion or over­sight of the SPP process.

The director of SPP, Geri Word, was con­tacted to ask why a cloud of secrecy is hanging over SPP. According to inves­tiga­tive jour­nalist Jerome Corsi, Word replied

“We did not want to get the con­tact people of the working groups dis­tracted by calls from the public.” ²⁰

This pater­nal­istic atti­tude is a typ­ical elitist men­tality Their work (what­ever they have dreamed up on their own) is too impor­tant to be dis­tracted by the likes of pesky cit­i­zens or their elected legislators.

This elite change of tac­tics must not be under­stated: Reg­u­la­tions and Exec­u­tive Orders have replaced Con­gres­sional leg­is­la­tion and public debate. There is no pre­tense of either. This is another Gardner-style “end-run around national sov­er­eignty, eroding it piece by piece.”

Appar­ently, the Trilateral-dominated Bush admin­is­tra­tion believes that it has accu­mu­lated suf­fi­cient power to ram the NAU down the throat of the Amer­ican People, whether they protest or not.

Robert A. Pastor: A Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion Operative

As men­tioned ear­lier, Pastor is hailed as the father of the North Amer­ican Union, having written more papers about it, deliv­ered more tes­ti­monies before Con­gress, and headed up task forces to study it, than any other single U.S. aca­d­emic figure. He would seem a tire­less archi­tect and advo­cate of the NAU.

Although he might seem to be a fresh, new name to in the glob­al­iza­tion busi­ness, Pastor has a long his­tory with Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers and the global elite.

He is the same Robert Pastor who was the exec­u­tive director of the 1974 CFR task force ( funded by the Rock­e­feller and Ford Foun­da­tions) called the Com­mis­sion on US-Latin Amer­ican Rela­tions – aka the Linowitz Com­mis­sion. The Linowitz Com­mis­sion, chaired by an orig­inal Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioner Sol Linowitz, was sin­gu­larly cred­ited with the give­away of the Panama Canal in 1976 under the Carter pres­i­dency. ALL of the Linowitz Com­mis­sion mem­bers were mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion save one, Albert Fishlow; other mem­bers were W. Michael Blu­men­thal, Samuel Hunt­ington, Peter G. Peterson, Elliot Richardson and David Rockefeller.

One of Carter’s first actions as Pres­i­dent in 1977 was to appoint Zbig­niew Brzezinski to the post of National Secu­rity Advisor. In turn, one of Brzezinski’s first acts was to appoint his pro­tege, Dr. Robert A. Pastor, as director of the Office of Latin Amer­ican and Caribbean Affairs. Pastor then became the Tri­lat­eral Commission’s point-man to lobby for the Canal giveaway.

To actu­ally nego­tiate the Carter-Torrijos Treaty, Carter sent none other than Sol Linowitz to Panama as tem­po­rary ambas­sador. The 6-month tem­po­rary appoint­ment avoided the require­ment for Senate con­fir­ma­tion. Thus, the very same people who cre­ated the policy became respon­sible for exe­cuting it.

The Tri­lat­eral Commission’s role in the Carter Admin­is­tra­tion is con­firmed by Pastor him­self in his 1992 paper The Carter Admin­is­tra­tion and Latin America: A Test of Principle:

“In con­verting its pre­dis­po­si­tion into a policy, the new admin­is­tra­tion had the ben­efit of the research done by two pri­vate com­mis­sions. Carter, Vance, and Brzezinski were mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, which pro­vided a con­cep­tual frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion among the indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries in approaching the full gamut of inter­na­tional issues. With regard to set­ting an agenda and an approach to Latin America, the most impor­tant source of influ­ence on the Carter admin­is­tra­tion was the Com­mis­sion on U.S.-Latin Amer­ican Rela­tions, chaired by Sol M. Linowitz.“²¹

As to the final Linowitz Com­mis­sion reports on Latin America, most of which were authored by Pastor him­self, he states:

“The reports helped the admin­is­tra­tion define a new rela­tion­ship with Latin America, and 27 of the 28 spe­cific rec­om­men­da­tions in the second report became U.S. policy.”²²

Pastor’s deep involve­ment with Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers and poli­cies is irrefutable, and it con­tinues into the present.

In 1996, when Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sioner Bill Clinton nom­i­nated Pastor as Ambas­sador to Panama, his con­fir­ma­tion was force­fully knocked down by Sen­ator Jesse Helms (R-NC), who held a deep grudge against Pastor for his cen­tral role in the give­away of the Panama Canal in 1976.

The set­back obvi­ously did not phase Pastor in the slightest.

Where from here?

The stated target for full imple­men­ta­tion of the North Amer­ican Union is 2010.

“The Task Force pro­poses the cre­ation by 2010 of a North Amer­ican com­mu­nity to enhance secu­rity, pros­perity, and oppor­tu­nity. We pro­pose a com­mu­nity based on the prin­ciple affirmed in the March 2005 Joint State­ment of the three leaders
that ‘our secu­rity and pros­perity are mutu­ally depen­dent and com­ple­men­tary.’ Its bound­aries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer secu­rity perimeter within which the move­ment of people, prod­ucts, and cap­ital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guar­antee a free, secure, just, and pros­perous North America.” ²³

Don’t under­es­ti­mate the global elite’s ability to meet their own deadlines!

Con­clu­sion

This paper does not pre­tend to give thor­ough or even com­plete cov­erage to such impor­tant and wide-ranging topics as dis­cussed above. We have shown that the restruc­turing of the United States has been accom­plished by a very small group of pow­erful global elit­ists as rep­re­sented by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion plainly stated that it intended to create a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order. We have fol­lowed their mem­bers from 1973 to the present, only to find that they are at the dead center of every crit­ical policy and action that seeks to restruc­ture the U.S.

Some critics will undoubt­edly argue that involve­ment by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is merely inci­dental. How­ever, the odds for their involve­ment at random is too large to be even remotely under­stand­able; it would be like win­ning the lot­tery jackpot five times in a row, with the same numbers!

The credo of The August Review is “Follow the money, follow the power.” In this view, the United States has lit­er­ally been hijacked by less than 300 greedy and self-serving global elit­ists who have little more than con­tempt for the cit­i­zens of the coun­tries they would seek to dom­i­nate. According to Tri­lat­er­alist Richard Gardner’s view­point, this incre­mental takeover (rather than a frontal approach) has been wildly successful.

To again answer Lou Dobbs ques­tion, “Have our polit­ical elites gone mad?” — No Lou, they are not “mad”, nor are they igno­rant. To look into the face of these global elites is to look into the face of unmit­i­gated greed, avarice and treachery.

Foot­notes:

1. Gardner, Richard, The Hard Road to World Order, (For­eign Affairs, 1974) p. 558
2. ibid, p. 563
3. ibid. p. 556
4. Fast Track Talking Points, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
5. Excerpts From Pres­i­den­tial Debates, Ross Perot, 1992
6. MacArthur, The Selling of Free Trade, (Univ. of Cal. Press, 2001) p. 228
7. Wash­ington Post, op-ed, Kissinger & Vance, May 13, 1993
8. Los Angeles Times, op-ed, Kissinger, July 18, 1993
9. The Fruits of NAFTA, Patrick Buchanan, The Con­ser­v­a­tive Voice, March 10, 2006
10. Tonelson, The Race to the Bottom (West­view Press, 2002) p. 89
11. Tri­na­tional Elites Map North Amer­ican Future in “NAFTA Plus”, Miguel Pickard, IRC Amer­icas website
12. A Modest Pro­posal To the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Pre­sen­ta­tion by Dr. Robert A. Pastor, 2002
13. Council Joins Leading Cana­dians and Mex­i­cans to Launch Inde­pen­dent Task Force on the Future of America, Press Release, CFR Website
14. ibid.
15. ibid.
16. Building a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity, Council on For­eign Rela­tions, 2005
17. North Amer­ican Leaders Unveil Secu­rity and Pros­perity Part­ner­ship, Inter­na­tional Infor­ma­tion Pro­grams, U.S. Govt. Website
18. Con­cluding Press Con­fer­ence at Cancun Summit, Vicente Fox, March 31, 2006
19. Tra­di­tional Elites Map North Amer­ican Future in “NAFTA Plus”, Miguel Pickard, p. 1, IRC Website
20. Bush sneaking North Amer­ican super-state without over­sight?, Jerome Corsi,WorldNetDaily, June 12, 2006.
21. The Carter Admin­is­tra­tion and Latin America: A Test of Prin­ciple, Robert A. Pastor, The Carter Center, July 1992, p. 9
22. ibid. p. 10
23. Building a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity, Council on For­eign Rela­tions, 2005, p. 2

Fur­ther Reading

Meet Robert Pastor: Father of the North Amer­ican Union, Human Events, Jerome R. Corsi, July 25, 2006
Robert A. Pastor Resume, Amer­ican Uni­ver­sity, 2005
North America’s Super Cor­ridor Coali­tion, Inc. Web­site

By Carl Teichrib

Editor’s Note: Glob­al­iza­tion is not a random-walk process. It moves for­ward according to a tan­gible, coherent and well-planned strategy. This article offers the reader a glimpse into one aspect of the glob­al­iza­tion strat­agem – one that recast Europe and is now reshaping north America. Region­al­iza­tion, as you will see, is a nec­es­sary stepping-stone toward and an essen­tial com­po­nent of glob­al­iza­tion. This article lays the ground­work for future arti­cles that will lay bare ele­ments of region­alism in the Amer­icas such as NAFTA and CAFTA.

---

“The two processes of glob­al­iza­tion and region­al­iza­tion are artic­u­lated within the same larger process of global struc­tural trans­for­ma­tion…”
— Björn Hettne, “Glob­al­iza­tion, the New Region­alism and East Asia,” Glob­alism and Region­alism. [1]

Strategic land­scapes are rad­i­cally changing. No longer does a person’s country rep­re­sent the core of cit­i­zen­ship or iden­tity. Today, a new murky world is dawning, one that advo­cates global gov­er­nance [2] as the por­tent to humanity’s social, polit­ical, and eco­nomic future. Indeed, in this post-Cold War envi­ron­ment, “nation-states” – like the soci­eties they serve and accom­mo­date – find them­selves in a relent­less swell of trans­for­ma­tion. National inter­ests give way to global loy­al­ties, just as world cit­i­zen­ship is touted as prefer­able to the narrow views of nation­alism; no indi­vidual, cor­po­ra­tion, or country is immune to this rev­o­lu­tion. Wel­come to “glob­al­iza­tion,” where everyone is either a pawn or a player.

As an end to itself, the con­cept of glob­al­iza­tion seems to rest on one cen­tral pillar: the con­sol­i­da­tion of power. No matter what stripe or ide­ology glob­al­iza­tion comes pack­aged in, this sin­gular com­po­nent cannot be denied. And in a society where “power begets power,” a global system, by def­i­n­i­tion, has the capa­bility to expand this char­ac­ter­istic to new levels.

Polit­i­cally, glob­al­iza­tion rep­re­sents the lever­aging of power beyond that found in any one nation. Using the clichés of global gov­er­nance, we would call this a “new world civ­i­liza­tion,” one that’s built with inter­na­tional man­age­ment in mind. Mikhail Gor­bachev, the last true master of the Soviet style of cen­tral­ized power explains, “The time has come to develop inte­grated global poli­cies.” [3]

But polit­ical glob­al­iza­tion is not an overnight game. We don’t stop work Friday after­noon, take a break over the weekend, and poof, find our­selves on Monday morning immersed in global gov­er­nance. Rather, this macro-political trans­for­ma­tion is the product of gen­er­a­tions of changes, bumps and cor­rec­tions, and decades of deci­sive plan­ning. Already in 1945, leading socialist Scott Nearing penned,

“A world society cannot be hap­hazard. Since there are no prece­dents, it cannot be tra­di­tional at this stage in its devel­op­ment. It can only be delib­er­a­tive and exper­i­mental, planned and built up with par­tic­ular objec­tives…” [4]

Much more recently, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion co-founder Zbig­niew Brzezinski espoused sim­ilar notions, albeit with an American-focused bent. In his book, The Grand Chess­board: Amer­ican Pri­macy and its Geostrategic Imper­a­tives, the former National Secu­rity Advisor main­tains that America’s pur­pose for global engage­ment is “that of forging an enduring frame­work of global geopo­lit­ical coop­er­a­tion” and to “unapolo­get­i­cally” posi­tion itself as the arbi­trator of “global man­age­ment.” [5] Cap­ping off this asser­tion, Brzezinski closes with these sobering words, “Geostrategic suc­cess in that cause would rep­re­sent a fit­ting legacy of America’s role as the first, only, and last truly global super­power.” [6]

Jim Gar­rison, founder and Pres­i­dent of the Gor­bachev Foundation/USA (at the behest of Mikhail Gor­bachev), [7] like­wise sees America as the forging ele­ment in globalization.

“…America must con­sciously view itself as a tran­si­tional empire, one whose des­tiny at this moment is to act as mid­wife to a demo­c­ra­t­i­cally gov­erned global system. Its great chal­lenge is not to dom­i­nate but to cat­alyze. It must use its great strength and demo­c­ratic her­itage to estab­lish inte­grating insti­tu­tions and mech­a­nisms to manage the emerging global system so that its own power is sub­sumed by the very edi­fice it helps to build.

Pres­i­dent Wilson estab­lished the League of Nations out of the ashes of World War I. Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt and Truman estab­lished a new inter­na­tional order after World War II. America must now build the third iter­a­tion of global gov­er­nance. If it attains this level of great­ness, it could become the final empire, for it will have bequeathed to the world a demo­c­ratic and inte­grated global system in which empire will no longer have a place or per­form a role.” [8] [italics in original]

Nearing, Brzezinski, and Gar­rison all point to the reality of inter­na­tion­alism – it’s not acci­dental. And the last two indi­vid­uals, global players in their own right, directly call for America’s guiding hand in plan­e­tary transformation.

America, how­ever, isn’t the only major agent for global change. Europe too, and more specif­i­cally for the 21st cen­tury, the Euro­pean Union, is a fan­tastic factor in the glob­al­iza­tion process. Indeed, Brzezinski calls for America to act with the Euro­pean Union “for sus­tained global polit­ical plan­ning.” [9]

Not sur­pris­ingly, an American-European approach to global order already exists under the Transat­lantic Alliance heading. Over the years, this alliance has been greatly shaped by men such as Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and John J. McCloy on the US side – and by key Euro­peans such as Paul-Henri Spaak, Jacques Delors and Javier Solana.

Presently this Transat­lantic system is com­prised of a myriad of polit­ical, mil­i­tary, and eco­nomic link­ages. Some of its com­po­nents include,

• NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
• OSCE (Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­rity and Co-operation in Europe)
• OECD [10] (Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nomic Co-operation and Devel­op­ment), which orig­i­nally started out as the Organ­i­sa­tion for Euro­pean Eco­nomic Co-operation.
• Var­ious joint com­mis­sions and pri­vate policy groups – such as the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, [11] the Atlantic Council of the United States, the British Amer­ican Secu­rity Infor­ma­tion Council, and the less well known Streit Council – along with numerous pro­grams such as the Transat­lantic For­eign Policy Discourse.
• Mas­sive busi­ness and cor­po­rate ties within air­craft and ship­ping indus­tries, petro­leum and petro-chemical com­pa­nies, defense and aero­space ven­tures, all major auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­turers, and many more com­mer­cial connections.

This last point bears spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance. Eliz­a­beth Pond, writing for the Euro­pean Union Studies Association’s U.S.-EU Rela­tions Project, tells us, “So inter­twined have transat­lantic com­pa­nies become, espe­cially in the past decade, that it is often impos­sible to tell if firms are actu­ally ‘Amer­i­can’ or ‘Euro­pean’.” [12]

For many out­side observers, the ques­tion arises: Does this Transat­lantic con­nec­tion rep­re­sent the Amer­i­can­iza­tion of Europe, or is Europe shaping America?

Maybe it’s nei­ther. Too often we in North America per­ceive such quan­daries through nation­al­istic lenses, instead, when viewed through the glasses of glob­al­iza­tion, a whole new world comes into focus.

What the Transat­lantic ideal ulti­mately rep­re­sents is the “Third Wave” – the route of glob­al­iza­tion. As social scholars Alvin and Heidi Tof­fler assert, “what is hap­pening now is nothing less than a global rev­o­lu­tion, a quantum leap.” [13]

But please don’t mis­un­der­stand: this “global rev­o­lu­tion” is not a seam­less process. As one facet of the rev­o­lu­tion, the Transat­lantic part­ner­ship – like all other rela­tion­ships – has growing pains, set­backs, and observ­able dif­fer­ences. Indeed during the last number of years, size­able rifts have occurred between Euro­pean and Amer­ican pop­u­la­tion seg­ments, espe­cially in light of Middle Eastern devel­op­ments. [14] Although this fis­sure is more apparent in the gen­eral cit­i­zenry and within cer­tain policy cir­cles, and may even have spill over effects within Transat­lantic mar­kets such as defense spending, [15] it’s a rift that tem­porarily detracts from the global reality.

And what is the “global real­ity”? That America is on the threshold of having to reshape itself, just as it helped re-shape post-war Europe, and is now looked upon as the “mid­wife” of a new global order.

It’s the shift from nation­alism to glob­al­iza­tion, via the Euro­pean model of regionalism.

Glob­al­iza­tion, Euro­pean Region­alism, and Anti-Nationalism

Imme­di­ately after the close of the Cold War, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion – a pri­vate policy group com­prised of Amer­ican, Euro­pean, and Asian coun­ter­parts – released its study, Region­alism in a Con­verging World. [16] According to its Introduction,

“…region­alism need not be opposed to glob­alism. The world should not have to choose between one or the other. It needs to live with both. The challenge…is how to channel the forces of region­alism in direc­tions com­pat­ible with and sup­portive of glob­alism.” [17] [italics in original]

It’s impor­tant to under­stand that spon­sor­ship for region­alism as a step in the glob­al­iza­tion process hasn’t just been con­fined to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and its mem­bers. Thank­fully, the many builders of this regional-global order have left their fin­ger­prints plas­tered throughout the twen­tieth cen­tury. More sig­nif­i­cantly, their motives are also discernable.

Back in 1942, The Brook­ings Insti­tute released its report, Peace Plans and Amer­ican Choices, high­lighting a variety of hopeful post-war con­cepts for “world order.” Options were reviewed such as explicit US mas­tery over inter­na­tional affairs, the cre­ation of a British-American Alliance, har­mo­nizing world order through a “Union of Democ­ra­cies” (which was being touted at the time by Clarence Streit [18] ), and the col­lab­o­ra­tion of a larger “United Nations” package. Region­alism was con­sid­ered in detail, with the Western Hemi­sphere, Europe, and Asia com­prising the main blocks.

Arthur Millspaugh, author of the Brook­ings report, was candid in his linking of region­alism to the “bigger picture,”

“Such regional arrange­ments may be con­sid­ered either as steps or stages in the evo­lu­tion of a uni­versal world order, as sub­sti­tutes for a uni­versal order, or as some­thing to be com­bined with a world-wide system.” [19]

Although the Brook­ings report focused on the antic­i­pated after­math of World War II, the idea of a Europe-State had been birthed decades ear­lier. Already in 1914, the first year of The Great War (WWI), Nicholas Murray Butler – Pres­i­dent of Columbia Uni­ver­sity and later recip­ient of the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize – sug­gested that Euro­pean uni­fi­ca­tion and the advent of a supra-national gov­ern­ment was needed to replace the “existing national system.”

“What will be in sub­stance a United States of Europe, a more or less formal fed­er­a­tion of the self-governing coun­tries of Europe, may be the out­come of the demon­strated failure of the existing national system to adjust gov­ern­ment to the growth of civilization…

There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I feel sure is rising there behind the war-clouds. Europe’s stu­pen­dous eco­nomic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incal­cu­lable, will give us an oppor­tu­nity to press this argu­ment home…

…the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world fed­er­a­tion some por­tion of its sov­er­eignty for the gen­eral good. When this hap­pens it will be pos­sible to estab­lish an inter­na­tional exec­u­tive and an inter­na­tional police, both devised for the espe­cial pur­pose of enforcing the deci­sions of the inter­na­tional court.” [20]

Attempts to pro­mote Euro­pean inte­gra­tion and coop­er­a­tion after The Great War were made. In 1923 the Pan-European Union was founded, attracting a number of indi­vid­uals who would later play a post-Word War II role, including Konrad Ade­nauer. [21] And France’s for­eign min­ister, Aris­tide Briand, envi­sioned a scheme to orga­nize Europe around uni­fied lines as opposed to nation­al­istic ten­den­cies, even bringing the debate to the League of Nations. [22] None of these cam­paigns, how­ever, were gen­er­ally effective.

Iron­i­cally, while the League of Nations and the Pan-European Union ideas floun­dered, a type of con­ti­nental inte­gra­tion almost occurred via the National Socialist German Worker’s Party – better known as the Nazis. John Laugh­land, author of The Tainted Source, details the exten­sive Euro­pean uni­fi­ca­tion plat­form espoused by the Nazi lead­er­ship, including plans for a Cen­tral Euro­pean Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity, a customs-free market area, and the even­tual cre­ation of a Euro­pean mon­e­tary area. [23] What’s more, as Laugh­land points out, “Nazi plans for Euro­pean inte­gra­tion were as polit­ical as they were eco­nomic.” [24]

The influ­ence of Nazi-era con­cepts on Euro­pean inte­gra­tion cannot be under­stated. Sta­tioned in Ger­many during the early years of World War II, George F. Kennan, one of the most impor­tant Amer­ican diplo­mats of the twen­tieth cen­tury and the first Director of Policy Plan­ning Staff at the State Depart­ment, can­didly shared his observations,

“When sta­tioned in Berlin during the war I had been struck with the fact that Hitler him­self, albeit for the wrong rea­sons and in the wrong spirit, had actu­ally accom­plished much of the tech­nical task of the uni­fi­ca­tion of Europe. He had cre­ated cen­tral author­i­ties in a whole series of areas: in trans­porta­tion, in banking, in pro­cure­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion of raw mate­rials, in the con­trol of var­ious forms of nation­al­ized prop­erty. Why, I asked myself, could this sit­u­a­tion not be use­fully exploited after an Allied vic­tory? What was needed was an Allied deci­sion not to smash this net­work of cen­tral con­trols when the war was ended but rather to take it over, to remove the Nazi offi­cials who had made it work, to appoint others (and not nec­es­sarily all non-Germans) in their place, and then to sup­ple­ment this phys­ical uni­fi­ca­tion with a new Euro­pean fed­eral authority. When I returned from Ger­many, in 1942, I tried to win under­standing for this idea in the Depart­ment of State…” [25]

After the war, Kennan (who was a member of the Council on For­eign Rela­tions and later in life involved in the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion) became the US coun­sellor to the Euro­pean Advi­sory Com­mis­sion and a pri­mary archi­tect of the Mar­shall Plan – America’s rebuilding pro­gram for Europe. In his Mem­oirs, the diplomat noted,

“The United States gov­ern­ment, ani­mated pri­marily by a belief that some­thing should be done to ‘inte­grate’ the economies of the Euro­pean coun­tries in the inter­ests of eco­nomic recovery, had been adding words of encour­age­ment, if not pres­sure.” [26]

This imme­diate post-war “encour­age­ment” was essen­tially chan­neled via the Mar­shall Plan, with Euro­pean inte­gra­tion “tacked on every pro­posal made in Wash­ington for export to Europe.” [27]

Theodore H. White, a US for­eign jour­nalist and later member of the Council on For­eign Rela­tions, describes the sit­u­a­tion in his book, Fire in the Ashes,

“American’s had, for many years, been loftily instructing Euro­peans in the virtues of their own great Union of the States, and chided Europe on the stu­pidi­ties of its rival­ries and sep­a­ratisms. During the war sev­eral Amer­ican brain trusters had even toyed with the idea that, come Lib­er­a­tion, it would be best to sweep away all cur­ren­cies of the Lib­er­a­tion coun­tries and replace them with one new common Euro­pean cur­rency issued by the United States Army…” [28]

White con­tinued,

“It was the Mar­shall Plan that hard­ened Amer­ican con­vic­tions that Euro­peans must unite…When vis­iting Con­gressmen asked the Mar­shall Plan­ners what they were trying to do, they would answer, ‘We’re trying to pull them together, we’re trying to inte­grate them.’ ‘Inte­gra­tion’ was a con­ve­nient word and each suc­ces­sive del­e­ga­tion asked sternly, ‘How far have you got with inte­gra­tion now?’ as if expecting the Mar­shall Plan to pull out of its desk drawers a draft con­sti­tu­tion and a design for a Euro­pean flag.

By 1949, in the second appro­pri­a­tion of the Mar­shall Plan, Con­gress, without debate, set the uni­fi­ca­tion of Europe as one of the major pur­poses of the Plan.” [29]

Later in life White would reflect, “The story of the Mar­shall Plan, it turned out, began with the Meaning of Money. It was also about Money and Europe, and Money and the Peace – but above all, Money and Power and America.” [30]

While the Mar­shall Plan was oper­a­tional, three mem­bers of Europe’s Chris­tian Demo­c­ratic com­mu­nity – Alcide De Gasperi, Konrad Ade­nauer, and Robert Shuman – led the way towards rousing con­ti­nental interest in uni­fi­ca­tion. Giving us some insight into the moti­va­tional fac­tors of these three “Fathers of Europe,” R.W. Key­ser­lingk, Gen­eral Man­ager of the British United Press during the 1940s, writes,

“…all three [had] been formed in their youth by the Catholic social move­ments acti­vated by the papal teach­ings of Rerum Novarum. They were all deeply reli­gious, fer­vent patriots but deter­mined anti-nationalists. All three came from fron­tier areas of border dis­putes and border contacts…This had taught them that only a Europe as a fed­er­a­tion, not Europe torn by hatreds bred by narrow nation­alism, could assure freedom and lib­erty to their beloved, more inti­mate border home­lands.” [31] [italics in original]

Demon­strating the depth of this Euro­pean ideal within an anti-nationalistic frame­work and of the sub­se­quent roadmap to region­alism, Key­ser­lingk reminds us, “Inte­gra­tion into a fed­eral system, along polit­ical, eco­nomic and mil­i­tary lines, involving the sac­ri­fice of absolute national sov­er­eignty, was their objec­tive.” [32]

How to achieve this objec­tive? The con­ti­nuity between assim­i­la­tion approaches is truly remarkable,

“First, the polit­ical line was attempted and although this proved almost to be putting the cart before the horse, it had con­sid­er­able merit for the future. It cre­ated the Council of Europe and the Euro­pean Parliament…

When the polit­ical approach revealed the insur­mount­able dif­fi­cul­ties of get­ting down to prac­tical working mea­sures, Robert Shuman came up with the second pos­si­bility, eco­nomic inte­gra­tion; a merging of inter­locking inter­ests, the abo­li­tion of trade bar­riers elim­i­nating eco­nomic competition…working out of common poli­cies for use of the labour market…freedom of move­ment for workers…and a gradual strength­ening of joint eco­nomic poli­cies…” [33]

Through this decided act of eco­nomic amal­ga­ma­tion, which has since borne itself out via the Euro­pean Union and Euro cur­rency, Europe became for the rest of the world a rec­og­nized model to advance inter­na­tion­alism above single state inter­ests. This reality was per­ceived early on by Euro­pean fed­er­al­ists and is evi­dent in the 1946 Herten­stein Program,

“A Euro­pean Com­mu­nity on fed­eral lines is a nec­es­sary and essen­tial con­tri­bu­tion to any world union…The mem­bers of the Euro­pean Union shall transfer part of their sov­er­eign rights – eco­nomic, polit­ical and mil­i­tary – to the Fed­er­a­tion which they constitute…By showing that it can solve the prob­lems of its des­tiny in a fed­eral spirit, Europe will make its con­tri­bu­tion to recon­struc­tion and to the cre­ation of a world com­mu­nity of peo­ples.” [34]

Less than one year after the Herten­stein announce­ment, the “World Move­ment for World Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment” released a sim­ilar plat­form known as the Mon­treux Dec­la­ra­tion. After stating that national sov­er­eignty required lim­i­ta­tions and that nations needed to transfer powers to a “world fed­eral gov­ern­ment,” the Dec­la­ra­tion added,

“We con­sider that inte­gra­tion of activ­i­ties at regional and func­tional levels is con­sis­tent with the true fed­eral approach. The for­ma­tion of regional fed­er­a­tions – insofar as they do not become an end in them­selves or run the risk of crys­tal­lizing into blocs – can and should con­tribute to the effec­tive func­tioning of a world fed­eral gov­ern­ment.” [35]

In the decades imme­di­ately fol­lowing World War II, Transat­lantic ties between Euro-federalists and Amer­ican elites broad­ened inter­na­tional accep­tance of a Euro­pean Com­mu­nity. More­over, Europe’s march to amal­ga­ma­tion suc­cess­fully achieved strategic goals. The Euro­pean Coal and Steel Com­mu­nity, the Treaty of Rome and the sub­se­quent Euro­pean Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity and Euratom agency, and the gradual har­mo­niza­tion of agri­cul­tural and fiscal poli­cies all demon­strated the strength of this trans-national agenda.

By the time the 1970s rolled around with its OPEC petro­leum crisis and the revamping of the Bretton Woods finan­cial system, the oppor­tu­ni­ties region­alism offered as a tool for global trans­for­ma­tion was clearly evi­dent. The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, the Club of Rome, and the Insti­tute for World Order all looked to region­alism as a trump card over nation­alism. [36]

As one of the most pro­lific advo­cates of regional mod­eling, the Club of Rome – an elite body acting as a “global cat­a­lyst of change” [37] – deserves spe­cial atten­tion. Its report, Mankind at the Turning Point, envi­sioned a world zoned into ten dif­ferent blocs, and acknowl­edged that the regional view was nec­es­sary for global devel­op­ment. [38] In another report released during this same time period, the Club of Rome merged the steering of world change, anti-nationalism, and regional cooperation.

“In the present inter­na­tional order huge power is con­cen­trated in indi­vid­u­al­ized nation-States. Seen from a world view­point, this must be deemed unde­sir­able. Some of the means which could be employed to attain those objec­tives of vital impor­tance to the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity can more effec­tively be han­dled by higher levels of decision-making…the achieve­ment of some aims, such as the cre­ation of larger mar­kets through regional and sub-regional coop­er­a­tion (col­lec­tive self-reliance), would be facil­i­tated by decision-making on a level higher than the nation-State.” [39]

Richard A. Falk, a Pro­fessor of Inter­na­tional Law with con­nec­tions to the Council on For­eign Rela­tions and the World Fed­er­alist Asso­ci­a­tion, pos­tu­lated sim­ilar direc­tives in the mid-1970s. Con­tributing to the World Order Model’s Project (a pro­gram of the Insti­tute for World Order), he wrote that,

“…region­alism has con­sid­er­able appeal as a world order half-way house. It seems more fea­sible in the near term as a step beyond state sov­er­eignty that can be used to dilute nation­alist sen­ti­ments during a period when global loy­al­ties need to grow stronger.” [40]

Falk had seen the hand­writing on the wall less than a decade ear­lier. Touching on the increasing role of regional insti­tu­tions and the United Nations as it related to global tran­si­tional strate­gies, he offered an inter­esting per­spec­tive to the World Law Fund’s Strategy of World Order pro­gram: “The result of these chal­lenges to the tra­di­tional inter­na­tional legal system is to create a sit­u­a­tion of tran­si­tional crisis. For the inad­e­qua­cies of the old order have given rise to the begin­nings of a new order…” [41]

Today, global elites from both Europe and America con­sider region­alism to be a prime strat­agem for global gov­er­nance. In fact, this “new region­al­ism” is now embraced by a mul­ti­tude of key indi­vid­uals, orga­ni­za­tions, and gov­ern­mental agen­cies. As two United Nations Uni­ver­sity doc­u­ment released in 2005 state,

“…regional gov­er­nance is not incom­pat­ible with and does not negate global gov­er­nance. On the con­trary, it has the poten­tial to strengthen global gov­er­nance. The regional logic has always been inherent to the global body…” [42]

And,

“Regional inte­gra­tion between sov­er­eign states…is a booming phe­nom­enon, and, not sur­pris­ingly, it is nowa­days seen as a process that, together with glob­al­iza­tion, chal­lenges the existing West­phalian [Ed., nation-centered] world order.” [43]

Amer­ican Choices and World Realities

Nations-states will not go away, either under region­alism or through some form of global gov­er­nance. Roles, func­tions and the sov­er­eign status of nations, how­ever, will be fun­da­men­tally altered. But the “country,” like state/provinces and city/local gov­ern­ments, will remain intact. Just add another layer to the pile – after all, it’s the Third Wave style of global transformation.

As social engi­neers Alvin and Heidi Tof­fler reminds us, “Change so many social, tech­no­log­ical and cul­tural ele­ments at once and you create not just a tran­si­tion but a trans­for­ma­tion, not just a new society but the begin­nings, at least, of a totally new civ­i­liza­tion.” [44]

Glob­al­iza­tion and region­alism go hand-in-hand, and the rel­e­vancy of this is extra­or­di­nary. Cur­rently, the EU is assisting in the cre­ation of new regional blocs around the world: including the Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Council, an Asian zone, the devel­op­ment of the South Amer­ican Com­mu­nity of Nations, and new blocs in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

One 2004 EU doc­u­ment spells out this strategy,

“Because of its his­tory and its own inte­gra­tion process, sup­port for regional inte­gra­tion is an area in which the EU has real added value to con­tribute. The EU is ready to share this unique expe­ri­ence with other world regional group­ings. It also hopes to help them draw on the sub­stan­tial gains made in the regional inte­gra­tion process. It there­fore encour­ages other coun­tries in the world to forge even stronger links with their neigh­bours and to orga­nize them­selves within insti­tu­tion­alised regional organ­i­sa­tions.” [45]

In dis­cussing its own enlarge­ment we can, more­over, catch a glimpse of what the EU envi­sions: “Enlarge­ment strengthens the role and posi­tion of the Union in the world, in external rela­tions, secu­rity, trade and in other domains relating to world gov­er­nance.” [46] And, “In polit­ical terms, by adding to the power, cohe­sion and influ­ence of the Union on the inter­na­tional arena, enlarge­ment strengthens the Union’s hand when it comes to glob­al­i­sa­tion…” [47]

What does this have to do with the United States of America? Everything.

At the finan­cial level, the US has to mon­e­tarily and eco­nom­i­cally com­pete with the Euro­pean Union and its Euro cur­rency. This com­pe­ti­tion not only impacts America’s trading power with Europe directly, but the growing influ­ence of the Euro around the world raises the stakes even higher. In 2004, Toshi­hiko Fukui, a board member with the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments, noted; “Today, we can dis­cuss the euro’s poten­tial to bring a sea change to the global finan­cial archi­tec­ture, without being crit­i­cized for fan­ta­sizing.” [48] Fukui then talked of a time when, like the Euro­pean Union, Asia too will work as an eco­nomic bloc with a single pow­erful, glob­ally rec­og­nized cur­rency. [49]

The Euro’s impor­tance as a rival to the US dollar, and as a model for other cur­rency zones, cannot be ignored. And as dif­ferent regions develop – with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of China, India, and Brazil becoming nat­ural mag­nets for the cre­ation of mas­sive economic/regional power blocs – America, with its debt loads expanded beyond com­pre­hen­sion and its dollar losing face inter­na­tion­ally, finds itself treading eco­nom­i­cally dan­gerous waters.

But there’s one other ele­ment added to this mix. As stated ear­lier, the Euro­pean Union is involved in cre­ating other com­pet­i­tive regional blocs. Not only does this cause a deflec­tion in US dollar strength at the inter­na­tional level, it also shifts for­eign inter­ests away from the US and back to Europe. Hence Amer­ican influ­ence, espe­cially in terms of advancing US inter­ests abroad, weakens as Europe’s influ­ence grows.

These facts haven’t escaped US policy makers. The irony is that America’s answer is to follow Europe’s foot­steps, blending domestic real­i­ties with regional/global trends, and try to assist for­eign nations to inte­grate under US guid­ance. The paradox deepens: America, in order to counter the Europe it helped estab­lish, now has to create a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity incor­po­rating itself, Canada, and Mexico into a new super-region. How­ever, this is only a paradox to those in America who view the US through nation­alist lenses, as already wit­nessed, its elite view things very differently.

North Amer­ican inte­gra­tion isn’t a pie-in-the-sky idea. It’s been batted around by a host of priv­i­leged tri-national orga­ni­za­tions, including the Cana­dian Council of Chief Exec­u­tives (Canada’s top busi­ness leaders), the Mex­ican Council on For­eign Rela­tions, the Center for Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies (a Wash­ington DC think tank with Tri­lat­er­alist Brzezinski playing a key role), and the New York Council on For­eign Relations.

In the spring of 2005, the CFR came out with an “inde­pen­dent task force” report titled Building a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity. This doc­u­ment details an eco­nomic and secu­rity man­date that binds North America by estab­lishing a common secu­rity perimeter, a North Amer­ican border pass pro­gram, common external tar­iffs, the seam­less move­ment of goods, full mobility of labor between Canada and the US, a con­ti­nental energy plat­form, and the cre­ation of a single eco­nomic tri-national region; with 2010 as a target date for many of these arrange­ments. [50]

Responding to this report, the US Embassy in Canada – “pointing to increased com­pe­ti­tion from the Euro­pean Union and raising eco­nomic powers such as India and China” – called the CFR’s agenda a “blue­print for a pow­er­house North Amer­ican trading area.” [51]

A few short weeks after the CFR announced that its upcoming inte­gra­tion report would go public, [52] US Pres­i­dent Bush, Mex­ican Pres­i­dent Fox, and Cana­dian Prime Min­ister Martin met in Texas to announce a tri-national agenda to “ensure that North America remains the most eco­nom­i­cally dynamic region of the world.” [53] The Council on For­eign Rela­tions final report directly acknowl­edged this tri-national lead­er­ship summit, and point­edly said that, “The Task Force is pleased to pro­vide spe­cific advice on how the part­ner­ship can be pur­sued and real­ized.” [54] And tucked into the task­force chairman’s state­ment was a simple but vital com­ment; the “process of change must be prop­erly man­aged.” [55]

This wasn’t any­thing new to the banking com­mu­nity. In 1991, the Dallas Fed­eral Reserve issued a research paper titled, North Amer­ican Free Trade and the Peso: The Case for a North Amer­ican Cur­rency Area. [56] In the late 1990’s the Bank of Canada pub­lished a string of working papers looking at the pros and cons of a North Amer­ican eco­nomic and mon­e­tary zone. [57] One US Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cial, out­lining world finan­cial trends at the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Atlanta in October 2000, can­didly remarked that “a quantum increase in global eco­nomic and finan­cial coop­er­a­tion” would be needed to meet future inter­na­tional challenges,

“Suc­cessful glob­al­iza­tion requires a par­allel inter­na­tional process of har­mo­niza­tion of rules, including rules gov­erning the finan­cial system, a process that has been going on largely silently for many years in the cen­tral banking community…

…I believe that it is at least pos­sible that in the years ahead we will wit­ness a dra­matic decline in the number of inde­pen­dent cur­ren­cies in the world…I would not like to put a time frame on an evo­lu­tion to a world with sub­stan­tially fewer cur­ren­cies, but I am sure you have noted that the pres­i­dent elect of Mexico, Vin­cente Fox, has sug­gested a long-term evo­lu­tion towards a North Amer­ican cur­rency area. Such trends may lead to new chal­lenges and insti­tu­tions in the area of inter­na­tional eco­nomic coop­er­a­tion.” [58]

Region­alism as a stepping-stone to glob­al­iza­tion is the insep­a­rable blending of pol­i­tics and eco­nomics across the board. On the “polit­ical side,” con­sider what Richard N. Haass had to say when he was the Director of the Policy Plan­ning Staff at the US Depart­ment of States back in 2002 (remember George F. Kennan was its first director).

“There clearly is a con­sis­tent body of ideas and poli­cies that guides the Bush Administration’s for­eign policy. Whether these ideas and poli­cies will evolve into a formal doc­trine with a name, I’ll leave to his­tory to decide. But this coher­ence exists and can be cap­tured by the idea of integration.

In the 21st cen­tury, the prin­ciple aim of Amer­ican for­eign policy is to inte­grate other coun­tries and orga­ni­za­tions into arrange­ments that will sus­tain a world con­sis­tent with U.S. inter­ests and values.

…Inte­gra­tion is about bringing nations together and then building frame­works of coop­er­a­tion and, where fea­sible, insti­tu­tions that rein­force and sus­tain them even more.

…Inte­gra­tion reflects not merely a hope for the future, but the emerging reality of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion.” [59]

Haass should know. Not only is he a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, he’s the Pres­i­dent of the Council on For­eign Rela­tions. In fact, Haass wrote the for­ward to the CFR report, Building a North Amer­ican Com­mu­nity.

The bottom line is this: Just as pol­i­tics and eco­nomics are bonded at the hip, region­alism and all it entails – including the uni­fi­ca­tion of North America – fits part-and-parcel with the strategy of glob­al­iza­tion. It’s the pur­suit of the Third Wave global society as a replace­ment to the archaic world of nationalism.

In con­clu­sion, the ques­tion must be asked; How far will this process reach? Alvin and Heidi Tof­fler let the cat-out-of-the-bag.

“The fact is that building a Third Wave civ­i­liza­tion on the wreckage of Second Wave insti­tu­tions involves the design of new, more appro­priate polit­ical struc­tures in many nations at once. This is a painful yet nec­es­sary project that is mind-staggering in scope…

In all like­li­hood it will require a pro­tracted battle to rad­i­cally over­haul the United States Con­gress, the House of Com­mons and the House of Lords, the French Chamber of Deputies, the Bun­destag, the Diet, the giant min­istries and entrenched civil ser­vices of many nations, their con­sti­tu­tions and court system – in short, much of the unwieldy and increas­ingly unwork­able appa­ratus of existing rep­re­sen­ta­tive governments.

Nor will this wave of polit­ical struggle stop at the national level. Over the months and decades ahead, the entire ‘global law machine’ – from the United Nations at one end to the local city or town council at the other – will even­tu­ally face a mounting, ulti­mately irre­sistible demand for restructuring.

All of these struc­tures will have to be fun­da­men­tally altered, not because they are inher­ently evil or even because the are con­trolled by this or that class or group, but because they are increas­ingly unwork­able – no longer fit­ting to the needs of a rad­i­cally changing world.” [60]

Can’t you hear it? That’s the sound of the cru­cible of glob­al­iza­tion being fired up.

End­notes:

Intro­duc­tion  

Zbig­niew Brzezinski, co-founder of the global elitist Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973 and the prin­cipal archi­tect of modern glob­al­iza­tion, recently wrote in 2004,

“The notion of total national secu­rity is now a myth. Total secu­rity and total defense in the age of glob­al­iza­tion are not attain­able. The real issue is: with how much inse­cu­rity can America live while pro­moting its inter­ests in an increas­ingly inter­ac­tive, inter­de­pen­dent world?”¹

The orig­inal Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion policy of national inse­cu­rity has now come full circle.

The U.S. Depart­ment of Com­merce white paper, Mar­itime Secu­rity and Beyond, tells us what is at stake in our mar­itime secu­rity policies:

“America’s coasts, rivers, bridges, tun­nels, ports, ships, mil­i­tary bases, and water­side indus­tries may be the ter­ror­ists’ next tar­gets. The overall risk asso­ci­ated with the vul­ner­a­bility of the U.S. mar­itime assets, both as a poten­tial target for ter­rorist activity and more impor­tantly as a trans­porta­tion plat­form for the intro­duc­tion of a “Trojan Horse,” in which a poten­tial weapon of mass destruc­tion (WMD), ter­rorist, con­tra­band or illegal aliens, enters the U.S. through its sea­ports, has been made very clear in the last sev­eral years. A cat­a­strophic event at a sea­port facility would not only affect the global trans­port infra­struc­ture, but could also result in global eco­nomic dev­as­ta­tion for a long period of time.” [emphasis added]²

The issue of national secu­rity is of huge impor­tance to all Amer­i­cans. There are only three ways to enter the U.S. — by land, sea or air. While glob­alist politi­cians have done little, if any­thing, to secure land bor­ders with Canada and Mexico, it is now apparent that they will do little or nothing to improve our mar­itime secu­rity as well. In fact, they seem to be intent on dis­man­tling what little secu­rity remains.

Mar­itime secu­rity in the U.S. is run by the Mar­itime Admin­is­tra­tion (MARAD), which sits directly under the Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion, Norman Mineta.

The mis­sion state­ment of MARAD is

To strengthen the U.S. mar­itime trans­porta­tion system – including infra­struc­ture, industry and labor – to meet the eco­nomic and secu­rity needs of the Nation. MARAD pro­grams pro­mote the devel­op­ment and main­te­nance of an ade­quate, well-balanced United States mer­chant marine, suf­fi­cient to carry the NationÂ’s domestic water­borne com­merce and a sub­stan­tial por­tion of its water­borne for­eign com­merce, and capable of ser­vice as a naval and mil­i­tary aux­il­iary in time of war or national emer­gency. MARAD also seeks to ensure that the United States main­tains ade­quate ship­building and repair ser­vices, effi­cient ports, effec­tive inter­modal water and land trans­porta­tion sys­tems, and reserve ship­ping capacity for use in time of national emer­gency.³

Whether they know it or not, Amer­i­cans rely on MARAD to pro­tect its shores from any kind of maritime-related secu­rity risk. Yet, on Jan­uary 24, 2006, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush appointed Dave San­born to head MARAD.

Who is Dave San­born? He was most recently a senior exec­u­tive for Dubai Ports World (DP World, Director of Oper­a­tions for Europe and Latin America), the same United Arab Emi­rates com­pany that caused a firestorm in Amer­ican pol­i­tics just a few weeks later when the U.S. public found out about the Arab takeover of 6 U.S. ports.

What kind of dis­turbing pat­tern is emerging that would allow a former employee of DP World to be picked to head MARAD… at vir­tu­ally the same time that DP World seeks to take con­trol over the majority of east coast ship­ping facilities?

This issue will explore glob­al­iza­tion as it relates to national secu­rity, or the lack thereof, with a focus on mar­itime secu­rity. It will be shown that the modern degra­da­tion of national mar­itime secu­rity started with Pres­i­dent James Earl Carter (an orig­inal member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and hand-picked as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date by Zbig­niew Brzezinski) with the 1977 give­away of the Panama Canal, which was the most strategic mar­itime asset that America ever owned. Fur­ther, it will be shown that the same global elite are riding the money-go-round with sev­eral Arab states, including the United Arab Emi­rates who are mem­bers of the Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Council (GCC) that was founded by Saudi Arabia in 1981.

It was the same Zbig­niew Brzezinski who wrote in 1972 that the

“nation state as a fun­da­mental unit of man’s orga­nized life has ceased to be the prin­cipal cre­ative force: Inter­na­tional banks and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions are acting and plan­ning in terms that are far in advance of the polit­ical con­cepts of the nation-state.” [emphasis added] ⁴

The more things change, the more they remain the same!

The Panama Canal Give­away 

Since its offi­cial opening on August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal con­nects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by tra­versing the isthmus of Panama in Cen­tral America. The Canal was built exclu­sively by the United States after acquiring the land with the Hay-Bunau Var­illa Treaty of 1903.

Each year, some 14,000 ships (mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial) trans­port well over 250 mil­lion tons of cargo. The dis­tance from San Fran­cisco to New York via the Canal is one-half the dis­tance using the Cape Horn route at the tip of South America. To say the least, the Panama Canal has long been rec­og­nized by every trade and mil­i­tary authority in the world as an incred­ibly impor­tant and strategic waterway.

The Panama Canal was sum­marily given away to a com­mu­nist dic­tator by Pres­i­dent James Earl Carter.

It must be remem­bered that the Carter pres­i­dency was the first to be dom­i­nated by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Not only had Carter him­self been hand-picked by Zbig­niew Brzezinski to be groomed for the pres­i­dency, but when elected, he brought almost one-third of the U.S. mem­ber­ship into high-level posi­tions in his Administration.

Begin­ning in 1974, it had become apparent to cer­tain inter­na­tional banks that well over $2 bil­lion in loans pre­vi­ously made to Panama were in jeop­ardy of defaulting. There was no eco­nomic solu­tion, so focus changed to the polit­ical arena. A plan was devised to turn over the Panama Canal to Panama, thus allowing Panama to pocket the income stream gen­er­ated from pas­sage fees, and hence to ser­vice its debt pay­ments to the inter­na­tional banks. Never mind that the Panama Canal was sov­er­eign U.S. prop­erty and the most strategic mil­i­tary and eco­nomic asset held by the U.S. in the hemi­sphere. Never mind that Omar Tor­rijos was a Marxist dic­tator who ascended to power not by demo­c­ratic elec­tion but by mil­i­tary coup.

Because sov­er­eign U.S. prop­erty cannot be ceded to any for­eign power without a 2/3 full vote of the Senate and the House, a scheme was hatched to transfer the prop­erty by treaty nego­ti­ated by the Exec­u­tive Branch. The treaty ulti­mately became known as the Carter-Torrijos Treaty. (Note: Space limits dis­cus­sion of the Carter Administration’s fla­grant dis­re­gard for the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion in this matter.)

Con­gressman Robert Dornan (R-CA) saw through this scheme and tes­ti­fied bluntly before Congress:

The Tor­rijos dic­ta­tor­ship is up to its ears in debt to banks. The debt of the Tor­rijos regime has not reached such pro­por­tions that 39 per­cent of the Panama GNP — repeat, 39 per­cent — goes to debt ser­vicing alone. This might not cause the extreme con­ster­na­tion in the banking cir­cles that it does if it were a debt owed by a stable gov­ern­ment. But the Tor­rijos regime is far from stable.

The dic­tator was nearly ousted a few years ago by an abortive coup and there are few wagers on his staying in power long if the treaties are rejected by the Senate. And if he is not in power, the banks do not have much chance of get­ting their money.

“Some mem­bers of Con­gress and Amer­i­cans are aware of the con­flict of inter­ests involved in some of the bank’s sup­port of the Pana­manian treaties. They are aware of the Marine Mid­land con­nec­tion through nego­tiator Sol Linowitz. But there are many other banks whose endorse­ment of the give­away of the canal may be moti­vated by mon­e­tary inter­ests. Unlike Marine Mid­land, they have been able to keep a lower pro­file. They are not gen­er­ally known to be a part of the banking group with a lucra­tive stake in the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the treaties.⁵

Dornan pub­lished a list of banks par­tic­i­pating in the Tor­rijos debt. This writer, along with Antony C. Sutton, exam­ined the list of banks (thirty-one for one loan and four­teen for another loan), and traced the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion links to these par­tic­i­pating banks. The results were astounding.

Given that there were only a total of three hun­dred mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion world­wide with less than 100 from North America, con­sider the following:

1. No fewer than thirty-two Tri­lat­erals were on the boards of the thirty-one banks par­tic­i­pating in the Pana­manian $115 mil­lion 10-year Eurodollar loan issued in 1972
2. Fif­teen Tri­lat­erals were on the boards of four­teen banks par­tic­i­pating in the $20 mil­lion floating rate promis­sory note issued in 1972.⁶

Carter chose a fellow Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion member, Sol Linowitz, to nego­tiate the Carter-Torrijos treaty. In order to avoid the normal Senate con­fir­ma­tion process (which would have cer­tainly failed) Linowitz was appointed as a “tem­po­rary Ambassador.”

The Linowitz con­flict of interest was astounding. Linowitz was a director of Marine Mid­land Bank that stood to lose a bundle if Panama defaulted on its loans. Marine Mid­land was also the sole agent of the Pana­manian gov­ern­ment for its own banking rela­tions with the U.S. Not sur­pris­ingly, because Linowitz was also a director of Time Mag­a­zine, edi­to­rial arti­cles appeared in favor of the giveaway.

Despite the fact that 76 per­cent of Amer­i­cans opposed the give­away of the Panama Canal, the U.S. Senate nar­rowly rat­i­fied the Carter-Torrijos Treaty on April 18, 1978, which promised com­plete turnover of the Canal on December 31, 1999.

Twenty-one years later in 1999, Pres­i­dent William Jef­ferson Clinton, also a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, oversaw the com­ple­tion of the treaty by pre­siding over the actual transfer of title to Panama. While Panama had orig­i­nally promised to pro­tect America’s secu­rity and strategic interest in the Canal, it pro­ceeded in the exact oppo­site direc­tion by signing long-term port man­age­ment con­tracts with a Chi­nese com­pany, Hutchinson Whampoa of Hong Kong. As a result, both ends of the Panama Canal are now con­trolled by a com­pany closely aligned with, and par­tially owned by, the com­mu­nist Chi­nese government.

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, a great Amer­ican patriot and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1970 to 1974, had strongly protested Pres­i­dent Carter’s Panama policy in 1977. In 1999, Admiral Moorer again spoke out with per­fect clarity:

“In 1996, while China was ille­gally pouring mil­lions of dol­lars into ClintonÂ’s re-election effort, it was also fun­neling huge amounts of cash to Pana­manian politi­cians to ensure that one of its front com­pa­nies, Hutchinson Whampoa of Hong Kong, could move in when we vacate. In 1997, Panama secretly turned over the American-built port facility at Balboa, which con­trols ship­ping on the Pacific side, and at Cristobal, which con­trols ship­ping on the Atlantic side, to Hutchinson. Over the next sev­eral months we are sched­uled to turn over Rodman Naval Sta­tion, Howard Air Force Base, and other impor­tant mil­i­tary facil­i­ties to Panama, which has given Hutchison an option on these bases.

“This means that very soon we could see Com­mu­nist China in con­trol of one of the world’s most strategic water­ways in our own back­yard. Pres­i­dent Clinton may say that they are our friends and allies, but the Chi­nese mil­i­tary and Com­mu­nist Party lit­er­a­ture refer to the United States as “the main enemy.” And despite what Pres­i­dent Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and the media may tell you about “reform” in China, it is still run by a brutal, total­i­tarian, Com­mu­nist regime that will do us harm if and when it thinks it can get the better of us.” ⁷

[Editor’s note: One may better under­stand Clinton’s “Chi­na­gate” polit­ical con­tri­bu­tion scandal, when one under­stands that the object of that illegal lobby effort may well have been to allow Com­mu­nist China to take full con­trol of the Panama Canal.]

Despite the protests, the treaty was com­pleted as planned on December 31, 1999, and con­trol over the canal was handed over to the Panama Canal Authority, which in turn handed over oper­a­tional con­trol to Hutchison Whampoa.

The end of the matter is that a sov­er­eign asset of the United States was sub­verted for pri­vate gain; national secu­rity was of no con­cern whatsoever.

West Coast Mar­itime Secu­rity 

There are two Chi­nese ship­ping com­pa­nies oper­ating in the United States: China Ocean Ship­ping Com­pany (COSCO) and China Ship­ping Group (CSG).

China Ocean Ship­ping Com­pany (COSCO) is the largest con­tainer ship­ping com­pany in the world, oper­ating more than 540 ships and accounting for four-fifths of China’s inter­na­tional fleet. Prior to its first public offering of stock in 2005, COSCO was com­pletely owned by the Peo­ples Republic of China, where it con­tinues even now as the PRC’s mer­chant marine.

In the U.S., Seattle-based SSA Marine and COSCO have had an exclu­sive 25-year busi­ness rela­tion­ship: SSA Marine has han­dled every COSCO con­tainer in every port on the West Coast, totaling some 7.7 mil­lion containers.

SSA Marine (pre­vi­ously known as Steve­doring Ser­vices of America) is a sub­sidiary of Carrix Cor­po­ra­tion, with 2005 rev­enues easily in excess of $1.2 bil­lion. Carrix is a pri­vately owned multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tion whose busi­ness rev­enue is growing at a rate of about 18 per­cent per year. Carrix also owns Tide­works Tech­nology and Rail Man­age­ment Ser­vice (RMS), the world’s largest rail yard oper­ator with 45 facil­i­ties in 23 states.

SSA Marine obvi­ously has a pref­er­en­tial rela­tion­ship with China. In addi­tion to its exclu­sive rela­tion­ship with COSCO, it is cur­rently investing $350 mil­lion to double the size of its ter­minal facility at the eastern end of the Panama Canal (oper­ated by Hutchinson Whampoa), serving as a trans­ship­ment center for cargo between ships moving up the coast and those moving through the canal.

In 1996, COSCO attempted to lease a huge 130 acre ter­minal which had been con­verted from the aban­doned Long Beach Naval Sta­tion. According to the Her­itage Foundation,

“Long Beach is located in the heart California’s military-industrial com­plex, and the port itself is a prime loca­tion where the Chi­nese mil­i­tary could inter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which would allow them to track mil­i­tary exer­cises and deploy­ment. COSCO, which is owned in part by the Chi­nese People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army, is a less than ideal can­di­date for the port’s lease. In March 1996, U.S. cus­toms agents seized 2,000 AK47 assault rifles, bound for U.S. street gangs, that were on board a COSCO ship. With this in mind, Con­gress passed the National Defense Autho­riza­tion Act of 1998 (P.L. 105 – 85), effec­tively ban­ning COSCO from renting any por­tion of the former Long Beach Naval Sta­tion.” ⁸

This did not hinder COSCO from expanding its facil­i­ties in Los Angeles and Oakland.

COSCO also oper­ates an inter­modal net­work (see map) in North America through a sub­sidiary and with the help of Carrix Cor­po­ra­tion. The net­work facil­i­tates “door-to-door” delivery of goods arriving from China.

The second Chi­nese ship­ping com­pany men­tioned above is the China Ship­ping Group (CSG). This com­pany was formed in 1997 and is also owned by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. It cur­rently has routes span­ning the globe, ser­viced by 118 modern con­tainer ves­sels. CSG main­tains offices in Long Beach, Seattle, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleve­land, Sea­caucus, Savannah and Jack­sonville, which roughly par­al­lels the COSCO net­work described above.

Although COSCO and CSG make ample use of U.S. facil­i­ties to fur­ther their own goals here, it would be com­pletely unthink­able in China for the U.S. to attempt sim­ilar oper­a­tions on Chi­nese soil.

Under normal trade oper­a­tions, the global elite argue that there is no secu­rity risk to the United States in allowing Chi­nese government-owned busi­nesses to main­tain and operate ship­ping and inter­modal facil­i­ties in the U.S. Such an argu­ment is ludi­crous when one con­siders that China is still a sworn enemy of the United States, and has a long and sordid his­tory of espi­onage. In the event of an even­tual con­flict with China, it could imme­di­ately bring the U.S. to its knees by closing the Panama Canal and invoking a trade embargo with its vast net­work of ships. If that were not enough, they will have had ample time to directly deliver any amount of clan­des­tine mate­rial (weapons, explo­sives, nuclear devices) to loca­tions throughout the country.

NAFTA and NASCO

Thanks to the 1993 North Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA), the United States is being drawn into a hemi­spheric perimeter that includes Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

NAFTA is a purely Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion inven­tion. On December 17, 1992, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush and his U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Carla A. Hills, ini­tialed the NAFTA doc­u­ments in a cer­e­mony that included Mex­ican Pres­i­dent Salinas Cana­dian Prime Min­ister Mul­roney. Both Bush and Hills are mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

In fact, Carla Hills is widely cred­ited as being the pri­mary archi­tect and nego­tiator of NAFTA. Who is Carla Hills? Among other things, she is…

• founder, chairman and CEO of Hills & Com­pany, an inter­na­tional con­sul­tancy spe­cial­izing in global trade
• former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Housing and Urban Development
• co-founder of the Forum for Inter­na­tional Policy
• member of the boards of Time Warner and Amer­ican Inter­na­tional Group
• vice-chair of the National Com­mittee on U.S.-China Relations
• vice-chair of the U.S.-China Busi­ness Council
• trustee (and member) of the Council on For­eign Relations
• trustee of the Insti­tute of Inter­na­tional Economics
• member of the Board of the Asia Society
• member of the exec­u­tive com­mittee of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

Not sur­pris­ingly, in 2000 Hills was awarded the Aztec Eagle by Mexico, the highest honor given by the Mex­ican gov­ern­ment to a non-citizen.

In short, Carla A. Hills is at the white-hot core of the global elite, and one of its key oper­a­tives in glob­al­izing the world.

Having said this, one can under­stand how the North Amer­ican Super­Cor­ridor Coali­tion, Inc. (NASCO) sub­se­quently sprung up and declared itself to be “NAFTA’s trade Super­Cor­ridor” from Mexico to Canada. Note in the accom­pa­nying map from NASCO’s web site that the Super­Cor­ridor begins in Mexico and ends in Canada, with a U.S. route starting at Laredo, Texas and pro­ceeding to Kansas City, MO. According to NASCO’s web site,

“The NASCO Cor­ridor encom­passes Inter­state High­ways 35, 29 and 94, and the sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tors to those high­ways in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Cor­ridor directly impacts the con­ti­nental trade flow of North America. Mem­ber­ship includes public and pri­vate sector enti­ties along the Cor­ridor in Canada, the United States and Mexico.”

The cor­ridor con­cept is to offload inter­modal con­tainer freight in Man­zanillo, Mexico. Man­zanillo is one of the largest deep-water ports on the western side of North America, rivaling Long Beach and Los Angeles. Con­tainers will then be loaded on trains and trucks, given a spe­cial elec­tronic clear­ance, and then trans­ported directly to Kansas City (an “inland port” in this scheme of things) where the freight will go through a cus­toms pro­ce­dure prior to being redis­trib­uted to other des­ti­na­tions. This freight traffic will bypass Mex­ican and U.S. cus­toms check areas at Laredo.

Ulti­mately, con­tainer traffic will bypass border check points in all direc­tions. Cana­dian con­tainers can pro­ceed from Canada directly to the Man­zanillo port for ship­ping, thus skirting U.S. or Mex­ican border requirements.

Building the super­cor­ridor has already begun in earnest, with major expan­sion of Inter­state 35 in the U.S. and major new truck and rail facil­i­ties in Kansas City and points in between. Untold bil­lions of dol­lars are being poured into building up this infra­struc­ture so that tens of thou­sands of con­tainers can freely flow from ship to shore and back again.

There are assur­ances from everyone involved, as with the DP World takeover of 21 east coast ports, that secu­rity is of prime impor­tance, and that sophis­ti­cated new tech­nology will be imple­mented to pre­vent unwanted ter­rorist activ­i­ties. What they appar­ently don’t want to under­stand is that people with evil intent don’t play by their rules.

Although NAFTA and NASCO have a North Amer­ican con­text, the real money­lust lies in trade with Asia, and in par­tic­ular, with China. It has already been noted that China (via COSCO and CSG) have attempted to gain a major foothold in con­tainer port facil­i­ties on the west coast of the U.S. Also noted is that Hutchinson Whampoa con­trols the eastern and western ports of the Panama Canal. All three of these com­pa­nies share major own­er­ship with the People’s Republic of China, a com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship who is a sworn enemy of the United States.

The main obser­va­tion here is that Hutchison Whampoa, as in Panama, is also the prin­cipal port oper­ator at Man­zanillo, Mexico, and is cur­rently pouring bil­lions into its fur­ther devel­op­ment. By allowing Hutchinson Whampoa to take over the Man­zanillo port, Mexico has clearly aligned itself with the global elite, and against national secu­rity inter­ests of the United States.

The bottom line is that tens of thou­sands of ship­ping con­tainers will be expressed through Mexico into the heart­land of the United States with no more that 2 – 5% being checked to deter­mine if declared cargo is the actual cargo. Once again, trade tri­umphs over national security.

There is much more that will be said about NAFTA, NACSO, region­alism, etc., in future arti­cles. Our pur­pose here is to dis­cuss national secu­rity and to demon­strate that the dis­man­tling of U.S. national secu­rity is a deci­sive policy set in motion by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

East Coast Mar­itime Security

On Feb­ruary 11, 2006, a U.S. Trea­sury depart­ment com­mittee issued its approval for a United Arab Emi­rates (UAE) com­pany, Dubai Ports World (DP World), to take over the oper­a­tional man­age­ment of six major Amer­ican com­mer­cial ports and two U.S. mil­i­tary ports. After min­imal inves­ti­ga­tion, it was later deter­mined that the total count for takeover was 21 ports, split between eastern and gulf cost states. The ports in ques­tion were for­merly man­aged by the London-based Penin­sular and Ori­ental Steam Nav­i­ga­tion Com­pany (“P&O”), which had just been acquired by DP World.

Pres­i­dent George Bush and his cab­inet mem­bers vehe­mently endorsed and defended the takeover. Most Amer­i­cans and many of their respec­tive elected offi­cials won­dered if the Exec­u­tive Branch had com­pletely lost its marbles.

The com­pelling neg­a­tive aspects of this poten­tial secu­rity col­lapse being reported are that the UAE…

• pro­vided cit­i­zen­ship to two of the hijackers in the 9 – 11 attack on America
• has been a key transfer point for ship­ments of nuclear com­po­nents sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya
• was one of only three nations that had rec­og­nized the Tal­iban as Afghanistan’s legit­i­mate government
• is an Islamic state closely aligned with Saudi Arabia, the center of the rad­ical Wahabi school of Islam that has fomented ter­rorism world-wide.

When threat­ened with leg­is­la­tion to block the takeover by DP World, Pres­i­dent Bush pledged to veto any such leg­is­la­tion because the secu­rity impli­ca­tions of the deal were “rig­or­ously reviewed” (in a secret, closed-door Trea­sury Depart­ment com­mittee meeting) and that the deci­sion “was final.” According to Reuters, Bush told reporters during a Cab­inet meeting, “This wouldn’t be going for­ward if we were not cer­tain that our ports would be secure.”

How does this rec­on­cile with Bush’s post-9 – 11 “War on Terror” dec­la­ra­tion? Is this some Machi­avel­lian dialectic that pits oppo­site and mutu­ally exclu­sive con­cepts against each other?

The August Review’s credo is to “Follow the money, follow the power.” With that in mind, the mys­tery is more easily unraveled.

The pro­posed DP World man­age­ment of U.S. ports was approved by CFIUS (Com­mittee on For­eign Invest­ments in the United States), which is orga­nized under the Depart­ment of the Trea­sury. CFIUS admin­is­ters Sec­tion 5021 of the Omnibus Trade and Com­pet­i­tive­ness Act of 1988 (the “Exxon-Florio” pro­vi­sion) which gives the Pres­i­dent power to block a for­eign acqui­si­tion of a U.S. cor­po­ra­tion if he finds:

1. there is cred­ible evi­dence that the for­eign entity exer­cising con­trol might take action that threatens national secu­rity, and
2. the pro­vi­sions of law, other than the Inter­na­tional Emer­gency Eco­nomic Powers Act do not pro­vide ade­quate and appro­priate authority to pro­tect the national secu­rity.⁹

The CFIUS com­mittee mem­ber­ship is hardly made up of second-rate gov­ern­ment staffers. Its twelve mem­bers include:

• John W. Snow, Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, Chairman
• John Mar­burger, Director of the Office of Sci­ence and Tech­nology Policy
• Stephen Hadley, Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for National Secu­rity Affairs
• Stephen Friedman, Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for Eco­nomic Policy (TC)
• Michael Chertoff, Depart­ment of Home­land Security
• Con­doleezza Rice, Sec­re­tary of State
• Donald Rums­feld, Sec­re­tary of Defense (CFR)
• Carlos M. Gutierrez, Sec­re­tary of Commerce
• Alberto Gon­zales, U.S. Attorney General
• Joshua Bolten, Director of the Office of Man­age­ment and Budget
• Rob Portman, U.S. Trade Representative
• N. Gre­gory Mankiw, Chairman of the Council of Eco­nomic Advisers.

John W. Snow was appointed Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury by Pres­i­dent Bush on Jan­uary 13, 2003. It is not insignif­i­cant that he was pre­vi­ously CEO of CSX Cor­po­ra­tion, a global ship­ping and inter­modal company.

On December 9, 2004, DP World issued a press release stating that it acquired CSX World Ter­mi­nals (a major sub­sidiary of CSX Cor­po­ra­tion) and other related inter­ests for $1.15 bil­lion.¹⁰

David San­born, appointed to head the Mar­itime Admin­is­tra­tion, worked for John Snow while at CSX. San­born became a DP World employee as a result of its acqui­si­tion of CSX World Terminals.

Snow claimed he had no knowl­edge of the CSX sale, and that he heard about it in the news­pa­pers like every­body else. Bush claims he had no knowl­edge of the DP World takeover of P&O, even though over half of his Cab­inet sit on the com­mittee that approved it. In light of the com­pli­cated tryst between Trea­sury, DP World, CSX, and David San­born, it is not too likely that anyone was in the dark about the pending DP World takeover of 21 U.S. ports.

United Arab Emi­rates: Home of Dubai Ports World 

One place in the world where it can be said “the buck stops here” is in the UAE. Put another way, if the world was a money funnel into which the global elite pour their bil­lions of quar­terly profits, then the bottom of that funnel emp­ties out on the UAE and a few other coun­tries who are mem­bers of the pow­erful Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Council.

The GCC was founded by Saudi Arabia in 1981. Other mem­bers of the GCC include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

Most Amer­i­cans cannot fathom the eco­nomic pros­perity in the GCC coun­tries in the mid-east because of the con­stant bar­rage of news on war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent years, the mas­sive infu­sion of fresh cap­ital from all over the world is funding the building of cities out of the desert sand. Huge con­struc­tion cranes are seen in every direc­tion, each one building the next latest and greatest sky­scraper. [Note: See Addi­tional Resources below for more images of the UAE and Dubai.]

The cor­po­rate inter­ests of vir­tu­ally every global elite are heavily rep­re­sented throughout the GCC. Huge deals are sealed in closed meet­ings. Secrecy is a stan­dard busi­ness prac­tice. Reg­u­la­tions of any kind are min­imal. Restraint is unnecessary.

These cities are being built with the latest tech­nology and mate­rials. They are “wired” with the latest Internet and com­puter tech­nology. It’s becoming a des­ti­na­tion of choice for regional cor­po­rate headquarters.

If you are an “any­body” in the global cor­po­rate world, you lust to have your own suite of offices and sup­porting con­do­miniums. This is a place where money meets ambi­tion, greed and avarice.

For instance, con­sider the Dubai Inter­na­tional Finan­cial Centre (DIFC): :

“The DIFC is an onshore cap­ital market des­ig­nated as a finan­cial free zone designed to create a unique finan­cial ser­vices cluster economy for wealth cre­ation ini­tia­tives. It is estab­lished as part of the larger vision of His High­ness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Mak­toum, Vice-President and Prime Min­ister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and the Gov­ern­ment of Dubai to create an envi­ron­ment for growth, progress and eco­nomic devel­op­ment in the UAE and the wider region. Integrity, trans­parency and effi­ciency are the guiding prin­ci­ples of the DIFC.

“There are six pri­mary sec­tors of focus within the DIFC: Banking Ser­vices (Invest­ment Banking, Cor­po­rate Banking & Pri­vate Banking); Cap­ital Mar­kets (Equity, Debt Instru­ments, Deriv­a­tives & Com­modity Trading); Asset Man­age­ment & Fund Reg­is­tra­tion (Fund Reg­is­tra­tion, Fund Admin­is­tra­tion & Fund Man­age­ment); Rein­sur­ance; Islamic Finance and Back Office Operations.

“Licence appli­ca­tions are being con­sid­ered from finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the above sec­tors. Each of these units will offer ben­e­fits such as zero tax rate on income and profits, 100 per cent for­eign own­er­ship, no restric­tions on for­eign exchange or capital/profit repa­tri­a­tion, oper­a­tional sup­port and busi­ness con­ti­nuity facil­i­ties. [Emphasis added]¹¹

It’s no sur­prise that Morgan Stanley applied for and received a license from the Dubai Finan­cial Ser­vices Authority (DFSA) to operate within the DIFC. According to Dr. Georges Makhoul, Morgan StanleyÂ’s regional head for the Middle East and North Africa,

“We are oper­a­tional in the DIFC now and look for­ward to the offi­cial opening of this impor­tant regional office later next month. ‘The DFSA’s effec­tive reg­u­la­tory frame­work, com­bined with the DIFC’s robust infra­struc­ture, pro­vides us with an excel­lent envi­ron­ment in which to expand our offering to clients.”  ¹²

The director-general of the DIFC Authority, Dr. Omar Bin Sulaiman, wel­comed Morgan Stanley by stating,

“This is a tes­ti­mony to our status as an inter­na­tional finan­cial centre of repute. Morgan Stanley is a highly reputed organ­i­sa­tion and to have them here at the DIFC is a vin­di­ca­tion of our strategy to create a world-class finan­cial hub for the region. The oppor­tu­nity avail­able within the region, along with the state-of-the-art infra­struc­ture and the inter­na­tional reg­u­la­tory frame­work of the DIFC, pro­vides the ideal plat­form for insti­tu­tions such as Morgan Stanley to grow their busi­ness.” [Emphasis added]¹³

Ideal plat­form, indeed. Who couldn’t grow their busi­ness with zero income tax, unlim­ited for­eign own­er­ship and no for­eign exchange regulations?

Cities like Dubai are rem­i­nis­cent of the rebuilding of Japan and Ger­many after WWII. Since their eco­nomic infra­struc­ture was destroyed, they were rebuilt from the ground up with the latest indus­trial tech­nology, leaving America behind and less com­pet­i­tive in world markets.

On the other hand, both Japan and Ger­many were a con­quered people after WWII. They gave up and “rolled over.” The Islamic res­i­dents of Dubai (and other GCC coun­tries), by con­trast, have not been con­quered and most con­tinue to view the U.S. as the “great Satan” that must be elim­i­nated from the face of the earth, along with Israel.

DP World, who will shortly take over oper­a­tion of 21 U.S. port ter­minal facil­i­ties, is wholly owned by the royal family that con­sti­tutes the gov­ern­ment of the UAE. This form of gov­ern­ment, where a family owns and runs the gov­ern­ment, is unknown in the western world. It is the pin­nacle of fas­cism and dic­ta­tor­ship combined.

Most assume that the royal family’s riches came from roy­al­ties paid on oil pro­duc­tion, and this is cer­tainly true. But even that kind of wealth cannot account for the rapid rise of DP World as a top player in ship­ping and port oper­a­tion throughout the world.

Records show, for instance, that DP World pur­chased P&O for $6.8 bil­lion. Only $300 mil­lion (5 per­cent) actu­ally came from DP World — the rest, $6.5 bil­lion, was pro­vided by Bar­clays Cap­ital and Deutsche Bank AG.

In short, it is the global banking com­mu­nity that enables the cor­po­rate expan­sion of pow­erful com­pa­nies owned by close-knit Islamic fam­i­lies in the GCC coun­tries. Without global bank sup­port, there would be no DP World to take over Amer­ican ship­ping ports.

Tri­lat­eral Sup­port for DP World Takeover

On March 1, 2006, The Finan­cial Times was first to report the story that former U.S. pres­i­dent Bill Clinton (member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion) had advised the UAE on damage con­trol when con­fronted with stiff polit­ical resis­tance over the DP World takeover of Amer­ican ports. Although it was inti­mated that Clinton acted in an informal capacity, the article also noted that his overall rela­tion­ship with the UAE and Dubai is far from casual:

“Mr. Clinton’s con­tact with Dubai on the issue under­scores the rela­tion­ship he has devel­oped with the United Arab Emi­rates since leaving office. In 2002, he was paid $300,000 to address a summit in Dubai.”¹⁴

Three days later on March 4, when reporting on Hillary Clinton’s claim that she knew nothing of her husband’s involve­ment with Dubai, the Finan­cial Times revealed yet more details about Clinton’s rela­tion­ship to the UAE…

“Mrs. Clinton’s finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms reveal that her hus­band earned $450,000 giving speeches in Dubai in 2002. Offi­cials from the UAE also report­edly donated between $500,000 and $1m to fund Mr. Clinton’s pres­i­den­tial library in Arkansas – part of an effort by the emi­rates to forge a close rela­tion­ship with the former US pres­i­dent.“¹⁵

In another instance, the New York Daily News released an article sug­gesting the White House seeks to defuse resis­tance to the DP World port takeover by finding a U.S. partner to add to the deal.

“A lot of people are talking about this, a sub­sidiary or a deal like that,” a con­gres­sional source confirmed.

One snag to such a deal may be that sources say the U.S. com­pany best equipped to partner with DP World is Hal­liburton, once headed by Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney.

After under­going so much scrutiny for its no-bid Iraq con­tract and the han­dling of some of its duties there, Hal­liburton may not be able to help DP World land the deal, a source admitted.”¹⁶

Both Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, are mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

It is likely that this article is only a trial bal­loon to test public resis­tance to Hal­liburton, but even the sug­ges­tion that Cheney’s ex-employer might be involved iden­ti­fies Tri­lat­eral influence.

Robert Zoel­lick, also a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and cur­rently Deputy Sec­re­tary of State, was for­merly the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. On November 11, 2004, Zoel­lick announced that the Admin­is­tra­tion intended to nego­tiate Free Trade Agree­ments with the UAE and Oman. In his letter to con­gres­sional leaders, he wrote,

“A free trade agree­ment with the UAE and Oman will pro­mote the President’s ini­tia­tive to advance eco­nomic reforms and open­ness in the Middle East and the Per­sian Gulf, moving us closer to the cre­ation of a Middle East Free Trade Area,” ¹⁷

Note that Zoel­lick posi­tions the FTA as the President’s ini­tia­tive, rather than an out­right Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion policy ini­tia­tive. In his next sen­tence, he credits the policy due to rec­om­men­da­tions from the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report:

Fur­ther­more, our free trade agree­ments in the Middle East com­ple­ment The 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report rec­om­men­da­tion urging the United States to expand trade with the Middle East as a way to “encourage devel­op­ment, more open soci­eties and oppor­tu­ni­ties for people to improve the lives of their fam­i­lies.” [Emphasis added] ¹⁸

Who did Pres­i­dent Bush orig­i­nally appoint to head the 9/11 Com­mis­sion? None other than orig­inal Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion member, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger accepted the appoint­ment but resigned a month later amid accu­sa­tions of “con­flict of interest.” Bush replaced Kissinger with Thomas Kean, a member of the Council on For­eign Rela­tions and a director of the oil giant Amerada Hess, and who had busi­ness ties to Saudi Arabia and the GCC.

The U.S./UAE Free Trade Agree­ment started by Zoel­lick in 2004 is due to be com­pleted in March or April, 2006. This lucra­tive FTA is in jeop­ardy if the DP World takeover of U.S. ports does not pro­ceed as planned. This may ade­quately explain the President’s imme­diate and vehe­ment sup­port of the DP World deal — to reject the UAE could easily kill the FTA and thus cost bil­lions to global corporations.

Con­clu­sion 

As usual, it’s about money and not national secu­rity. There is clear and abun­dant evi­dence that since 1973, U.S. mar­itime national secu­rity has been lit­er­ally wrecked by the self-serving inter­ests of mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and other global elit­ists. In every instance men­tioned in this report, there was no public dis­clo­sure until someone else made it public. In every instance, there was fierce resis­tance from the U.S. public. If the Con­sti­tu­tion, statutes, courts, Con­gress or the public stood in their way, then other ways were found to get around them.

From this dis­cus­sion of mar­itime national secu­rity, we can sadly conclude:

• Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion self-serving poli­cies of greed have tri­umphed over national security
• The com­mu­nist Chi­nese are in com­plete con­trol of the immensely strategic Panama Canal
• The com­mu­nist Chi­nese operate mas­sive door-to-door ship­ping net­works on the North Amer­ican pacific coast and throughout the U.S.  (via COSTO, CSG, NASCO, NAFTA)
• The Islamic United Arab Emi­rates may soon con­trol 21 major U.S. East Coast ship­ping ports
• The U.S. is wide open for eco­nomic and mil­i­tary defeat if con­flict breaks out

When Brzezinski asks, “with how much inse­cu­rity can America live while pro­moting its inter­ests in an increas­ingly inter­ac­tive, inter­de­pen­dent world?“, one must remember that it was Brzezinski’s own poli­cies that brought him to the place of needing to ask the ques­tion. Per­haps he is really won­dering how much we can take before we break altogether.

[This article was updated on March 23, 2006]

Foot­notes: 

1. Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Dom­i­na­tion or Global Lead­er­ship (Basic Books, 2004) p. 17
2. Mar­itime Secu­rity and Beyond, Car­roll Ward, Mariners Weather Log, April 2005
3. Mis­sion State­ment, MARAD Web site
4. Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: The Tech­netronic Era (Pen­guin Books , 1971)
5. Banking Inter­ests in Panama, Robert K. Dornan, Con­gres­sional Record (Sept. 15, 1977)
6. Sutton & Wood, Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington Vol. I (August, 1980) p. 64
7. Admi­rals Sound the Alarm, The New Amer­ican inter­view, Mar. 29, 1999
8. Seeking Reci­procity in Mar­itime Trade with China, Wortzel (Her­itage Foun­da­tion, March 19, 2001)
9. Office of Inter­na­tional Affairs, U.S. Depart­ment of Treasury
10. Acqui­si­tion of CSX World Ter­mi­nals, DP World web site
11. DIFC Anniver­sary 2005 Notes of Suc­cess, DISC web site
12. Morgan Stanley Joins DIFC, Trade Arabia, March 5, 2006
13. ibid.
14. Bill Clinton helped Dubai on ports deal, Finan­cial Times, March 1, 2006
15. Bill’s ties to Dubai ‘sur­prise’ Hillary Clinton, Finan­cial Times, March 4, 2006
16. Dubai & Dubya in dash for lifeboat, New York Daily Times, March 4, 2006
17. U.S. Announces Intent to Nego­tiate FTAs with UAE and Oman, Office of the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, November 11, 2004)
18. ibid.

Addendum:

Cur­rent Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion “players” in and around the Bush administration:

• Dick Cheney, Vice Pres­i­dent of the United States
• Lynne V. Cheney, Chairman of the National Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, wife of Dick Cheney
• Robert Zoel­lick, U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State
• Paul Wol­fowitz, Pres­i­dent of the World Bank
• Paula J. Dobri­ansky, U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State for Global Affairs
• William J. McDo­nough, Chairman of the Public Com­pany Accounting Over­sight Board; former chairman of the New York Fed­eral Reserve
• William H. Web­ster, vice-chairman of Home­land Secu­rity Advi­sory Council
• Richard N. Perle, for­eign policy advisor to Pres­i­dent George Bush
• George H.W. Bush, Pres­i­dent George Bush’s father
• Catherine Bertini, Under-Secretary-General for Man­age­ment, United Nations, New York, NY
• Paul Volker, Chairman of the Oil-for-Food inves­ti­ga­tion at the United Nations
• Carla A. Hills, former U.S. Trade Representative

Addi­tional resources: 

• Spe­cial pic­tures of UAE
• Map of UAE and Per­sian Gulf
• Images of Abu Dhabi, largest city in UAE
• Images of Dubai, home of DP World

NOTE: Carl Teichrib, Senior Fellow at World Research Library, con­tributed to this report