Intro­duc­tion

There are two common mis­con­cep­tions held by those who are crit­ical of globalism.

The first error is that there is a very small group of people who secretly run the world with all-powerful and unre­strained dic­ta­to­rial powers. The second error is that there is a large amor­phous and secret orga­ni­za­tion that runs the world. In both cases, the use of the word “they” becomes the cul­prit for all our trou­bles, who­ever “they” might be. If taxes go up, it is “they” that did it. If the stock market goes down, “they” are to blame. Of course, nobody really knows who “they” are so a few fig­ure­heads (people or orga­ni­za­tions) are often made out to be the scapegoats.

Depending on a person’s pol­i­tics and phi­los­ophy, the scape­goats could be the U.S. Pres­i­dent, the ACLU, the Ford Foun­da­tion, or Vladimir Putin. The point is, the real power struc­ture is not cor­rectly defined, and thus escapes exposure.

These mis­con­cep­tions are under­stand­able because when things are wrong, we all have a dri­ving need to know who to blame! In some cases, elitist slight-of-hand ini­ti­ates and then per­pet­u­ates false assumptions.

This writer has never been accused of charging that all large cor­po­ra­tions are guilty of ini­ti­ating and per­pet­u­ating glob­al­iza­tion. There are many busi­nesses, including banks, who are led by moral, eth­ical and good-hearted busi­nessmen or busi­ness­women. Just because a com­pany might touch glob­alism does not mean it and its man­age­ment or employees are evil.

Every bit of thirty-five years of research indi­cates that there is a rel­a­tively small yet diverse group of global players who have been the plan­ners and insti­ga­tors behind glob­al­iza­tion for many decades. The pri­mary dri­ving force that moves this “clique” is greed; the sec­ondary force is the lust for power. In the case of the aca­d­e­mics who are key to glob­alism, a third force is pro­fes­sional recog­ni­tion and accep­tance (a subtle form of egoism and power.)

It is also impor­tant to under­stand that core glob­al­ists have full under­standing of their goals, plans and actions. They are not dimwitted, igno­rant, mis­in­formed or naive.

The global elite march in three essen­tial columns: Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical and Aca­d­emic. For the sake of clarity, these names will be used herein to refer to these three groups.

In gen­eral, the goals for glob­alism are cre­ated by Cor­po­rate. Aca­d­emic then pro­vides studies and white papers that jus­tify Corporate’s goals. Polit­ical sells Academic’s argu­ments to the public and if nec­es­sary, changes laws to accom­mo­date and facil­i­tate Cor­po­rate in get­ting what it wants.

An impor­tant ancil­lary player in glob­alism is the media, which we will call Press in this report. Press is nec­es­sary to filter Cor­po­rate, Aca­d­emic and Political’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the public. Press is not a fourth column, how­ever, because it’s pur­pose is merely reflec­tive. How­ever, we will see that Press is dom­i­nated by mem­bers of Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical and Aca­d­emic who sit on the var­ious boards of direc­tors of major Press organizations.

This report will attempt to iden­tify and label the core players in the glob­al­iza­tion process. The intent is to show the makeup and pat­tern of the core, not to list every person in it. Nev­er­the­less, many people will be named and their asso­ci­a­tions and con­nec­tions revealed. This is done for two reasons.

First, it will equip the reader be able to accu­rately iden­tify other core players as they are brought into focus. Sec­ondly, the reader will be able to pass over minor players who may sound like “big fish” but in fact are only pedestrians.

Orga­ni­za­tional Memberships

The old saying, “Birds of a feather, flock together” is appro­priate for the per­pe­tra­tors of glob­alism. Soci­o­log­i­cally speaking, they are like any other people group with like inter­ests: they nat­u­rally tend to form soci­eties that will help them achieve their common inter­ests. A side-benefit of fel­low­ship is mutual sup­port and encour­age­ment. Once formed, such groups tend to be self-perpetuating, at least as long as common inter­ests remain.

In modern his­tory, the pin­nacle of global dri­vers has been the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Founded in 1973 by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski, this group is cred­ited with being the founder of the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order that has given rise to the glob­al­iza­tion we see today.

The Council on For­eign Relations

Prior to the founding of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, the Council on For­eign Rela­tions (CFR) was the most sig­nif­i­cant body of global-minded elit­ists in the United States. As far back as 1959, the CFR was explicit about a need for world government:

“The U.S. must strive to build a new inter­na­tional order… including states labeling them­selves as ‘socialist’… to main­tain and grad­u­ally increase the authority of the United Nations.”

The site for the United Nations head­quar­ters in New York was orig­i­nally donated by the Rock­e­feller family, and the CFR world archi­tects worked for many years to use the U.N. as a means to develop an image of world order. Indeed, the CFR mem­ber­ship roster has been, and still is a Who’s Who of the elitist eastern establishment.

The first problem with the CFR is that it became too large and too diverse to act as a “cut­ting edge” in global policy cre­ation. The second problem is that it’s mem­ber­ship was lim­ited to north America: What group could effect global changes without a global membership?

The CFR con­tinues to be sig­nif­i­cant in the sense that politi­cians often look to its mem­ber­ship when searching for people to fill var­ious appoint­ments in gov­ern­ment. It also con­tinues to be a policy mill through its offi­cial organ, For­eign Affairs.

While there are a sev­eral core global elit­ists in the ranks of the CFR, they rep­re­sent a very small per­centage of the total mem­ber­ship. Con­versely, there are many CFR mem­bers who are only lightly involved with glob­alism. For this reason, we do not count the CFR as being cen­tral to glob­al­iza­tion today.

The Tri­lat­eral Commission

David Rock­e­feller rec­og­nized the short­com­ings of the CFR when he founded the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973 with Zbig­niew Brzezinski. Rock­e­feller rep­re­sented Cor­po­rate and Brzezinski rep­re­sented Academic.

Together, they chose approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers from north America, Europe and Japan, whom they viewed as being their “birds of a feather.” These mem­bers were at the pin­nacle of their pro­fes­sion, whether Cor­po­rate, Aca­d­emic, Polit­ical or Press. It is a tes­ti­mony to the influ­ence of Rock­e­feller and Brzezinski that they could get this many people to say “Yes” when they were tapped for membership.

Out of the 54 orig­inal U.S. mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Jimmy Carter was fronted to win the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 1976. Once inau­gu­rated, Carter brought no less than 18 fellow mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion into top-level cab­inet and gov­ern­ment agencies.

Per­haps no one has described the Tri­lat­eral oper­a­tion as suc­cinctly as vet­eran reporter Jere­miah Novak in the Chris­tian Sci­ence Mon­itor (Feb­ruary 7, 1977):

“Today a new crop of econ­o­mists, working in an orga­ni­za­tion known as the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, is on the verge of cre­ating a new inter­na­tional eco­nomic system, one designed by men as bril­liant as Keynes and White. Their names are not well known, but these modern thinkers are as impor­tant to our age as Keynes and White were to theirs.

“More­over, these econ­o­mists, like their World War II coun­ter­parts, are working closely with high gov­ern­ment offi­cials, in this case Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter and Vice Pres­i­dent Walter Mon­dale. And what is now being dis­cussed at the highest levels of gov­ern­ment, in both the United States and abroad, is the cre­ation of a new world eco­nomic system – a system that will affect jobs in America and else­where, the prices con­sumers pay, and the freedom of indi­vid­uals, cor­po­ra­tions, and nations to enter into a truly plan­e­tary eco­nomic system. Indeed, many observers see the advent of the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and what is now being called the “Tri­lat­eral” cab­inet as the har­binger of this new era.”¹

The per­ni­cious influ­ence of the Com­mis­sion and its dom­i­nance of the U.S. Exec­u­tive branch remains unchal­lenged to this day.

Ronald Reagan was not a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but his Vice Pres­i­dent, George H. W. Bush, was a member. The Commission’s influ­ence was safely per­pet­u­ated into the Reagan years.

The 1988 elec­tion of George H.W. Bush to the pres­i­dency fur­ther con­sol­i­dated Tri­lat­eral influ­ence in the U.S.

In 1992, Tri­lat­eral member William Jef­ferson Clinton fol­lowed in the pres­i­dency and con­tributed greatly to the cause of globalization.

In 2000, George W. Bush assumed the pres­i­dency. While it can be demon­strated that Bush is closely aligned with and totally ded­i­cated to Tri­lat­eral goals, he is not a member of the Com­mis­sion. How­ever, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney is a member of the Commission.

Obvi­ously, Corporate’s part­ner­ships with Polit­ical, Aca­d­emic and Press has been very suc­cessful.

The Orig­inal Mem­ber­ship: 1973 – 1978

A short look at the first U.S. mem­ber­ship list is instruc­tive. We have taken lib­erty to orga­nize the names according to broad func­tions, which is not fully ade­quate to explain the inter­re­la­tion­ships. As one exam­ines the biogra­phies of these indi­vid­uals, one sees a “revolving door” phe­nom­enon where people rotate in and out of gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, think-tanks, etc., on a reg­ular basis. This is one sev­eral tests used to iden­tify a member of the true core of global elite.

* Indi­cates member of Exec­u­tive Committee

Rock­e­feller and Brzezinski’s strategy was nefar­ious, yet brilliant.

The elec­tion of demo­crat James Earl “I will never lie to you” Carter was assured by deliv­ering the mostly demo­c­ratic labor vote. This was accom­plished by adding to the inner core: Leonard Wood­cock (UAW), I.W. Abel (United Steel­workers) and Lane Kirk­land (AFL-CIO).

By 1977, three more labor leaders were added to the mem­ber­ship: Glenn E. Watts (Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Workers of America), Martin J. Ward (pres­i­dent of United Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­neymen and Appren­tices), and Sol Chaikin, pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Ladies Gar­ment Workers Union.

Leonard Wood­cock served as Chief Envoy to China under Carter, and was largely respon­sible for solid­i­fying eco­nomic and polit­ical ties with Com­mu­nist China. [Editor’s note: Any reader who is or was a member of one of these unions will instantly have flashes of insight as to the enduring duplicity of labor man­age­ment — you were effec­tively “sold down the river” starting 1973 and con­tin­uing into the present.]

Those com­mis­sioners who Carter brought into his admin­is­tra­tion (the ini­tial “steering com­mittee”, if you will) were Walter Mon­dale (Vice Pres­i­dent), Zbig­niew Brzezinski (National Secu­rity Advisor), Cyrus Vance (Sec­re­tary of State), Harold Brown (Sec­re­tary of Defense) and W. Michael Blu­men­thal (Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury,) among others.

As the Wash­ington Post phrased it:

“Tri­lat­er­al­ists are not three-sided people. They are mem­bers of a pri­vate, though not secret, inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion put together by the wealthy banker, David Rock­e­feller, to stim­u­late the estab­lish­ment dia­logue between Western Europe, Japan and the United States.

“But here is the unset­tling thing about the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. The President-elect is a member. So is Vice-President-elect Walter F. Mon­dale. So are the new Sec­re­taries of State, Defense and Trea­sury, Cyrus R. Vance, Harold Brown and W. Michael Blu­men­thal. So is Zbig­niew Brzezinski, who is a former Tri­lat­eral director, and, Carter’s national secu­rity advisor, also a bunch of others who will make for­eign policy for America in the next four years.”³

Before Carter’s term was com­pleted, no less than 18 mem­bers (thirty per­cent of the U.S. Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship) of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion served in his admin­is­tra­tion. Coin­ci­dence? Hardly!

This article pur­posely leaves out dis­cus­sion of the non-U.S. mem­ber­ship of the Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship, which will be saved for another day. Suf­fice it to say that the Euro­pean and Japanese con­tin­gents were just as pow­erful and effec­tive in their respec­tive home coun­tries. Approx­i­mately one-third of the mem­ber­ship came from Europe and the other third from Japan. The joint mem­ber­ship met annu­ally (no press allowed) to for­mu­late policy and action plans for their respec­tive regions. Many, if not most, of their poli­cies were pub­lished in the Commission’s quar­terly journal, Trialogue.

The most damning argu­ment ever launched against the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is the uncon­sti­tu­tional influ­ence of other gov­ern­ments and forces upon the U.S. For instance, Com­mis­sion mem­bers are not elected nor rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion of the U.S., yet they effec­tively dom­i­nated the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. When the Com­mis­sion resolved poli­cies (behind closed-doors) with non-U.S. mem­bers, who were a mere one-third minority, could it be said that for­eign influ­ences effec­tively con­trolled U.S. policy?

These con­cerns were never addressed by Con­gress or the Judi­ciary. The Exec­u­tive branch would have nothing to address because it has been con­tin­u­ously dom­i­nated by Com­mis­sion mem­bers — who repeat­edly assured us that there was no such con­flict of interest. Of course, the answer to these ques­tions are self-evident: U.S. inter­ests, eco­nomic and polit­ical, have been subverted.

The eco­nomic sub­ver­sion of the U.S. was studied in The August Review’s America Plun­dered by the Global Elite and was likened to the plun­dering of a nation, the likes of which have not been seen in modern history.

Cur­rent Tri­lat­eral Membership

The fol­lowing list of north Amer­ican mem­bers is not exhaus­tive. These are selected because of their high vis­i­bility in posi­tions within Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical or Eco­nomic and Press. A future install­ment of The August Review will examine the entire mem­ber­ship list more care­fully and com­pletely. The pur­pose here is to show that the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has grown, rather than declined, in strength over the years.

Keep in mind that there is no enroll­ment or appli­ca­tion process to belong to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. One is invited to join in a manner sim­ilar to a col­lege stu­dent being “tapped” for mem­ber­ship in a fra­ter­nity. Thus, the process is highly selec­tive and dis­crete. Can­di­dates are thor­oughly screened before invi­ta­tion is deliv­ered. For this reason, one can be rel­a­tively sure that anyone who is or who has ever been a member of the Com­mis­sion is in the core of the global elite. There are likely a few mem­bers who are not truly a part of the core, but for the sake of aggre­gate analysis, this is not an impor­tant issue.

U.S. Mem­bers who have been sub­se­quently added to the Com­mis­sion over the years include, in part, the fol­lowing list.

* Indi­cates member of Exec­u­tive Com­mittee
The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same

The occu­pa­tional makeup of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has obvi­ously changed over time, but that only rep­re­sents the maturing of the glob­al­iza­tion process. What was needed in 1973 is not what is needed today. Still, there are some con­sis­ten­cies that are easily observed.

The most obvious con­sis­tency (and expan­sion) is the very large rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the banking cartel: two chairmen and two board mem­bers of of the Fed­eral Reserve System, two pres­i­dents of the World Bank, director of the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, and chairmen/CEO’s of sev­eral promi­nent global banks. This does not take into account any link­ages from Com­mis­sion mem­bers who are also direc­tors of com­mer­cial and invest­ment banks. Finan­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tion is not inci­dental because money is the life-blood of glob­alism. The August Review’s cov­erage in Global Banking: The Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments detailed the apex and makeup of global banking.

Through mem­ber­ship, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion dom­i­nates the exec­u­tive branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, the Fed­eral Reserve System, and is closely aligned with the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments, which con­trols the world’s cur­ren­cies and money supply. This is seen even without ana­lyzing the remaining two-thirds of Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship that resides out­side of the U.S.

The Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics (IIE)

The IIE is an example of a key orga­ni­za­tion in which one might iden­tify other core mem­bers of the global elite. Founded in 1981, IIE is a small policy-wonk orga­ni­za­tion with only 60 employees and an annual budget of $7 mil­lion. According to its own web site,

“The Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics is a pri­vate, non­profit, non­par­tisan research insti­tu­tion devoted to the study of inter­na­tional eco­nomic policy. Since 1981 the Insti­tute has pro­vided timely, objec­tive analysis and con­crete solu­tions to key inter­na­tional eco­nomic problems.

“The Insti­tute attempts to antic­i­pate emerging issues and to be ready with prac­tical ideas to inform and shape public debate. Its audi­ence includes gov­ern­ment offi­cials and leg­is­la­tors, busi­ness and labor leaders, man­age­ment and staff at inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions, university-based scholars and their stu­dents, other research insti­tu­tions and non­govern­mental orga­ni­za­tions, the media, and the public at large. It addresses these groups both in the United States and around the world.“⁵
This would be easily over­looked unless you examine IIE’s board of direc­tors. Tri­lat­er­alist Peter G. Peterson is chairman of the board. Anthony M. Solomon is hon­orary chairman of the exec­u­tive com­mittee. Solomon is the former chairman of War­burg (USA) Inc., former pres­i­dent and CEO of the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York and former Under Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury for Mon­e­tary Affairs. Solomon was listed only as “Con­sul­tant” on the 1973 Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship list.⁶

There are 12 other Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers (including David Rock­e­feller) on IIE’s board of direc­tors! Having estab­lished Tri­lat­eral influ­ence (if not total dom­i­na­tion), con­sider the fol­lowing non-Commission IIE board mem­bers who might well be can­di­dates for inclu­sion in the core of the global elite:

• Chen Yuan – Gov­ernor, China Devel­op­ment Bank; former Deputy Gov­ernor, Peo­ples Bank of China.

• Jacob A. Frenkel – Former gov­ernor of the Bank of Israel and former IMF eco­nomic coun­selor and director of research.

• Mau­rice R. Green­berg – Chairman, Amer­ican Inter­na­tional Group.

• David O’Reilly – Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Chevron­Texaco Corporation.

• James W. Owens – Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar.
• Lawrence H. Sum­mers - Pres­i­dent, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity; former Sec­re­tary of the Treasury.

These are just a few of the non-Trilateral board mem­bers, and are reviewed only to show the process by which one might iden­tify addi­tional global elite core members.

There are other orga­ni­za­tions like IIE that could stand sim­ilar analysis of pur­pose, lead­er­ship and directorship.

Con­clu­sion

As was declared in the begin­ning of this analysis, the stam­pede to glob­alism is con­ducted by a small group of indi­vid­uals with aspi­ra­tions for global dom­i­nance. It should be noted again that there are mem­bers of the global “core” who are not mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

In gen­eral, they are driven by lust for money and power. They have clearly made an end-run around the Amer­ican people in order to achieve per­sonal goals that, in many cases, are dia­met­ri­cally opposed to U.S. inter­ests. If the Amer­ican people fully under­stood the mag­ni­tude of the decep­tion and power-grab, they would imme­di­ately and totally repu­diate these indi­vid­uals and their self-serving global schemes.

In 1971, Zbig­niew Brzezinski wrote in Between Two Ages: 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.”⁷

Brzezinski could not have been more clear than this. Of the few people who paid atten­tion to Brzezinski pre­vi­ously, only one person needed to receive his mes­sage fully: David Rock­e­feller, chairman of Chase Man­hattan Bank and con­sum­mate glob­alist. When they teamed up to start the Tri­lat­eral Com­mi­sison in 1973, the rest, as we say, “became history.”

So, how can one deter­mine if an indi­vidual is a member of the core of the global elite? There is a good chance that such a person will be:

•  closely aligned with and accepted by many of the people already iden­ti­fied as core;
•  often family-related to other core mem­bers (i.e., the Bush family, Rock­e­feller family, etc.);
•  part of the “revolving-door” that switches them in and out of impor­tant and crit­ical posi­tions in gov­ern­ment, acad­emia and business;
•  a member (director or high-level exec­u­tive) of an orga­ni­za­tion iden­ti­fied as a core com­pany, such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Cit­i­group, Cater­pillar Tractor, etc.;
•  edu­cated at a pres­ti­gious and global-minded university;
•  belong to one or more orga­ni­za­tions that are dom­i­nated by people already iden­ti­fied as core.

This list is not com­pre­hen­sive, nor is it meant to be some sim­plistic litmus test. It is impor­tant to realize that many names being bandied about are NOT part of the core of the global elite, but rather become decoys that shift the focus away from the real elite core. Dis­cre­tion, common sense and study is required to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between the two.

Foot­notes

1. Novak, Jere­miah, Chris­tian Sci­ence Mon­itor (Feb­ruary 7, 1977)
2. The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Mem­ber­ship List, www.trilateral.org
3. Wash­ington Post, Jan­uary 16, 1977
4. op. cit.
5. About Us, http://www.iie.com/institute/aboutiie.cfm
6. Board of Direc­tors, http://www.iie.com/institute/board.cfm
7. Brzezinski, Zbig­niew, Between Two Ages: The Tech­netronic Era, (Pen­guin Books , 1971)

by Patrick Wood

INTRODUCTION

There are three inter­locking ele­ments that are key to any society: Pol­i­tics, eco­nomics and reli­gion. The three are inter­de­pen­dent and cannot be “unhinged” into sep­a­rate com­po­nents. Every facet of human inter­ac­tion is wrapped up in these three ele­ments, meaning that there are no more than three elements.

This issue will answer the ques­tion, “Do the global elite pro­mote a reli­gion that is com­pli­men­tary and inte­gral in pur­pose to their New World Eco­nomic Order and the World Governance?”

This is a slip­pery sub­ject and hard to nail down. When this writer asked (from 1978 – 1981) mem­bers of the elitist Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion if they had plans for a New World Polit­ical Order, they would say “Absolutely not.” Rather, they would point to their mis­sion state­ment, which clearly referred to a “New World Eco­nomic Order”. Upon closer exam­i­na­tion, we showed the inter­locks between cor­po­rate and foun­da­tion direc­tor­ships and funding of non-governmental think-tanks and ini­tia­tives, that proved otherwise.

When one talks about a “New World Reli­gion”, a sim­ilar ana­lyt­ical approach is nec­es­sary. While those in the global reli­gious move­ment are quick to dis­cuss global polit­ical gov­er­nance issues, those in the global eco­nomic and/or global polit­ical world more often side-step reli­gious ques­tions as being “pri­vate issues”, and simply deny any goals of bringing about a uni­fied, global reli­gion of any sort.

As we examine this sub­ject, one cannot help but note how the Amer­ican court system is fanat­i­cally removing every sem­blance of Judeo-Christian sym­bolism from public places using the argu­ment of “Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State.” In spite of the fact that America’s her­itage is deeply rooted in simple con­cepts like the Ten Com­mand­ments, these are now per­sona non grata. To the global elite how­ever, there appar­ently is no “sep­a­ra­tion of church and state”… as long as it is their reli­gion and their state: Nei­ther of these wel­come tra­di­tional evan­gel­ical Christianity.

The first example of reli­gion in glob­alism is the Aspen Insti­tute, for­merly called the Aspen Insti­tute for Human­istic Studies. Aspen is chosen because it is estab­lished, influ­en­tial, sub­stan­tive and very rep­re­sen­ta­tive. There are many other orga­ni­za­tions that com­prise a loose net­work of common inter­ests, but it is not nec­es­sary or pos­sible to dis­cuss each one.

To lay a proper ground­work for a modern look at Aspen, the fol­lowing newsletter issue is reprinted in its entirety.

Tri­lat­eral Observer Vol. 3, Issue 9, Sep­tember, 1980

HUMANISM: THE GLOBAL IDEOLOGY

The term “Humanism” is often erro­neously thought of as humane-ism. Humanism is a sec­ular, non-theistic (athe­istic) reli­gion that believes man is capable of self-fulfillment, eth­ical con­duct and sal­va­tion without super­nat­ural intervention.

Roots of modern-day Humanism go back to at least fifth cen­tury B.C. to the Greek philoso­pher Pro­tagoras who said, “Man is the mea­sure of all things.”¹ During the period of the Enlight­en­ment, philoso­phers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778), Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831) and slightly later Karl Marx (1818 – 1883), devel­oped human­istic doc­trines that have worked their way into the 20th cen­tury in the form of Humanism, Marxism, Socialism, Com­mu­nism, Col­lec­tivism and Rationalism.

Rousseau wrote in Emile, “Only through the individual’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ‘common unity’ can full per­sonal matu­rity become pos­sible… nature is still the norm, but one that has to be recre­ated, as it were, at a higher level, con­fer­ring on man a new rational unity which replaces the purely instinc­tive unity of the prim­i­tive state.”² In Du Con­trat Social he pro­posed a sort of civil reli­gion or civic pro­fes­sion of faith to which every cit­izen after giving his free assent – must remain obe­dient under pain of death.³

Hegel coined the idea, “Freedom is not some­thing merely opposed to con­straint; on the con­trary, it pre­sup­poses and requires restraint.”⁴ Like Rousseau, he con­tended that the indi­vidual could be “free” even when he is being coerced into it, and even though he would not like being forced, he must follow the “public will.”

Karl Marx hated Chris­tianity, Judaism and reli­gion in gen­eral. He stated: “Crit­i­cism of reli­gion is the foun­da­tion of all crit­i­cism.”⁵ Even in his own life­time Marx was known as a mil­i­tant atheist. All of his writ­ings were directed toward destroying the middle “bour­geois” class by means of the working class, which was to result in a class­less society.

At the turn of the cen­tury, Humanism was rep­re­sented in the US by the Amer­ican Eth­ical Union (The Amer­ican Civil Lib­er­ties Union – ACLU – was the legal arm of the AEU.) In 1933 Humanist Man­i­festo I was pub­lished in The New Humanist, Vol. VI, No.3, and in 1973 Humanist Man­i­festo II appeared in The Humanist, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5.⁶

The fol­lowing selected quotes from Humanist Man­i­festo II will give you a gen­eral idea of its content:

“As in 1933, Human­ists still believe that tra­di­tional theism, espe­cially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for per­sons, to hear and under­stand their prayers, and to be able to do some­thing about them, is an unproved and out­moded faith… Rea­son­able minds look to other means for sur­vival… False ‘the­olo­gies of hope’ and mes­sianic ide­olo­gies, sub­sti­tuting new dogmas for old, cannot cope with existing world real­i­ties… No deity will save us, we must save ourselves”.

“Ethics is autonomous and sit­u­a­tional, needing no the­o­log­ical or ide­o­log­ical sanc­tion.”⁷ [Authors’ Note: This gave birth to the phrase, “if it feels good, do it.”]

“In the area of sex­u­ality, we believe that intol­erant atti­tudes, often cul­ti­vated by orthodox reli­gions and puri­tan­ical cul­tures unduly repress sexual con­duct”.⁸

“We deplore the divi­sion of humankind on nation­al­istic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human his­tory where the best option is to tran­scend the limits of national sov­er­eignty and to move toward the building of a world com­mu­nity in which all sec­tors of the human family can participate. “

“We believe in the peaceful adju­di­ca­tion of dif­fer­ences by inter­na­tional courts and by the devel­op­ment of the arts of nego­ti­a­tion and com­pro­mise. War is obso­lete. So is the use of nuclear, bio­log­ical and chem­ical weapons. “

“The prob­lems of eco­nomic growth and devel­op­ment can no longer be resolved by one nation alone; they are world­wide in scope.”

‘Tech­nology is the vital key to human progress and development. “

“We urge that parochial loy­al­ties and inflex­ible moral and reli­gious ide­olo­gies be tran­scended. Destruc­tive ide­o­log­ical dif­fer­ences among com­mu­nism, cap­i­talism, socialism, con­ser­vatism, lib­er­alism, and rad­i­calism should be overcome.”

‘[Humanism]… tran­scends the narrow alle­giances of church, state, party, class or race in moving toward a wider vision of human poten­tiality. What more daring a goal for humankind than for each person to become, in ideal as well as prac­tice, a cit­izen of a world com­mu­nity. “⁹

Corliss Lamont is one of the most pro­lific writers on Humanism, and is lit­er­ally “Mr. Humanism” in regard to awards, men­tions, etc. in human­istic cir­cles. Lamont authored The Phi­los­ophy of Humanism (1977) and noted “A truly Humanist civ­i­liza­tion must be a world civ­i­liza­tion.”¹⁰ He fur­ther wrote:

“Humanism is not only a phi­los­ophy with a world ideal, but is an ideal phi­los­ophy for the world… sur­mounting all national and sec­tional provin­cialisms, pro­vides a con­crete oppor­tu­nity for over­coming the age-long cleavage between East and West. It is the philo­sophic coun­ter­part of world patri­o­tism”¹¹

“The prin­ciple around which the United Nations and the Inter­na­tional Court of Jus­tice are orga­nized is that the scope of national sov­er­eignty must be cur­tailed and that nations must be willing to accept, as against what they con­ceived to be their own self-interest, the demo­c­ra­t­i­cally arrived at deci­sions of the world com­mu­nity. “¹²

There is an extra­or­di­nary par­al­lelism between Human­ists and Marx­ists. Among the more obvious are:

• rejec­tion of tra­di­tional Chris­tianity and religion
• the neces­sity for sub­or­di­na­tion of the indi­vidual to state and the community
• catch­words of both Humanism and Marxism are “democ­racy, peace and high stan­dard of living”
• indi­vidual rights and beliefs are non-existent
• col­lec­tivism is supreme.

CORLISS LAMONT AND THE MORGAN FINANCIAL GROUP

Corliss Lamont (pre­vi­ously quoted as a prime source of humanist phi­los­ophy) is the son of Thomas W. Lamont.

Let’s to back to the First World War.

Thomas W. Lamont (1870 – 1948) was one of the orig­inal orga­nizers of the Round Table group cited by Quigley in Tragedy and Hope.¹³

Lamont’s auto­bi­og­raphy is appro­pri­ately enti­tled Across World Fron­tiers. He was not only a senior partner in J.P. Morgan & Co., but was also a director of Guar­anty Trust Com­pany, Inter­na­tional Har­vester Co. (with its Tri­lat­eral direc­tors today) and the law firm of Lamont Corliss & Co. Thomas Lamont was a key figure in the Morgan finan­cial group. (For fur­ther infor­ma­tion and exten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion on the links between J.P. Morgan and the devel­op­ment of the early Soviet Union, see Wall Street and the Bol­shevik Rev­o­lu­tion by Antony Sutton.)

Mrs. Thomas Lamont was a member of sev­eral unusual organizations:

• Fed­eral Union
• American-Russian Insti­tute (on the Attorney General’s sub­ver­sive list)
• National Council of American-Soviet Friendship
• Amer­ican Com­mittee for Friend­ship with the Soviet Union… and numerous others. (See above cita­tion for full list.)

In short, the Lamont family epit­o­mizes the links between:

• Humanism
• Com­mu­nism
• New York finan­cial interests

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE FOR HUMANISTIC STUDIES

Humanism today is being “taught” throughout the busi­ness world by the Aspen Insti­tute, par­tic­u­larly to the multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tion com­mu­nity. The major financiers of Aspen also are the major financiers of Tri­lat­er­alism, and no less than seven mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion also serve at the Aspen Institute.

The Aspen Insti­tute was founded in 1949 by Pro­fessor Giuseppe Borgese, Chan­cellor Robert M. Hutchins (both of Uni­ver­sity of Chicago) and Walter Paepcke, a Chicago busi­nessman. In 1957, Robert O. Anderson became chairman, and has been its guiding force ever since. In 1969, chair­man­ship switched to Joseph E. Slater, a member of the Council on For­eign Rela­tions and for­merly of the Ford Foundation.

In the past the edi­tors have reported the con­nec­tions between the Rock­e­feller Family and the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago and also between the Ford Foun­da­tion and the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

The two leading foun­da­tions con­tributing to Aspen are Atlantic-Richfield (ARCO) and the Rock­e­feller Foundation.

More­over, the largest single insti­tu­tional share­holder in ARCO is Chase Man­hattan (4.5%) and the largest indi­vidual share­holder is Robert O. Anderson, who is also on the board of direc­tors of Chase Man­hattan Bank.

The Markle Foun­da­tion (a sub­stan­tial Aspen backer) is less well known but leads us back to New York banks — in this case to the Morgan Guar­antee group. Markle Foun­da­tion chairman is Charles F. Biddle, also chairman of the credit policy group of Morgan Guar­antee Trust. Walter H. Page is pres­i­dent of Morgan Guar­antee Trust and pres­i­dent of J.P. Morgan. Another director, William M. Rees, is a director of First National City Bank.

In short, it seems the pri­vate financing for the Aspen Insti­tute comes from the inter­na­tional banks in New York City, and more specif­i­cally, from foun­da­tions con­trolled by Rock­e­feller and Morgan interests.

Donors sup­port activ­i­ties which reflect their objectives!

FUNDING OF ASPEN INSTITUTE FOR
HUMANISTIC STUDIES – 1979 COLORADO

PUBLIC FINANCING OF ASPEN

In Brzezinski’s book, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era, he wrote in ref­er­ence to a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion, “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 insti­tu­tions.”¹⁴ A prime Tri­lat­eral objec­tive is to blur the dis­tinc­tion between “pri­vate” and “public” oper­a­tions so as to divert public funds into pri­vate projects set up by Tri­lat­erals to achieve Tri­lat­eral objectives.

A Freedom of Infor­ma­tion Act request for infor­ma­tion on public financing granted to Aspen was sub­mitted to the National Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties. We received the fol­lowing list of NEH grants:

Ad-20009 – 80-1434
PI: Stephen P. Strick­land
Title: Aspen Institute/ United Way Bicen­ten­nial Project
Amount: $350,000 G&M (to date $90,000)

AP-00132 – 79-1297
PI: Robert B. McKay
Title: Devel­op­ment of the Jus­tice Pro­gram
Amount: $15,000 out­right
Grant Period: 11 – 1-76 to 6 – 30-80

CA-28286 – 77-0616
PI: Stephen Strickland/Aspen Insti­tute
Title: Chal­lenge Grant
Amount: $645,000
Grant Period: 11 – 1-76 to 6 – 30-80¹⁵

SUMMARY OF ASPEN INSTITUTE FUNDING

In brief, Aspen Insti­tute has been funded from the fol­lowing sources, taking 1979 as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive year:

The key point to note is the heavy rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dona­tions that have also financed Tri­lat­er­alism: these include Wey­er­haeuser, Rock­e­feller, Ford and Kettering.

THE ASPEN EXECUTIVE SEMINAR PROGRAM

While cen­tral offices of Aspen are in New York City, it has “cen­ters of activity” (i.e. sem­inar and housing facil­i­ties) in Wash­ington, D.C., Cam­bridge, Princeton, New Haven, Boulder, Hawaii, Tokyo and Berlin.

According to an Aspen publication:

“The idea behind the Aspen Insti­tute has three essen­tial ingre­di­ents: to gather thoughtful men and women around the table, not across the table; to explore the power of ideas in great lit­er­a­ture stretching from ancient to con­tem­po­rary time, and to trans­late ideas into poli­cies and actions that meet the chal­lenge of our age.

“In view of the rapidly increasing world­wide activ­i­ties of the Insti­tute, its inter­na­tional Board of Trustees and key staff act on the Institute’s long-standing prin­ciple to main­tain absolute con­trol over the selec­tion of indi­vidual par­tic­i­pants and their mix in all its meet­ings, the loca­tions at which its meet­ings are held, as well as the sub­jects to be dis­cussed. “¹⁶

At these meet­ings, a hotch­potch of cor­po­rate exec­u­tives, mil­i­tary people, intel­lec­tuals and media per­son­ages “mingle” and become “edu­cated,” typ­i­cally for a period of two weeks at a time. This subtle form of brain­washing on global affairs is cou­pled with the breaking down of hard line prin­ci­pled posi­tions through peer pres­sure. As Wilbur Mills once said, “To get along you have to go along.”

This is quite suc­cessful. For example, Newsweek reports that Bill Moyers (a spe­cial adviser to Aspen Insti­tute) has drawn more than ten of his Public Broad­casting Ser­vice pro­grams from con­tacts and ideas devel­oped at Aspen.¹⁷ PBS is sup­ported by many of the same foun­da­tions that sup­port the Aspen Insti­tute and Tri­lat­er­alism in addi­tion to large amounts of public money (Cor­po­ra­tion for Public Broad­casting, etc.). Once again we observe a “blur­ring” of insti­tu­tions where elit­ists com­bine their money with public financing to achieve their own ends and spread their global propaganda.

THE FUND FOR GOVERNANCE

According to the Institute’s A Brief Overview:

“…the Insti­tute is under­taking a sus­tained exam­i­na­tion of cru­cial issues of Gov­er­nance: how soci­eties and their gov­ern­ments and insti­tu­tions, public and pri­vate, national and inter­na­tional, can better respond to the often con­flicting pres­sures for social jus­tice, fair­ness, effi­ciency and indi­vidual freedom. Under this broad theme of Gov­er­nance, the Insti­tute focuses on such sub­jects as Financing the Future; Human Rights; The Cor­po­ra­tion and Society; Energy; A Chal­lenge to Gov­er­nance; Tra­di­tion and Mod­ern­iza­tion; The First 20 Years of Life; Ethics; Reli­gion and Gov­er­nance; Work, Indus­trial Policy and Society; and Struc­tures for Peace.¹⁸

While these issues of Gov­er­nance will be pur­sued throughout the year and around the globe, the pre­em­i­nent set­ting for the dealing with Gov­er­nance ques­tions is the Institute’s newly acquired Wye Plan­ta­tion out­side of Wash­ington, D. C. “¹⁹

Why should the Aspen Insti­tute under­take this pro­gram? It merely quotes from Edmund Burke, “The only thing nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”¹⁹ Appar­ently the Insti­tute equates itself with the “good men.”

The Insti­tute pro­poses to raise about $15 mil­lion for oper­ating cap­ital for this project. An annual budget of at least $1.2 mil­lion will pro­vide a staff of senior fel­lows and con­sul­tants (about $450,000 per year) with work­shops, sem­i­nars and con­sul­ta­tive ses­sions and pub­li­ca­tions costing about $600,000 a year.

The Atlantic Rich­field Com­pany pro­vided the first grant of $1 mil­lion and it is antic­i­pated that another $3 mil­lion will be raised from cor­po­ra­tions and foun­da­tions. As much as $6 mil­lion could come from public funds – either con­gres­sional appro­pri­a­tions or through the National Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties grants.

Some of the par­tic­i­pants in this pro­gram will not sur­prise you: Harlan Cleve­land, John Gardner, Tri­lat­eral Henry Kissinger, Marion Doen­hoff and Pehr Gyl­len­hammar.

Without ques­tion, this Aspen pro­gram is a well-funded attack on Con­sti­tu­tional America.

CONCLUSIONS

• Humanism is a man-centered, athe­istic reli­gion incon­sis­tent with and indeed utterly opposed to tra­di­tional Chris­tianity, Bib­lical the­ology or Orthodox Judaism.
• The phi­los­ophy has been nur­tured and pro­moted by the same group of glob­al­ists that nur­tures and sup­ports communism.
• Humanism is inti­mately con­nected with Tri­lat­er­alism, and calls for the elim­i­na­tion of nation­alism and nation­al­istic boundaries.
• Trilateral-style Humanism is pro­cre­ated pri­marily by The Aspen Insti­tute, and is funded by tax­payers’ money as well as by pri­vate foun­da­tion and cor­po­rate funds.

[END OF ORIGINAL TRILATERAL OBSERVER NEWSLETTER]

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE TODAY

Little has changed in 25 years. Aspen has since expanded its influ­ence by sev­eral times over, pro­viding human­istic training to tens of thou­sands of cor­po­rate executives.

With regard to funding, 2004 saw major sup­port from globalist-oriented foundations.

The cur­rent direc­tors of the Aspen Insti­tute con­tinue to be drawn from the same upper ech­elon of global elitists.:

Aspen also main­tains a Council of Hon­orary Trustees that con­sists of former board mem­bers or promi­nent indi­vid­uals who have been elected to the Council by a majority of the board mem­ber­ship. Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers on the council include: John Brademas, William T. Coleman, Jr., Umberto Colombo, Robert S. Ingersol, Henry Kissinger, Paul Volker and Robert McNa­mara.

HAS ASPEN CHANGED ITS MISSION?

According to the 2005 “Letter From the Pres­i­dent” on Aspen’s web site, Walter Isaacson writes:

The orig­inal goal of the Aspen Insti­tute, in the words of one of its ear­liest mis­sion state­ments, was “for Amer­ican busi­ness leaders to lift their sights above the pos­ses­sions which pos­sess them, to con­front their own nature as human beings, to regain con­trol over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting and hence more self-fulfilling.”

…But our core mis­sion remains the same. We seek to foster enlight­ened lead­er­ship and open-minded dia­logue. Through sem­i­nars, policy pro­grams, con­fer­ences and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives, the Insti­tute and its inter­na­tional part­ners seek to pro­mote non­par­tisan inquiry and an appre­ci­a­tion for time­less values. [Emphasis added]

We help people become more enlight­ened in their work and enriched in their lives. Together we can learn one of the keys to being suc­cessful in busi­ness, lead­er­ship and life: bal­ancing con­flicting values in order to find common ground with our fellow cit­i­zens while remaining true to basic ideals.²⁰

Reli­gious buzz­words seen above include self-aware, self-correcting, self-fulfilling, enlight­ened lead­er­ship, open-minded dia­logue, time­less values, bal­ancing con­flicting values, etc. Some readers may equate these terms to New Age Enlight­en­ment, and that would be cor­rect. Human­ists, by def­i­n­i­tion, do not limit them­selves to one “tra­di­tion”. In fact, as suc­cessful as Aspen Insti­tute has been in achieving its goals, even it rec­og­nizes that the world is not going to be con­verted to Sec­ular Humanism.

Rather, a more likely sce­nario is to take the existing reli­gions of the world and gather them together under a single umbrella of lead­er­ship and a common frame­work that all can agree upon. The best cur­rent example of such an effort is seen with the United Reli­gions Ini­tia­tive (URI).

UNITED RELIGIONS INITIATIVE AND THE QUEST FOR WORLD RELIGION

URI was founded in 1993 by William Swing, Bishop of the Epis­copal Church Dio­cese of Cal­i­fornia, as an Inter­faith orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to bind reli­gions of the world into one common orga­ni­za­tion. The con­cept of inter­faith orga­ni­za­tions is nothing new, but few have made much headway in this conflict-ridden world. By con­trast, URI has grown at a spec­tac­ular rate, up to 100% per year. In his newly released book, False Dawn, Lee Penn writes

“In 2002, New Age author Neale Donald Walsch said that the URI is ‘more global in scope, and more uni­versal in reach’ than other inter­faith orga­ni­za­tions, adding that ‘I am not sure that any other inter­faith orga­ni­za­tion casts that wide a net.’”²¹

The people (and the orga­ni­za­tions they rep­re­sent) who have drawn close to URI is striking; to name a few, World Eco­nomic Forum, Earth Charter move­ment, Ted Turner, Ford Foun­da­tion, Dee Hock (inventor of the VISA credit card, founder and former CEO of VISA Inter­na­tional), Mau­rice Strong (Cana­dian bil­lion­aire), Bill Gates (Microsoft founder), among others. The URI is also closely allied with the United Nations. At least two URI summit con­fer­ences have been held at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. Carnegie-Melon Uni­ver­sity in Pitts­burgh hosted the 2000 conference.

In 2000, URI co-sponsored the World Mil­len­nium Peace Summit of Reli­gious and Spir­i­tual Leaders, held at the United Nations in New York City. The Secretary-General of the meeting was Bawa Jain. After the con­fer­ence, Jain was inter­viewed by James Harder of Insight On The News as saying,

“What we need to engage in is an edu­ca­tion factor of the dif­ferent reli­gious tra­di­tions and the dif­ferent the­olo­gies and philoso­phies and prac­tices. That would give us a better under­standing, and then I think [we have to deal with] the claims of absolute truth – we will rec­og­nize there is not just one claim of absolute truth, but there is truth in every tra­di­tion. That is hap­pening more and more when you have gath­er­ings such as these.” ²²

The reli­gions rep­re­sented at the summit included Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Zoroas­tri­anism, Con­fu­cianism, Ba’hai, Chris­tianity, Indige­nous, Judaism, Shinto, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam and Taoism, among others. Note the heavy rep­re­sen­ta­tion of eastern religions.

Ted Turner, who gave a keynote address at the Summit, denounced his child­hood Chris­tian faith because “it was intol­erant because it taught we were the only ones going to heaven.”

What does URI have to do with any­thing other than reli­gion? Its pre­amble state­ment declares,

We unite in respon­sible coop­er­a­tive action to bring the wisdom and values of our reli­gions, spir­i­tual expres­sions and indige­nous tra­di­tions to bear on the eco­nomic, envi­ron­mental, polit­ical and social chal­lenges facing our Earth com­mu­nity. [emphasis added]²³

The United Reli­gions Ini­tia­tive is cer­tainly not the exclu­sive effort of the global elite, but it is per­haps the best example of the char­acter and nature of what they are attempting to achieve.

THE EARTH CHARTER INITIATIVE

The Earth Charter was cre­ated in 1994 by Mau­rice Strong and Mikhail Gor­bachev. Some view Earth Charter as being a pro­to­type con­sti­tu­tion for the New World Order. Although closely asso­ci­ated with the United Nations, Earth Charter indoc­tri­na­tion is meant to take place through edu­ca­tion and reli­gion, which is one reason that it is strongly sup­ported by URI.

NOTE: Much could be said about the Marxist-like doc­trine of Earth Charter, URI, and others, but the pur­pose of this newsletter is to answer the ques­tion, “Do the global elite pro­mote a reli­gion that is com­pli­men­tary and inte­gral in pur­pose to their New World Eco­nomic Order and the World Gov­er­nance?” So, we must leave the nature of that reli­gion for another issue.

The prin­cipal spokesman for Earth Charter, and its U.S. Chairman and Com­mis­sioner, is little known Steven C. Rock­e­feller, son of the late Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Steven Rock­e­feller is the reli­gious link to the New World Order being pro­moted by orga­ni­za­tions like the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. This Rock­e­feller received his Master of Divinity from the very lib­eral Union The­o­log­ical Sem­i­nary in New York City, and his Ph.D. in the phi­los­ophy of reli­gion from Columbia Uni­ver­sity, also very lib­eral. He is Pro­fessor emer­itus of Reli­gion at Mid­dle­bury Col­lege in Ver­mont, and also served as Dean of the Col­lege. Most impor­tantly to this dis­cus­sion, he was Chairman of the Earth Charter Inter­na­tional Drafting Committee.

Steven Rock­e­feller is also chairman of the Rock­e­feller Brothers Fund (RBF). David Rock­e­feller, his uncle, is also a director of RBF.

CONCLUSIONS

• The global elite have a reli­gious agenda.
• It is funded by the same people & orga­ni­za­tions who fund global polit­ical and eco­nomic policies.
• It is spe­cific in its beliefs and method­olo­gies of envelopment.
• It is unques­tion­ably set against Bib­lical Chris­tianity and Bible-believing Chris­tians because the Bible makes spe­cific claim to exclu­sivity regarding entrance into Heaven, for instance, John 14:6 states, “I am the way, the truth, and the light: no man comes to the Father except through Me.”

ENDNOTES

1. Pro­tagoras, Pro­tagoras IV, 51.
2. J.J. Rousseau, Emile.
3. —, Du Con­trat Social.
4. Paul Edwards, Ency­clo­pedia of Philosophy.
5. Ibid.,
6. Both of these Man­i­festos are avail­able from Prometheus Books, 923 Kens­ington Avenue, Buf­falo, New York 14215.
7. John Dewey et al, Humanist Man­i­festo I and II, p. 14 – 16.
8. Ibid., p. 17, 18.
9. Ibid., p. 21 – 23.
10. Corliss Lamont, The Phi­los­ophy of Humanism, p. 281.
11. Ibid., p. 282, 283.
12. Ibid., p. 257, 258.
13. Ibid.
14. Zbig­niew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era, p.259.
15. Report of Financing Granted to Aspen Insti­tute, National Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, 14th report (1979).
16. The Aspen Insti­tute: a Brief Overview, Aspen Institute.
17. Eric Gelman, The Great Amer­ican Salon, Newsweek XCVI (July 14, 1980), p. 66.
18. Aspen Insti­tute, Op. Cit.
19. Edmund Burke, Letter to William Smith, Jan­uary 9, 1795.
20. Letter From the Pres­i­dent, http://www.aspeninstitute.org/index.asp?i=53
21. Lee Penn, False Dawn, p. 43
22. James Harder, U.N. Faithful Eye Global Religion ;

    http://www.insightmag.com/media/paper441/news/2000/10/02/World/Religion.U.n.Faithful.Eye.Global.Religion-213309.shtml

23. United Reli­gions Ini­tia­tive, About URI; http://www.uri.org/About_URI.html

By Patrick Wood, Editor

Intro­duc­tion

In 1978, Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington revealed the global strategy of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and it’s co-founders David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski. Brzezinski, in par­tic­ular, pro­vided the intel­lec­tual rea­soning and polit­ical strategy for the “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order”.

Brzezinski was also an astute polit­ical oper­ator. He is cred­ited as the first person to take interest in Jimmy Carter, to mentor him in glob­alism starting in 1973 when Carter was chosen to be part of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Upon Carter’s elec­tion vic­tory in 1976, Brzezinski was appointed National Secu­rity Advisor. By the end of 1976, Carter had appointed no less than 19 mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion to high-ranking gov­ern­ment posi­tions. These 19 mem­bers rep­re­sented just under 20% of the entire U.S. del­e­ga­tion of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

The stage was now set for their power to become per­ma­nently embedded. Each suc­ces­sive Admin­is­tra­tion has been dis­pro­por­tion­ally dom­i­nated by mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion: George H.W. Bush, William Jef­ferson Clinton, Richard B. Cheney. Each admin­is­tra­tion filled top posts from the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Think-tanks con­nected to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion cranked out vol­umes of studies that droned on and on about the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order and the need for polit­ical change.

Looking back­ward to Brzezinski, how­ever, is nec­es­sary because he most clearly and lucidly embodied the heart and soul of the rush to glob­alism. He cre­ated the water­shed that ini­ti­ated the plun­dering of America and the buildup of the global cor­po­rate elite. This issue intends to quan­tify the extent of this plundering.

Brzezinski was inter­viewed in 1974 by the Brazilian news­paper Vega: “How would you define this new world order?” 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.” In his 1969 book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tech­netronic Era, he wrote 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.”

Indeed, mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion chosen from north America, Europe and Asia (mostly Japan), are all in agree­ment on this point — the nation-state only gets in the way of so-called “free trade” and there­fore must be closely manip­u­lated for their own common good. Col­lec­tively, they have taken a self-induced quantum leap above national law, into an ele­vated posi­tion of making their own rules as they go. We see some direct evi­dence of such an atti­tude, for instance, when Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton had no par­tic­ular legal qualms (or con­se­quences) of giving (free or for money) top-secret mis­sile tech­nology to Com­mu­nist China.

The gath­ering of cor­po­rate elites in the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion started with names such as Coca Cola, Ford Motor, Deere & Co., Hewlett-Packard, Cargill, Chase Man­hattan Bank, Cum­mins Engine, Texas Instru­ments, Hon­ey­well, Bechtel Cor­po­ra­tion, Wey­er­hauser, Gen­eral Motors, Boeing, and many others. Today, we see the same kind of makeup: Archer Daniels Mid­land (ADM), J.P. Morgan, Chase, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Pitney Bowes, GE, Cit­i­group, Amer­ican Inter­na­tional Group (AIF), Bank of America, Xerox and Hal­liburton, just to name a few.

To sum­ma­rize then, the real plun­dering of America started with the founding of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973 and the con­sol­i­da­tion of power in 1976 with the dom­i­nance of the Carter Admin­is­tra­tion. When one begins to see the pat­tern emerging, many unan­swered ques­tions start to clear up. Why does Pres­i­dent George Bush so point­edly want to elim­i­nate the U.S./Mexican border? Why the stam­pede to out­source Amer­ican jobs, even to the hurt of our own cit­i­zens? Why do people around the world intu­itively hate the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion, NAFTA and CAFTA? (The last ques­tion sug­gests that the U.S. is not the only nation-state being plun­dered these days.) Nations are finan­cially dis­in­te­grating while global cor­po­ra­tions grow fan­tas­ti­cally richer.

One might protest that the scope of this oper­a­tion is just too fan­tastic and huge to be real. This writer would remind the skeptic that U.S. his­tory is lit­tered with monop­o­listic tycoons who tried to get a lever on the soci­eties they lived in. Monop­o­lies are blind to pol­i­tics, except when pol­i­tics can be manip­u­lated to estab­lish or extend the monopoly. The vast majority of Amer­i­cans are left com­pletely in the dark because Amer­ican main­stream media, col­lec­tively slanted toward glob­alism, has been dom­i­nated by the very same glob­al­ists who founded the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in the first place: New York Times, Time-Warner, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, For­eign Policy Mag­a­zine, Com­cast, CBS, Atlantic Media, The Rand Cor­po­ra­tion, Wash­ington Post, Dow Jones & Com­pany, U.S. News and World Report all have direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

The reader is encour­aged to read Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington, Vol­umes I and II, to get a deeper sense of back­ground on these issues. Both of these books are avail­able in full-text ver­sions on The August Review website.

The State of the Nation

This issue attempts to give the reader a back­ground and per­spec­tive on the state of affairs of Amer­ican business.

There are three fac­tors to con­sider. First, there is the gov­ern­ment itself. Second, there is pri­vate industry. Although they are very dif­ferent types of enti­ties, they both can ade­quately be described in terms of flows of income. Third, we will look at the transfer of own­er­ship of U.S. based cor­po­ra­tions to for­eign ownership.

In the case of the gov­ern­ment, there has been vir­tu­ally no restraint on keeping its spending within its income. When­ever it spent out­side of income-in-hand, bor­rowing what­ever extra was needed was all too easy.

You can quickly see what the last 37 years look like from the chart to the left. Prior to 1975, budget deficits were very small. The upward trend started in earnest in 1975. A brief sur­plus was recorded between 1998 and 2001.

Pre­siding pres­i­dents are pur­pose­fully not men­tioned because they are irrel­e­vant to the big picture.

It should also stand out that there are three troughs: the first “peaked” in 1986, the second in 1992 and the third in 2005. The extremity cycle is approx­i­mately 6 years long.

The cumu­la­tive effect of these deficits on the U.S. national debt is quite dra­matic. In 1970, the debt was well under the $1 tril­lion level. Today, it stands over $8 tril­lion, a 10-fold increase.

To put this in per­sonal terms, every man, woman and child in America owes $28,500 each. A family of 4 col­lec­tively owes $114,000. You might say, “But, that’s the gov­ern­ment debt, not mine!” The fact is though, we are the gov­ern­ment. Except that tax­payers pay taxes, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment would have no source of income whatever.

So, let’s take a look at the busi­ness economy now.

A trade deficit occurs when we import more than we export. A sur­plus occurs when the reverse is true. Whether pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, the figure is called the “cur­rent account”.

Since 1981, America has been in the red every single year. The curve is sim­ilar in nature to the National Debt curve: very low deficits in the 70′s and early 80′s, then rising dra­mat­i­cally during the 90′s into the cur­rent decade.

In the chart to the right, you can see that the gap between imports (orange line) and exports (purple line) is widening at an increasing rate every year. The bottom curve shows the neg­a­tive bal­ance on the cur­rent account as it accu­mu­lates more and more red ink. Cur­rently, the annu­al­ized rate of the cur­rent trade deficit is easily $600 billion.

By con­trast, there were only two years in the decade of the 1970′s that had small trade deficits.

In March, the Busi­ness Tele­graph in London reported that the March (2005) deficit of $55 bil­lion was well below the $60 bil­lion that was expected by the markets.

“It’s a relief,” said James Glassman, senior econ­o­mist at JP Morgan Chase in New York. “It does dampen the fears that there was some­thing bad going on in the US economy.”

The psy­chology at play here is amazing. The fact that the trade deficit for a single month is $55 bil­lion instead of $60 bil­lion is a cause for reas­sur­ance that nothing bad is hap­pening to the U.S. economy? On the other hand, note that Glassman is senior econ­o­mist at JP Morgan Chase bank which has been at the very core of the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order from the beginning.

The third area to look at is transfer of own­er­ship. Cor­po­rate mergers are every­where. It’s so con­fusing that most people don’t have a clue who owns what anymore.

Out­lays for New Invest­ment in the United States by For­eign Direct Investors, 1980 – 2003

(Source: U.S. Bureau of Eco­nomic Analysis)

During the 1960′s, Amer­ican busi­ness increased its own­er­ship in the U.S. every year except one. During the 1970′s, there were only 5 years that we increased our posi­tion. Since 1982, there has not been one single year where for­eign invest­ment did not out­strip our own… and dra­mat­i­cally so, to the tune of $3.8 tril­lion. You ask, “How can this happen?” Simple.

Mergers.

Con­sider a few mergers from recent his­tory – do you rec­og­nize any of these “Amer­ican” names?

These few exam­ples are listed only to give you a flavor of the depth of pen­e­tra­tion of for­eign pur­chases into the core of Amer­ican industry. In order to get to an aggre­gate of $3.8 tril­lion, you can hardly imagine how many bil­lion dollar deals there have been over 20 years. In short, America is lit­er­ally being sold out from under us.

Let’s sum­ma­rize this now. In the past 35 years, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has racked up over $8 tril­lion in debt. The cur­rent trade deficit for 2005 alone will likely exceed $600 bil­lion (importing more than we export). The $3.8 tril­lion of show­case Amer­ican com­pa­nies have been sold to foreigners.

Is some­thing wrong with this picture?

When this writer began to do research for Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington in the late 1970′s, we focused on the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion because it was very apparent that it was laying the ground­work for — in their own words — a “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” The con­cept of the nation-state was out­dated and we were moving into an era of “interdependence.”

David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski founded the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973. It has been com­posed of slightly over 300 mem­bers chosen from North America, Europe and Asia (pri­marily Japan). The mem­bers are lit­er­ally the Who’s Who of global elit­ists: top politi­cians, think-tank philoso­phers, indus­tri­al­ists and bankers.

We clearly doc­u­mented in Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington (avail­able in full text form to The August Review sub­scribers on this site) that the move toward global eco­nomic con­sol­i­da­tion was well on its way. Twenty-five years later, we are standing under an avalanche of eco­nomic deterioration.

During these 25 years, America has lit­er­ally “lost its shirt”. We are tech­ni­cally quite bankrupt.

Cor­po­rate profits during this same time, how­ever, have seen huge and con­sis­tent profits. Those global-minded com­pa­nies in par­tic­ular (e.g., cor­po­rate board mem­bers who belong to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion) have prof­ited even more.

According to the BEA, aggre­gate cor­po­rate profits totaled $874 bil­lion in 2002, $1.02 tril­lion in 2003 and $1.2 tril­lion in 2004. Exxon increased its annual earn­ings from $21.5 bil­lion in 2003 to $25.33 bil­lion in 2004. This was not uncommon.

Is it pos­sible that the U.S. can be stripped to the bone while multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions get rich? Was it planned this way from the begin­ning (circa 1973)? Yes, and yes.

There is another aspect of national bank­ruptcy that needs to be men­tioned, namely, the land­slide loss of tech­no­log­ical genius that made America great in the first place. Putting aside the legal and illegal trans­fers of tech­nology to China during the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion, con­sider the case of IBM:

Lenovo, China’s largest PC com­pany, has com­pleted a $1.25 bil­lion acqui­si­tion of IBM’s Per­sonal Com­puting Divi­sion (PCD). Lenovo, which already has a third of the Chi­nese PC market and shares in enter­prise PC mar­kets around the world, says this deal makes it a new inter­na­tional IT com­petitor and the world’s third-largest per­sonal com­puting com­pany. The PCD acqui­si­tion, first announced in December, means, according to newly named Lenovo CEO Stephen Ward, that the com­pany will have com­bined annual PC rev­enue of about $13 bil­lion and volume of about 14 mil­lion units. Ward says Lenovo expects imme­diate syn­er­gies through com­ple­men­tary cus­tomer bases, product offer­ings and geo­graphic cov­erage, among other things. (SA Com­puter Mag­a­zine, 5-3-2005)

That is, the very com­pany that invented the PC and lit­er­ally rev­o­lu­tion­ized the world has now sold 100% of their Per­sonal Com­puting Divi­sion to a Com­mu­nist nation who have sworn many times that they will bury us. Chi­nese engi­neers will soon be moving into IBM’s Armonk, NY head­quar­ters to take over.

Another example is that Steven Chen, a Taiwanese-born Amer­ican cit­izen and one of America’s most bril­liant and top super­com­puter designers, quit his post with Sil­icon Graphics and is moving to main­land China. He is choosing to build his next gen­er­a­tion super­com­puter in China

According to IDC, the pre­mier intel­li­gence resource and fore­caster in the com­puter world,

Attracting a leading super­com­puter designer like Chen is good news for the growing Chi­nese com­puter industry. China has recently been pri­marily focusing its high-performance tech­nical com­puter designs on com­modity com­po­nent clus­ters. In gen­eral, clus­ters pro­vide very attrac­tive price-performance but lack some of the high-end capa­bil­i­ties pro­vided by tra­di­tional super­com­puters. Chen plans to bridge the gap by building high-performance blade-based clus­ters in China and offering them for sale around the world.

If America’s tech­nology prowess is a national trea­sure, then people like Steven Chen are national trea­sures also. How is it that we cannot offer enough entice­ment to keep such a talent in the United States? In an age where sports fig­ures can com­mand mil­lion of dol­lars per season for pure enter­tain­ment, this seems rather odd. It’s not just that Chen isn’t helping the U.S. but that he is helping a Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment develop tech­nology that can be used against us — com­mer­cially and militarily.

Example of a “Blind Eye”

The New York Times car­ried an article on May 17, 2005, “Bush’s Choice: Anger China or Con­gress Over Cur­rency.” China bought more than $200 bil­lion in Trea­suries last year, bringing their total own­er­ship of U.S. debt to a whop­ping $650 bil­lion. These pur­chases essen­tially finance a com­pa­rable trade deficit with China. Because China’s cur­rency, the yuan, is pegged to the U.S. dollar, China is in a posi­tion to manip­u­late the system (under­valuing its cur­rency) and gain a whop­ping trade advan­tage over America.

U.S. Busi­nesses have filed vol­umes of com­plaints with the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Rob Portman, about issues ranging from China’s dumping of prod­ucts at prices below cost of man­u­fac­turing, to wide­spread copy­right and patent vio­la­tions. Con­gress is some­what sen­si­tive to this issue and, bucking the pres­i­dent, is pushing for tar­iffs and quotas against China to punish them for milking the system.

Bush must now be crit­ical of China (and infu­riate China) or give China a clean bill of health and say that every­thing is fine (and infu­riate Con­gress and the Amer­ican people).

So, what do you do when you’ve invited an 800 pound gorilla into your living room? You pray he doesn’t get mad when you ask him to leave.

Trea­sury Sec­re­tary John Snow is on the spot. In the past, he has refused to crit­i­cize China openly, but rather seeks to rely on “finan­cial diplo­macy” instead. He believes that China can be per­suaded that flex­ible exchange rates ought to be in its own interest.

Mr. Snow, in an inter­view on Monday with CNBC, reit­er­ated his opti­mism that China would change policy on its own. “I’m con­vinced they will move,” Mr. Snow said. “Now is the time. We’re anx­ious to see them move. It’s time.”

What evi­dence does Snow have that China will vol­un­tarily pull back from an oppor­tu­nity to plunder the U.S.? His wishful thinking that they might com­pli­antly respond to our being “anx­ious” to see them move?

It is easier to under­stand the con­flict of interest if you look back a few years at John Snow’s career. From 1994 – 1996, Snow was chairman of the Busi­ness Round­table, an asso­ci­a­tion of 250 chief exec­u­tive offi­cers of the largest cor­po­ra­tions, rep­re­senting over $3.7 tril­lion in com­bined rev­enues. During that time, he was a key player in sup­porting the pas­sage of the North Amer­ican Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA).

He recently received the Marco Polo Award (2001), awarded by the U.S.-China Foun­da­tion for Inter­na­tional Exchanges as the highest honor that can be given to a for­eign busi­ness leader. He is a director of CarMax, U.S. Steel, Johnson & Johnson, Ver­izon Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sits on the boards of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, is chairman of the Kennedy Center Cor­po­rate Fund Board, and is a member of the Busi­ness Council and Busi­ness Roundtable.

In short, Snow has been at the cor­po­rate center of pro­moting glob­alism and in par­tic­ular, building China’s trade for many years. As Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, he is in an influ­en­tial posi­tion of trust to pro­tect the Amer­ican people from eco­nomic harm. But, will he?

To under­stand more com­pletely, ask your­self this ques­tion. Who invested money in, and built up, this 800 pound gorilla?

Take Bechtel for instance, one of the largest con­struc­tion and engi­neering com­pa­nies in the world. In 1994, Bechtel was the first U.S. com­pany to receive a con­struc­tion license in China. It has com­pleted 80 major projects in China and has per­ma­nent offices located in Bei­jing, Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong. Its latest project is a $4.3 bil­lion petro­chem­ical com­plex in Daya Bay that will pro­duce 2.3 mil­lion tons of prod­ucts annu­ally. It’s being touted as one of the largest Sino-foreign invest­ments to date, and is 50% owned by a sub­sidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell.

If we say, “China is really prof­iting from the U.S.”, to whom are we really refer­ring? It’s true that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is get­ting an advan­tage from the increase in eco­nomic activity, but who are the front-line col­lec­tors of rev­enue and aggre­ga­tors of profit in China? That’s right, it’s the same multi­na­tional corporations.

So, as noted above, when John Snow reit­er­ates his opti­mism that China will change policy on its own, you can see just how selec­tive his vision is. As long as China’s policy remains as it is, America gets plun­dered and the global cor­po­ra­tions in China rack up record profits.

This issue con­tends that America is For Sale. The sale is “under the table” in that the Amer­ican people don’t have a clue that it’s being slowly sold out from under their feet, one piece at a time. The sale is decep­tive because as the red ink grows larger and larger, we are told by these same glob­al­ists that trade and budget deficits don’t really matter that much. The sale is dis­honest because it was planned from the begin­ning by elitist groups like the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, to twist and manip­u­late the system to their own benefit.

The fact that America’s down­ward finan­cial spiral started in earnest shortly after the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion was founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski, is not inci­dental. The very poli­cies that brought us the “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” (their own phrase) have wrecked our country. This is not an anec­dotal obser­va­tion, as will be demon­strated over and over in future issues of The August Review.

America is in a very grievous and trepid sit­u­a­tion. Any number of iso­lated inci­dents could touch off a finan­cial firestorm that burns our house to the ground. When a com­pany goes bank­rupt, it is seldom adver­tised in advance. Its cus­tomers, share­holders and debtors are invari­ably in a state of shock when the bank­ruptcy occurs, even though hind site shows that there were ample evi­dences of impending bank­ruptcy. So it is with America: There is evi­dence every­where of what is hap­pening to us, but there are few eyes to see it nor ears to hear it.

In 30 – 40 short years, America has gone from the strongest and most stable nation in the world, to one of the weakest and unstable. Poor Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and had a great fall, but few people will see the real truth that Humpty was actu­ally pushed!