Who Wants A One World Government?
by Michael Barker
© Michael Barker 2009
(Swans - April 6, 2009)
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Throughout the past century, liberal elites organizing to build the institutional foundations for a one world government have regularly acted as whipping boys for conservative commentators who accuse them of conspiring to enmesh the global populace within the oppressive chains of communism. In the past, popular promoters of such misconceptions have been derived from far-right groups like the John Birch Society, but more recently the accusations have come from top religious and political leaders like Pat Robertson and Ron Paul. In the eyes of these conservative commentators, liberal elites stand guilty of promoting a one world government, or New World Order, designed to rein in individual freedom and enslave humanity. The most notable ringleader elites of this conspiracy include influential neo-centrics like George Soros (who founded the Open Society Institute), and members of the Rockefeller family -- most notably David Rockefeller and the liberal foundations that receive funding from his family.
Like most widely accepted analyses presented in the mainstream media this conservative interpretation of world events comprises an element of truth. Consequently, this article analyses the conservative interpretation of world events. It reviews the ongoing activities of groups that openly acknowledge their desire to promote a one world government and goes on to critique the left's approach to global government. It will demonstrate how the critical onslaught from the Right has, to date, served to prevent the progressive community from engaging in this critical debate; that is, the debate to shape the future of global politics to enable us to create a new peaceful world order. Finally, it offers a progressive theoretical framework to expose the disturbing ambitions of the liberal elite.
World Federalists, "Socialists," and Gorbachev Power
Elite aspirations for creating more efficient means of managing the world are not new. One of the most significant US-based organizations pushing this global agenda has been the American branch of the World Federalist Movement, a group that was first known as the World Federalists of America. Formed in the aftermath of World War I, the World Federalists of America "call[ed] for the formation of a world government with the power to make and enforce laws which will control pollution of the earth's atmosphere and water, curb the waste of its resources, and dismantle the war machines of all nations." Later, as Joseph Baratta recounts in his book, The Politics of World Federation: From World Federalism to Global Governance (Praeger, 2004), by 1939:
...as the League [of Nations] collapsed, bolder spirits began to call for establishment of a true world
federal government, by delegation of sovereign powers at least for the maintenance of peace and security. ... They included Clarence Streit, author of the book that practically conjured up the movement, Union Now. Another was Tom Otto Greissemer, German émigré from Hilter's Reich, who edited World Government News. Gressemer, educator Vernon Nash, and advertising executive Mildred Riorden Blake founded the World Federalists in New York in 1941. The Wall Street lawyer and "statesman incognito" behind the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations, Grenville Clark, had some influence when the times were auspicious, and later he and Harvard international lawyer Louis B. Sohn wrote one of the classics of the movement, World Peace through World Law. (p. 3)
In 1947, this group along with World Federalists of America met in Asheville, North Carolina, with representatives of three other like-minded world-federalist organizations to merge to become the United World Federalists which boasted a roster that "read like a Who's Who of academe, science, politics, the media, the legal community, business, and labor." (1) Although this newly-formed group had substantial support from the elites, Baratta observed that in its early days, "The only substantial money to come into the [World Federalist] movement -- $1 million from McCormick reaper heiress Anita McCormick Blaine -- funded the Foundation for World Government." (2) In later years United World Federalists would undergo a number of name changes before finally settling on their current name Citizens for Global Solutions (in 2004).
Following sustained attacks from radical conservatives like Pat Robertson (author of The New World Order), world federalists have become sensitive to openly declaring ambitions to create a world government. However, the former president of the World Federalist Movement, (1991-2004), the late Sir Peter Ustinov, has openly stated that a "World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable..."; similarly, in 1992, Strobe Talbott, writing for Time magazine famously quipped, "I'll bet that within the next hundred years... nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority." (3) Significantly, David Rockefeller noted in his memoirs, how some quarters considered the Rockefeller family "internationalists" who "conspire[d] with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure, one world, if you will." His response to this accusation was: "If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." (4) On this point, Baratta observes how "Federalists want world government, like any government, not as a good in itself but as the necessary instrument to establish peace and justice. Not to talk of government is not to face squarely the issue of willing the means for the end." (p.536)
Since 2004 the work of the World Federalists of America has been presided over by the Very Rev. Lois Wilson. Just prior to becoming the acting president of the World Federalist Movement (in 2004), Rev. Wilson served as Canada's special envoy to the Sudan (1999-2002), (5) but she had also been the first Canadian to be the president of the World Council of Churches (1983-90). Around this time, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell became the first woman to be named executive director of the US office of the World Council of Churches -- a position she held from 1985 until 1991. To date Rev. Campbell is an influential member of the globalist interfaith community and is presently a board member of the World Council of Religious Leaders and The Interfaith Alliance, while she chairs the Global Women's Peace Initiative (a group whose executive director, Marianne Marstrand, is the sister-in-law of the world's leading globalists, Maurice Strong). (6)
In 1983, the World Federalist Movement formed the Institute for Global Policy, which acts as their research arm. In 2003, the Institute launched their Responsibility to Protect-Engaging Civil Society Project (R2PCS) that ostensibly "seeks to promote commitment by the international community to prevent and respond early and effectively to threats of genocide and other mass atrocities." Stephen Gowans recently exposed the selective nature of this project's concerns with human rights violations, highlighting that,
...the plight of the Palestinians is nowhere to be found on the[ir] website..., though R2PCS has much to say about "the crisis in Darfur," "the crisis in Myanmar" and "the crisis in Zimbabwe," as well as the "genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, (and) crimes against humanity in Kosovo." That the humanitarian catastrophe visited upon the Palestinians is absent from the R2PCS's concerns hardly jibes with its professed mission to "promote concrete policies to better enable governments, regional organizations and the U.N. to protect vulnerable populations."
In late 2007, R2PCS formed a new initiative to build a Right to Protect (R2P) "global civil society coalition," which was supported by groups like "Oxfam International, Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, and Refugees International." The last three groups mentioned on the Project's Web site are all tightly connected to "humanitarian" warrior George Soros, (7) and so it is no coincidence that Anthony Fenton writes:
In short, R2P has been defined as a situation wherein "the power of the sovereign state can be legitimately revoked if the international community decides that the state is not protecting its citizens." Importantly, the state's power is not only taken in extreme instances, via military intervention. Sovereignty can also be undermined by policies imposed under the "preventive" and "rebuilding" phases of the R2P spectrum, often in the form of economic sanctions, "coercive diplomacy," "democracy promotion," "good governance," and structural adjustment programs.
Although Fenton's work focuses on the utility of R2P doctrine to imperial interventions in Haiti, he makes the more general observation that "Following the controversial inclusion of the (albeit watered-down) R2P language in the UN's 2005 World Summit Outcome document, a veritable, well-funded 'R2P Lobby' has stealthily emerged to advance and consolidate the doctrine as a 'global norm.'" The proponents of this R2P doctrine fit within an ideological grouping that I refer to as the "Project For A New American Humanitarianism." Given the World Federalist Movement's service to imperial interests, it appears paradoxical that the same group would be amongst the leading promoters of an idea called subsidiarity.
Maurice Strong, "a great believer in the principle of subsidiarity" defines this concept as ensuring that "responsibility for decision making resides at the level closest to the people affected at which it can be exercised effectively." However, Strong and the World Federalist Movement's interpretation of this democratic ideal are vastly at odds with those of groups challenging (not creating) hierarchies, for example anarchists, who strongly support the devolution of power to the people. Consequently, as Aaron deGrassi points out:
[W]hile subsidiarity may seem to portend the desirability of decentralization, the concept also raises crucial questions of who decides what is "practicable" (and hence what are the limits of decentralization), on which criteria, with which evidence, and through which processes? Deciding where to allocate powers and resources thus inherently involves "the politics of the possible," and consequently the principle of subsidiarity can and has been used across the political spectrum equally to justify higher-level intervention or non-intervention -- a tension present in the crowning pinnacle of subsidiarity to date, the Maastricht Treaty. (8)
On this latter point Takis Fotopoulos, writing in 1994, notes how in contrast to following the genuine principle of subsidiarity, the European Economic Community's implementation of the principle works by delegating "all unimportant decisions" to local decision-taking bodies.
Returning to the World Federalist Movement, Rev. Wilson took over the reins of the Movement in 2004 when the former president, actor Sir Peter Ustinov, passed away. Ustinov had served as the president of the Movement since 1991 and was a member of Ervin Laszlo's Club of Budapest -- a group that "appear[s] to be working to attempt to promote a form of spirituality that can overcome all geographic and cultural divides," which seem "well suited to other homogenizing globalizing tendencies." In 2002, Ustinov received the Club of Budapest's Planetary Consciousness Award along with the controversial Shimon Peres (see Khaled Amayreh's recent article "Shimon Peres: Murderer, Liar, and Hypocrite") and the United Nations' Messengers of Peace, Paulo Coelho (who also serves as a board member of the Shimon Peres Institute for Peace). Here it is noteworthy that in 1978 Shimon Peres was elected as vice president of Socialist International, the "worldwide organisation of social democratic, socialist and labour parties," a group that Peres described as "probably the most important nongovernmental political organization in Europe, if not in the world." (9)
During Peres's service at Socialist International, the organization's president was the late Willy Brandt (who served in this position from 1978 until 1992). At present the secretary general of Socialist International is Luis Ayala. Ayala is a patron of One World Action, a group that was cofounded by Glenys Kinnock, the wife of the former UK Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock (who is an honorary president of Socialist International, and the vice president of the pro-European membership organisation, European Movement). (10) It is noteworthy that the vice president of One World Action, Sir Sigmund Sternberg, is a Club of Budapest member, a businessman turned into a powerful interfaith philanthropist who coordinated the religious component of the World Economic Forum. Recently he assisted Tony Blair to establish the Tony Blair Faith Foundation serving as an "informal advisor." (11) Sternberg also acts as the president of the Movement for Reform Judaism, and in 1997 helped co-found the Three Faiths Forum, a group that focuses on "improving understanding between the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities." From the Forum's founding until his death in 2008, Sidney Shipton acted as the coordinator of the Three Faiths Forum -- a strange choice given that he was a "bastion of the Zionist Establishment" who had formerly headed the UK arm of the Jewish National Fund (a Zionist colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing). In addition, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, who serves as a patron of the Three Faiths Forum, is the cofounder of the World Faiths Development Dialogue -- a group he set up in 1998 with the aid of prominent Zionist James Wolfensohn (the then president of the World Bank) to promote "dialogue on poverty and development". (12) One has to be sceptical of the type of just and equitable outcomes that can be achieved for Muslims by engaging in this type of dialogue with Zionists.
Socialist International and assorted interfaith groups clearly fulfill an important role in World Federalists' global governance agenda. However, coming back to the World Federalists of America (now known as the World Federalist Movement), another critical individual who helped found this group in the 1940s was the late Alan Cranston, who went on to serve as their president from 1949 until 1952. In 1945 Cranston published The Killing of the Peace, which was released in the hope that it would build support for the United Nations. Cranston remained a dedicated promoter of World Federalism until the end of his life, and in 1995 he "teamed with former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev as the chairman of the Gorbachev Foundation/USA, a San Francisco based think-tank seeking nuclear disarmament." This think tank, which was founded in 1992 by Jim Garrison and John Balbach, "set the stage for the establishment," in 1995, of another San Francisco based non-profit institution, the State of the World Forum, which was formed to "gather together the creative genius on the planet in a search for solutions to critical global challenges." The following provides a brief introduction to this unique global-level forum and the personalities that drive it.
Funding for the State of the World Forum is obtained from the Canadian International Development Agency, a multitude of liberal foundations, (13) and corporate sponsors like Booz Allen Hamilton and McKinsey & Company. John Balbach ("a pioneer of the broadband wireless industry") served as co-founder of the Forum (and also acted as vice president of the Gorbachev Foundation). Balbach presently acts as senior counsel to the Seva Foundation -- a philanthropic effort that was founded by Larry Brilliant (the executive director of Google's philanthropic project Google.org) -- and is the managing partner and founder of the international strategic consultancy Global Alliances. Balbach's consultancy, Global Alliances, "served as the founders of the first State of the World Forum," while some of their other clients include free-market environmental groups (e.g., Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council), and world leaders like Boris Yelstin, Margaret Thatcher, and George Bush. (14)
Another important person connected to both the Gorbachev Foundation and the Forum is James Hickman. He was vice president of the Gorbachev Foundation in 1993, and served as the director of Programs and Business Affairs for the State of the World Forum (2000-04). Hickman currently sits on the latter's board of directors and in addition sits on the board of Wisdom University (see below), and on the executive committee of Citizens Democracy Corps, "a non-profit organization that supports private sector development and economic growth in emerging and transitioning economies throughout the world" -- a group that is intimately enmeshed in the US government's global democracy-manipulating activities.
Jim Garrison is the president of the Forum; the convening chairman is Mikhail Gorbachev, and founding co-chairs of the first forum (held in 1995) included leading liberal elites like Oscar Arias, Maurice Strong, Ted Turner, and Jane Goodall (see "Jane Goodall's Elite Monkey Business"). Given Oscar Arias's connection to Deepak Chopra (see (15)), a leading proponent of "capitalist spirituality," it is critical to draw attention to a significant link between the State of the World Forum and the Wisdom University. This is because in 2005 Jim Garrison became president and chairman of Wisdom University, and both the other two board members of the State of the World Forum (James Hickman and Caroline Myss) happen to be the same three board members for Wisdom University; given this overlap the following section will throw some much needed light on this ostensibly spiritual university.
Capitalist Spirituality for the New World Order
So what type of spiritual education is provided by the Wisdom University? Well, according to their Web site:
The average student enrolled at Wisdom University is a professional, with an established career and one or more advanced degrees. They have come to the conclusion that they need deeper spiritual challenges in order to maintain momentum and meaning in their lives. Our students soon discover that they can continue to grow spiritually and professionally at Wisdom University, thus combining spiritual nourishment with enhanced professional qualifications.
It appears that Wisdom University provides spiritual guidance for corporate and political elites who have lost their way (and inner peace) in the harsh capitalist, individualistic, secular world that they promote as the panacea for the world's problems. This form of globalized corporate spirituality is an important phenomenon. Paul Heelas writes in his landmark book The New Age Movement (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) how: "A significant number of New Agers have in fact moved beyond counter-cultural antagonism to the capitalistic mainstream. Instead, they incorporate the creation of prosperity." (16) This is what Jeremy Carrette and Richard King refer to in their book Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (Routledge, 2005) as "capitalist spirituality," which they argue is "utilised to 'smooth out' resistance to the growing power of corporate capitalism and consumerism." (17) They write:
The interiorisation of spirituality and its location within the bounds of the modern, individual self emerged with the development of psychology in the late nineteenth century. It became popularised, however, in the 1950s and 1960s with the rise of Humanistic Psychology (particularly the work of [Abraham] Maslow), professional counselling, and psychedelic culture. Having been cast as a private and psychological phenomenon, "spirituality" has gone through a second major shift in the 1980s. This is the point at which the first privatisation -- involving the creation of individual, consumer-oriented spiritualities -- begins to overlap with an increasing emphasis upon a second privatisation of religion -- that is, the tailoring of spiritual teachings to the demands of the economy and of individual self-expression to business success. This is no better illustrated than by the various self-improvement movements of the 1980s... (18)
Michael Parenti draws our attention to the activities of the arch-democracy-manipulator, Vaclav Havel, who "now promotes a sort of New Age spiritualism." Parenti points out how Havel has...
...called for a new breed of political leader, who would rely less on "rational, cognitive thinking," and show "humility in the face of the mysterious order of Being" and "trust in his own subjectivity as his principal link with the subjectivity of the world." We should have a "sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom," and the ability "to get to the heart of reality through personal experience." Havel lists the ecological dangers facing the world but denounces the idea of rational, collective social efforts to solve them. He denounces democracy's "traditional mechanisms" for being linked to "the cult of objectivity and statistical average." He thinks he is being visionary when in fact he is putting forth an elitist subjectivism and antidemocratic obscurantism. (19)
As Steve Bruce noted in 2006, "New Age spirituality would seem to be a strong candidate for the future of religion because its individualistic consumeristic ethos fits well with the spirit of the age." (20)
Returning to Wisdom University, in order to provide spiritual comfort to their already well-educated students the University employs fourteen faculty chairs "who teach and conduct research and other programs at Wisdom University." For instance, Caroline Myss, a "pioneer in the field of energy medicine and human consciousness," is chair of Energy Medicine, while other chairs cover subjects as diverse as Sacred Dance and Interspecies Connections. Yet, the one chair that seems particularly relevant to the topic of this essay is Barbara Marx Hubbard's chair in Conscious Evolution. (21)
Marilyn Ferguson recounts some of Hubbard's achievements in the new age classic, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Paladin Books, 1982):
In 1967, Barbara Marx Hubbard, a futurist moved by [Pierre] Teilhard's vision of evolving consciousness, invited a thousand people around the world, including [Abraham] Maslow's network, to form a "human front" of those who shared a belief in the possibility of transcendent consciousness. Hundreds responded, including Lewis Mumford and Thomas Merton. Out of this grew a newsletter and later a loose-knit organization, the [pro-space exploration group] Committee for the Future. (p.59)
Hubbard is well qualified to teach Conscious Evolution as she is the president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution -- a group that has been "supported by major financial gifts from [the late] Laurance S. Rockefeller," amongst others. Furthermore, although not organized by Hubbard, Ferguson notes how in 1970 Lockheed Aircraft underwrote a meeting held at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, "that was the first group of scientists and physicians -- friends -- gathered in a public forum to assert their interest in spiritual realities and alternative approaches to health." She adds that within a few years similar meetings were taking place all over America, and the "Rockefeller, Ford, and Kellogg foundations funded programmes exploring the interface of mind and health." (22)
An important person working alongside Barbara Marx Hubbard at the Foundation for Conscious Evolution during the 1990s was Nancy Carroll, who served as the Foundation's executive director from 1993 to 1999. Like Hubbard, Carroll happens to be a founding board member of a group called Women of Vision and Action -- a group whose advisory board includes people like Maurice Strong's wife, Hanne Strong, and Alison Van Dyk (who is the chairman of the board and interim executive director at the Temple of Understanding at the United Nations).
Here it is interesting to return to the fact that one of Hubbard's most influential supporters at the Foundation for Conscious Evolution was David Rockefeller's brother, Laurance Rockefeller. This is noteworthy as Rockefeller dynasties activities have long provided fertile grounds for one world government conspiracy theorists (for example, in 1952 Emanuel Josephson published his book Rockefeller, 'Internationalist': The Man Who Misrules the World). Ironically Laurance Rockefeller is directly involved in funding research that advocates the legitimacy of some phenomena often categorised as conspiracy theories.
Writing in 2002, Leslie Kean, an investigative reporter and producer with Pacifica Radio, noted that "a study about to be published [on crop circles] by a team of scientists and funded by Laurance Rockefeller concludes 'it is possible that we are observing the effects of a new or as yet undiscovered energy source.'" This funding of what in many circles is considered to be non-academic research is not however an anomaly, as for instance Laurance Rockefeller has also supported the research of the late professor of psychiatry John Mack (formerly based at Harvard Medical School). (23) Indeed, John Mack, shortly before publishing his book, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (Charles Scribner, 1994), with funding provided by Laurance Rockefeller, founded the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research. Thus the very family that is considered to be at the heart of the one world government conspiracies (the Rockefellers) is involved in promoting research that encourages the public to believe in theories that more sceptical people consider to be conspiratorial. (24)
A significant observation is that Hubbard's spiritual work is complemented by her pro-space exploration activities, which saw her provide financial assistance to a group called the L5 Society, a group that was formed in 1975 and later merged (in 1987) with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society. More recently, Hubbard provided the "inspiration" that (in 2005) helped launch the Council for the Future -- a joint project of three leading space advocacy groups: the Space Frontier Foundation, the National Space Society, and the Mars Society. According to their Web site:
The Council [for the Future] is shaping an Earth/Space/Human Development Agenda. The Council is also shaping a new social meme or world view that is consistent with that Agenda. As part of the meme, there is full agreement as to the imperative of extending human civilization into space, and that logical coherent steps must be taken in the very near term to facilitate that accomplishment.
Hubbard sits on the Council for the Future's board of directors alongside Rick Tumlinson. Tumlinson is linked to Walter Anderson, one of the world's leading capitalists who plans to colonize space and profit from an imperialist space agenda. Tumlinson is the executive director and cofounder of the ominously named Foundation for the International Nongovernmental Development of Space, a group that was launched with $5 million from Anderson. Anderson backed the Roton project that aimed to make space travel "affordable." In 1991 he funded the establishment of the Space Frontier Foundation. This foundation's advisory board includes a representative from the Center for Enterprise in Space, and a variety of popular authors including the late Arthur C. Clarke of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame. Like Hubbard, Clarke happened to be a member of the Club of Budapest, whose efforts to promote a form of spirituality that can overcome all geographic and cultural divides appears to be highly suited to the homogenizing practices of corporate-led globalization and the defeat of democracy.
Hubbard's direct affiliations to other liberal corporate globalizers are strong, and in 1966 she helped cofound the World Future Society -- current board members of this group include amongst others, Maurice Strong, and the former US secretary of defense and subsequent Ford Foundation president, Robert McNamara. In addition, until recently the well-known corporate futurists Alvin Toffler and his wife, Heidi Toffler, sat alongside the late Arthur C. Clarke on the World Future Society's global advisory council. Hubbard's ties to corporate-backed futurists does not bode well for her involvement in teaching any form of emancipatory lessons in higher consciousness at Wisdom University. As Murray Bookchin observed:
The radical thrust of utopian thinking, as exemplified by [Charles] Fourier, has been transmuted by academics, statisticians, and "game theorists" into a thoroughly technocratic, economistic, and aggressive series of futuramas that can be appropriately designated as "futurism." However widely at odds utopias were in their values, institutional conceptions, and visions (whether ascetic or hedonistic, authoritarian or libertarian, privatistic or communistic, utilitarian or ethical), they at least had come to mean a revolutionary change in the status quo and a radical critique of its abuses. Futurism, at its core, holds no such promise at all. In the writings of such people as Herman Kahn, Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler, John O'Neill, and the various seers in Stanford University's "think tanks," futurism is essentially an extrapolation of the present into the century ahead, of "prophecy" denatured to mere projection. It does not challenge existing social relationships and institutions, but seeks to adapt them to seemingly new technological imperatives and possibilities -- thereby redeeming rather than critiquing them. The present does not disappear; it persists and acquires eternality at the expense of the future. Futurism, in effect, does not enlarge the future but annihilates it by absorbing it into the present. What makes this trend so insidious is that it also annihilates the imagination itself by constraining it to the present, thereby reducing our vision -- even our prophetic abilities -- to mere extrapolation.(25)
Like the aims of the Club of Budapest, Hubbard's work appears better geared towards constraining new thought to the stifling confines of capitalist prerogatives. This makes it especially ironic that Hubbard is a member of the Leadership Council of the Association for Global New Thought. The Association's executive director, Barbara Fields Berstein -- who also serves on the board of Hubbard's Foundation for Conscious Evolution -- is the former co-director of Harvard University's Global Negotiation Network's Abraham Path Initiative. This affiliation is significant because, as recounted in the article, "Alternative Dispute Resolution or Revolution," the activities promoted by the Global Negotiation Network's work are indicative of the type of strategies that the corporate and political elites zealously promote to boost global corporate equity, not human equality. Finally, it is interesting to point out that Berstein is a board member of EarthAction, another project that is linked to Harvard University's Alternative Dispute Resolution network through the head of their Global Negotiation Project, William Ury (who serves on the advisory board of EarthAction). Consequently, given its key role in attempting to catalyse the formation of a one world government, the following section will explore the background of this group.
Global Action to "Save the Earth"
The background of EarthAction returns us more concretely to the elite agenda for propagating a one world government. Formed in 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit (which was presided over by Secretary General Maurice Strong), EarthAction now boasts that its work encompasses more than 2,600 civil society organizations from 165 countries, making it the "world's largest network of organizations, policymakers, citizens and journalists that work together for a more just, peaceful and sustainable world."
The president and executive director of EarthAction, Lois Barber, formerly served as the creative director of the World Future Council Initiative. (26) This initiative, which was launched in late 2004, led to the creation of the World Future Council, a group whose founder and first president, Jakob von Uexkull, also serves as a board member of EarthAction. (27) Uexkull is most famous among progressive circles as being the founder of Right Livelihood Award, but amongst his other responsibilities he serves on the Council of Governance of the democracy-manipulating group Transparency International, and is a patron of Friends of the Earth International.
Due to the integral role played by Barber in launching the World Future Council it is worth initially exploring their background before returning to EarthAction. Thus, according to their Web site the Council "considers itself the global advocate for the concerns of future generations in international politics." The World Future Council is comprised of 50 personalities from around the world, whose mission is to "inform and educate policy makers and opinion leaders about the challenges facing future generations while providing them with practical solutions." Council members include progressive activists like Vandana Shiva to one-worlders like Tony Colman, who is the chair of One World Trust (a group that was formed in 1951 as the "charitable arm" of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on World Government). (28) Beside board chair Jakob von Uexkull, the only other board members of the World Future Council are the "world market leader for private islands," Farhad Vladi, and Alexandra Wandel, who is the former European trade and sustainability programme coordinator of Friends of the Earth International. Between 1999 and 2006 Wandel had coordinated European NGO activities at the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conferences, and acted as an advisor to the then EU Commissioner Pascal Lamy (now the director general of the World Trade Organization) on behalf of the major European environmental NGOs.
Returning to EarthAction, the next member of their seven-person-strong board of directors is Anne Zill. In 1974, Zill co-founded two reformist projects, the Women's Campaign Fund (to "support pro-choice women for elected office") and the Fund for Constitutional Government (which is a philanthropic foundation that is "dedicated to the exposure and correction of corruption in the United States federal government.") Zill is currently the president of the latter Fund for Constitutional Government. (29) The group's chairperson, Russell Hemenway, is linked to four controversial organizations: he is the chair of the Center for National Security Studies, a trustee of the Fund for Peace, a board member of the National Security Archive (for further details see "Coopting Intellectual Aggressors"), and he is a board member of the Population Institute -- a group which is presided over by the influential neo-Malthusian, William Ryerson.
The Fund for Constitutional Government is based on the first floor of 122 Maryland Avenue in the home of their former board member, the late Stewart Mott. Like Hemenway, Stewart Mott formerly aided the work of the neo-Malthusian Population Institute by serving on their public advisory committee. The Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust -- of which Stewart Mott was president -- is also based at 122 Maryland Avenue; but more significantly this philanthropic trust shares the same executive director as the Fund for Constitutional Government (his name is Conrad Martin). Given Mott's powerful influence on liberal activism it is worth highlighting that:
Stewart Mott originally bought 122 to house the various activities and projects of the Fund for Peace. Over the years, the building has been the first offices of the Center for Defense Information, In The Public Interest, the Center for International Policy, and the Center for National Security Studies. The house was the birthplace of the Women's Campaign Fund and Friends of Family Planning PACs. Other tenants of note include the Campaign Against Nuclear War, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Pax Americas, and the Military Families Support Network. The most recent tenant was the national DC office of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Liberal philanthropy runs in the Mott family, and Stewart Mott's father was Charles Steward Mott, the founder of the Charles Steward Mott Foundation -- a foundation on which his younger sister, Maryanne Mott, presently serves as a board member. Like many other liberal foundations, the Charles Steward Mott Foundation describes its role as existing to "support efforts that promote a just, equitable and sustainable society," a mission statement that belies reality. Indeed, a good case can be made that elite liberal philanthropy helps sustain capitalism rather than promote equitable alternatives to it. Ironically, this contradiction is not something that the Charles Steward Mott Foundation attempts to hide, as their Web site demonstrates that one of the many groups that they have provided funding to is the notorious democracy manipulator, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). (30) The Foundation's openness about being connected to a group that carries out the work that the CIA once undertook covertly is not surprising: this is because groups like the NED and Charles Steward Mott Foundation can rely upon the fact that the mainstream media (and even progressive alternative media) will do little to critique their ostensibly progressive credentials. This partly explains why the CIA transferred many of their formerly covert democracy-manipulating activities to the overt interventions that are now undertaken by the NED. The adoption of such transparency by all manner of democracy-manipulating groups helps explain why EarthAction board member Ellen Miller can comfortably sit alongside NED board member Esther Dyson on the five-person-strong board of the Sunlight Foundation, with no questions asked by the global media. (31)
The most interesting (and progressive) EarthAction board member is Jackie Smith, who is an associate professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (an institute that, problematically, is a member of the "humanitarian" Save Darfur Coalition). For many years Smith's work has documented the importance of the World Social Forum, and one of her most recent books (co-authored with Marina Karides) is titled Global Democracy and the World Social Forums (Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
This book includes a short section that examines a report made to the Trilateral Commission in 1975 called The Crisis of Democracy -- a report suggesting, as Smith and Karides surmise, that the global "problems we face are not attributed to faulty economic reasoning and corporate profiteering but [instead] to the influence of 'nonexpert' citizens on economic and social policy decisions." In the spirit of plutocratic governance, Smith and Karides point out that the report recommends that "governments should encourage political passivity so that prevailing excessive citizen democratic participation can be reduced." (pp. 8-9) Referring to Holly Sklar's edited book Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (South End Press, 1980), Smith and Karides acknowledge that "David Rockefeller, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973." Yet despite making this anti-democratic connection, Smith and Karides fail to draw attention to David Rockefeller's efforts to manipulate civil society through his liberal philanthropy; i.e., via the influential Rockefeller Foundation. This omission is concerning given the controversial support that the World Social Forum has obtained from some of the world's most powerful liberal foundations. (32)
Smith and Karides describe Francisco (Chico) Whitaker as "one of the prime movers of the forum from its inception," so it is fitting that he should be a council member of the aforementioned World Future Council. That said, although they fail to critique the influence of liberal philanthropy, they do write:
Particularly contentious is the claim by Chico Whitaker that the forum is simply a space, one without a pyramidal politics or power relations. In fact, however, the WSF does have its pyramids of power. April Biccum, for example, contends that it would be naïve to assume "that the open space is space without struggle, devoid of politics and power." Many of these struggles revolve around the organization of the forum in general and the role of the International Council (IC), the association of 150 nonelected organizations and intellectuals that decide where the global forums are held and how they are to be organized.
Many grassroots activists have criticized the IC, as well as local and regional organizing committees, for acting precisely as a closed space of representation and power, limited to certain prominent international organizations and networks with access to information and sufficient resources to travel. (p. 38)
Unfortunately, Smith and Karides do not delve any deeper into the issue, and are content in noting that while some groups critique the "closed and, at least at the time, nontransparent" nature of the forum, others like Immanuel Wallerstein have "argued, [that] the WSF could not function without an organization, one that is hierarchical, has power, and makes decisions." (p. 39) Here it should be noted that Wallerstein, who has long been an influential scholar of the Left, is a member of the Network Institute for Global Democratization, a group whose six-person-strong board of directors includes Jackie Smith. Moreover, problematically, the former chair of this network, Teivo Teivainen (2001-02 and 2005-06), has in the past been supported by an assortment of liberal foundations, including both the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. (33) Most recently, while working at the Network Institute for Global Democratization, Teivainen co-wrote the briefing paper (with Heikki Patomaki) for the Ford Foundation-supported project "Elements for a Dialogue on Global Political Party Formations" -- a project that was successfully launched in late 2005. (34) That said, Teivainen's previous seemingly uncritical relations with the foundation world may soon become a relic of the past, as since 2007 he has served on the international advisory board of the radical academic journal Critical Sociology (formerly the Insurgent Sociologist). This is particularly significant because in May 2007 Joan Roelofs guest edited a special issue of Critical Sociology (along with Daniel Faber and Robert Arnove) that provided one of the most up-to-date critical examinations of the problems associated with liberal philanthropy. Roelofs concludes her contribution to this issue by noting how the evidence demonstrates...
... that the pluralist model of civil society obscures the extensive collaboration among the resource-providing elites and the dependent state of most grassroots organizations. While the latter may negotiate with foundations over details, and even win some concessions, capitalist hegemony (including its imperial perquisites) cannot be questioned without severe organizational penalties. By and large, it is the funders who are calling the tune. This would be more obvious if there were sufficient publicized investigations of this vast and important domain. That the subject is "off-limits" for both academics and journalists is compelling evidence of enormous power. (35)
The final EarthAction board member to be examined here is Jan Roberts, a Florida-based psychotherapist who in 1995 helped found Michael Lerner's Foundation for Ethics and Meaning -- a group that aims to "encourage a holistic and community spirit of caring that promotes tolerance, justice, and reconciliation." (Lerner is most famous for being the editor of Tikkun magazine). Most significant is that in July 1999 Roberts became involved in the Earth Charter movement when she attended a small conference held in Italy on "Spirituality and Sustainability" (co-sponsored by St. Thomas University in Florida and the Center for Respect of Life and the Environment). Roberts then became involved with promoting the Earth Charter in the United States, and in 2000 Mikhail Gorbachev invited her to attend the June launch of the Earth Charter campaign at The Hague Peace Palace. (36) Gorbachev along with Maurice Strong had played a key role in "develop[ing]" the Earth Charter as a "civil society initiative" -- a process that had begun in 1994 working through organizations they each founded (Green Cross International and Earth Council respectively). (37) As a result of these and other elite meetings, in 2005 Roberts founded Earth Charter U.S., and she presently acts as an advisor to Earth Charter International, serving alongside environmentalists like Herbert Girardet (see footnote #27), "humanitarian" activists like Bianca Jagger (who is also a member of the Club of Budapest), and other assorted environmental capitalists like Amory Lovins. (38)
The four-person-strong advisory council of EarthAction bolsters EarthAction's one world government credentials. As mentioned above, one member is William Ury, but others include Nicholas Dunlop, Robert Johansen, and Michael Shuman. Dunlap, in addition to being a member of the World Future Council, is the co-founder and secretary general of the e-Parliament, and former secretary general of Parliamentarians for Global Action. Johansen is a council member of e-Parliament, and a fellow of the World Federalist Institute; however, Shuman, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, appears to be involved in research that runs counter to one world government trends. For instance, Shuman recently published the book The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006). That said, the Web site Small-Mart.org that developed as a result of the book is funded through grants from two major liberal foundations, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the controversial Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Possible Scenarios for the Future
This article has suggested that there are many long-range projects and trends that provide the institutional basis for creating a corporate-driven one world government, or new world order. The advent of the most recent global crisis of capitalism means that the time has now come when the citizens of the world need to decide what type of alternative forms of governance will rise in the wake of the crisis. William I. Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests that there are five possible responses to the current structural crisis of global capitalism. These are: (1) the advent of global neo-Keynesianism, (2) the resurgence of the Left, (3) a recoiling into national protectionism, (4) a move toward 21st century fascism, and (5) a global collapse, and the possible degeneration into global warlordism. (39) Robinson notes that he "is not predicting any one of these five happening," and he suggests that they "are not mutually exclusive." For example, he points out that you could envisage a scenario where there is "right wing neo-Keynesianism involving very authoritarian structures."
The creeping threat of fascism (on a global level) is a real and present danger, (40) but this article has been predominantly concerned with tracing a small part of the development of the structures needed to coordinate a one world government, or in Robinson's terms, "a global neo-Keynesianism...to save capitalism from itself and from potential radical challenges from below." Thus with regard to the current crisis it is fitting to cite Robinson at length on the potential of this response. He notes that:
[T]he first signs we are seeing of this are of the Obama Administration putting forward a reformist neo-Keynesianism type project. But we can also see how the transnational elites became split in the late twentieth, early 21st century, and one wing started arguing for this global neo-Keynesianism, global reformism... We see reregulation, and we see a return of state intervention to regulate and resuscitate, and organize capitalist accumulation including stimuli's and bailouts and so forth. And possibly we will see -- this is just speculation -- the states out for this option trying to ferment a shift back from financial to productive accumulation. And I would say though that if this option is to be viable, any new deal must be global. Given the extent of global integration... to talk about a new New Deal, or a neo-Keynesianism project in one country is not realistic at all... We can't talk about anything other than a global neo-Keynesianism...
This scenario faces a major contradiction, and it's that we have a globalizing economy with a nation-state based political system. I always emphasise that. So transnational state apparatus are incipient, they are unable to impose any regulation on the global economy.... Transnational elites recognize this problem. If they want to implement the global neo-Keynesianism they have to set up transnational institutions to actually regulate and organize it. So in the G-20 meeting late last year, British prime minister Gordon Brown said "We now have global financial markets, global corporations, global financial flows, but what we do not have is anything other than national and regional regulations and supervision. We need a global way of supervising our financial system. We need very large and very radical political institutional changes." (41)
However, while Gordon Brown downplays the existing mechanisms of international governance outlined in this article, it is apparent that the transnational networks and institutions needed to coordinate a global neo-Keynesianism have already been created. Such institutions represent a real and present danger to global democracy, and so it is fitting to note how Robinson ends his talk on an optimistic note as the current financial crisis "opens up space for social forces from below and collective agency to influence the course of history in ways that are not possible in times of equilibrium and stable government." He continues, this "opens up new opportunities for change and for new ideas to flourish," as "the future is never predetermined." The "future is open to us," and how we respond to this crisis will determine whether the antidemocratic forces pushing the neo-Keynesianism One World Government agenda will win out, or NOT (as I am hopeful that the case will be).