by Andrew Gavin Marshall
June-July 2010
from
GlobalResearch Website
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research
on Globalization (CRG), and is studying Political Economy and History in
Canada.
He is co-editor, with Michel Chossudovsky, of the recent book, "The
Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," available
to order at Globalresearch.ca. |
Part 1
The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order
June 24, 2010
There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place
around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also
the greatest threat to all global power structures: the 'global political
awakening.'
The term was coined by
Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the
fact that, as Brzezinski wrote:
For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically
activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global
activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and
economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial
domination.[1]
It is, in essence, this massive 'global political awakening' which presents
the gravest and greatest challenge to the organized powers of globalization
and the global political economy:
nation-states, multinational corporations
and banks, central banks, international organizations, military,
intelligence, media and academic institutions.
The Transnational Capitalist
Class (TCC), or 'Superclass' as David Rothkopf refers to them, are
globalized like never before.
For the first time in history, we have a truly
global and heavily integrated elite. As elites have globalized their power,
seeking to construct a 'new world order' of global governance and ultimately
global government, they have simultaneously globalized populations.
The 'Technological Revolution' (or 'Technetronic' Revolution, as Brzezinski
termed it in 1970) involves two major geopolitical developments.
-
The first
is that as technology advances, systems of mass communication rapidly
accelerate, and the world's people are able to engage in instant
communication with one another and gain access to information from around
the world. In it, lies the potential - and ultimately a central source - of
a massive global political awakening.
-
Simultaneously, the Technological
Revolution has allowed elites to redirect and control society in ways never
before imagined, ultimately culminating in a global scientific dictatorship,
as many have warned of since the early decades of the 20th century.
The
potential for controlling the masses has never been so great, as science
unleashes the power of genetics, biometrics, surveillance, and new forms of
modern eugenics; implemented by a scientific elite equipped with systems of
psycho-social control (the use of psychology in controlling the masses).
What is the "Global Political Awakening"?
To answer this question, it is best to let Zbigniew Brzezinski speak for
himself, since it is his term.
In 2009, Zbigniew Brzezinski published an
article based on a speech he delivered to the London-based Chatham House in
their academic journal, International Affairs. Chatham House, formerly the
Royal Institute of International Relations, is the British counterpart to
the US-based
Council on Foreign Relations, both of which were founded in
1921 as "Sister Institutes" to coordinate Anglo-American foreign policy.
His
article, "Major foreign policy challenges for the next US President," aptly
analyzes the major geopolitical challenges for the
Obama administration in
leading the global hegemonic state at this critical juncture. Brzezinski
refers to the 'global political awakening' as "a truly transformative event
on the global scene," since:
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically
activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only
a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are
not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings
that are so widespread today around the world.
The resulting global
political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity,
cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by
memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination.[2]
Brzezinski posits that the 'global political awakening' is one of the most
dramatic and significant developments in geopolitics that has ever occurred,
and it,
"is apparent in radically different forms
from Iraq to Indonesia, from Bolivia to Tibet."
As the Economist explained,
"Though America has focused on its notion of
what people want (democracy and the wealth created by free trade and
open markets), Brzezinski points in a different direction: It's about
dignity."
Further, argues Brzezinski,
"The worldwide yearning for human dignity is
the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political
awakening."[3]
In 2005, Brzezinski wrote an essay for The
American Interest entitled, "The
Dilemma of the Last Sovereign," in which he explains the geopolitical
landscape that America and the world find themselves in.
He wrote that,
"For
most states, sovereignty now verges on being a legal fiction," and he
critically assessed the foreign policy objectives and rhetoric of the Bush
administration.
Brzezinski has been an ardent critic of the "war on terror"
and the rhetoric inherent in it, namely that of the demonization of Islam
and Muslim people, which constitute one of the fastest growing populations
and the fastest growing religion in the world.
Brzezinski fears the compound
negative affects this can have on American foreign policy and the objectives
and aspirations of global power.
He writes:
America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality:
that the world's population is experiencing a political awakening
unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of
populism are transforming the politics of power.
The need to respond to that
massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely sovereign America an historic
dilemma: What should be the central definition of America's global role?[4]
Brzezinski explains that formulating a foreign policy based off of one
single event - the
September 11th terror attacks - has both legitimized
illegal measures (torture, suspension of habeas corpus, etc) and has
launched and pacified citizens to accepting the "global war on terror," a
war without end.
The rhetoric and emotions central to this global foreign
policy created a wave of patriotism and feelings of redemption and revenge.
Thus, Brzezinski explains:
There was no need to be more precise as to who the terrorists actually were,
where they came from, or what historical motives, religious passions or
political grievances had focused their hatred on America. Terrorism thus
replaced Soviet nuclear weapons as the principal threat, and terrorists
(potentially omnipresent and generally identified as Muslims) replaced
communists as the ubiquitous menace.[5]
Brzezinski explains that this foreign policy, which has inflamed
anti-Americanism around the world, specifically in the Muslim world, which
was the principle target population of 'terrorist' rhetoric, has in fact
further inflamed the 'global political awakening'.
Brzezinski writes that:
[T]he central challenge of our time is posed not by global terrorism, but
rather by the intensifying turbulence caused by the phenomenon of global
political awakening. That awakening is socially massive and politically
radicalizing.[6]
This 'global political awakening', Brzezinski writes, while unique in its
global scope today, originates in the ideas and actions of the French
Revolution, which was central in "transforming modern politics through the
emergence of a socially powerful national consciousness."
Brzezinski
explains the evolution of the 'awakening':
During the subsequent 216 years, political awakening has spread gradually
but inexorably like an ink blot.
Europe of 1848, and more generally the
nationalist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reflected
the new politics of populist passions and growing mass commitment. In some
places that combination embraced utopian Manichaeism for which the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917, the Fascist assumption of power in Italy in 1922, and
the Nazi seizure of the German state in 1933 were the launch-pads.
The
political awakening also swept China, precipitating several decades of civil
conflict. Anti-colonial sentiments galvanized India, where the tactic of
passive resistance effectively disarmed imperial domination, and after World
War II anti-colonial political stirrings elsewhere ended the remaining
European empires.
In the western hemisphere, Mexico experienced the first
inklings of populist activism already in the 1860s, leading eventually to
the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century.[7]
Ultimately, what this implies is that - regardless of the final results of
past awakenings - what is central to the concept of a 'political awakening'
is the population - the people - taking on a political and social
consciousness and subsequently, partaking in massive political and social
action aimed at generating a major shift and change, or revolution, in the
political, social and economic realms.
Thus, no social transformation
presents a greater or more direct challenge to entrenched and centralized
power structures - whether they are political, social or economic in nature.
Brzezinski goes on to explain the evolution of the 'global political
awakening' in modern times:
It is no overstatement to assert that now in the 21st century the population
of much of the developing world is politically stirring and in many places
seething with unrest. It is a population acutely conscious of social
injustice to an unprecedented degree, and often resentful of its perceived
lack of political dignity.
The nearly universal access to radio, television
and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions
and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or
religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a
challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global
hierarchy, on top of which America still perches.[8]
Brzezinski explains that several central areas of the 'global political
awakening', such as China, India, Egypt, Bolivia, the Muslims in the Middle
East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and increasingly in Europe, as well as
Indians in Latin America,
"increasingly are defining what they desire
in reaction to what they perceive to be the hostile impact on them of
the outside world. In differing ways and degrees of intensity they
dislike the status quo, and many of them are susceptible to being
mobilized against the external power that they both envy and perceive as
self-interestedly preoccupied with that status quo."
Brzezinski elaborates on the specific
group most affected by this awakening:
The youth of the Third World are particularly restless and resentful. The
demographic revolution they embody is thus a political time-bomb, as well.
With the exception of Europe, Japan and America, the rapidly expanding
demographic bulge in the 25-year-old-and-under age bracket is creating a
huge mass of impatient young people.
Their minds have been stirred by sounds
and images that emanate from afar and which intensify their disaffection
with what is at hand. Their potential revolutionary spearhead is likely to
emerge from among the scores of millions of students concentrated in the
often intellectually dubious "tertiary level" educational institutions of
developing countries.
Depending on the definition of the tertiary
educational level, there are currently worldwide between 80 and 130 million
"college" students. Typically originating from the socially insecure lower
middle class and inflamed by a sense of social outrage, these millions of
students are revolutionaries-in-waiting, already semi-mobilized in large
congregations, connected by the Internet and pre-positioned for a replay on
a larger scale of what transpired years earlier in Mexico City or in
Tiananmen Square.
Their physical energy and emotional frustration is just
waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a faith, or a hatred.[9]
Brzezinski thus posits that to address this new global
"challenge" to
entrenched powers, particularly nation-states that cannot sufficiently
address the increasingly non-pliant populations and populist demands, what
is required, is "increasingly supranational cooperation, actively promoted
by the United States."
In other words, Brzezinski favors an increased and
expanded 'internationalization', not surprising considering he laid the
intellectual foundations of the
Trilateral Commission.
He explains that
"Democracy per se is not an enduring solution," as it could be overtaken by
"radically resentful populism."
This is truly a new global reality:
Politically awakened mankind craves political dignity, which democracy can
enhance, but political dignity also encompasses ethnic or national
self-determination, religious self-definition, and human and social rights,
all in a world now acutely aware of economic, racial and ethnic inequities.
The quest for political dignity, especially through national
self-determination and social transformation, is part of the pulse of
self-assertion by the world's underprivileged.[10]
Thus, writes Brzezinski,
"An effective response can only come from a
self-confident America genuinely committed to a new vision of global
solidarity."
The idea is that to address the grievances caused by
globalization and global power structures, the world and America must expand
and institutionalize the process of globalization, not simply in the
economic sphere, but in the social and political as well. It is a flawed
logic, to say the least, that the answer to this problem is to enhance and
strengthen the systemic problems.
One cannot put out a fire by adding fuel.
Brzezinski even wrote that,
"Let it be said right away that
supranationality should not be confused with world government. Even if
it were desirable, mankind is not remotely ready for world government,
and the American people certainly do not want it."
Instead, Brzezinski argues, America must be
central in constructing a system of global governance,
"in shaping a world that is defined less by
the fiction of state sovereignty and more by the reality of expanding
and politically regulated interdependence."[11]
In
other words, not 'global government' but 'global governance', which is
simply a rhetorical ploy, as 'global governance' - no matter how
overlapping, sporadic and desultory it presents itself, is in fact a key
step and necessary transition in the moves toward an actual global
government.
Thus, the rhetoric and reality of a "global war on terror" in actuality
further inflames the 'global political awakening' as opposed to challenging
and addressing the issue.
In 2007, Brzezinski told the US Senate that the
"War on terror" was a "mythical historical narrative,"[12] or in other
words, a complete fiction.
Of Power and People
To properly understand the 'global political awakening' it is imperative to
understand and analyze the power structures that it most gravely threatens.
Why is Brzezinski speaking so vociferously on this subject? From what
perspective does he approach this issue?
Global power structures are most often represented by nation-states, of
which there are over 200 in the world, and the vast majority are overlooking
increasingly politically awakened populations who are more shaped by
transnational communications and realities (such as poverty, inequality,
war, empire, etc.) than by national issues.
Among nation-states, the most
dominant are the western powers, particularly the United States, which sits
atop the global hierarchy of nations as the global hegemon (empire).
American foreign policy was provided with the imperial impetus by an
inter-locking network of international think tanks, which bring together the
top political, banking, industrial, academic, media, military and
intelligence figures to formulate coordinated policies.
The most notable of these institutions that socialize elites across national
borders and provide the rationale and impetus for empire are an
inter-locking network of international think tanks.
In 1921, British and
American elite academics got together with major international banking
interests to form two "sister institutes" called the Royal Institute of
International Affairs (RIIA) in London, now known as Chatham House, and the
Council on Foreign Relations in the United States.
Subsequent related think
tanks were created in Canada, such as the Canadian Institute of
International Affairs, now known as the Canadian International Council
(CIC), and other affiliated think tanks in South Africa, India, Australia,
and more recently in the European Union with the formation of the European
Council on Foreign Relations.[13]
Following World War I, these powers sought to reshape the world order in
their designs, with Woodrow Wilson proclaiming a right to "national self
determination" which shaped the formation of nation-states throughout the
Middle East, which until the war was dominated by the Ottoman Empire.
Thus,
proclaiming a right to "self-determination" for people everywhere became, in
fact, a means of constructing nation-state power structures which the
western nations became not only instrumental in building, but in exerting
hegemony over. To control people, one must construct institutions of
control. Nations like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait,
etc., did not exist prior to World War I.
Elites have always sought to control populations and individuals for their
own power desires. It does not matter whether the political system is that
of fascism, communism, socialism or democracy: elites seek power and control
and are inherent in each system of governance.
In 1928, Edward Bernays,
nephew of the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, wrote one of his most
influential works entitled "Propaganda."
Bernays also wrote the book on "Public Relations," and is known as the
"father of public relations," and
few outside of that area know of Bernays; however, his effect on elites and
social control has been profound and wide-ranging.
Bernays led the propaganda effort behind the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala,
framing it as a "liberation from Communism" when in fact it was the
imposition of a decades-long dictatorship to protect the interests of the
United Fruit Company, who had hired Bernays to manage the media campaign
against the democratic socialist government of Guatemala.
Bernays also found
a fan and student in Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, who
took many of his ideas from Bernays' writings. Among one of Bernays' more
infamous projects was the popularizing of smoking for American women, as he
hired beautiful women to walk up and down Madison Avenue while smoking
cigarettes, giving women the idea that smoking is synonymous with beauty.
In his 1928 book, "Propaganda," Bernays wrote that,
"If we understand the mechanisms and motives
of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses
according to our will without their knowing it."
Further:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society...
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an
invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country...
In
almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or
business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by
the relatively small number of persons... who understand the mental
processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires
which control the public mind.[14]
Following World War II, America became the global
hegemon, whose imperial
impetus was provided by the strategic concept of "containment" in containing
the spread of Communism.
Thus, America's imperial adventures in Korea, the
Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America became defined by the desire to
"roll back" the influence of the Soviet Union and Communism. It was, not
surprisingly, the Council on Foreign Relations that originated the idea of "containment" as a central feature of foreign policy.[15]
Further, following World War II, America was handed the responsibility for
overseeing and managing the international monetary system and global
political economy through the creation of institutions and agreements such
as the
World Bank,
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
NATO,
the
UN, and GATT (later to become the World Trade Organization - WTO).
One central power
institution that was significant in establishing consensus among Western
elites and providing a forum for expanding global western hegemony was the
Bilderberg Group, founded in 1954 as an international think tank.[16]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, an up-and-coming academic, joined the Council on
Foreign Relations in the early 1960s. In 1970, Brzezinski, who had attended
a few Bilderberg meetings, wrote a book entitled, "Between Two Ages - America's
Role in the Technetronic Era," in which he analyzed the impact of
the 'Revolution in Technology and Electronics,' thus, the 'technetronic
era.'
Brzezinski defines the 'technetronic society' as,
"a society that is shaped culturally,
psychologically, socially, and economically by the impact of technology
and electronics - particularly in the arena of computers and
communications. The industrial process is no longer the principal
determinant of social change, altering the mores, the social structure,
and the values of society."[17]
Brzezinski, expanding upon notions of social control, such as those
propagated by Edward Bernays, wrote that,
"Human conduct, some argue, can be
predetermined and subjected to deliberate control," and he quoted an "experimenter in intelligence control" who asserted that,
"I foresee the time when we shall have the means and therefore,
inevitably, the temptation to manipulate the behavior and intellectual
functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical
manipulation of the brain."[18]
Brzezinski, in a telling exposé of his astute powers of observation and
ability to identify major global trends, wrote that we are,
"witnessing the
emergence of transnational elites" who are "composed of international
businessmen, scholars, professional men, and public officials. The ties
of these new elites cut across national boundaries, their perspectives
are not confined by national traditions, and their interests are more
functional than national."
Further, writes Brzezinski,
"it is likely that before long the social
elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly
internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook."
However, warns
Brzezinski, this increasing internationalization of elites,
"could create a dangerous gap between them
and the politically activated masses, whose 'nativism' - exploited by
more nationalist political leaders - could work against the
'cosmopolitan' elites."[19]
Brzezinski also wrote about "the
gradual appearance of a more controlled and directed society," in the "technetronic revolution;" explaining:
Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power
would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the
restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to
achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for
influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and
control.
Under such circumstances, the scientific and technological momentum
of the country would not be reversed but would actually feed on the
situation it exploits.[20]
Further, writes Brzezinski,
"Persisting social crisis, the emergence of
a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain
public confidence would be the steppingstones in the piecemeal
transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society."
Elaborating, Brzezinski
writes,
"The traditionally democratic American
society could, because of its fascination with technical efficiency,
become an extremely controlled society, and its humane and
individualistic qualities would thereby be lost."[21]
In his book, Brzezinski called for a "Community of the Developed Nations,"
consisting of Western Europe, North America and Japan, to coordinate and
integrate in order to shape a 'new world order' built upon ideas of global
governance under the direction of these transnational elites.
In 1972,
Brzezinski and his friend,
David Rockefeller, presented the idea to the
annual Bilderberg meetings. Rockefeller was, at that time, Chairman of the
Council on Foreign Relations and was CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1973,
Brzezinski and Rockefeller created the Trilateral Commission, a sort of
sister institute to the Bilderberg Group, with much cross-over membership,
bringing Japan into the western sphere of economic and political
integration.[22]
In 1975, the Trilateral Commission published a Task Force Report entitled,
"The Crisis of Democracy," of which one of the principal authors was Samuel
Huntington, a political scientist and close associate and friend of Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
In this report, Huntington argues that the 1960s saw a surge in
democracy in America, with an upswing in citizen participation, often,
"in the form of marches, demonstrations,
protest movements, and 'cause' organizations."[23]
Further,
"the 1960s also saw a reassertion of the
primacy of equality as a goal in social, economic, and political life."[24]
Huntington analyzed how as part of this "democratic surge," statistics
showed that throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, there was a
dramatic increase in the percentage of people who felt the United States was
spending too much on defense (from 18% in 1960 to 52% in 1969, largely due
to the Vietnam War).[25]
In other words, people were becoming politically
aware of empire and exploitation.
Huntington wrote that the,
"essence of the democratic surge of the 1960s was
a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private,"
and that, "People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they
had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status,
expertise, character, or talents."
Huntington explained that in the 1960s,
"hierarchy, expertise, and wealth" had come
"under heavy attack."[26]
He
stated that three key issues which were central to the increased political
participation in the 1960s were:
social issues, such as use of drugs, civil liberties, and the role of women;
racial issues, involving integration, busing, government aid to minority
groups, and urban riots; military issues, involving primarily, of course,
the war in Vietnam but also the draft, military spending, military aid
programs, and the role of the military-industrial complex more
generally.[27]
Huntington presented these issues, essentially, as the
"crisis of
democracy," in that they increased distrust with the government and
authority, that they led to social and ideological polarization, and led to
a,
"Decline in the authority, status,
influence, and effectiveness of the presidency."[28]
Huntington concluded that many problems of governance in the United States
stem from an,
"excess of democracy," and that, "the
effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires
some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some
individuals and groups."
Huntington
explained that society has always had "marginal groups" which do not
participate in politics, and while acknowledging that the existence of "marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic," it has
also "enabled democracy to function effectively."
Huntington identifies "the
blacks" as one such group that had become politically active, posing a
"danger of overloading the political system with demands."[29]
Huntington, in his conclusion, stated that the vulnerability of democracy,
essentially the 'crisis of democracy,' comes from,
"a highly educated,
mobilized, and participant society," and that what is needed is "a more
balanced existence" in which there are "desirable limits to the indefinite
extension of political democracy."[30]
Summed up, the
Trilateral Commission
Task Force Report essentially explained that the "Crisis of Democracy" is
that there is too much of it, and so the 'solution' to the 'crisis' is to
have less democracy and more 'authority.'
The New World Order
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, American ideologues -
politicians and academics - began discussing the idea of the emergence of a
"new world order" in which power in the world is centralized with one power
- the United States, and laid the basis for an expansion of elitist ideology
pertaining to the notion of 'globalization':
that power and power structures
should be globalized.
In short, the 'new world order' was to be a global
order of global governance. In the short term, it was to be led by the
United States, which must be the central and primary actor in constructing a
new world order, and ultimately a global government.[31]
Anne-Marie Slaughter, currently the Director of Policy Planning for the US
State Department, is a prominent academic within the American elite
establishment, having long served in various posts at the State Department,
elite universities and on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In
1997, Slaughter wrote an article for the journal of the Council on Foreign
Relations, "Foreign Affairs," in which she discussed the theoretical
foundations of the 'new world order.'
In it, she wrote that,
"The state is
not disappearing, it is disaggregating into its separate, functionally
distinct parts. These parts - courts, regulatory agencies, executives, and
even legislatures - are networking with their counterparts abroad, creating a
dense web of relations that constitutes a new, transgovernmental order," and
that, "transgovernmentalism is rapidly becoming the most widespread and
effective mode of international governance."[32]
Long preceding Slaughter's analysis of the 'new
world order,'
Richard N.
Gardner published an article in Foreign Affairs titled, "The Hard Road to World Order."
Gardner, a former American Ambassador and member of the
Trilateral Commission, wrote that,
"The quest for a world structure that
secures peace, advances human rights and provides the conditions for
economic progress - for what is loosely called world order - has never
seemed more frustrating but at the same time strangely hopeful."[33]
Gardner wrote,
"If instant world government, [UN] Charter
review, and a greatly strengthened International Court do not provide
the answers, what hope for progress is there? The answer will not
satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it
comes down essentially to this: The hope for the foreseeable future
lies, not in building up a few ambitious central institutions of
universal membership and general jurisdiction as was envisaged at the
end of the last war, but rather in the much more decentralized,
disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions
of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific
problems on a case-by-case basis, as the necessity for cooperation is
perceived by the relevant nations."[34]
He then stated,
"In short, the "house of world order" will
have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down." It
will look like a great, "booming, buzzing confusion, to use William
James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national
sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than
the old-fashioned frontal assault." [35]
In 1992, Strobe Talbott wrote an article for Time Magazine entitled,
"The Birth of the Global Nation."
Talbott worked as a journalist for Time
Magazine for 21 years, and has been a fellow of the Yale Corporation, a
trustee of the Hotchkiss School and the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, the North American
Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, and the American
Association of Rhodes Scholars, and a member of the participating faculty of
the World Economic Forum.
Talbott served as Deputy Secretary of State from
1994 to 2001 in the Clinton administration and currently sits as President
of the Brookings Institution, one of the premier American think tanks.
In
his 1992 article,
"within the next hundred years," Talbott wrote,
"nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a
single, global authority."
He explained:
All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing
circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any
one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. Through the ages,
there has been an overall trend toward larger units claiming sovereignty
and, paradoxically, a gradual diminution of how much true sovereignty any
one country actually has.[36]
Further, he wrote that,
"it has taken the events in our own wondrous
and terrible century to clinch the case for world government. With the
advent of electricity, radio and air travel, the planet has become
smaller than ever, its commercial life freer, its nations more
interdependent and its conflicts bloodier." [37]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the
Clinton administration, former managing director of Kissinger and
Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote
a book titled, "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are
Making."
As a member of that "superclass," his writing
should provide a necessary insight into the construction of this "New World Order."
He states
that,
"In a world of global movements and threats
that don't present their passports at national borders, it is no longer
possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfill its portion of the
social contract."
He wrote that,
"progress will continue to be made," however, it will be challenging,
because it "undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural
concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human
civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty."
He further wrote that,
"Mechanisms of
global governance are more achievable in today's environment," and that
these mechanisms "are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent
problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more
controversial idea like real global government."[38]
In December of 2008, the Financial Times published an article titled,
"And
Now for A World Government," in which the author, former Bilderberg
attendee, Gideon Rachman, wrote that,
"for the first time in my life, I
think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible," and
that, "A 'world government' would involve much more than co-operation
between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics,
backed by a body of laws.
The European Union has already set up a
continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU
has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large
civil service and the ability to deploy military force." [39]
He stated that,
"it is increasingly clear that the most
difficult issues facing national governments are international in
nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a 'global
war on terror'."
He wrote
that the European model could "go global" and that a world government,
"could
be done," as "The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national
governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China
and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national
sovereignty."
He
quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying,
"Global
governance is just a euphemism for global government," and that the "core of
the international financial crisis is that we have global financial
markets and no global rule of law."
However, Rachman states that any push towards a
global government "will be a painful, slow process."
He then states that a
key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which,
"has suffered a series of humiliating
defeats in referendums, when plans for 'ever closer union' have been
referred to the voters.
In general, the Union has progressed fastest
when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians
- and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters.
International governance tends to be effective, only when it is
anti-democratic."[40]
The Global Political Awakening and the Global Economic Crisis
In the face of the global economic crisis, the process that has led to the
global political awakening is rapidly expanding, as the social, political
and economic inequalities and disparities that led to the awakening are all
being exacerbated and expanded.
Thus, the global political awakening itself
is entering into a period in which it will undergo rapid, expansionary and
global transformation.
This 'global political awakening', of which Brzezinski has explained as
being one of the primary global geopolitical challenges of today, has
largely, up until recent times, been exemplified in the 'Global South', or
the 'Third World' developing nations of the Middle East, Central and
Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Developments in recent decades and
years in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Iran exemplify the nationalist-orientation
of much of this awakening, taking place in a world increasingly and
incrementally moving towards global governance and global institutions.
In 1998, Hugo Chavez became President of Venezuela, having campaigned on
promises of aiding the nation's poor majority. In 2002, an American coup
attempt took place in Venezuela, but Chavez retained his power and was
further emboldened by the attempt, and gained a great burst of popular
support among the people.
Chavez has undertaken what he refers to as a
process of "Bolivarian socialism", and has taken a decidedly and vehemently
anti-American posture in Latin America, long considered America's "back
yard." Suddenly, there is virulent rhetoric and contempt against the United
States and its influence in the region, which itself is backed by the
enormous oil-wealth of Venezuela.
In Bolivia, Evo Morales was elected President in 2005 of the poorest nation
in South America, and he was also the first indigenous leader of that
country to ever hold that position of power, after having long been
dominated by the Spanish-descended landed aristocracy. Evo Morales rose to
power on the wave of various social movements within Bolivia, key among them
being the "water wars" which took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third
largest city, in 2000.
The water wars were instigated after the
World Bank
forced Bolivia to
privatize its water so that American and European
companies could come in and purchase the rights to Bolivia's water, meaning
that people in the poorest nation in South America could not even drink rain
water without paying American or European companies for the 'right' to use
it.
Thus, revolt arose and Evo Morales rose with it. Now, Morales and Chavez
represent the "new Left" in Latin America, and with it, growing sentiments
of anti-American imperialism.
In Iran, itself defined more by nationalism than ethnic polarities, has
become a principal target of the western hegemonic world order, as it sits
atop massive gas and oil reserves, and is virulently anti-American and
firmly opposed to western hegemony in the Middle East. However, with
increased American rhetoric against Iran, its regime and political elites
are further emboldened and politically strengthened among its people, the
majority of whom are poor.
Global socio-political economic conditions directly relate to the expansion
and emergence of the 'global political awakening'.
As of 1998,
"3 billion people live on less than $2 per
day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of
those living on less than $1 per day are women."[41]
In 2003, a World Bank report revealed that,
"A minority of the world's population (17%)
consume most of the world's resources (80%), leaving almost 5 billion
people to live on the remaining 20%. As a result, billions of people are
living without the very basic necessities of life - food, water, housing
and sanitation."[42]
In regards to poverty and hunger statistics,
"Over 840 million people in the world are
malnourished - 799 million of them are from the developing world. Sadly,
more than 153 million of them are under the age of 5 (half the entire US
population)."
Further,
"Every day, 34,000 children under five die
of hunger or other hunger-related diseases. This results in 6 million
deaths a year."
That amounts to a "Hunger Holocaust" that takes place every single
year.
As of 2003,
"Of 6.2 billion living today, 1.2 billion
live on less than $1 per day. Nearly 3 billion people live on less than
$2 a day."[43]
In 2006, a groundbreaking and comprehensive report released by the
World
Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations
University (UNU-WIDER) reported that,
"The richest 2% of adults in the world own
more than half of global household wealth."
An incredibly startling
statistic was that:
[T]he richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year
2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world
total. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned
barely 1% of global wealth.[44]
This is worth repeating:
-
the top 1% owns 40% of global assets
-
the top 10%
owns 85% of world assets
-
the bottom 50% owns 1% of global assets
A
sobering figure, indeed. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report stated that in 2009,
"an estimated 55 million to 90 million more
people will be living in extreme poverty than anticipated before the
crisis."
Further,
"the encouraging trend in the eradication of
hunger since the early 1990s was reversed in 2008, largely due to higher
food prices."
Hunger in developing regions has risen
to 17% in 2008, and "children bear the brunt of the burden."[45]
In April of 2009, a major global charity, Oxfam, reported that a couple
trillion dollars given to bail out banks could have been enough "to end
global extreme poverty for 50 years."[46]
In September of 2009, Oxfam
reported that the economic crisis "is forcing 100 people-a-minute into
poverty."
Oxfam stated that,
"Developing countries across the globe are
struggling to respond to the global recession that continues to slash
incomes, destroy jobs and has helped push the total number of hungry
people in the world above 1 billion."[47]
The financial crisis has hit the 'developing' world much harder than the
western developed nations of the world.
The UN reported in March of 2009
that,
"Reduced growth in 2009 will cost the 390 million people in
sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty around $18 billion, or $46 per
person," and "This projected loss represents 20 per cent of the per capita
income of Africa's poor - a figure that dwarfs the losses sustained in
the developed world."[48]
Thus, the majority of the world's people live in absolute poverty and social
dislocation.
This is directly the result of the globalized world order that
has been and is being constructed. Now, as that same infrastructure is being
further institutionalized and built upon, people are being thrown into the
'awakening' like never before. Their very poverty pushes them into an
awakening.
There is a seemingly lost notion of judging a society by how it
treats it weakest members: the poor.
Poverty forces one to look at the world
differently, as they see the harsh restraints that society has imposed upon
the human spirit. Life simply cannot be about the struggle to make payments
week-to-week; to afford water, shelter, and food; to live according to the
dictates of money and power.
Look to history, and you see that from some of the most oppressive societies
can come the greatest of humanity. Russia, a nation which has never in its
history experienced true political freedom for the individual, has managed
to produce some of the greatest music, art, expression and literature as a
vibrant outcry of humanity from a society so overcome with the need to
control it.
It the fact that such triumphs of human spirit can come from
such tyrannies over human nature is a sobering display of the great mystery
of human beings. Why waste humanity by subjecting it to poverty? Think of
the difference that could be made if all of humanity was allowed to flourish
individually and collectively; think of all the ideas, art, expression,
intellect and beauty we aren't getting from those who have no voice.
Until we address this fundamental issue, any notion of humanity as being
'civilized' is but a cynical joke. If it's human civilization, we haven't
quite figured it out yet.
We don't yet have a proper definition of 'civilized', and we need to make it
'humane'.
The West and the Awakening
The middle classes of the western world are undergoing a dramatic
transition, most especially in the wake of the global economic crisis.
In
the previous decades, the middle class has become a debt-based class, whose
consumption was based almost entirely on debt, and so their ability to
consume and be the social bedrock of the capitalist system is but a mere
fiction. Never in history has the middle class, and most especially the
youth who are graduating college into the hardest job market in decades,
been in such peril.[49]
The global debt crisis, which is beginning in Greece, and spreading
throughout the Euro-zone economies of Spain, Portugal, Ireland and
ultimately the entire EU, will further consume the UK, Japan and go all the
way to America.[50]
This will be a truly global debt crisis. Government
measures to address the issue of debt focus on the implementation of 'fiscal
austerity measures' to reduce the debt burdens and make interest payments on
their debts.
'Fiscal austerity' is a vague term that in actuality refers to cutting
social spending and increasing taxes.
The effect this has is that the public
sector is devastated, as all assets are privatized, public workers are fired
en masse, unemployment becomes rampant, health and education disappear,
taxes rise dramatically, and currencies are devalued to make all assets
cheaper for international corporations and banks to buy up, while internally
causing inflation - dramatically increasing the costs of fuel and food.
In
short, 'fiscal austerity' implies 'social destruction' as the social
foundations of nations and peoples are pulled out from under them. States
then become despotic and oppress the people, who naturally revolt against 'austerity': the sterilization of society.
'Fiscal austerity' swept the developing world through the 1980s and 1990s in
response to the 1980s debt crisis which consumed Latin America, Africa, and
areas of Asia. The result of the fiscal austerity measures imposed upon
nations by the World Bank and IMF was the social dismantling of the new
societies and their subsequent enslavement to the international creditors of
the IMF, World Bank, and western corporations and banks.
It was an era of
economic imperialism, and
the IMF was a central tool of this imperial
project.
As the debt crisis we see unfolding today sweeps the world, the IMF is again
stepping in to impose 'fiscal austerity' on nations in return for short-term
loans for countries to pay off the interest on their exorbitant debts,
themselves owed mostly to major European and American banks.
Western nations
have agreed to impose fiscal austerity,[51] which will in fact only inflame
the crisis, deepen the depression and destroy the social foundations of the
west so that we are left only with the authoritarian apparatus of state
power - the police, military, homeland 'security' apparatus - which is
employed against people to protect the status quo powers.
The IMF has also come to the global economic crisis with a new agenda,
giving out loans in its own synthetic currency - Special Drawing Rights
(SDRs)
- an international reserve basket of currencies. The G20 in April of
2009 granted the IMF the authority to begin phasing in the applications of
issuing SDRs, and for the IMF to in effect become a global central bank
issuing a global currency.[52]
So through this global debt crisis, SDRs will
be disbursed globally - both efficiently and in abundance - as nations will
need major capital inflows and loans to pay off interest payments, or in the
event of a default. This will happen at a pace so rapid that it would never
be conceivable if not for a global economic crisis. The same took place in
the 1980s, as the nature of "Structural Adjustment Programs" (SAPs) could
not be properly assessed as detrimental to economic conditions and
ultimately socially devastating, for countries needed money fast (as the
debt crisis spread across the developing world) and were not in a position
to negotiate.
Today, this will be the 'globalization' of the debt crisis of
the 1980s, on a much larger and more devastating scale, and the reaction
will be equally globalized and devastating: the continued implementation of
'global governance'.
As austerity hits the west, the middle class will vanish in obscurity, as
they will be absorbed into the lower, labour-oriented working class.[53] The
youth of the western middle class, comprising the majority of the educated
youth, will be exposed to a 'poverty of expectations' in which they grew up
in a world in which they were promised everything, and from whom everything
was so quickly taken. The inevitability of protests, riots and possible
rebellion is as sure as the sun rises.[54]
In the United States, the emergence of the
Tea Party movement is
representative of - in large part - a growing dissatisfaction with the
government and the economy.
Naturally, like any group, it has its radical
and fringe elements, which tend to draw the majority of media attention in
an effort to shape public opinion, but the core and the driving force of the
movement is the notion of popular dissatisfaction with government. Whatever
one thinks of the legitimacy of such protestations, people are not pleased,
and people are taking to the streets. And so it begins.
Even intellectuals of the left have spoken publicly warning people not to
simply and so easily discount the Tea Party movement as fringe or radical.
One such individual, Noam Chomsky, while speaking at a University in April
of 2010, warned that he felt fascism was coming to America, and he explained
that,
"Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error," as their
attitudes "are understandable."
He explained,
"For over 30 years, real incomes have
stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the
decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy."
This constitutes
'class resentment', as,
"The bankers, who are primarily responsible
for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official
unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing
sector is at Depression-era levels."
This same financial industry is directly linked to Obama, who is supporting their interests, and people are noticing.[55]
Another notable feminist intellectual of the left, Naomi Wolf, who wrote a
book during the
Bush administration on the emergence of fascism in America,
and much of her message is being picked up by the Tea Party movement, as
those on the right who were listening and agreeing with Wolf during the Bush
administration (a considerable minority), then provided the impetus for the
emergence of the Tea Party movement and many of its core or original ideas.
In an interview in March 2010, Wolf explained that her ideas are even more
relevant under Obama than Bush.
She explained,
"Bush legalized torture, but Obama is
legalizing impunity. He promised to roll stuff back, but he is
institutionalizing these things forever. It is terrifying and the left
doesn't seem to recognize it."
She explained how the left, while active
under Bush, has been tranquilized under Obama, and that there is a potential
for true intellectuals and for people more generally and more importantly,
to reach out to each other across the spectrum.
She explained:
I was invited by the Ron Paul supporters to their rally in Washington last
summer and I loved it. I met a lot of people I respected, a lot of
"ordinary" people, as in not privileged. They were stepping up to the plate,
when my own liberal privileged fellow demographic habituates were lying
around whining.
It was a wake-up call to the libertarians that there's a
progressive who cares so much about the same issues. Their views of liberals
are just as distorted as ours are of conservatives.[56]
In regards to the Tea Party movement, Wolf had this to say:
"The Tea Party is not monolithic. There is a
battle between people who care about liberty and the Constitution and
the Republican Establishment who is trying to take ownership of it and
redirect it for its own purposes."
Further, she
explained that the Tea Party is "ahead of their time" on certain issues,
"I
used to think "End the Fed people" were crackpots. The media paints them as
deranged. But it turned out we had good reason to have more oversight."[57]
In time, others will join with the Tea Party movement and new activist
groups, the anti-war movement will have to revitalize itself or die away;
since Obama became President their influence, their voice, and their dignity
has all but vanished.
They have become a pacified voice, and their silence
is complicity; thus, the anti-war movement must reignite and reinvigorate or
it will decompose.
The 'Left's' distrust of corporations must merge with the
'Right's' distrust of government to create a trust in 'people'. Soon
students will be joining protests, and the issues of the Tea Party movement
and others like it can become more refined and informed.
When the middle classes of the west are plunged into poverty, it will force
an awakening, for when people have nothing, they have nothing left to lose.
The only way that the entrenched powers of the world have been able to
expand their power and maintain their power is with the ignorant consent of
the populations of the west. Issues of war, empire, economics and terror
shape public opinion and allow social planners to redirect and reconstitute
society.
The people of the west have allowed themselves to be ruled as such
and have allowed our rulers to be so ruthless in our names. People have been
blinded by consumerism and entertainment. Images of celebrities,
professional sports, Hollywood, iPods, blackberrys, and PCs consume the
minds of people, and especially the youth of the west today.
It has been the
illusion of being the consuming class that has allowed our societies to be
run so recklessly. So long as we have our TVs and PCs we won't pay attention
to anything else!
When the ability to consume is removed, the people will enter into a period
of a great awakening. This will give rise to major new political movements,
many progressive but some regressive, some fringe and radical, some violent
and tyrannical, but altogether new and ultimately global. This is when the
people of the west will come to realize the plight of the rest.
This will be
the era in which people begin to understand the realization that there is
great truth in Dr. Martin Luther King's words,
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere."
Thus, the struggle of Africans will become
the struggle of Americans: it must be freedom for all or freedom for none.
This is the major geopolitical reality and the pre-eminent global threat to
world power structures. No development in all of human history presents such
a monumental challenge to the status quo. As global power structures have
never resembled such a monumental threat to mankind, mankind has never posed
such an immense threat to institutionalized power. For every action, there
is an equal and opposite reaction.
Even if elites think that they truly do
run the world, human nature has a way of exposing the flaws in that
assumption.
Human nature is not meant to be 'controlled,' but rather is
meant to be nurtured.
A View From the Top
Again, it is important to go to Brzezinski's own words in describing this
new geopolitical reality, as it provides great insight into not only how the
'global political awakening' is defined; but more importantly, how it is
perceived by those who hold power.
In 2004, Brzezinski gave a speech at the
Carnegie Council on his 2004 book, "The Choice". The Carnegie Council is an
elite think tank based in the United States, so Brzezinski is speaking to
those who are potentially negatively affected by such an awakening.
Brzezinski
stated that America's foreign policy in the wake of 9/11 - the "War on Terror"
- is presenting a major challenge to American hegemony, as
it is increasingly isolating the United States and damaging the nation's
credibility, as well as hiding the issues in virulent rhetoric which only
further inflames the real and true challenge: the global political
awakening. He states:
The misdiagnosis [of foreign policy] pertains to a relatively vague,
excessively abstract, highly emotional, semi-theological definition of the
chief menace that we face today in the world, and the consequent slighting
of what I view as the unprecedented global challenge arising out of the
unique phenomenon of a truly massive global political awakening of mankind.
We live in an age in which mankind writ large is becoming politically
conscious and politically activated to an unprecedented degree, and it is
this condition which is producing a great deal of international turmoil.
But we are not focusing on that. We are focusing specifically on one word,
which is being elevated into a specter, defined as an entity, presented as
somehow unified but unrelated to any specific event or place - and that word
is terrorism. The global challenge today on the basis of which we tend to
operate politically is the definition of terrorism with a global reach as
the principal challenge of our time.
I don't deny that terrorism is a reality, a threat to us, an ugly menace and
a vicious manifestation. But it is a symptom of something larger and more
complicated, related to the global turmoil that takes place in many parts of
the world and manifests itself in different ways.
That turmoil is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today
vast masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have been
throughout history. They have political consciousness. It may be undefined,
it may point in different directions, it may be primitive, it may be
intolerant, it may be hateful, but it is a form of political activism.[58]
Brzezinski explains that,
-
literacy has made for greater political awareness
-
while TV has made for immediate awareness of global disparities
-
and the
Internet has provided instant communications
Further, says Brzezinski,
"Much of this is also spurred by America's impact on the world," or in other
words, American economic, political, and cultural imperialism; and further,
"Much of it is also fueled by globalization, which the United States
propounds, favors and projects by virtue of being a globally
outward-thrusting society."
Brzezinski warns,
"But that also contributes to instability,
and is beginning to create something altogether new: namely, some new
ideological or doctrinal challenge which might fill the void created by
the disappearance of communism."
Brzezinski explains that
Communism emerged in the last century as an alternative, however, today:
it is now totally discredited, and we have a pragmatic vacuum in the world
today regarding doctrines. But I see the beginnings, in writings and
stirrings, of the making of a doctrine which combines anti-Americanism with
anti-globalization, and the two could become a powerful force in a world
that is very unequal and turbulent.[59]
A question following Brzezinski's speech asked him to expand upon how to
address the notion of and deal with the 'global political awakening'.
Brzezinski explained that,
"We deal with the world as it is and we are
as we are. If we are to use our power intelligently and if we are to
move in the right direction, we have no choice but do it incrementally."[60]
In other
words, as Brzezinski has detailed his vision of a solution to world problems
in creating the conditions for global governance; they must do it
"incrementally," for that is how to "use [their] power intelligently."
The
solution to the 'global political awakening', in the view from the top, is
to continue to create the apparatus of an oppressive global government.
On April 23, 2010, Zbigniew Brzezinski went to the Montreal Council on
Foreign Relations to give a speech at an event jointly-hosted by the
Canadian International Council (CIC), the Canadian counterpart to the
Council on Foreign Relations in the US and Chatham House in the U.K.
These
are many of the intellectual, social, political and economic elite of
Canada.
In his speech, Brzezinski gives a breakdown of the modern
geopolitical realities:
Let me begin by making just a thumbnail definition of the geopolitical
context in which we all find ourselves, including America.
And in my
perspective, that geopolitical context is very much defined by new - by two
new global realities. The first is that global political leadership - by
which I mean the role of certain leading powers in the world - has now
become much more diversified unlike what it was until relatively recently.
Relatively recently still, the world was dominated by the Atlantic world, as
it had been for many centuries. It no longer is.
Today, the rise of the Far
East has created a new but much more differentiated global leadership. One
which in a nutshell involves a wanton hazard, an arbitrary list of the
primary players in the world scene: the United States, clearly; maybe next
to it - but maybe - the European Union, I say maybe because it is not yet a
political entity; certainly, increasingly so, and visibly so, China; Russia,
mainly in one respect only because it is a nuclear power co-equal to the
United States, but otherwise very deficient in all of the major indices of
what constitutes global power.
Behind Russia, perhaps individually, but to a
much lesser extent, Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, certainly,
although it does not have the political assertive posture; India is rising,
and then in the background of that we have the new entity of the G20, a much
more diversified global leadership, lacking internal unity, with many of its
members in bilateral antagonisms. That makes the context much more
complicated.
The other major change in international affairs is that for the first time,
in all of human history, mankind has been politically awakened. That is a
total new reality - total new reality. It has not been so for most of human
history until the last one hundred years. And in the course of the last one
hundred years, the whole world has become politically awakened.
And no
matter where you go, politics is a matter of social engagement, and most
people know what is generally going on - generally going on - in the world,
and are consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of
respect, exploitation. Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring.
The
combination of the two: the diversified global leadership, politically
awakened masses, makes a much more difficult context for any major power
including, currently, the leading world power: the United States.[61]
Conclusion
So, the Technological Revolution has led to a diametrically opposed,
antagonistic, and conflicting geopolitical reality: never before has
humanity been so awakened to issues of power, exploitation, imperialism and
domination; and simultaneously, never before have elites been so
transnational and global in orientation, and with the ability to impose such
a truly global system of scientific despotism and political oppression.
These are the two major geopolitical realities of the world today. Reflect
on that.
Never in all of human history has mankind been so capable of
achieving a true global political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity
ever been in such danger of being subjected to a truly global scientific
totalitarianism, potentially more oppressive than any system known before,
and without a doubt more technologically capable of imposing a permanent
despotism upon humanity. So we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency.
In all of human history, never has the potential nor the repercussions of
human actions and ideas ever been so monumental.
Suddenly, global elites are faced with the reality of seeking to dominate
populations that are increasingly becoming self-aware and are developing a
global consciousness.
Thus, a population being subjected to domination in
Africa has the ability to become aware of a population being subjected to
the same forms of domination in the Middle East, South America or Asia; and
they can recognize that they are all being dominated by the same global
power structures. That is a key point: not only is the awakening global in
its reach, but in its nature; it creates within the individual, an awareness
of the global condition.
So it is a 'global awakening' both in the external
environment, and in the internal psychology.
This new reality in the world, coupled with the fact that the world's
population has never been so vast, presents a challenge to elites seeking to
dominate people all over the world who are aware and awakened to the
realities of social inequality, war, poverty, exploitation, disrespect,
imperialism and domination. This directly implies that these populations
will be significantly more challenging to control: economically,
politically, socially, psychologically and spiritually.
Thus, from the point
of view of the global oligarchy, the only method of imposing order and
control - on this unique and historical human condition - is through the
organized chaos of economic crises, war, and the rapid expansion and
institutionalization of a global scientific dictatorship. Our hope is their
fear; and our greatest fear is their only hope.
As Charles Dickens once wrote,
"It was the best of times, it was the worst
of times."
That has never been so true as it is today.
Endnotes
[1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Global Political Awakening. The New York Times:
December 16, 2008:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16iht-YEbrzezinski.1.18730411.html
[2] Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US
President," International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009), page 53 (emphasis added)
[3] AFP, A new brain for Barack Obama. The Economist: March 14, 2007:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2007/03/a_new_brain_for_barack_obama
[4] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Dilemma of the Last Sovereign. The American
Interest Magazine, Autumn 2005:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=56
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Michael Collins, Brzezinski: On The Path To War With Iran. Global
Research: February 25, 2007:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4920
[13] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Origins of the American Empire: Revolution,
World Wars and World Order. Global Research: July 28, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14552 ; see sections,
"World War Restructures World Order," and "Empire, War and the Rise of the
New Global Hegemon," for a look at this interlocking network of think tanks.
[14] John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays
& The Birth of PR. PR Watch, Second Quarter 1999, Volume 6, No. 2:
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html
[15] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Origins of the American Empire: Revolution,
World Wars and World Order. Global Research: July 28, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14552 ; Andrew Gavin
Marshall, Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the Trilateral
Commission and the Federal Reserve. Global Research: August 3, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14614
[16] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the
Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve. Global Research: August 3,
2009: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14614
[17] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the
Technetronic Era. (Viking Press, New York, 1970), page 10
[18] Ibid, page 12.
[19] Ibid, page 29.
[20] Ibid, page 97.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the
Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve. Global Research: August 3,
2009: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14614
[23] Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis
of Democracy. (Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral
Commission, New York University Press, 1975), page 61
[24] Ibid, page 62.
[25] Ibid, page 71.
[26] Ibid, pages 74-75
[27] Ibid, page 77.
[28] Ibid, page 93.
[29] Ibid, pages 113-114.
[30] Ibid, page 115.
[31] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Forging a "New World Order" Under a One World
Government. Global Research: August 13, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14712
[32] Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Real New World Order. Foreign Affairs:
September/October, 1997: pages 184-185
[33] Richard N. Gardner, The Hard Road to World Order. Foreign Affairs:
April, 1974: page 556
[34] Ibid, page 558.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Strobe Talbott, America Abroad. Time Magazine: July 20, 1992:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976015,00.html
[37] Ibid.
[38] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They
are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), pages 315-316
[39] Gideon Rachman, And now for a world government. The Financial Times:
December 8, 2008:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html
[40] Ibid.
[41] Jeff Gates, Statistics on Poverty and Inequality. Global Policy Forum:
May 1999:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/218/46377.html
[42] Social & Economic Injustice, World Centric, 2004:
http://worldcentric.org/conscious-living/social-and-economic-injustice
[43] Ibid.
[44] GPF, Press Release: Pioneering Study Shows Richest Own Half World
Wealth. Global Policy Forum: December 5, 2006:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/218/46555.html
[45] UN, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009. United Nations, New
York, 2009: page 4
[46] G20 Summit: Bank bailout would end global poverty, says Oxfam. The
Telegraph: April 1, 2009:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/g20-summit/5087404/G20-Summit-Bank-bailout-would-end-global-poverty-says-Oxfam.html
[47] Press Release, 100 people every minute pushed into poverty by economic
crisis. Oxfam International: September 24, 2009:
http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2009-09-24/100-people-every-minute-pushed-poverty-economic-crisis
[48] Press Release, Financial crisis to deepen extreme poverty, increase
child mortality rates - UN report. UN News Center: March 3, 2009:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30070
[49] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis:
The Impoverishment of the Middle Class. Global Research: March 30, 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18386
[50] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Debt Dynamite Dominoes: The Coming Financial
Catastrophe. Global Research: February 22, 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17736
[51] Reuters, G20 communique after meeting in South Korea. G20 Communiqué:
June 5, 2010: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6540VN20100605
[52] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Forging a
"New World Order" Under a One World
Government. Global Research: August 13, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14712 ; or for a more
succinct analysis, Andrew Gavin Marshall, The Financial New World Order:
Towards a Global Currency and World Government. Global Research: April 6,
2009: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13070
[53] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis:
The Impoverishment of the Middle Class. Global Research: March 30, 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18386
[54] Andrew Gavin Marshall, The Global Economic Crisis: Riots, Rebellion and
Revolution. Global Research: April 7, 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18529
[55] Matthew Rothschild, Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America. The
Progressive: April 12, 2010: http://www.progressive.org/wx041210.html
[56] Justine Sharrock, Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism
-- Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land? Alternet: March 30, 2010:
http://www.alternet.org/news/146184/naomi_wolf_thinks_the_tea_parties_help_fight_fascism_--_is_she_on_to_something_or_in_fantasy_land__
[57] Ibid.
[58] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global
Leadership. Speech at the Carnegie Council: March 25, 2004:
http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/4424.html
[59] Ibid.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Geopolitical Dilemmas. Speech at the
Canadian International Council and Montreal Council on Foreign Relations:
April 23, 2010:
http://www.onlinecic.org/resourcece/multimedia/americasgeopoliticaldilemmas
Part 2
Revolution and Repression in America
June 29, 2010
Introduction
As outlined in Part 1 above of this series, "The Technological Revolution and the
Future of Freedom," there are two major geopolitical realities in the world
today, both largely brought about as a result of the "Technological
Revolution" in which technology and electronics have come to define and
shape our society.
The Technological Revolution has led to a diametrically opposed,
antagonistic, and conflicting geopolitical reality:
never before has
humanity been so awakened to issues of power, exploitation, imperialism and
domination; and simultaneously, never before have elites been so
transnational and global in orientation, and with the ability to impose such
a truly global system of scientific despotism and political oppression.
These are the two major geopolitical realities of the world today.
Never in
all of human history has mankind been so capable of achieving a true global
political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity ever been in such danger
of being subjected to a truly global scientific totalitarianism, potentially
more oppressive than any system known before, and without a doubt more
technologically capable of imposing a permanent despotism upon humanity.
So
we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency. In all of human history,
never has the potential nor the repercussions of human actions and ideas
ever been so monumental.
Not only is the awakening global in its reach, but in its very nature. It
creates within the individual, an awareness of the global condition. So it
is a 'global awakening' both in the external environment, and in the
internal psychology.
This new reality in the world, coupled with the fact
that the world's population has never been so vast, presents a challenge to
elites seeking to dominate people all over the world who are aware and
awakened to the realities of social inequality, war, poverty, exploitation,
disrespect, imperialism and domination. This directly implies that these
populations will be significantly more challenging to control: economically,
politically, socially, psychologically and spiritually.
Thus, from the point
of view of the global oligarchy, the only method of imposing order and
control - on this unique and historical human condition - is through the
organized chaos of economic crises, war, and the rapid expansion and
institutionalization of a global scientific dictatorship. Our hope is their
fear; and our greatest fear is their only hope.
This essay (Part II) will undertake an examination of these two geopolitical
realities on a national scale, focusing primarily on the "American
Awakening."
The American Awakening
In the past decade, there has been an enormous surge in popular political
activism, which has corresponded to the expansion of imperialism,
exploitation and despotism in the world.
The events of September 11th, 2001,
sparked two major geopolitical events.
The first was the implementation of
the Bush Doctrine - the "War on Terror" - which was organized in response to
the terrorist attacks. This imperialist expansion led to the war and
occupation of Afghanistan, the war on Iraq and subsequent occupation, the
war in Lebanon in 2006, the war on Somalia, continuing military expansionism
and imposition in the Palestinian territories, as well as expansive covert
operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and around the world.
The second major geopolitical trend instigated by the 9/11 attacks was the
formation of what has come to be known as the "9/11 Truth Movement," in
which millions of people around the world, including thousands of academics,
architects, engineers, government officials, intelligence and military
officials and other professionals, as well as an exponentially growing
abundance of people in the general population internationally have sought to
question and challenge the official accounts of the events of 9/11.
Like all
activist groups, there are fringe and radical elements within the movement,
those who claim that "no planes" were used in the attacks, or that the
attacks were undertaken by Israel - with anti-Semitic undertones - or other
such fringe theories. Regardless of the fringe elements, the main focus of
the movement is based around the fact that the official story of events does
not stand up to any form of independent and unbiased, rational analysis.
The
media for years ignored the growing international movement, but only in
recent years have acknowledged the movement; however, they did not address
the movement by analyzing the information and issues, but rather by seeking
to discredit and demonize the political movement, focusing on the fringe
elements and beliefs and applying labels of "conspiracy theorist,"
attempting to discredit anyone who questions the official story.
In 2006, Time Magazine acknowledged that the 9/11 Truth Movement is not a
"fringe movement," but is, in fact, "a mainstream political reality." They
also cited a major political poll by Scripps-Howard in 2006, which revealed
that 36% of Americans think it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that
government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried
out the attacks themselves.[1]
The growth of this movement spurred on major new movements and political
activism, driven almost exclusively by organized and 'politically awakened'
civilians. Driven largely by the Internet, this movement has awakened a mass
of people globally to the political and strategic reality of what is known
- in military terms - as a "false flag operation", in which an attack is
carried out against a certain target, where those undertaking the attack fly
the flag of someone else (i.e., "false flag") in an effort to implicate them
in the attack; and thus the response to an attack would be against the
perceived attackers.
It is, essentially, a covert military stratagem: a
strategic deception.
The Greek dramatist and playwright Aeschylus wrote
that,
"In war, the first casualty is truth."
A false flag attack an act of
war that is deliberately designed to deceive and hide the truth. It is an
attack carried out and blamed on one's enemy in order to justify
implementing a political agenda.
Governments have used such tactics for
centuries, and especially western nations in the past half-century.[2]
This movement has spawned an activist resurgence in other global issues,
such as the global economic system, and most notably, the central banking
system, particularly the Federal Reserve. While many Americans knew next to
nothing about their central bank, the Federal Reserve, a growing movement of
Americans and others around the world were educating themselves about the
Federal Reserve System and the global banking system in general.
Many found
a leader in a Texas Congressman named Ron Paul, who campaigned on the
Republican ticket for President in 2008, and who drew the widest grassroots
support from across the nation of any Republican candidates.
Among
Democrats, "9/11 Truthers" and others critical of US foreign policy came to
find a passionate leader in Cynthia McKinney, who was one of the lone voices
in Congress to directly challenge the Bush administration on the official
version of events, and has challenged the election fraud in 2000 and 2004,
conducted a Congressional hearing on covert activities in Africa, exposing
the hand of western nations behind the Rwandan genocide and Congo Civil War.
In late 2008, as the government began its financial bailout of the banks,
the "End the Fed" movement emerged in sporadic protests at the 12 Federal
Reserve Banks located around the country, and over 40 protests took place
across the nation within a matter of months.[3]
The "Homeland Security State" Targets Dissenters
With the increasing militarization of foreign policy, we also see the
increasing militarization of domestic politics, and most notably the
emergence of a high-tech surveillance police state: a "Homeland Security
State."
National and international elites are in the process of
incrementally constructing a 'new totalitarianism' in replacing
democracy.[4]
Civil rights and freedoms are dismantled through
anti-terrorist legislation, wiretapping and internet surveillance are
rampant and expansive, "watch lists" are constructed, which often include
the names of dissenters, and the military is increasingly poised to partake
in policing. Further, over the past decade, we have seen the rapid expansion
of "Continuity of Government" (COG) plans, which plan for the suspension of
the Constitution and imposition of martial law in the event of an
emergency.[5]
At this point in American society, if there was a rapid and
expansive economic collapse or another major terrorist attack on US soil,
America would transform into a military government, more fascist in nature
than anything; but equipped with an arsenal and "technetronic" police state
the likes of which no dictator in history has had access to.
Freedom has
never been so threatened; yet, people have never been so mobilized in modern
history to challenge the threats to freedom and democracy in America, in the
west, and in the world.
(See:
The Transnational Homeland Security State and the Decline of Democracy)
In 2003, General Tommy Franks gave an interview with Cigar Aficionado
magazine in which he elaborated on this concept.
Tommy Franks was the former
Commander of the Pentagon's Central Command over the Middle East, and thus
he was the top General overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In his
interview with the magazine, Franks stated that the objective of terrorism
is "to change the mannerisms, the behavior, the sociology and, ultimately,
the anthropology of a society," and thus, in the event of another major
terrorist attack in America or in the West:
the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is
freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand
experiment that we call democracy. Now, in a practical sense, what does that
mean?
It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a
terrorist, massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the western
world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population
to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in
order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in
fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.[6]
One interesting facet that very little is known about in the militarization
of domestic society and incremental totalitarianism is how the coercive
state apparatus, while being justified under the guise of fighting terrorism
or "protecting the Homeland," is in fact being directed against citizen
activists and popular political movements.
For example, following 9/11, the
Department of Homeland Security established what are known as
"Fusion
Centers," set up all over the United States, and which are designed as "information sharing and collecting" hubs, in which agencies like the CIA,
FBI, Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the US Military collect
and analyze information together.
As of July 2009, there were 72
acknowledged Fusion Centers around the United States.[7]
Think of them as
local surveillance centers, because that's what they are.
Fusion Centers are also positioned to take part as local command centers in
the event of a national emergency or implementation of "Continuity of
Government" plans to declare martial law. State and local law enforcement
agencies provide the majority of information to the local Fusion Centers,
which is then analyzed and disseminated to the major intelligence, military
or Homeland Security departments and agencies.
However, in recent years,
Fusion Centers have been criticized for their purported agenda, as they are
justified on the basis of acting as centers designated for
"counter-terrorism" purposes, but in practice are directed against citizen
groups.
In the spring of 2009, it was revealed that the Missouri Information
Analysis Center (MIAC) - a Fusion Center - had put out an information
pamphlet designed to help law enforcement officials identify "potential
domestic terrorists."
According to the report:
If you're an anti-abortion activist, or if you display political
paraphernalia supporting a third-party candidate or a certain Republican
member of Congress, if you possess subversive literature, you very well
might be a member of a domestic paramilitary group.[8]
When did our society become something out of 1984? When did our governments
designate "subversive literature" as a sign of terrorism?
The report
classified such activities as being part of a "Modern Militia Movement," and
further identified "potential threats to American security" as:
People who supported former third-party presidential candidates like Texas
Rep. Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr are cited in
the report, in addition to anti-abortion activists and conspiracy theorists
who believe the United States, Mexico and Canada will someday form a North
American Union.[9]
In other words, those who are opposed to the political and economic process
of "North American integration"[10] are seen and identified as
"potential militia members."
The report even directly identified possession of such
films like the anti-Federal Reserve film, "America: Freedom to Fascism" as
"potential signals of militia involvement."[11]
The document put out by the
Fusion Center further warned law enforcement officials to be "on the
lookout" for "bumper stickers advertising third party candidates, or people
with copies of the United States Constitution."
The report wrote that due to
the economic crisis, "a lush environment for militia activity has been
created," and:
It goes on to cite possible militia members as people who talk about the
New
World Order conspiracy, express anger with the Federal Reserve banking
system, resist paying taxes, warn other citizens about the perceived dangers
of radio frequency identification (RFID) or lobby for a return to strict
constitutionalism as possible threats to law enforcement.
While the memo does offer something of a lopsided summary of many of the
various groups which swelled enormously following the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, it also links individuals who are otherwise peaceful with
the Ku Klux Klan and other violent organizations.[12]
Another Fusion Center in Virginia identified many universities as potential
"radicalization nodes" for terrorists, singling out "historically black
colleges" as potential threats, and,
"it also contains an extensive list of
peaceful American and International activist groups from nearly all
cross-sections of political engagement, placing them side-by-side with
groups that have long been known for resorting to violence."[13]
In April of 2009, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) released a
report on the threat to liberties and civil rights posed by the Fusion
Centers, saying that,
"Fusion centers have experienced a mission
creep in the last several years, becoming more of a threat than a
security device. With no overarching guidelines to restrict or direct
them, these centers put Americans' privacy at huge risk."
The ACLU report identified several
"troubling incidents" in regards to Fusion Centers violating privacy and
civil rights:
-
A May 7, 2008 report entitled "Universal Adversary Dynamic Threat
Assessment" authored by a private contractor that labeled environmental
organizations like the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Audubon
Society as "mainstream organizations with known or possible links to
eco-terrorism";
-
A potential abuse of authority by DHS officials who improperly monitored
and disseminated the communications of peace activists affiliated with the
DC Anti-War Network (DAWN);
-
A report produced on February 19, 2009 by the North Central Texas Fusion
System entitled "Prevention Awareness Bulletin" which described a purported
conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the
anti-war movement, the U.S. Treasury Department, hip hop bands and former
Congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney to "provide an
environment for terrorist organizations to flourish";
-
A "Strategic Report" produced February 20, 2009 by the Missouri
Information Analysis Center that described a purported security threat posed
by the "modern militia movement" but inappropriately included references to
social, religious and political ideologies, including support of third party
presidential candidates such as Congressman Ron Paul and former Congressman
Bob Barr; and
-
A "Protective Intelligence Bulletin" issued by the DHS Intelligence Branch
of the Threat Management Division of the Federal Protective Service which
improperly collected and disseminated information regarding political
demonstrations and inappropriately labeled peaceful advocacy groups and
other activists as "extremists."[14]
To those in power, 'peace' is an 'extremist' idea, because
'war' and 'violence' are the norms to them.
Now it has come to the point where those
who challenge the structures of power are simply designated as terrorists
and extremists. This is an incredibly dangerous political road at which the
end is despotism and the death of democracy. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney,
as one of those identified by Fusion Centers as providing "an environment
for terrorist organizations to flourish," had this to say about the Fusion
Center report:
As a student of
COINTELPRO, the government's infamous Counter-Intelligence
Program [directed against the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s], I know
what my government is capable of doing to quash dissent. That's why I voted
against the Patriot Act, worked in Congress to roll back the Secret Evidence
Act, and introduced legislation to repeal the Military Commissions Act.
I
come from a long legacy of activists for justice and freedom inside this
country. I am on the advocacy front lines for peace abroad and justice at
home. But I know that we will not have peace or justice without truth. Truth
is the foundation of the dignity that we seek. Dignity for all is not a
threat to the United States.[15]
It has become evident that the response of the American government to the
"global political awakening" within the United States is aimed at
demonizing, discrediting, and oppressing activist groups and political
movements.
But how far can this oppression go?
Detention Camps for Dissidents?
One startling and deeply concerning development in the area of "Homeland
Security" is the highly secretive and deliberately quiet establishment of "detention centers" within the United States, designed to house millions of
people in the event of an "emergency."
In 2002, Attorney General John
Ashcroft,
"announced [a] desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be
'enemy combatants'," and that his plan "would allow him to order the
indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of
their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them
enemy combatants."[16]
Also in 2002, it was reported that
FEMA, the
Federal Emergency Management
Agency (now under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security), was,
"moving ahead with plans to create temporary
cities that could handle millions of Americans after mass destruction
attacks on U.S. cities."
Newsmax reported that,
"FEMA was seeking bids from three major real
estate and/or engineering firms to help prepare for the creation of the
emergency cities, using tents and trailers - if an urban area is
attacked by NBC (nuclear, chemical or biological) weapons."[17]
In 2006, Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, and its subsidiary
company, Kellogg-Brown & Root (KBR) received a major contract from the
Department of Homeland Security worth $385 million, which was given,
"to support the Department of Homeland
Security's (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
facilities in the event of an emergency."
A press
release on KBR's website stated that:
The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing
temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE
Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an
emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid
development of new programs.[18]
Further, it stated that,
"The contract may also provide migrant
detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of
an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react
to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a
natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing
for ICE personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of
relief efforts."[19]
Within two weeks,
"Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff announced that the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budget would
allocate over $400 million to add 6,700 additional detention beds (an
increase of 32 percent over 2006)."
As historian and author Peter Dale Scott reported:
Both the contract and the budget allocation are in partial fulfillment of an
ambitious 10-year Homeland Security strategic plan, code-named ENDGAME,
authorized in 2003. According to a 49-page Homeland Security document on the
plan, ENDGAME expands "a mission first articulated in the Alien and Sedition
Acts of 1798."
Its goal is the capability to "remove all
removable aliens," including "illegal economic migrants, aliens who have
committed criminal acts, asylum-seekers (required to be retained by law)
or potential terrorists."[20]
Considering that the government labels anti-war activists, libertarians,
progressives, and other peaceful citizens groups as "extremists," "paramilitary members" and
"terrorists," this is especially concerning.
In
2008, a former US Congressman wrote an article for the San Francisco
Chronicle in which he warned that,
"Since 9/11, and seemingly without the
notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the
authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents
(citizen and non-citizen alike), and detain people without legal or
constitutional recourse in the event of 'an emergency influx of
immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new
programs'."
He elaborated:
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid
contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build
detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The
government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of
railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport
detainees.[21]
As Peter Dale Scott explained:
the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North's controversial
Rex-84
"readiness exercise" in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary
"refugees," in the context of "uncontrolled population movements" over the
Mexican border into the United States. North's activities raised civil
liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns
persist.
"Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for
Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," says Daniel Ellsberg, a
former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S.
military's account of its activities in Vietnam. "They've already done this
on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant
men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."
Plans for detention facilities or camps have a long history, going back to
fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo
Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for
continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis
Giuffrida.
The order called for "suspension of the Constitution" and
"declaration of martial law."[22]
More recently, there have been several reported incidents of small towns
having major "detention centers" being built in them which remain empty and
maintained for the event of an "emergency."
One such facility is being
proposed for the City of Italy to build "a detention center for illegal
immigrants."[23]
There was also an effort to have a detention center built
in Benson City "to house illegal immigrants."[24] A major American prison
corporation, Corplan Corrections,
"has been at the center of numerous
controversies, including a bizarre prison-building scheme in Hardin,
Montana that involved a private military force called American Police
Force run by an ex-con. The prison cost the small town $27 million but
never housed any prisoners."
Further, Corplan,
"has approached city officials in several
towns across the U.S. - Benson, Arizona; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and
Weslaco, Texas - with a proposal to build a new detention center for
immigrant families."[25]
These facilities, built under the pretences of housing
"illegal immigrants"
yet largely remaining empty, could potentially be used to house not only
immigrants, but also Muslims and "possibly dissenters" following a major
emergency, such as an economic collapse or terrorist attack within the
United States.
After all, in World War II, Canada and the United States
rounded up Japanese and German immigrants into internment camps.
Again, it
becomes evident that the response of power structures to the manifestation
of the global political awakening within the United States is to oppress and
suppress the people, and with that, undermine democracy itself.
The Prospects of Revolution
During the first phase of the global economic crisis in December of 2008,
the IMF warned governments of the prospect of "violent unrest on the
streets."
The head of the IMF warned that,
"violent protests could break out in
countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to
benefit everyone rather than a small elite."[26]
Naturally, the IMF director
leaves out the fact that he is part of that small elite and that the IMF
functions for the benefit of that very same elite.
In late December of 2008,
"A U.S. Army War College report warn[ed] an
economic crisis in the United States could lead to massive civil unrest
and the need to call on the military to restore order."
The report stated that,
"Widespread civil violence inside the United
States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities...
to defend basic domestic order and human security."[27]
Throughout 2009, there was an abundance of civil unrest, protests and even
riots all across Europe in response to the economic crisis.
In February of
2009, Obama's intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, the Director of National
Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the economic
crisis has become the greatest threat to U.S. national security:
I'd like to begin with the global economic crisis, because it already looms
as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries ... Economic crises
increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged
for a one- or two-year period... And instability can loosen the fragile hold
that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in
dangerous ways into the international community.[28]
In other words, the economic crisis poses two major social threats to the
"national security" (i.e., imperial status) of the United States.
Of key
importance is that America and other western nations may lose control of
their colonial possessions and interests in the developing world - Africa,
South America and Asia - as the people in those regions, the most
"politically awakened" in the world, can cause "regime-threatening
instability" as the prospects of riots, rebellion and revolution expose the
failure of their national leaders and governance structures.
This would pose
an immense threat to the interests of the west in those regions, as they
primarily rely upon local nation-states to control the populations and
resources. Concurrently, these revolts could spread to the developing world.
So western elites are faced with the prospects of possibly losing their
control over the world's resources and even their own domestic populations.
The natural reaction, in imperial logic, is to militarize both the foreign
and domestic spheres.
No wonder then, that in 2008, the highest-ranking general in the United
States,
"Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, ranks the financial crisis as a higher priority and
greater risk to security than current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
He explained,
"It's a global crisis. And as that impacts
security issues, or feeds greater instability, I think it will impact on
our national security in ways that we quite haven't figured out yet."[29]
The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) warned that,
"The global economic crisis could trigger
political unrest equal to that seen during the 1930s."
He elaborated,
"The crisis today is spreading even faster
(than the Great Depression) and affects more countries at the same
time."[30]
In February of 2009, renowned economic historian and Harvard professor,
Niall Ferguson, predicted a,
"prolonged financial hardship, even civil war,
before the 'Great Recession' ends," and that, "The global crisis is far from
over, [it] has only just begun, and Canada is no exception," he said while
at a speaking event in Canada.
He explained,
"Policy makers and forecasters
who see a recovery next year are probably lying to boost public confidence,"
while, "the crisis will eventually provoke political conflict."
He further
explained:
There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound
to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to
destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have
been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in
governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable.[31]
Even in May of 2009, the head of the World Bank warned that,
"the global
economic crisis could lead to serious social upheaval," as "there is a risk
of a serious human and social crisis with very serious political
implications."[32]
Zbigniew Brzezinski himself warned in February of 2009
that,
"There's going to be growing conflict
between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting,
hell, there could be even riots!"[33]
In March of 2010, Moody's, a major credit ratings agency, warned that
"social unrest" is coming to the west, as the US, the UK, Germany, France,
and Spain,
"are all at risk of soaring debt costs and
will have to implement austerity plans that threaten 'social cohesion'."[34]
In 2007, a British Defense Ministry report was released assessing global
trends in the world over the next 30 years.
In assessing "Global
Inequality", the report stated that over the next 30 years:
[T]he gap between rich and poor will probably increase and absolute poverty
will remain a global challenge... Disparities in wealth and advantage will
therefore become more obvious, with their associated grievances and
resentments, even among the growing numbers of people who are likely to be
materially more prosperous than their parents and grandparents.
Absolute
poverty and comparative disadvantage will fuel perceptions of injustice
among those whose expectations are not met, increasing tension and
instability, both within and between societies and resulting in expressions
of violence such as disorder, criminality, terrorism and insurgency.
They
may also lead to the resurgence of not only anti-capitalist ideologies,
possibly linked to religious, anarchist or nihilist movements, but also to
populism and the revival of Marxism.[35]
Further, the report warned of the dangers to the established powers of a
revolution emerging from the disgruntled middle classes of the west:
The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role
envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets
and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could
reduce peoples' attachment to particular states.
The growing gap between
themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might
fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are
likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the
burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite.
Faced by these twin challenges, the world's middle-classes might unite,
using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational
processes in their own class interest.[36]
From the Old World to the New
So here we are, in the year 2010, the end of the first decade of the 21st
century.
And what a century it has been thus far:
-
9/11
-
a recession
-
the war
on Afghanistan
-
the "war on terror"
-
the war on Iraq
-
terrorist attacks in
Bali, Madrid, London and all across the Middle East
-
the war on Somalia
-
the
Congo Civil War (the deadliest conflict since World War II, with upwards of
6 million innocent civilians killed since 1996)
-
the Russia-Georgia war
-
the
expansion of the war into Pakistan
-
the election of
Barack Obama
-
the
global
economic crisis,
...and here we are.
All of human history is the story of the struggle of free humanity - the
individual and the collective - against the constructs of power, which
sought to dominate and control humanity.
From humanity's origins in Africa,
civilizations rose and fell, dominated and decimated. From Ancient Egypt to
Greece and Rome, the Chinese dynasties, the Mayans and Aztecs, all sought
domination of land and people. The Persian Empire and the Ottoman Empire
expanded and controlled vast populations and diverse people; and with the
emergence of Capitalism came the emergence of the European powers.
For the past 500 years, Europe and America have dominated the world; and in
fact, only in the last 65 years has America dominated the globe. The Peace
of Westphalia was signed in 1648, ending the Thirty Years' War in the Holy
Roman Empire and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Republic of the
Seven United Netherlands.
This agreement effectively ended the Holy Roman
Empire, and marked the emergence of the idea of the modern nation-state.
University studies in International Relations begin with the Peace of
Westphalia, as it is viewed as the beginning of the international system we
know today.
Out of this emerged the great European empires: the Portuguese, the Spanish,
the Dutch, and later the French, British and German empires, which created
the first global political economy with the Atlantic Slave Trade, trading
weapons and goods in exchange for captured slaves, fueling internal civil
wars among the large African empires to feed them a supply of slaves which
they then took to the Americas to use as a labour force.
That labour force
would produce goods taken back to Europe, traded among the world's empires,
and ultimately financing the continued flow of weapons into Africa. It was a
triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas. At this time, the
notion of 'race' originated through a series of legal decisions made in the
colonies.
In the 1600s, the colonies in the Americas were made up of white, Indian and
black indentured labourers and slaves, both 'un-free blacks and whites, with
blacks being a minority, yet they still "exercised basic rights in law."
A
problem arose for elites attempting to control the labour class: the un-free
native labour force knew the land and could escape easily (so they would
later be largely eliminated through genocide); and in the 1660s, the labour
class was becoming rebellious, where black and white labourers worked
together and rebelled against local elites.
The entire lower class of
society was united - regardless of their varied and expansive differences - and they were united against the elites. Thus, a doctrine of
'divide and
conquer' was implemented against the psycho-social foundations of the
people.[37]
The elite,
"relaxed the servitude" of the white labourers, and
"intensified
the bonds of black slavery," and subsequently "introduced a new regime of
racial oppression. In doing so, they effectively created the white race
- and with it white supremacy."
Thus,
"the conditions of white and black servants
began to diverge considerably after 1660."
Following this,
legislation would separate white and black slavery, prevent "mixed"
marriages, and seek to prevent the procreation of "mixed-race" children.
Whereas before 1660, many black slaves were not indentured for life, this
changed as colonial law increasingly,
"imposed lifetime bondage for black servants
- and, especially significant, the curse of lifetime servitude for their
offspring."[38]
A central feature of the social construction of this racial divide was
"the
denial of the right to vote," as most Anglo-American colonies previously
allowed free blacks to vote, but this slowly changed throughout the
colonies. The ruling class of America was essentially "inventing race."
Thus, "Freedom was increasingly identified with
race, not class."[39]
In 1648, the nation-state emerged; in 1660, racism was created through legal
decisions; and in 1694, the Bank of England was created and the birth of the
central banking system took place.
All of these were essentially 'social
constructions' - nation, race, currency - in which they are simply ideas
that are accepted as reality.
-
A nation is not a physical entity
-
Race has no
true basis for discrimination or hierarchy
-
A currency has no actual
value
They only hold as true because everyone accepts them as true.
From this period of immense transition, European imperial nations dominated
the world; racism justified their domination, and central banks dominated
the empires at home and abroad. The 1800s saw the Industrial Revolution,
which instigated the decline of slavery and the emergence of paid labour and
hourly wages.
Eventually, the notion of 'race science' emerged within the
eugenics movement, originating in Europe, and later migrating to the United
States in the late 19th century. This helped justify the 'Scramble for
Africa', which began in the 1880s and entailed the European empires formally
colonizing the entire continent of Africa, carving it into nations among
them, but justifying it on the basis of a racist "civilizing mission."
The European imperial age declined with World War I, a battle of empires and
economies. This led to the collapse of many European empires as well as the
Ottoman and Russian empires, with the emergence of the Soviet Union as well
as nation-states in the Middle East. The emergence of fascism took root in
the 1920s and 30s, and grew to coalesce in World War II, which led to the
ultimate decline of the British and French empires, and the emergence of the
American empire.
America became the engine of empire for the Atlantic community, Europe and
North America. It created and ran international organizations allowing for
transnational elites to share power among an increasingly global - an
increasingly smaller - group of elites. The World, for nearly fifty years,
was defined as a global struggle between Communism and Democracy - between
the Soviet Union and the West.
This historical myth hides the face of global
domination: a struggle between two blocs for global domination of the
world's people and resources.
With the end of the Cold War came the emergence of the
New World Order, a
world in which there was only one global power: the United States.
I was born shortly before the Berlin Wall came
down, and I developed a memory only after the Soviet Union collapsed; the
only world I know is the one in which the United States has been the only
global power. I know only the era of 'globalization' and the promises it made my generation.
Think of the effect
upon the youth this great period of transition will have.
The history of humanity is one of constant change, sometimes slow and
incremental, at other times rapid and expansive. Today, we are in a period
in which we are seeing a convergence of never-before-seen global realities.
The population of the world has never been so monumentally large - at 6.8
billion - and among the global population, for the first time in human
history, there is a true "global political awakening."
This does not mean
that everyone is correct in their views, but it does mean that the world's
people are thinking and acting - even if incidentally or unknowingly - about
the global polity. This is most especially so in the areas where the
Atlantic world has dominated for so long, as they have been subjected to
poverty, racism, and war like no other people on earth. Their 'awakening'
was forced upon them, and the west is now having its awakening forced upon
it.
At our current position, we are about to undergo a global historical period
of transition, the likes of which has never before been seen.
The
incremental and slow building 'global political awakening' that emerged
around the world in the past century, is reaching a precipice and rapid
expansion at the beginning of the 21st century. Global power has never been
so centralized, with international institutions and systems of global
governance holding authority over several realms of humanity.
We are
partaking in global wars seeking to dominate populations and control
resources, democracy is eroding in the west, and wealth disparities have
never been so great in all of human history.
For the first time in the last 500 years, the East has risen - with China
and India - as new global powers, rising within the system not against it;
marking the first time that nation-states have not risen against the global
power, but with the global power. China and India are being brought within a
new global political and economic system that is being constructed: a global
totalitarian system of continental colonies to a global state.
In 1998, then
Secretary-General of NATO, Javier Solana, gave a speech in which he said:
It is my general contention that humanity and democracy - two principles
essentially irrelevant to the original Westphalian order - can serve as
guideposts in crafting a new international order, better adapted to the
security realities, and challenges, of today's Europe.[40]
Further, he explained,
"the Westphalian system had its limits. For
one, the principle of sovereignty it relied on also produced the basis
for rivalry, not community of states; exclusion, not integration."
Thus, to truly have
global power, the international system of nation-states must be
're-imagined' and altered: first, into continental governance structures,
and ultimately a global structure.
As Solana said,
"In the
United Nations,
the ideal of a global institution including all nations became a reality,"
and "the ideal of European integration was set in motion."
He elaborated:
But an integral part of the evolution of the Atlantic Alliance was the idea
of reconciliation: the integration of our militaries, the common project of
collective defense, and the willingness to work towards a common approach to
defend the Alliance's common values.
Unfortunately, also out of the same ashes of the second world war emerged
the East-West confrontation that left Europe deeply divided for more than
four decades.
As our century comes to an end, we at last have the
opportunity to overcome this division and to set free all the creative
energies this continent can muster to build the new security order which
will lead us into the 21st century.[41]
It is a difficult balancing act for global powers
- particularly the United
States - to manage the integration of China into the 'new world order',
while simultaneously both of them compete for control of global resources,
located primarily in regions of the world which are experiencing the most
rapid and extensive 'awakening'.
The imperial mindset - like that of
Brzezinski's - seeks to rationalize global power as being equated with 'global stability', and that without empire, there is only
'chaos'. Thus,
imperial logic dictates that America must seek to dominate as much of the
world as fast as possible, and hence control global resources, which will
allow it to determine the terms of China and other powers' inclusion in the
new world order.
This has the potential to spark a global war - a World War
III type of scenario between the NATO powers and the China-Russia alliance - the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
- who seek to share power, not
to be dominated. Global populations at home and abroad have never been so
challenging to control: global war is inevitable in the imperial mindset.
As
Brzezinski himself stated in a speech to Chatham House in London in 2009:
But these major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while
the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity
to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a
historic low.
To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to control
one million people than to physically kill one million people; today, it is
infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million
people.[42]
In many people's view of the global economic crisis, the problem was
'greed'.
Greed is not the problem, it is but a symptom of
the disease that is 'power'; which, like a cancer, expands and kills its host. Humanity is
entering what will likely be the most turbulent period in human history.
The
future is not yet written; all that is certain is that everything will
change. What it comes down to is the greatest human struggle in the history
of our small little planet:
the struggle of the world's people - in every
corner of the world, from every religion, 'race', ethnicity, ideology,
language, sex, gender and variation - against a
global power elite who
control the most advanced, technological, and lethal tools of oppression
every conceived.
Make no mistake, we are not repeating history, we are
making it.
The Power of Ideas
Our awakening is the greatest threat to these global elites, and it is our
only hope of protecting any notions of freedom, liberty, family, equality
and individuality.
It is these notions that have led to and created the
greatest developments and ideas in human history. Humanity's best is within
these concepts, and its worst is within power. The shame of humanity is
within its systems of power, so for humanity to survive we must re-imagine
and remodel our global system and global power.
We cannot design a society for humanity without taking into consideration
human nature. If you build it, they will come. If we keep creating positions
of great power, and continually globalize power, it will attract exactly the
wrong type of people to those positions of power: the ones that want it and
want to abuse the power.
These people are more likely to get to these
positions of power because they are willing to do anything to get there,
which means that once they have it, they will do anything to maintain and
expand it. And so power grows, and the cancer spreads. Imagine if Hitler's
rise to power took place not in the era of nation-states, but in the era of
the 'global state.'
All that is required is one tyrant, and humanity is
nothing if not proof that there are always tyrants in waiting.
What is a nation? Is it an army, a flag, an anthem, or a building of
government? A nation is an idea - and is constructed by a series of ideas.
There is no 'real' border, it is an imaginary line, and everyone in the
world pretends they are there, and nation-states (which are really people
who are in control of these ideas), govern accordingly.
Now we are in a
period in which elites are attempting to re-imagine the international
community, to erase the 'idea' of borders, and to ultimately re-program
humanity to follow their example.
Social planners seek to control not simply
our land, resources and bodies, but most importantly, our minds. World
government will be sold to us on the 'ideas' of peace, something all of
humanity wants; all save the powerful, for war and conflict is the means
through which power is accumulated and society is transformed.
True peace will never be possible with a singular global power structure;
for once power is globally centralized, what more can the powerful seek to
achieve?
Thus, the powerful fight each other for control of the centralized
authority, paranoia governs their minds, and distrust and hatred directs
their actions. Power subsequently becomes its own worst enemy, as it eats
away at its host and destroys the body within which it lives.
True peace can only come from human understanding. Free humanity must
understand each other if we are to live among each other. We cannot any
longer view each other through the lenses of power: through the media,
government, economic, and social structures.
These structures are designed
with the intent to mislead and misrepresent people, they are illegitimate
and must be considered as such. We must view and understand each other on a
human level: on ideas of freedom, liberty, family, equality and
individually. To achieve that understanding, one realizes that freedom must
be for all or none, that liberty is not to be selective, the importance of
family, the necessity of equality and the acceptance and celebration of
individuality.
With that, peace is inevitable. With power, peace is
impossible.
Just as elites seek to re-imagine and recreate our world, we too, can do the
same. This must begin with the human understanding, where we enter into a
new Renaissance or Enlightenment, not western, but global; where the people
communicate and interact with each other on a personal basis, not through
elite structures.
This must be the aim of the global political awakening: to
achieve peace through peaceful means. If everyone in the world simply
decided to no longer acknowledge people and positions of power, that power
would vanish. If there is no army, because the soldiers decided to no longer
recognize the government, there is no one to pull the trigger on people in
the street.
I think, therefore I am. If I think I am free, I will become free.
But while
an individual can do this, it does not work if everyone doesn't do it. This
requires all people, everywhere, to work together, talk together, learn
together, think together and act together. We can either do this now, or
potentially be subdued for decades if not longer. If we do not achieve
global peace and freedom for all people, if we do not understand each other,
power will win, at least for a while.
What is important to note is that the
emergence of a technetronic society reduces the need for people, as
technology can watch, listen, control and kill people with the push of a
button. We are also in danger of becoming a docile, tranquilized society,
lost in drugs - whether recreational or even more notably,
pharmaceutical.
We must avoid entering into a 'brave new world', and instead bravely
construct a different world.
From the militarization of domestic society, it would appear as if we are
moving into a world quite reminiscent of George Orwell's
1984, in which the world is divided
into a few major regional blocs that war against each other and terrorize
their populations through acts of physical terror and total surveillance ("Big Brother").
This is but a phase and evolution into the
final stage - the grand idea - or as Aldous Huxley referred to it, "The
Ultimate Revolution": the global scientific dictatorship.
That will be the
focus of the third and final part in this series.
Endnotes
[1] Lev Grossman, Why the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Won't Go Away. Time
Magazine: September 3, 2006:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531304,00.html
[2] Andrew Gavin Marshall, State-Sponsored Terror: British and American
Black Ops in Iraq. Global Research: June 25, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9447; Andrew Gavin
Marshall, Breaking Iraq and Blaming Iran. Global Research: July 3, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9450 ; Andrew Gavin
Marshall, Operation Gladio: CIA Network of "Stay Behind" Secret Armies.
Global Research: July 17, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9556 ; also see:
Daniele Ganser, NATO's secret armies: operation Gladio and terrorism in
Western Europe, (Frank Cass: 2005).
[3] Chris Steller, Minneapolis Federal Reserve draws third protest in six
months. The Minnesota Independent: April 25, 2009:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/33400/end-the-fed-minneapolis
[4] Andrew Gavin Marshall, The Transnational Homeland Security State and the
Decline of Democracy. Global Research: April 15, 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18676
[5] Peter Dale Scott, Supplanting the United States Constitution: War,
National Emergency and "Continuity of Government". Global Research: May 19,
2010: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19238 ; Peter
Dale Scott, Martial Law, the Financial Bailout, and War. Global Research:
January 8, 2009: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11681
[6] Marvin R. Shanken, General Tommy Franks: An exclusive interview with
America's top general in the war on terrorism. Cigar Aficionado Magazine:
December 1, 2003:
http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/CA_Profiles/People_Profile/0,2540,201,00.html
[7] Amy Goodman, Broadcast Exclusive: Declassified Docs Reveal Military
Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned. Democracy Now!
July 28, 2009:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/28/broadcast_exclusive_declassified_docs_reveal_military
[8] Joshua Rhett Miller, 'Fusion Centers' Expand Criteria to Identify
Militia Members. Fox News: March 23, 2009:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/fusion-centers-expand-criteria-identify-militia-members/
[9] Joshua Rhett Miller, 'Fusion Centers' Expand Criteria to Identify
Militia Members. Fox News: March 23, 2009:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/fusion-centers-expand-criteria-identify-militia-members/
[10] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Tyrants and Traitors: The "Evolution by Stealth"
of a North American Union. Global Research: August 7, 2007:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6475
[11] Joshua Rhett Miller, 'Fusion Centers' Expand Criteria to Identify
Militia Members. Fox News: March 23, 2009:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/fusion-centers-expand-criteria-identify-militia-members/
[12] Stephen C. Webster, Missouri retracts police memo which labeled
activists as 'militia'. The Raw Story: March 26, 2009:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Missouri_retracts_police_memo_which_labeled_0326.html
[13] Stephen C. Webster, Fusion center declares nation's oldest universities
possible terror threat. The Raw Story: April 6, 2009:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2008/Virginia_terror_assessment_targets_enormous_crosssection_0406.html
[14] Press Release, ACLU Calls For Internal DHS Investigations On Fusion
Centers. ACLU: April 1, 2009:
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/aclu-calls-internal-dhs-investigations-fusion-centers
[15] Press Release, ACLU Calls For Internal DHS Investigations On Fusion
Centers. ACLU: April 1, 2009:
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/aclu-calls-internal-dhs-investigations-fusion-centers
[16] Jonathan Turley, Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision. Los
Angeles Times: August 14, 2002:
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0814-05.htm
[17] Christopher Ruddy, FEMA's Plan for Mass Destruction Attacks: Of Course
It's True. Newsmax: August 6, 2002:
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/8/6/183147.shtml
[18] Press Release, KBR Awarded U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Contingency Support Project for Emergency Support Services. KBR: January 24,
2006:
http://www.kbr.com/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2006/01/24/KBR-Awarded-US-Department-of-Homeland-Security-Contingency-Support-Project-for-Emergency-Support-Services/
[19] Ibid.
[20] Peter Dale Scott, 10-Year U.S. Strategic Plan For Detention Camps
Revives Proposals From Oliver North. New American Media: February 26, 2006:
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=9c2d6a5e75201d7e3936ddc65cdd56a9
[21] Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg, Rule by fear or rule by law? The San
Francisco Chronicle: February 4, 2008:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-02-04/opinion/17140386_1_martial-law-kbr-national-defense-authorization-act
[22] Peter Dale Scott, Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention
Camps. Global Research: February 6, 2006:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1897
[23] Cindy Sutherland, Italy City Council hears proposal for commercial
development. Italy Neotribune: May 18, 2010:
http://www.italyneotribune.com/stories/italy-city-council-hears-proposal-for-commercial-development
[24] Thelma Grimes, Council 'nay' on detention center; City wants project
funding assurance. Benson News: May 11, 2010:
http://www.bensonnews-sun.com/articles/2010/05/12/news/news03.txt
[25] Forrest Wilder, For the Lucios, Private Prison Consulting is a Family
Affair. Texas Observer: April 23, 2010:
http://www.texasobserver.org/forrestforthetrees/for-the-lucios-private-prison-consulting-is-a-family-affair
[26] Angela Balakrishnan, IMF chief issues stark warning on economic crisis.
The Guardian: December 18, 2008:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/imf-financial-crisis
[27] Military.com, Study: DoD May Act On US Civil Unrest. McClatchy-Tribune
Information Services: December 29, 2008:
http://www.military.com/news/article/study-dod-may-act-on-us-civil-unrest.html
[28] Stephen C. Webster, US intel chief: Economic crisis a greater threat
than terrorism. Raw Story: February 13, 2009:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/US_intel_chief_Economic_crisis_greater_0213.html
[29] Tom Philpott, MILITARY UPDATE: Official: Financial crisis a bigger
security risk than wars. Colorado Springs Gazette: February 1, 2009:
http://www.gazette.com/articles/mullen-47273-military-time.html
[30] AFP, WTO chief warns of looming political unrest. AFP: February 7,
2009:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gpC1Q4gXJfp6EwMl1rMGrmA_a7ZA
[31] Heather Scoffield, 'There will be blood'. The Globe and Mail: February
23, 2009:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/article973785.ece
[32] BBC, World Bank warns of social unrest. BBC News: May 24, 2009:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8066037.stm
[33] Press TV, Economic Crisis: Brzezinski warns of riots in US. Global
Research: February 21, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12392
[34] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Moody's fears social unrest as AAA states
implement austerity plans. The Telegraph: March 15, 2010:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7450468/Moodys-fears-social-unrest-as-AAA-states-implement-austerity-plans.html
[35] DCDC, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme, 2007-2036, 3rd ed.
The Ministry of Defence, January 2007: page 3
[36] Ibid, page 81.
[37] Andrew Gavin Marshall, War, Racism and the Empire of Poverty. Global
Research: March 22, 2010:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18263
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Dr. Javier Solana, "Securing Peace in Europe", NATO speech: November
12, 1998: http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1998/s981112a.htm
[41] Ibid.
[42] Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US
President," International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009), page 54
Part 3
New Eugenics and the Rise of the Global Scientific Dictatorship
July 5, 2010
Introduction
We are in the midst of the most explosive development in all of human
history.
Humanity is experiencing a simultaneously opposing and conflicting
geopolitical transition, the likes of which has never before been
anticipated or experienced. Historically, the story of humanity has been the
struggle between the free-thinking individual and structures of power
controlled by elites that seek to dominate land, resources and people.
The
greatest threat to elites at any time - historically and presently - is an
awakened, critically thinking and politically stimulated populace.
This
threat has manifested itself throughout history, in different places and at
different times. Ideas of freedom, democracy, civil and human rights,
liberty and equality have emerged in reaction and opposition to power
structures and elite systems of control.
The greatest triumphs of the human mind - whether in art, science or thought
- have arisen out of and challenged great systems of power and control.
The
greatest of human misery and tragedy has arisen out of the power structures
and systems that elites always seek to construct and manage. War, genocide,
persecution and human degradation are directly the result of decisions made
by those who control the apparatus of power, whether the power manifests
itself as intellectual, ecclesiastical, spiritual, militaristic, or
scientific.
The most malevolent and ruthless power is that over the free
human mind: if one controls how one thinks, they control the individual
itself.
The greatest human achievements are where individuals have broken
free the shackles that bind the mind and let loose the inherent and
undeniable power that lies in each and every individual on this small little
planet.
Currently, our world is at the greatest crossroads our species has ever
experienced. We are in the midst of the first truly global political
awakening, in which for the first time in all of human history, all of
mankind is politically awakened and stirring; in which whether inadvertently
or intentionally, people are thinking and acting in political terms.
This
awakening is most evident in the developing world, having been made through
personal experience to be acutely aware of the great disparities,
disrespect, and domination inherent in global power structures. The
awakening is spreading increasingly to the west itself, as the majority of
the people living in the western developed nations are thrown into poverty
and degradation.
The awakening will be forced upon all people all over the
world. Nothing, no development, ever in human history, has posed such a
monumental threat to elite power structures.
This awakening is largely driven by the Technological Revolution, which
through technology and electronics, in particular mass media and the
Internet, have made it so that people across the world are able to become
aware of global issues and gain access to information from around the world.
The Technological Revolution, thus, has fostered an
Information Revolution
which has, in turn, fed the global political awakening.
Simultaneously, the Technological Revolution has led to another unique and
unprecedented development in human history, and one that is diametrically
opposed, yet directly related to the global political awakening.
For the
first time in human history, free humanity is faced with the dominating
threat of a truly global elite, who have at their hands the technology to
impose a truly global system of control: a global scientific dictatorship.
The great danger is that through the exponential growth in scientific
techniques, elites will use these great new powers to control and dominate
all of humanity in such a way that has never before been experienced.
Through all of human history, tyrants have used coercive force and terror to
control populations. With the Technological Revolution, elites increasingly
have the ability to control the very biology and psychology of the
individual to a point where it may not be necessary to impose a system of
terror, but rather where the control is implemented on a much deeper,
psychological, subliminal and individual biological manner.
While terror can
prevent people from opposing power for a while, the scientific dictatorship
can create a personal psycho-social condition in which the individual comes
to love his or her own slavery; in which, like a mentally inferior pet, they
are made to love their leaders and accept their servitude.
So we are presented with a situation in which humanity is faced with both
the greatest threat and the greatest hope that we have ever collectively
experienced in our short human history.
This essay, the third part in the
series, "The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom," examines
the ideas behind the global scientific dictatorship, and how it may manifest
itself presently and in the future, with a particular focus on the emergence
of 'new eugenics' as a system of mass control.
Free humanity faces the most monumental decision we have ever been presented
with:
-
do we feed and fuel the global political awakening into a true human
psycho-social revolution of the mind, creating a new global political
economy which empowers and liberates all of humanity,
-
or... do we fall
silently into a 'brave new world' of a global scientific oppression, the
likes of which have never before been experienced, and whose dominance would
never be more difficult to challenge and overcome?
We can either find a true freedom, or descend into a deep despotism. We are
not powerless before this great ideational beast. We have, at our very
fingertips the ability to use technology to our benefit and to re-shape the
world so that it benefits the people of the world and not simply the
powerful.
It must be freedom for all or freedom for none.
What is the 'Scientific Dictatorship'?
In 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote his dystopian novel, "Brave New World," in
which he looked at the emergence of the scientific dictatorships of the
future.
In his 1958 essay, "Brave New World
Revisited," Huxley examined how
far the world had come in that short period since his book was published,
and where the world was heading.
Huxley wrote that:
In politics the equivalent of a fully developed scientific theory or
philosophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship. In economics, the
equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is the smoothly running
factory in which the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines. The
Will to Order can make tyrants out of those who merely aspire to clear up a
mess. The beauty of tidiness is used as a justification for despotism.[1]
Huxley explained that,
"The future dictator's subjects will be painlessly
regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers," and he quotes one
"advocate of this new science" as saying that, "The challenge of social
engineering in our time is like the challenge of technical engineering
fifty years ago. If the first half of the twentieth century was the era
of technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of social
engineers."
Thus, proclaims Huxley,
"The twenty-first century, I suppose, will
be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave
New World."[2]
In 1952, Bertrand Russell, a British
philosopher, historian, mathematician, and social critic wrote the book, "The
Impact of Science on Society," in which he warned and examined
how science, and the technological revolution, was changing and would come
to change society.
In his book, Russell
explained that:
I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass
psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced
study... This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish
to become rich or to acquire the government. It is, of course, as a science,
founded upon individual psychology, but hitherto it has employed
rule-of-thumb methods which were based upon a kind of intuitive common
sense. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern
methods of propaganda.
Of these the most influential is what is called
'education'.
Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one;
the Press, the
cinema and the radio play an increasing part.
What is essential in mass psychology is the art of persuasion. If you
compare a speech of Hitler's with a speech of (say) Edmund Burke, you will
see what strides have been made in the art since the eighteenth century.
What went wrong formerly was that people had read in books that man is a
rational animal, and framed their arguments on this hypothesis.
We now know
that limelight and a brass band do more to persuade than can be done by the
most elegant train of syllogisms. It may be hoped that in time anybody will
be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young
and is provided by the State with money and equipment.
This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under
a scientific dictatorship.[3]
Russell went on to analyze the question of whether a
'scientific
dictatorship' is more stable than a democracy, on which he postulated:
Apart from the danger of war, I see no reason why such a regime should be
unstable. After all, most civilized and semi-civilized countries known to
history have had a large class of slaves or serfs completely subordinate to
their owners. There is nothing in human nature that makes the persistence of
such a system impossible.
And the whole development of scientific technique
has made it easier than it used to be to maintain a despotic rule of a
minority. When the government controls the distribution of food, its power
is absolute so long as it can count on the police and the armed forces. And
their loyalty can be secured by giving them some of the privileges of the
governing class.
I do not see how any internal movement of revolt can ever
bring freedom to the oppressed in a modern scientific dictatorship.[4]
Drawing on the concept popularized by Aldous Huxley
- of people loving their
servitude - Bertrand Russell explained that under a scientific dictatorship:
It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give
governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have
even in totalitarian countries. Fichte laid it down that education should
aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they
shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or
acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished...
Diet,
injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce
the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider
desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become
psychologically impossible.
Even if all are miserable, all will believe
themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.[5]
Russell explained that,
"The completeness of the resulting control over
opinion depends in various ways upon scientific technique. Where all
children go to school, and
all schools are controlled by the
government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to
everything contrary to official orthodoxy."[6]
Russell later proclaimed in his book that,
"a scientific world society cannot be stable
unless there is a world government."[7]
He elaborated:
Unless there is a world government which secures universal birth control,
there must be from time to time great wars, in which the penalty of defeat
is widespread death by starvation. That is exactly the present state of the
world, and some may hold that there is no reason why it should not continue
for centuries. I do not myself believe that this is possible.
The two great
wars that we have experienced have lowered the level of civilization in many
parts of the world, and the next is pretty sure to achieve much more in this
direction. Unless, at some stage, one power or group of powers emerges
victorious and proceeds to establish a single government of the world with a
monopoly of armed force, it is clear that the level of civilization must
continually decline until scientific warfare becomes impossible - that is
until science is extinct.[8]
Russell explains that eugenics plays a central feature in the construction
of any world government scientific dictatorship, stating that,
"Gradually, by selective breeding, the
congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they
become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as
unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice
of eating mutton."[9]
In a 1962 speech at UC Berkeley, Aldous Huxley
spoke about the real world becoming the 'Brave New World' nightmare he envisaged. Huxley spoke
primarily of the 'Ultimate Revolution' that focuses on 'behavioural
controls' of people.
Huxley said of the 'Ultimate Revolution':
In the past, we can say, that all revolutions have essentially aimed at
changing the environment in order to change the individual. There's been the
political revolution, the economic revolution... the religious
revolution. All these aimed as I say not directly at the human being but at
his surroundings, so by modifying his surroundings you did achieve - at one
remove - an effect upon the human being.
Today, we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the
'Ultimate Revolution' - the 'Final Revolution' - where man can act directly
on the mind-body of his fellows. Well needless to say some kind of direct
action on human mind-bodies has been going on since the beginning of time,
but this has generally been of a violent nature.
The techniques of terrorism
have been known from time immemorial, and people have employed them with
more-or-less ingenuity, sometimes with utmost crudity, sometimes with a good
deal of skill acquired with a process of trial and error - finding out what
the best ways of using torture, imprisonments, constraints of various kinds...
If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must
have some measure of consent. It's exceedingly difficult to see how pure
terrorism can function indefinitely, it can function for a fairly long time;
but sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion, an
element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them.
Well it seems to me the nature of the Ultimate Revolution with which we are
now faced is precisely this: that we are in process of developing a whole
series of techniques, which will enable the controlling oligarchy - who have
always existed and will presumably always exist - to get people to love
their servitude. This is the ultimate in malevolent revolution...
There seems to be a general movement in the direction of this kind of
Ultimate Control, this method of control, by which people can be made to
enjoy a state of affairs by which any decent standard they ought not to
enjoy; the enjoyment of servitude . . .
I am inclined to think that the scientific dictatorships of the future
- and
I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the
world - will be probably a good deal nearer to the Brave New World pattern
than to the 1984 pattern. They will be a good deal nearer, not because of
any humanitarian qualms in the scientific dictators, but simply because the
'brave new world' pattern is probably a good deal more efficient than the
other.
That if you can get people to consent to the state of affairs in
which they are living - the state of servitude - if you can do this, then
you are likely to have a much more stable, a much more lasting society; much
more easily controllable society than you would if you were relying wholly
on clubs, and firing squads and concentration camps.[10]
In 1961, President Eisenhower
delivered his farewell address to the nation
in which he warned of the dangers to democracy posed by the
military-industrial complex: the interconnected web of industry, the
military, and politics creating the conditions for constant war.
In that
same speech, Eisenhower warned America and the world of another important
change in society:
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed
by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same
fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas
and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of
research.
Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract
becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old
blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely
to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,
we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy
could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[11]
In 1970,
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote about
"the gradual appearance of a more
controlled and directed society," in the "technetronic revolution";
explaining:
Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power
would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the
restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to
achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for
influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and
control.
Under such circumstances, the scientific and technological momentum
of the country would not be reversed but would actually feed on the
situation it exploits.[12]
New Eugenics
Many sciences and large social movements are directed by the same
foundations and money that financed the eugenics movement in the early 20th
century.
The Rockefeller foundations, Ford, Carnegie, Mellon, Harriman, and
Morgan money that flowed into eugenics led directly to 'scientific racism,'
and ultimately the Holocaust in World War II.[13]
Following the Holocaust,
Hitler had discredited the eugenics movement he admired so much in America.
So the movement branched off into forming several other social engineering
projects:
The same
foundations that laid the foundations for eugenic ideology - the belief in a
biological superiority and right to rule (justifying their power) - then
laid the foundations for these and other new social and scientific
movements.
Major environmental and conservation organizations were founded with
Rockefeller and Ford Foundation money,[14] which then continued to be
central sources of funding to this day; while the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
was founded in 1961 by Sir Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley's brother, who was
also the President of the British Eugenics Society.
Prince
Bernhard of the
Netherlands became the organization's first president.
Prince Bernhard also
happened to be one of the founders of the elite global think tank, the
Bilderberg Group, which he co-founded in 1954; and he was previous to that,
a member of the Nazi Party and an SS officer.[15] Sir Julian Huxley also
happened to be the first Director-General of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In 1946, Huxley wrote a paper titled, "UNESCO: It's Purpose and its Philosophy."
In it, he wrote that the
general focus of UNESCO:
is to help the emergence of a single world culture, with its own philosophy
and background of ideas, and with its own broad purpose. This is opportune,
since this is the first time in history that the scaffolding and the
mechanisms for world unification have become available, and also the first
time that man has had the means (in the shape of scientific discovery and
its applications) of laying a world-wide foundation for the minimum physical
welfare of the entire human species...[16]
At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of
civilization is
dysgenic instead of eugenic; and in any case it seems likely that the dead
weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability, and
disease-proneness, which already exist in the human species, will prove too
great a burden for real progress to be achieved.
Thus even though it is
quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years
politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for Unesco
to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that
the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is
unthinkable may at least become thinkable...[17]
Still another and quite different type of borderline subject is that of
eugenics. It has been on the borderline between the scientific and the
unscientific, constantly in danger of becoming a pseudo- science based on
preconceived political ideas or on assumptions of racial or class
superiority and inferiority.
It is, however, essential that eugenics should
be brought entirely within the borders of science, for, as already
indicated, in the not very remote future the problem of improving the
average quality of human beings is likely to become urgent; and this can
only be accomplished by applying the findings of a truly scientific
eugenics...[18]
It is worth pointing out that the applications of science at once bring us
up against social problems of various sorts. Some of these are direct and
obvious. Thus the application of genetics in eugenics immediately raises the
question of values- what qualities should we desire to encourage in the
human beings of the future?[19]
On page 6 of the UNESCO document, Sir Julian Huxley wrote that,
"in order to carry out its work, an
organization such as Unesco needs not only a set of general aims and
objects for itself, but also a working philosophy, a working hypothesis
concerning human existence and its aims and objects, which will dictate,
or at least indicate, a definite line of approach to its problems."[20]
While much of the language of equality and education sounds
good and benevolent, it is based upon a particular view of humanity as an
irrational, emotionally driven organism which needs to be controlled.
Thus,
the 'principle of equality' becomes "The Fact of Inequality":
Finally we come to a difficult problem-that of discovering how we can
reconcile our principle of human equality with the biological fact of human
inequality... The democratic principle of equality, which is also Unesco's,
is a principle of equality of opportunity-that human beings should be equal
before the law, should have equal opportunities for education, for making a
living, for freedom of expression and movement and thought.
The biological
absence of equality, on the other hand, concerns the natural endowments of
man and the fact of genetic difference in regard to them.
There are instances of biological inequality which are so gross that they
cannot be reconciled at all with the principle of equal opportunity. Thus
low-grade mental defectives cannot be offered equality of educational
opportunity, nor are the insane equal with the sane before the law or in
respect of most freedoms.
However, the full implications of the fact of
human inequality have not often been drawn and certainly need to be brought
out here, as they are very relevant to Unesco's task.[21]
Many of these "genetic inequalities" revolve around the idea of intellectual
superiority: the idea that there is no equality among the intellectually
inferior and superior.
That inequality is derived from human biology - from
genetics; it is a "human fact." It just so happens that elites who propagate
this ideology, also happen to view the masses as intellectually inferior;
thus, there can be no social equality in a world with a technological
intellectual elite.
So eugenics must be employed, as the UENSCO paper
explains, to address the issues of raising human welfare to a manageable
level; that the time will come where elites will need to address the whole
of humanity as a single force, and with a single voice. Eugenics is about
the social organization and control of humanity.
Ultimately, eugenics is
about the engineering of inequality.
In genetics, elites found a way to take
discrimination down to the DNA.
Genetics as Eugenics
Award-winning author and researcher, Edwin Black, wrote an
authoritative history of eugenics in his book, "War Against the Weak," in which he
explained that,
"the incremental effort to transform eugenics into human
genetics forged an entire worldwide infrastructure," with the founding of
the Institute for Human Genetics in Copenhagen in 1938, led by Tage Kemp, a
Rockefeller Foundation eugenicist, and was financed with money from the
Rockefeller Foundation.[22]
While not abandoning the eugenics goals, the new
re-branded eugenics movement "claimed to be eradicating poverty and saving
the environment."[23]
In a 2001 issue of Science Magazine, Garland Allen, a scientific historian,
wrote about genetics as a modern form of eugenics. He began by citing a 1998
article in Time Magazine which proclaimed that,
"Personality, temperament, even life
choices. New studies show it's mostly in your genes."
Garland
explains the implications:
Coat-tailing on major advances in genetic biotechnology, these articles
portray genetics as the new "magic bullet" of biomedical science that will
solve many of our recurrent social problems. The implication is that these
problems are largely a result of the defective biology of individuals or
even racial or ethnic groups.
If aggressive or violent behavior is in the
genes, so the argument goes, then the solution lies in biomedical
intervention - gene therapy in the distant future and pharmacotherapy
(replacing the products of defective genes with drug substitutes) in the
immediate future.
By promoting such claims, are we heading toward a new version of eugenics?
Are we getting carried away with the false promise of a technological fix
for problems that really lie in the structure of our society?
My answer to
these questions is "yes," but with some important qualifications that derive
from the different historical and social contexts of the early 1900s and the
present...
The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by the Victorian polymath Francis
Galton, geographer, statistician, and first cousin of Charles Darwin. It
meant to him "truly- or well-born," and referred to a plan to encourage the
"best people" in society to have more children (positive eugenics) and to
discourage or prevent the "worst elements" of society from having many, if
any, children (negative eugenics).
Eugenics became solidified into a
movement in various countries throughout the world in the first three
decades of the 20th century, but nowhere more solidly than in the United
States and, after World War I, in Germany.[24]
While genetic traits such as eye color and the like were proven to be
hereditary,
"eugenicists were more interested in the
inheritance of social behaviors, intelligence, and personality."
Further:
American eugenicists also strove to disseminate the results of eugenic
research to the public and to lawmakers. They supported the idea of positive
eugenics [encouraging the 'best' to become better], but focused most of
their energies on negative eugenics [to encourage the 'worst' to become
fewer].
Eugenicists wrote hundreds of articles for popular magazines,
published dozens of books for the general (and some for the scientific)
reader, prepared exhibits for schools and state fairs, made films, and wrote
sermons and novels.[25]
American eugenicists, fully backed by the financial support of the major
American philanthropic fortunes, passed eugenics legislation in over 27
states across the United States, often in the form of forced sterilizations
for the mentally 'inferior', so that,
"By the 1960s, when most of these laws were
beginning to be repealed, more than 60,000 people had been sterilized
for eugenic purposes."
As Garland Allen wrote:
For the wealthy benefactors that supported eugenics, such as the Carnegie,
Rockefeller, Harriman, and Kellogg philanthropies, eugenics provided a means
of social control in a period of unprecedented upheaval and violence. It was
these same economic elites and their business interests who introduced
scientific management and organizational control into the industrial
sector...
[In 1994] we saw the resurrection of claims that there are genetic
differences in intelligence between races, leading to different
socio-economic status. Claims about the genetic basis for criminality, manic
depression, risk-taking, alcoholism, homosexuality, and a host of other
behaviors have also been rampant in scientific and especially popular
literature. Much of the evidence for such claims is as controversial today
as in the past.
We seem to be increasingly unwilling to accept what we view as imperfection
in ourselves and others. As health care costs skyrocket, we are coming to
accept a bottom-line, cost-benefit analysis of human life. This mind-set has
serious implications for reproductive decisions. If a health maintenance
organization (HMO) requires in utero screening, and refuses to cover the
birth or care of a purportedly "defective" child, how close is this to
eugenics?
If gene or drug therapy is substituted for improving our workplace
or school environments, our diets and our exercise practices, how close is
this to eugenics? Significant social changes are expensive, however.
If
eugenics means making reproductive decisions primarily on the basis of
social cost, then we are well on that road.[26]
Genetics unleash an unprecedented power into human hands: the power of
unnatural creation and the manipulation of biology.
We do not yet fully
understand nor comprehend the implications of genetic manipulation in our
food, plants, animals, and in humans, themselves. What is clear is that we
are changing the very biology of our environment and ourselves in it. While
there are many clear and obvious benefits to genetic technology, such as the
ability to enhance ailing senses (sight, hearing, etc.) and cure diseases,
the positive must be examined and discussed with the negative repercussions
of genetic manipulation so as to better direct the uses of this powerful
technology.
Debates on issues such as stem-cell research and genetic manipulation often
focus on a science versus religion aspect, where science seeks to
benevolently cure mankind of its ailments and religion seeks to preserve the
sanctity of 'creation'.
This is an irrational and narrow manner to conduct a
real debate on this monumental issue, painting the issue as black and white,
which it most certainly is not. Science can be used for good as well as bad,
and human history, most especially that of the 20th century, is nothing if
not evidence for that fact. Incredible scientific ingenuity went into the
creation of great weapons; the manipulation of the atom to kill millions in
an instant, or the manufacturing of biological and chemical weapons.
The
problem with the interaction of science and power is that with such great
power comes the temptation to use and abuse it. If the ability to create a
weapon like an atom bomb seems possible, most certainly there are those who
seek to make it probable. Where there is temptation, there is human
weakness.
So while genetics can be used for benevolent purposes and for the betterment
of humankind, so too can it be used to effectively create a biological caste
system, where in time it would be feasible to see a break in the human race,
where as human advancement technologies become increasingly available, their
use is reserved to the elite so that there comes a time where there is a
biological separation in the human species.
Oliver Curry, an evolutionary
theorist from the London School of Economics predicted that,
"the human race
will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000" and that, "The human
race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive,
intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly
goblin-like creatures."[27]
Such was the plot of H.G. Wells' classic book, "The Time
Machine," who was himself, a prominent eugenicist at the turn of the 20th
century. While this would be a long time from now, its potential results
from the decisions we make today.
Population Control as Eugenics
Not only was the field of genetics born of eugenics, and heavily financed by
the same monied-interests that seek social control; but so too was the field
of population control.
In environmental literature and rhetoric, one concept
that has emerged over the years as playing a significant part is that of
population control. Population is seen as an environmental issue because the
larger the population, the more resources it consumes and land it occupies.
In this concept, the more people there are the worse the environment
becomes.
Thus, programs aimed at
controlling population growth are often
framed in an environmentalist lens. There is also a distinctly radical
element in this field, which views population growth not simply as an
environmental concern, but which frames people, in general, as a virus that
must be eradicated if the earth is to survive.
However, in the view of elites, population control is more about controlling
the people than saving the environment. Elites have always been drawn to
population studies that have, in many areas, helped construct their
worldview. Concerns about population growth really took hold with Thomas
Malthus at the end of the 18th century.
In 1798, Malthus wrote a "theory on
the nature of poverty," and he,
"called for population control by moral
restraint," citing charity as a promotion of "generation-to-generation
poverty and simply made no sense in the natural scheme of human
progress."
Thus, the idea of 'charity' became immoral.
The eugenics movement attached
itself to Malthus' theory regarding the "rejection of the value of helping
the poor."[28]
The ideas of Malthus, and later Herbert Spencer and
Charles Darwin were
remolded into branding an elite ideology of "Social Darwinism", which was,
"the notion that in the struggle to survive
in a harsh world, many humans were not only less worthy, many were
actually destined to wither away as a rite of progress. To preserve the
weak and the needy was, in essence, an unnatural act."[29]
This theory simply justified the immense wealth, power
and domination of a small elite over the rest of humanity, as that elite saw
themselves as the only truly intelligent beings worthy of holding such power
and privilege.
Francis Galton later coined the term "eugenics" to describe this emerging
field. His followers believed that the 'genetically unfit' "would have to be
wiped away," using tactics such as, "segregation, deportation, castration,
marriage prohibition, compulsory sterilization, passive euthanasia - and
ultimately extermination."[30]
The actual science of eugenics was lacking
extensive evidence, and ultimately Galton "hoped to recast eugenics as a
religious doctrine," which was "to be taken on faith without proof."[31]
As the quest to re-brand "eugenics" was under way, a 1943 edition of
Eugenical News published an article titled "Eugenics After the War," which
cited Charles Davenport, a major founder and progenitor of eugenics, in his
vision of,
"a new mankind of biological castes with
master races in control and slave races serving them."[32]
A 1946 article in Eugenical News stated
that,
"Population, genetics, [and] psychology, are
the three sciences to which the eugenicist must look for the factual
material on which to build an acceptable philosophy of eugenics and to
develop and defend practical eugenics proposals."[33]
In the post-war period, emerging in the 1950s and going into the 1960s, the
European colonies were retracting as nations of the 'Third World' were
gaining political independence.
This reinforced support for population
control in many circles, as,
"For those who benefited most from the
global status quo, population control measures were a far more palatable
alternative to ending Third World poverty or promoting genuine economic
development."[34]
In 1952,
"John D. Rockefeller 3rd convened a group of
scientists to discuss the implications of the dramatic demographic
change. They met in Williamsburg, Virginia, under the auspices of the
National Academy of Sciences, and after two and a half days agreed on
the need for a new institution that could provide solid science to guide
governments and individuals in addressing population questions."[35]
That new institution
was to become the Population Council. Six of the Council's ten founding
members were eugenicists.[36]
According to the Population Council's website, it,
"did not itself espouse any form of
population policy. Instead, through grants to individuals and
institutions, it invested in strengthening the indigenous capacity of
countries and regions to conduct population research and to develop
their own policies. The Council also funded seminal work in U.S.
universities and further developed its own in-house research expertise
in biomedicine, public health, and social science."[37]
In 2008, Matthew Connelly, a professor at Columbia University, wrote a book
called, "Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population," in
which he critically analyzes the history of the population control movement.
He documents the rise of the field through the eugenics movement:
In 1927 a Rockefeller-funded study of contraception sought,
"some simple
measure which will be available for the wife of the slum-dweller, the
peasant, or the coolie, though dull of mind."
In 1935 one representative
told India's Council of State that population control was a necessity for
the masses, adding that "it is not what they want, but what is good for
them."
The problem with the natives was that "they are born too much and
they don't die enough," a public-health official in French Indochina stated
in 1936.[38]
Connelly's general thesis was,
"how some people have long tried to redesign
world population by reducing the fertility of other's."
Further:
Connelly examines population control as a global transnational movement
because its main advocates and practitioners aimed to reduce world
population through global governance and often viewed national governments
as a means to this end. Fatal Misconceptions is therefore an intricate
account of networks of influential individuals, international organizations,
NGOs, and national governments.[39]
As one review in the Economist pointed out,
"Much of the evil done in the name of
slowing population growth had its roots in an uneasy coalition between
feminists, humanitarians and environmentalists, who wished to help the
unwillingly fecund, and the racists, eugenicists and militarists who
wished to see particular patterns of reproduction, regardless of the
desires of those involved."
The Economist further wrote:
As the world population soared, the population controllers came to believe
they were fighting a war, and there would be collateral damage. Millions of
intra-uterine contraceptive devices were exported to poor countries although
they were known to cause infections and sterility.
"Perhaps the individual
patient is expendable in the general scheme of things," said a participant
at a conference on the devices organized in 1962 by the Population Council,
a research institute founded by John D. Rockefeller, "particularly if the
infection she acquires is sterilizing but not lethal."
In 1969 Robert
McNamara, then president of the World Bank, said he was reluctant to finance
health care "unless it was very strictly related to population control,
because usually health facilities contributed to the decline of the death
rate, and thereby to the population explosion."[40]
A review in the New York Review of Books pointed out that this movement
coincided a great deal with the feminist movement in advancing women's
reproductive rights.
However,
"these benefits were seen by many US family
planning officials as secondary to the goal of reducing the absolute
numbers of people in developing countries. The urgency of what came to
be known as the "population control movement" contributed to a climate
of coercion and led to a number of serious human rights abuses,
especially in Asian countries."[41]
Dominic Lawson, writing a review of Connelly's book for The
Sunday Times, explained that:
the population-control movement was bankrolled by America's biggest private
fortunes - the Ford family foundation, John D Rockefeller III, and Clarence
Gamble (of Procter & Gamble). These gentlemen shared not just extreme wealth
but a common anxiety: the well-to-do and clever (people like them,
obviously) were now having much smaller families than their ancestors, but
the great unwashed - Chinamen! Indians! Negroes! - were reproducing
themselves in an irresponsible manner. What they feared was a kind of
Darwinism in reverse - the survival of the unfittest.[42]
As the New Scientist reported, while contraceptives and women's fertility
rights were being expanded,
"For much of the past half-century,
population control came first and human rights had to be sacrificed."
Further, the New
Scientist wrote that Connelly,
"lays bare the dark secrets of an
authoritarian neo-Malthusian ethos that created an international
population agenda built around control."
One such horrific notion was,
"the official policies that made it
acceptable to hand out food aid to famine victims only if the women
agreed to be sterilized."[43]
In a sad irony, this seemingly
progressive movement for women's rights actually had the effect of resulting
in a humanitarian disaster, disproportionately affecting women of the
developing world.
In 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote his widely influential book, 'The
Population Bomb,'
"in which he predicted that global
overpopulation would cause massive famines as early as the 1970s."[44]
In his book, he refers to
mankind as a "cancer" upon the world:
A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population
explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the
symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but
eventually he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a
population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our
efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer.
The
operation will demand many apparent brutal and heartless decisions. The pain
may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical
surgery does the patient have a chance to survive.[45]
The American political elite fully embraced this population paradigm of
viewing the world and relations with the rest of the world.
President Lyndon
Johnson was quoted as saying,
"I'm not going to piss away foreign aid in
nations where they refuse to deal with their own population problems," while
his successor, Richard Nixon, was quoted as saying, "population control is a
must... population control must go hand in hand with aid."[46]
Robert
McNamara, President of the World Bank and former Secretary of Defense in the
Johnson administration, said that he opposed World Bank programs financing
health care,
"unless it was very strictly related to
population control, because usually health facilities contributed to the
decline of the death rate, and thereby to the population explosion."[47]
Ehrlich was also influential in tracking India's rapid population growth
into the 1970s.
The rapid population growth in India was attributed at the
time to the result of the public health system the British had set up under
the colonial government, as well as the fact that, as a means to maintaining
a relationship of dependence with Britain, the British had discouraged
industrialization in India.
As famine was around the corner in India,
"President Johnson used food aid to pressure the Indian government to meet
its family planning targets," and "By the early 1970s, Bangladesh was
spending one third of its entire health budget on family planning and
India was spending 60 percent."[48]
Further:
[B]etween the 1960s and 1980s, millions of people in India and other Asian
countries were sterilized or had IUDs [intrauterine devices], as well as
other contraceptives, inserted in unhygienic conditions. Numerous cases of
uterine perforation, excessive bleeding, infections, and even death were
reported.[49]
The Population Council knowingly sent un-sterile IUDs to India, and in the
1970s, nearly half a million women in forty-two developing countries were
treated with defective IUDs that "heightened the risk of infection and
uterine perforation," after the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) had "quietly bought up thousands of the devices at a
discount for distribution overseas."
Then sterilization was introduced as a
means for "keeping the quotas" on population control in India, as,
"sterilization was made a condition for
receiving land allocations and water for irrigation, as well as
electricity, rickshaw licenses, and medical care."
A Swedish diplomat touring a Swedish/World Bank population program at
the time was quoted as saying,
"Obviously the stories... on how young and
unmarried men are more or less dragged to the sterilization premises are
true in far too many cases."[50]
In 1967, the UN Fund for Population Activities was created, and in 1971,
"the General Assembly acknowledged that
UNFPA [United Nations Population Fund] should play a leading role within
the UN system in promoting population programs."[51]
In 1970, Nixon created the Commission on
Population Growth and the American Future, known as the Rockefeller
Commission, for its chairman,
John D. Rockefeller 3rd.
In 1972, the final
report was delivered to Nixon.
Among the members of the Commission (besides Rockefeller) were David E.
Bell, Vice President of the Ford Foundation, and Bernard Berelson, President
of the Population Council.
Among the conclusions were that,
"Population
growth is one of the major factors affecting the demand for resources and
the deterioration of the environment in the United States. The further we
look into the future, the more important population becomes," and that,
"From an environmental and resource point of view, there are no
advantages from further growth."
Further, the report warned:
The American future cannot be isolated from what is happening in the rest of
the world. There are serious problems right now in the distribution of
resources, income, and wealth, among countries. World population growth is
going to make these problems worse before they get better. The United States
needs to undertake much greater efforts to understand these problems and
develop international policies to deal with them.[52]
In 1974,
National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 was issued under the
direction of US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, otherwise known
as "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and
Overseas Interests."
Among the issues laid out in the memorandum was that,
"Growing populations will have a serious impact on the need for food
especially in the poorest, fastest growing LDCs [Lesser Developed
Countries]," and "The most serious consequence for the short and middle term
is the possibility of massive famines in certain parts of the world,
especially the poorest regions."
Further,
"rapid population growth presses on a
fragile environment in ways that threaten longer-term food production."
The report plainly stated that,
"there is a major risk of severe damage to
world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems
begin to fail, to our humanitarian values."[53]
The memorandum lays out key policy recommendations for dealing with the
"crisis" of overpopulation.
They stated that,
"our aim should be for the
world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two-child family on
the average), by about the year 2000," and that this strategy "will require
vigorous efforts by interested countries, U.N. agencies and other
international bodies to make it effective [and] U.S. leadership is
essential."
They suggested a concentration on specific countries:
-
India
-
Bangladesh
-
Pakistan
-
Nigeria
-
Mexico
-
Indonesia
-
Brazil
-
the Philippines
-
Thailand
-
Egypt
-
Turkey
-
Ethiopia
-
Colombia [54]
They recommended the "Integration of population factors and population
programs into country development planning," as well as "Increased
assistance for family planning services, information and technology," and
"Creating conditions conducive to fertility decline."
The memorandum even
specifically mentioned that,
"We must take care that our activities
should not give the appearance to the LDCs [Lesser Developed Countries]
of an industrialized country policy directed against the LDCs."[55]
Essentially, NSSM 200 made population control a key strategy in US foreign policy,
specifically related to aid and development. In other words, it was eugenics
as foreign policy.
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, declared martial law.
Her son Sanjay was appointed as the nation's chief population controller.
Sanjay "proceeded to flatten slums and then
tell the residents that they could get a new house if they would agree
to be sterilized. Government officials were given sterilization quotas.
Within a year, six million Indian men and two million women were
sterilized. At least 2,000 Indians died as a result of botched
sterilization operations."
However, the following year
there was an election, and Indira Gandhi's government was thrown out of
power, with that issue playing a major factor.[56]
Next, however,
"China became the major focus of the population control
movement, which "offered technical assistance to China's "one child" policy
of 1978-83, even helping to pay for computers that allowed Chinese
officials to track "birth permits," the official means by which the
government banned families from having more than one child and required
the aborting of additional children."[57]
Further:
Even China's draconian population programs received some support in the
1980s from the US-funded International Planned Parenthood Federation and the
UN Population Fund. Before China launched its infamous "One Child Policy,"
concerns were being raised about its "voluntary" family planning program.
In
1981, Chinese and American newspapers reported that "vehicles transporting
Cantonese women to hospitals for abortions were 'filled with wailing
noises.' Some pregnant women were reportedly 'handcuffed, tied with ropes or
placed in pig's baskets.'"
After 1983, coercion became official Chinese policy. "All women with one
child were to be inserted with a stainless-steel, tamper-resistant IUD, all
parents with two or more children were to be sterilized, and all
unauthorized pregnancies aborted," according to the One Child Policy.
During
this time, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the UN
Population Fund continued to support China's nongovernmental Family Planning
Association, even though some of its top officials also worked for the
government.[58]
The UN was not a passive participant in population control measures, as it
actively supported these harsh programs, and in many cases, rewarded
governments for their vicious tactics in reducing population growth:
In 1983, Xinzhong Qian and Indira Gandhi were awarded the first United
Nations Population Award to recognize and reward their accomplishments in
limiting the population growth in China and India in the previous decade.
During the 1970s, officials in these countries had launched extremely
ambitious population programs that were supposed to improve the quality of
the population and halt its growth. The measures used were harsh.
For
example, slum clearance resulting in the eradication of whole urban
neighborhoods and the widespread sterilization of their inhabitants was an
important part of India's 'Emergency' campaign. In Delhi, hundreds of
thousands of people were driven from their homes in events that resulted in
numerous clashes, arrests, and deaths, while a total of eight million
sterilizations were recorded in India in 1976.[59]
Horrifically,
"between the 1960s and 1980s, millions of
people in India and other Asian countries were sterilized or had IUDs,
as well as other contraceptives, inserted in unhygienic conditions.
Numerous cases of uterine perforation, excessive bleeding, infections,
and even death were reported, but these programs made little effort to
treat these conditions, or even determine their frequency, so we don't
know precisely how common they were."[60]
In the late 1980s, revelations in Brazil uncovered the NSSM 200 in Brazil
since its implementation in 1975 under the Ford Presidency.
An official
government investigation was launched, and it was discovered that, "an
estimated 44% of all Brazilian women aged between 14 and 55 had been
permanently sterilized."
Further, the programs of sterilization, undertaken
by a number of international organizations, were coordinated under the
guidance of USAID.[61]
At the UN's 1994 World Population Conference in Cairo, Third World delegates
to the conference emphasized the need for development policies as opposed to
demographic policies; that the focus must be on development, not population.
This was essentially a setback for the radical population control movement;
however, it wasn't one they couldn't work around. There was still a great
deal of support among Western elites and co-opted developing world elites
for the aims of population control.
As Connelly articulated:
It appealed to the rich and powerful because, with the spread of
emancipatory movements and the integration of markets, it began to appear
easier and more profitable to control populations than to control territory.
That's why opponents were correct in viewing it as another chapter in the
unfinished history of imperialism.[62]
It was around this point that the population control movement, while
continuing on its overall aims of curbing population growth of Third World
nations, began to further merge itself with the environmental movement.
While always working alongside the environmental movement, this period saw
the emergence of a more integrated approach to policy agendas.
Environmentalism as Eugenics
Michael Barker extensively covered the connection between the Rockefeller
and Ford foundations in funding the environmental movement in the academic
journal, Capitalism Nature Socialism.
As Barker noted, following World War
II, the public became increasingly concerned with the environment as the
"chemical-industrial complex" grew at an astounding rate.[63] Since
Rockefeller interests were heavily involved in the chemical industry, the
rising trend in environmental thought and concern had to quickly be
controlled and steered in a direction favorable to elite interests.
Two important organizations in shaping the environmental movement were the
Conservation Foundation and Resources for the Future, which largely relied
upon Rockefeller and Ford Foundation funding, and both conservation
organizations had interestingly helped to "launch an explicitly
pro-corporate approach to resource conservation."[64]
Laurance Rockefeller
served as a trustee of the Conservation Foundation, and donated $50,000
yearly throughout the 50s and 60s. Further, the Conservation Foundation was
founded by Fairfield Osborn, whose cousin, Frederick Osborn, became another
prominent voice in conservation.[65] Frederick Osborn was also working with
the Rockefeller's Population Council and was President of the American
Eugenics Society.
In 1952, the Ford Foundation created the organization Resources for the
Future (RFF), (the same year that the Rockefellers created the Population
Council), and the original founders were also "John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s
chief advisors on conservation matters."
Laurance Rockefeller joined the
board of the RFF in 1958, and the RFF got $500,000 from the Rockefeller
Foundation in 1970.[66] The Ford Foundation would also go on to create the
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.[67]
McGeorge Bundy, who was
President of the Ford Foundation from 1966 until 1979, once stated that,
"everything the foundation did could be
regarded as 'making the world safe for capitalism'."[68]
Certainly one of the pre-eminent, if not the most prominent environmental
organizations in the world is the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF).
The WWF
was founded on September 11, 1961, by Sir Julian Huxley, the first Director
General of the UN organization, UNESCO.[69] Sir Julian Huxley was also a
life trustee of the British Eugenics Society from 1925, and its President
from 1959-62.
In the biography of Julian Huxley on the British Eugenics
Society's website (now known as the Galton Institute - a genetics research
center), it stated that,
"Huxley believed that eugenics would one day be
seen as the way forward for the human race," and that, "A catastrophic event
may be needed for evolution to move at an accelerated pace, as the
extinction of the dinosaurs gave the mammals their chance to take over
the world. It is much the same with ideas whose time has not yet come;
they must survive periods when they are not generally welcome. Like the
small mammals in dinosaur times they must await their opportunity."[70]
In 1962, Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist, published her seminal
work,
Silent Spring, which has long been credited with helping launch the
modern environmental movement.
Her book was largely based around the
criticism of pesticides as harmful to the environment and human and animal
health. Of particular note, she is seen as being the starting force for the
campaign against DDT. Carson died in 1964, but her legacy was set in stone
by the emerging environmental movement.
The Environmental Defense Fund was founded in 1967 with the specific aim to
ban DDT. Some of its initial funding came from the Ford Foundation.[71]
This
also spurred the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an
official US government agency, in 1970. In 1972, the EPA banned the use of
DDT in the United States.
Since this time,
"DDT prohibitions have been expanded and
enforced by NGO pressure, coercive treaties, and threats of economic
sanctions by foundations, nations and international aid agencies."[72]
DDT is widely regarded as a carcinogen, and most have never questioned the
banning of DDT until understanding the effects of DDT usage beyond the
environmental aspect.
In particular, we need to look at Africa to understand
the significant role of DDT and
why we need to re-evaluate its potential
usage, weighing the pros and cons of doing so. We must bring in the
"human
element" and balance that out with the "environmental element" instead of
just simply writing off the human aspect to the issue.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2000, that,
"malaria infected
over 300 million people. It killed nearly 2,000,000 - most of them in
sub-Saharan Africa. Over half the victims are children, who die at the rate
of two per minute or 3,000 per day," and that, "Since 1972, over 50 million
people have died from this dreaded disease. Many are weakened by AIDS or
dysentery, but actually die of malaria."
In 2002 alone, 80,000 Ugandans died
from malaria, half of which were children.[73]
The fact is, that:
No other chemical comes close to DDT as an affordable, effective way to
repel mosquitoes from homes, exterminate any that land on walls, and
disorient any that are not killed or repelled, largely eliminating their
urge to bite in homes that are treated once or twice a year with tiny
amounts of this miracle insecticide.[74]
Donald Roberts, Professor of Tropical Public Health at the Uniformed
Services University of Health Sciences, explained that,
"DDT is long-acting;
the alternatives are not," and that, ultimately, when it comes to the issue
of poor countries and poor people, "DDT is cheap; the alternatives are not.
End of Story."[75]
Richard Tren, President of Africa Fighting Malaria, said that,
"In the 60 years since DDT was first
introduced, not a single scientific paper has been able to replicate
even one case of actual human harm from its use."
At the
end of World War II, DDT was used on nearly every concentration camp
survivor to prevent typhus, and the,
"widespread use of DDT in Europe and the
United States played vital roles in eradicating malaria and typhus on
both continents."
Further, in 1979, a World Health Organization (WHO) review of
DDT use could not find,
"any possible adverse effects of DDT," and said it
was the "safest pesticide used for residual spraying and vector control
programs."[76]
However, organizations such as the WHO, United Nations Environmental Program
(UNEP), the World Bank, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and a variety of
others still remained adamantly opposed to the use of DDT. While DDT is not
outright banned, it is extremely difficult to have it used in places like
Africa due to funding.
The funding for health care and disease-related
programs comes largely from western aid agencies and NGOs, and,
"The US
Agency for International Development [USAID] will not fund any indoor
residual spraying and neither will most of the other donors," explained
Richard Tren, which "means that most African countries have to use whatever
[these donors] are willing to fund (bed nets), which may not be the most
appropriate tool."[77]
A Ugandan Health Minister said in 2002 that,
"Our people's lives are of primary
importance. The West is concerned about the environment because we share
it with them. But it is not concerned about malaria because it is not a
problem there. In Europe, they used DDT to kill anopheles mosquitoes
that cause malaria. Why can't we use DDT to kill the enemy in our camp?"[78]
Michael Crichton, an author and PhD molecular biologist, plainly stated,
"Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful
episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better,
and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die, and we
didn't give a damn."
As author Paul Driessen eloquently explained, the West,
"would never tolerate being told they had to
protect their children solely by using bed nets, larvae-eating fish and
medicinal treatments. But they have been silent about conditions in
Africa, and about the intolerable attitudes of environmental groups, aid
agencies and their own government[s]."[79]
James Lovelock, a scientist, researcher, environmentalist and futurist,
became famous for popularizing his idea known as
the Gaia hypothesis.
He
first started writing about this theory in journals in the early 1970s, but
it shot to fame with the publication of his 1979 book, "Gaia: A New Look at
Life on Earth."
The general theory is that the Earth acts as a single
organism, where all facets interact and react in a particular way that
promotes an optimal environment on Earth. Thus, the theory was named after
the Greek Earth goddess, Gaia.
In the opening paragraph of his book, he
stated that,
"the quest for Gaia is an attempt to find
the largest living creature on Earth."[80]
His theory provoked a fair amount criticism within
the scientific community, with some referring to it as merely a metaphorical
description of Earth processes.[81]
Lovelock has also been known to make wild predictive statements. In 2006, he
wrote an article for the Independent, in which he stated that,
"My Gaia
theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything
alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease," and that the Earth is
"seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as
long as 100,000 years."[82]
In 2008, the Guardian interviewed Lovelock, who contended that it was
"too
late" to do anything about global warming, that catastrophe was inevitable,
and that, "about 80%" of the world's population [will] be wiped out by
2100."[83]
In August of 2009, Lovelock became a patron of the Optimum
Population Trust, a British population control organization.
Upon his
becoming a patron, he stated that,
"Those who fail to see that population
growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either
ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems
are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is
irrational."
He
added,
"How can we possibly decrease carbon
emissions and land use while the number of emitters and the space they
occupy remorselessly increases? When will the environmentalists who
claim to be green recognize the truth and speak out?"[84]
Taxes and trades in carbon and carbon credits virtually commodify our
atmosphere, so that the very air we breathe becomes property that is bought
and sold.
A tax on carbon is a tax on life. Since the lifeblood of an
industrial society is oil, this requires carbon emissions in order to
develop. The restraints on carbon, particularly the notion of trading carbon
credits - i.e., trading the 'right' to pollute a certain amount - will
disproportionately affect the developing world, which cannot afford to
finance its own development.
Corporations and banks will trade and own the
world's carbon credits, granting them the exclusive right to pollute and
control the world's resources and environment. The carbon trading market
could become twice the size of the world oil market within ten years
time.[85]
In regards to the Copenhagen Climate talks, which essentially broke down in
December of 2009, the real source of this failure lies in a document that
revealed the true nature of the negotiations, referred to as the 'Danish
Text.'
The 'Danish Text' was a leaked Danish government document which
outlined a draft agreement,
"that hands more power to rich countries," as,
"The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World
Bank" and "would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate
change dependent on them taking a range of actions."[86]
In other words, it
becomes the new means of exerting "conditionality" upon the developing, and
increasingly the developed world. 'Conditionality' implying - of course - a
restructuring of society along lines designated by the
World Bank.
While these are but examples of the influence and shaping of science to mold
society and control humanity, much more discussion and debate is needed on
these issues. While science can be used for the benefit of mankind, so too
can it be used for the control and oppression of humanity. The people who
run our societies view us as needing to be controlled, so they redirect the
social apparatus into systems of control and coercion.
Science can allow us
to understand an idea or organism; but in doing so, it can also allow us to
understand how to dominate and control that idea or organism. We must
continually engage in a discussion of our changing society to better
understand the nature of its changes and how that could affect us both
positively and negatively.
If not for the Technological (or 'Technetronic') Revolution, elites would
not have access to such powerful means of control; but, simultaneously,
people have never had such great access to each other through mass
communications and the Internet.
So while environmental science can allow us
to better understand our environment, something we seem still to be very
much an adolescent in accomplishing, it also unleashes an ability, and
what's greater - a temptation - to control and shape the environment.
Science can be used to both free and imprison the human mind. It is
imperative that we approach and discuss the sciences (and all issues) from
this perspective, not from a narrow-minded and divisive black-and-white
world of 'left' and 'right', of religion or science.
We cannot simply view
criticism and opposition to social and scientific endeavors as 'backwards',
or based on 'religious doctrine'. There are rational reasons and purposes
for criticism and debate on all of these issues, and rational positions of
dissent.
Issues like
climate change are generally divided upon those who
'believe' in
climate change, and those who are termed 'deniers', which is a disingenuous
and divisive approach to rational debate. It silences the critical
scientists, who do not get funding from governments or corporations. It
classifies those who dissent as 'deniers', employing rhetoric like that used
against
Holocaust deniers, whereas the majority of the dissent within the
scientific community comes from those who simply see the role of other
forces (often natural) in shaping and changing our climate, such as solar
radiation.
They do not 'deny' climate change, but they dissent on the causes
and consequences. Is their opinion not worth hearing?
If we are reshaping
our entire global political and economic spheres as a result of our
supposedly 'collective' perception of this issue - as we certainly are - then is it not of the utmost importance that we hear from other voices,
especially those of dissent, in order to better understand the issue?
Merging Man and Machine
- The Future of Humanity
Eisenhower warned,
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by
Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever
present - and is gravely to be regarded," and that, "we must also be alert
to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become
the captive of a scientific-technological elite."[87]
Bill Joy, a computer scientist and
co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who was co-chair of the presidential
commission on the future of IT research, wrote an article for Wired Magazine
in 2000 entitled, "Why the Future Doesn't Need
Us."
Joy explained the possibilities in a technological society of the near
future, that "new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology
were giving us the power to remake the world."
One startling development in
the world is that of robot technology and its potential impact upon society.
Joy explains:
Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have
yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century
technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a
different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically,
robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying
factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot
can become many, and quickly get out of control.[88]
Joy explains that while these technologies can, and consistently are
promoted and justified in the name of doing good (such as curing diseases,
etc.),
"with each of these technologies, a sequence
of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of
great power and, concomitantly, great danger."
Joy ominously warns that:
The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR)
- are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and
abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are
widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not
require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable
the use of them.
Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of
knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely
amplified by the power of self-replication.
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further
perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond
that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on
to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.[89]
In other words: we are entering an era faced with the
"scientific dictators"
of Huxley's nightmare vision in 'Brave New World'.
Joy explained that by
2030,
"we are likely to be able to build machines,
in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of
today."
Thus:
As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances
of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics,
enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up
the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The
replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural
world are about to become realms of human endeavor.[90]
Joy examined the transformative nature of robotics, as an intelligent robot
may be built by 2030,
"And once an intelligent robot exists, it is
only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can
make evolved copies of itself."
Further,
"A second dream of robotics is that we will
gradually replace ourselves with our robotic technology, achieving near
immortality by downloading our consciousnesses."
Joy further warns of the
potential for an arms race to develop in these technologies, just as took
place in the nuclear, radiological and biological weapons of the 20th
century.[91]
Joy aptly explained that in the 20th century, those technologies were
largely the products of governments, whereas in the 21st century, the new
technologies of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics (GNR), are
the products of corporations and capitalism. Thus, the driving force is that
of competition, desire, and the economic system.
Hence, there is far less
regulation and discussion of these new technologies than there was of the
20th century technologies, as the new technologies are developed in
privately owned labs, not public. Joy often quotes a passage from
Kaczynski's Unabomber Manifesto regarding a future dystopia, which Joy feels
has "merit in the reasoning."
In the event that human control over machines
is retained (as opposed to the machines taking over):
[C]ontrol over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny
elite - just as it is today, but with two differences.
Due to improved
techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because
human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a
useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply
decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use
propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the
birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to
the elite.
Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play
the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to
it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are
raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a
wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become
dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem."
Of course, life
will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or
psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process
or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby.
These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will
most certainly not be free.
They will have been reduced to the status of
domestic animals.[92]
A horrifying vision indeed; but one which builds upon the ideas of Huxley,
Russell and Brzezinski, who envisioned a people who - through biological and
psychological means - are made to love their own servitude.
Huxley saw the
emergence of a world in which humanity, still a wild animal, is
domesticated; where only the elite remain wild and have freedom to make
decisions, while the masses are domesticated like pets.
Huxley opined that,
"Men and women will grow up to love their
servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good
reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be
overthrown."[93]
We Can Have a Scientific Dictatorship, or...
We can create an alternative.
We use, strengthen, mobilize, decentralize,
and mobilize the global political awakening into a global movement of people
not simply politically aware, but politically active and engaged. A world
where people do not simply observe the apparatus of political, economic and
social power influencing their lives; but in which the people actively seek
to change it to better suit their lives and their freedom.
We need to
understand each other better; but to do that, we cannot view each other
through the harsh and deceptive lens of power.
To understand each other, we must know each other. People must communicate
with one another around the world; ideas must be exchanged between people
and discussed, debated, and decided upon; the people must determine their
own futures. Take the elites out of the equation: if you do not want them to
dominate your lives, do not give them the power to do so.
Talk to each other
and determine your own polities, economies and societies. Do not entrust
dying ideas and diseased institutions to determine your future for you.
The tools and systems of social control are vast and evasive; they penetrate
the very psychology and biology of the individual. The elite feel that they
are entrusted - due to their supposed 'innate' superior intelligence and
specialization - to control society and reshape it as they see fit, to
actively mold and construct public opinion and ideas.
They have a belief
that people are essentially irrational emotional beings, and that they must
be controlled by an elite or else the world would be in chaos. This is what
underpins the ideas of 'stability' and 'order'. The state has been used to
fight every progressive form of change that society has ever developed for
its betterment: women's rights, racial rights, civil rights, the anti-war
movement, gay rights, etc. Initially, the impulse - the immediate reaction
of the state - is to oppress social movements and to suppress human
freedoms.
This approach often leads to a situation in which social movements
are only accepted by the state when they are co-opted by the state or
powerful economic forces, which then exert their influence over the state to
alter the policy.
If we gain stability and order at the cost of our very humanity, is it worth
it? Do we really need this eternal guidance, which has been constant through
almost all of human history, to treat the human species as if it was in a
constant state of adolescence, never quite prepared to make its own
decisions or go out in the world on its own?
Well it is time for humanity to
grow up, leave the strange comfort of mental authoritarianism.
The strive
for human autonomy has only just begun; only now is all of humanity
politically awakened; only now - and never before - has all of known
humanity had such a great and perfect opportunity to remake the world,
retake power, re-imagine individuality and revitalize freedom.
Our world is governed not by a conspiracy, but by ideas: ideas of power,
money, the state, military, empire, race, religion, sex, gender, politics
and people. The only challenge to those ideas, are new ideas. There are
roughly 6,000 members of the 'global elite,'[94] there are over 6.8 billion
people in the world. That sounds like a lot of potential for new ideas. The
greatest resource for the future of humanity is not in the 'control' of
humanity, which is doomed to ultimate failure, but for the release and
encouragement of the human mind and spirit.
People can understand the science and mechanics of the brain, the functions
of psychology, the ability of human strength; but still, today, we do not
know how all that biology can create Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Humanity is
still very much a mystery to humans, and it would seem likely that the best
answers to the questions of 'how should we live?' and 'how should our
societies function?' are best answered with the bigger question of 'why are
we here'?
If the purpose of people and humanity is to consume and dominate, then our
present situation seems only natural. If we were meant for more, then we
must become more. If we were meant to be free, we must become free. Ideas
are powerful things: they can build empires, and collapse them just as
easily.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered one of his most moving and
important speeches, "Beyond Vietnam," in which he spoke out against war and
empire.
He left humanity with sobering words:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We
must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a
"person-oriented" society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.[95]
Endnotes
[1] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited. (Harper
Perennial, New York, 2004), page 255
[2] Ibid, page 259.
[3] Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, (Routledge, 1985),
page 40
[4] Ibid, page 66.
[5] Ibid, page 62.
[6] Ibid, page 58.
[7] Ibid, page 117.
[8] Ibid, page 118.
[9] Ibid, page 63.
[10] Aldous Huxley, The Ultimate Revolution, March 20, 1962. Berkeley
Language Center - Speech Archive SA 0269:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Speech/VideoTest/audiofiles.html#huxley
[11] Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation.
January 17, 1961: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
[12] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the
Technetronic Era. (Viking Press, New York, 1970), page 97
[13] Edwin Black, Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection. The
San Francisco Chronicle: November 9, 2003:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-11-09/opinion/17517477_1_eugenics-ethnic-cleansing-master-race
[14] Michael Barker, The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting
the Rockefeller-Ford Connection. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Volume 19,
Number 2, June 2008
[15] Bruno Waterfield, Dutch Prince Bernhard 'was member of Nazi party'. The
Telegraph: March 5, 2010:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/7377402/Dutch-Prince-Bernhard-was-member-of-Nazi-party.html
[16] Julian Huxley, UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy (1946).
Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation, page 61.
[17] Ibid, page 21.
[18] Ibid, pages 37-38.
[19] Ibid, page 38.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid, page 18.
[22] Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to
Create a Master Race. (New York: Thunders's Mouth Press, 2004), page 418
[23] MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER, The War Against Fertility. The Wall Street
Journal: April 1, 2008:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120700566688178565.html?mod=hpp_europe_leisure
[24] Garland E. Allen, "Is a New Eugenics Afoot?" Science Magazine, October
5, 2001: Vol. 294, no. 5540:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/294/5540/59
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Niall Firth, Human race will 'split into two different species'. The
Daily Mail: October 26, 2007:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-489653/Human-race-split-different-species.html
[28] Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to
Create a Master Race (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004), 11-12
[29] Ibid, pages 12-13.
[30] Ibid, page 19.
[31] Ibid, page 28.
[32] Ibid, page 416.
[33] Ibid, page 418.
[34] Simon Butler, The Dark History of Population Control. Climate and
Capitalism: November 23, 2009: http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=1293
[35] History, ABOUT THE POPULATION COUNCIL. The Population Council:
September 10, 2008: http://www.popcouncil.org/about/history.html
[36] MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER, The War Against Fertility. The Wall Street
Journal: April 1, 2008:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120700566688178565.html?mod=hpp_europe_leisure
[37] History, ABOUT THE POPULATION COUNCIL. The Population Council:
September 10, 2008: http://www.popcouncil.org/about/history.html
[38] Review, Horrid History. The Economist: May 24, 2008
[39] Heli Kasanen, BOOK REVIEW: Fatal misconception: the struggle to control
world population, By Matthew Connelly: The Electronic Journal of Sustainable
Development, 2009, 1(3), page 15
[40] Review, Horrid History. The Economist: May 24, 2008
[41] Helen Epstein, The Strange History of Birth Control. The New York
Review of Books: August 18, 2008:
http://www.powells.com/review/2008_08_18.html
[42] Dominic Lawson, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World
Population by Matthew Connelly. The Sunday Times: May 18, 2008:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article3938455.ece
[43] Fred Pearce, Fatal Misconception by Matthew Connelly. The New
Scientist: May 21, 2008:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826572.400-review-ifatal-misconceptioni-by-matthew-connelly.html
[44] Jack M. Hollander, The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not
Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy. (University of California
Press: Berkeley, 2003), page 30
[45] Lara Knudsen, Reproductive Rights in a Global Context. (Vanderbilt
University Press: 2006), page 3
[46] Simon Butler, The Dark History of Population Control. Climate and
Capitalism: November 23, 2009: http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=1293
[47] Nicholas D. Kristof, Birth Control for Others. The New York Times:
March 23, 2008:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/books/review/Kristof-t.html
[48] Helen Epstein, The Strange History of Birth Control. The New York
Review of Books: August 18, 2008:
http://www.powells.com/review/2008_08_18.html
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid.
[51] UNFPA, UNFPA and the United Nations System. About UNFPA:
http://www.unfpa.org/about/unsystem.htm
[52] Population and the American Future, The Report of The Commission on
Population Growth and the American Future. The Center for Research on
Population and Security: March 27, 1972:
http://www.population-security.org/rockefeller/001_population_growth_and_the_american_future.htm#Commission
[53] NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security
and Overseas Interests. National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200: April
24, 1974: http://www.population-security.org/11-CH3.html#summary
[54] Ibid.
[55] Ibid.
[56] MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER, The War Against Fertility. The Wall Street
Journal: April 1, 2008:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120700566688178565.html?mod=hpp_europe_leisure
[57] Ibid.
[58] Helen Epstein, The Strange History of Birth Control. The New York
Review of Books: August 18, 2008:
http://www.powells.com/review/2008_08_18.html
[59] Heli Kasanen, BOOK REVIEW: Fatal misconception: the struggle to control
world population, By Matthew Connelly: The Electronic Journal of Sustainable
Development, 2009, 1(3), page 15
[60] Helen Epstein, The Strange History of Birth Control. The New York
Review of Books, August 18, 2008:
http://www.powells.com/review/2008_08_18.html
[61] F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic
Manipulation. (Global Research, Montreal: 2007), page 65
[62] Simon Butler, The Dark History of Population Control. Climate and
Capitalism: November 23, 2009: http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=1293
[63] Michael Barker, The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting
the Rockefeller-Ford Connection. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Volume 19,
Number 2, June 2008: page 15
[64] Ibid, pages 19-20.
[65] Ibid, page 20.
[66] Ibid, page 22.
[67] Ibid, page 25.
[68] Ibid, page 26.
[69] WWF, A History of WWF: The Sixties. World Wildlife Fund: November 13,
2005: http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/who_we_are/history/sixties/index.cfm
[70] John Timson, Portraits of the Pioneers: Sir Julian Huxley, FRS. The
Galton Institute: December 1999 Newsletter:
http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL9912/julian_huxley.htm
[71] Michael Barker, The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting
the Rockefeller-Ford Connection. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Volume 19,
Number 2, June 2008: page 25
[72] Paul Driessen, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death. (Merril
Press: 2004), page 67
[73] Ibid, page 66.
[74] Ibid, page 67.
[75] Ibid, page 68.
[76] Ibid, page 69.
[77] Ibid, page 71.
[78] Ibid, page 72.
[79] Ibid, page 73.
[80] James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. (Oxford: 1979), page
1
[81] S.J. Gould, Kropotkin was no crackpot. Natural History, June 1997:
pages 12-21
[82] James Lovelock, The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may
last as long as 100,000 years. The Independent: January 16, 2006:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-morbid-fever-that-may-last-as-long-as-100000-years-523161.html
[83] Decca Aitkenhead, 'Enjoy life while you can'. The Guardian: March 1,
2008:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
[84] OPT, GAIA SCIENTIST TO BE OPT PATRON. News Release: August 26, 2009:
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/releases/opt.release26Aug09.htm
[85] Terry Macalister, Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in
next decade. The Guardian: November 29, 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/carbon-trading-market-copenhagen-summit
[86] John Vidal, Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text'
leak. The Guardian: December 8, 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text
[87] Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation.
January 17, 1961: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
[88] Bill Joy, Why the future doesn't need us. Wired Magazine: April 2000:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
[89] Ibid.
[90] Ibid.
[91] Ibid.
[92] Ibid.
[93] Time, The Press: Brave New Newsday. Time Magazine: June 9, 1958:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868521,00.html
[94] Laura Miller, The rise of the superclass. Salon: March 14, 2008:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/03/14/superclass
[95] Rev. Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a
meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html