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Part 6 The New World Order Visions of The Rockefellers John D. Rockefeller III, Laurance, the Cousins and the Rockefeller Network Today
JOHN AND LAURANCE - SAVING THE WORLD FROM ITSELF
On some levels this should be no surprise, given the more prominent public roles of Nelson and David, who clearly overshadowed their siblings in terms of political power and influence; but from the point of view of the New World Order, to ignore the respective contributions of John and Laurance to the Rockefeller globalist ideology is to commit a significant oversight.
This error is, however, the
inevitable consequence of their much lower public profile, even the
invisibility of this duo. John D. Rockefeller III (hereafter
JDR3),
despite being the titular heir to the Rockefeller fortune and
carrying the name of Standard Oil's feared founder, was hardly a
prominent public figure during his lifetime, while Laurance has
always eschewed public exposure, rarely making public speeches or
appearances.
It is most evident in their avowed
enthusiasm for environmentalism, though through the distorted prism
of needing to conduct population control amongst the mass of the
poor rather than the rich, and, in JDR3's case, of his moves to open
the economies of East Asia to American capital.
A perception that Rockefeller gains were ill-gotten was
only reinforced by John D. Rockefeller Senior's deliberate refusal
to discuss the origins of Standard Oil with his children or
grandchildren.
JDR3 strove to meet Junior's lofty standards of personal decorum and sacrifice, devoting himself to charitable works, eschewing luxuries, and displaying seemingly endless self-criticism. 1
This soon afflicted JDR3, especially as he took his place in the Rockefeller philanthropic network, chairing the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board and later founding the Asia Society and the Population Council. Alex Morris, the author of the otherwise respectful tome Those Rockefeller Brothers (1953), noted that in an 18-year period JDR3 had been a member of at least 36 boards and committees. 2
In fact, his involvement began at the end
of the 1920s. Besides the Rockefeller Foundation and General
Education Board, JDR3 had also been a board member of the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the China Medical Board
and the Bureau of Social Hygiene.
JDR3 first displayed this newfound sensibility in the early 1950s, after having served in the US Navy during World War II and later as a cultural consultant to John Foster Dulles, then heading the US negotiation on a treaty with Japan. Out of that period of activity in service of government, JDR3 developed a deep and abiding interest in all things Asian.
This more
expansive world outlook Junior's eldest son resolved to impress upon
Americans in general.
The Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR), to which the Rockefeller Foundation had given support, was attacked for allegedly facilitating the "loss" of China to the Communists. Leading the charge against the IPR and foundations in general was the Special House Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations (the Reece Committee).
Although many of the Reece Committee's charges were perhaps unjustified - especially given Senator Reece's refusal to allow foundation leaders to formally challenge the accusations against them - it had succeeded, if only temporarily, in restraining the operations of the foundations. JDR3 sought to get around this by recreating the IPR under a new guise by dispersing its responsibilities to a range of new and existing organizations.
The
IPR's academic functions, for instance, were transferred to the Far
Eastern Association, while its cultural role was assumed by JDR3's
own creation, the Asia Society, formally launched in 1956.
3
So, although
seemingly devoted to cultural projects, JDR3 in effect planned for
the role of the Asia Society to "grow into other activities in due
course".
4
The Asia Society now considers issues of foreign, economic and defense policy in the region as a matter of routine and describes its "pan-Asian approach" as inherently sensible at a time when "many Asia/Pacific nations are forging stronger economic and political links with their neighbors, and many pressing issues, from trade to security to the environment, cut across national boundaries". 5
The implications of this "pan-Asian approach",
especially when seen in the context of Nelson's and David's own
advocacy of regional integration, are too obvious to warrant further
exposition.
According to Steve Weissman, JDR3 and other founders of the early "Eco-Establishment", which comprised the Population Council and Laurance Rockefeller's Conservation Foundation, are united by the view that natural resources must be conserved or, to be more precise, protected from being exploited by smaller businesses and individuals so as to maintain an ongoing supply of resources for the exclusive benefit of larger business entities in the long run. 6
Controlling the
population formed an inevitable part of this program of
conservation - something that JDR3 had embraced with obvious
enthusiasm since his days with the Rockefeller-funded Bureau of
Social Hygiene. This was in tune with the long-term interests of the
Rockefellers in this issue, something evident since 1936 when the
Rockefeller Foundation had provided funds to the
Office of
Population Research at Princeton University.
7
JDR3 argued that there was a "relationship between population growth and social development" and that "responsible leaders" in each country needed to "decide whether population stabilization was required".
There was a "cold inevitability, a certainty that is mathematical, that gives the problems posed by too-rapid population growth a somber and chilling caste indeed".
The language was indeed careful, but the implications were soon apparent:
In his book, The Second American Revolution (1973), JDR3 persisted in likening overpopulation to nuclear war, arguing that it was the "slow way" to "render [the] planet uninhabitable"; in fact, "no problem is more fundamental in long-range terms".
JDR3 noted with some pride the findings of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, set up by Congress in 1970 with him as Chairman, 9 that the "time has come for the United States to welcome and plan for a stabilized population" and that "no substantial benefit will result from further growth of the nation's population".
But for JDR3, getting population stabilization right in the US was
merely a dress rehearsal for applying such methods globally. By
being able to "cope with these broad problems on the home front",
JDR3 wrote, America would be "better equip[ped] to play a
constructive role internationally".10
David Rockefeller also made his contribution, using language perhaps more revealing than JDR3 chose, but hardly out of tune with sentiments of the Rockefeller family, no matter how pious its public image, that the population problem was one of economic and political stability.
It would also impact upon the "economic well-being" of American businesses, should rampant population growth fail to "create a climate of stability and order which is necessary to attract private capital".
And noting that
America was "rapidly depleting [its] domestic reserves of a vast
array of minerals needed by [its] industrial complex", David made
the odd suggestion that the "population barrier to development"
might prevent those goods reaching the US
12
- the unstated implication
being that if there are too many of them, then we cannot continue to
take what is surely ours by right…
This is probably not
surprising as the transparent objective of population control
activists, at least those residing within the Establishment, is to
maintain a global racial balance that favors the rich countries as
well as ensures that developing countries' resources can still be
exploited with little competition from indigenous peoples.
Having secured his own well-being, JDR3 was determined to deny it to others, warning that,
He followed this
prescription with calls for numerous types of environmental
legislation, regulation and enforcement as well as energy
conservation, and even suggested, in an obvious allusion to the
Club
of Rome's apocalyptic studies, that the "ethic of perpetual economic
growth" should probably be discarded.14
Despite the government's strength, problems were "not getting solved"; in fact, there was a "sheer overload" of government resources. As a solution, JDR3 proposed an "essentially conservative", "long-term policy to decentralize and privatize many government functions". Reading this now, after the tumultuous economic reforms and privatization agenda of the 1980s and 1990s, we can see from which corners this program was supported.
By "privatize", JDR3 indicated that he meant "moving
as many government functions and responsibilities toward the private
sector as possible", and he envisaged achieving this goal through
deregulation and the relaxation of anti-trust provisions. To
encourage "philanthropy as a social instrument" he pushed for
changes to the tax laws to make it easier to contribute to the
foundations.15
As for John D.
Rockefeller III, though, he remains a peripheral figure in most
New
World Order accounts despite most of his prescriptions playing an
integral role in the erosion of national sovereignty: by seeking to
reduce the power of governments while increasing that of private
groups; lending support to coordinated international efforts to
control population growth;
16 and endorsing a range of measures
designed to counter environmental damage, but with obvious
implications for international regulation.
But
in future New World Order accounts, a more in-depth examination of
JDR3's agenda, particularly his views on population control and the
role of philanthropic organizations, is surely warranted.
In most New World Order accounts, when he is actually mentioned it is usually assumed by default that Laurance shares the Rockefeller family goal of achieving world government, for the "Rockefellers are 100% Illuminati" (Icke) - though this agreement is by no means complete.
Disputing this apparent consensus is UFO researcher Michael Hesemann who, when queried by Israeli investigative journalist Barry Chamish on his dealings with the nonagenarian philanthropist, declared:
More mainstream admirers and critics tend to pigeon-hole Laurance as a "venture capitalist" (Lundberg), while a more recent account of his life has venerated the philanthropist as,
Part of the problem in discerning the most likely explanation is Laurance's deliberately chosen obscurity.
Taking a public role has not been his preferred path; instead, he has operated through a variety of organizations to achieve his desired goals, taking the concept of delegation to an even higher degree than his siblings. As Chernow has observed, Laurance possesses "his grandfather's enigmatic detachment", showing little interest in attracting the limelight.
Laurance majored in philosophy at Princeton, the exposure to "rational scrutiny" causing him to dispense with most of his religious beliefs. After dropping out of Harvard Law School, Laurance took up the Rockefeller seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1934, where he soon displayed his business acumen, buying large stakes in a number of aerospace enterprises including McDonnell–Douglas, all of which benefited from wartime and later Cold War boosts to national defense expenditures. 20
Laurance was
already a designated beneficiary of the Rockefeller trusts, but his
ventures only added to his wealth. The issue, though, is to what end
he intended to deploy it.
This might seem a somewhat uncontroversial, even laudable, goal in some quarters and, in terms of the New World Order, quite close to being irrelevant.
In terms of
the Rockefeller goal of changing how people think,
Laurance's
proclaimed objective warrants a closer look, for such an aim is
consistent with the overall Rockefeller strategy of undermining
national sovereignty; quite simply, people's thinking must be
changed for a world state to work.
What he appeared to have in mind, however, was the conformity of the American people to a new set of ideals, a new "ecological ethic":
Laurance went on to observe that a "new pattern of living" had emerged in the 1970s that included a wide range of recreational fads such as fitness as well as the growing commitment to environmentalist practices such as energy efficiency and recycling.
This "new pattern", he observed, was proving to be "essential to the
well-being of individuals and of the nation". That all Americans
adopt this new ethic voluntarily was essential, he opined, otherwise
"authoritarian" controls might be necessary to stave off
environmental and social degradation.
23
This has ranged from his founding of the American Conservation Association (formerly the Conservation Foundation) in 1958, through to his ongoing financial support for such groups as:
Some of
these are clearly activist environmentalist organizations; the
others have more esoteric concerns.
According to the CIIS website, project co-ordinator Professor Brian Swimme,
Swimme himself was quick to thank his benefactor and make the bold claim that his effort to create a "new story of the evolving universe" by combining existing religious and scientific accounts of creation would "serve as a link in creating an organizing mythic framework for the new millennium".24
The range of UFO organizations and projects he has funded, and alleged contacts with the US Government on the issue, is worth reviewing: 25
The purpose of Laurance Rockefeller's dabbling in the UFO field has long posed a puzzle to New World Order researchers. One popular suggestion, drawing on an idea probably pioneered by the late William Cooper in his book, Behold A Pale Horse (1991), is that Laurance's activities serve a more sinister agenda to "present an 'alien invasion'…as a pretext to fully entrench the New World Order" (Watson).
The alien presence, though, is to be deliberately and elaborately faked. As evidence of this intent, the public musings of President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and 1988, on how an "alien threat" or being "threatened by… a power from another planet" would cause all of humanity to set aside its differences and "come together" as "citizens of the world", are often cited.
Coupled with Laurance's efforts to confirm the
existence of an alien presence and those of Hollywood to shape
public attitudes towards extraterrestrials, the stage is supposedly
being set to deceive the public.
26
If this theory is true, then its advocates may rest assured they will be fêted for their prescience should the time come. In the view of this author, however, it seems more likely that Laurance's dabbling in the UFO scene, besides reflecting some possible eccentricities on his part, forms part of his broader agenda to try to mould humanity's ethical outlook.
Rather than trying to establish the existence of a negative "alien threat", the aim is gradually to reinforce the sense that there is a genuine, possibly benevolent, alien presence out there - a presence that by its very existence challenges existing religious, cultural and political frameworks, surely compelling us to coalesce around a single new idea.
Perhaps along the lines of Swimme's "New Story of the
Universe"…
Their contribution to the globalist ideology launched by Junior in the 1920s and further transformed by their parents is barely recognized yet no less significant, not least because of the major generational rupture revealed at length in Peter Collier and David Horowtiz's book, The Rockefellers (1976).
Caught up in the political tumult of the late 1960s and early 1970s, most of the children of the Rockefeller brothers, especially those belonging to David, rejected their family's legacy (and even the name), embracing leftist causes including opposition to the Vietnam War and a version of environmentalism less tied to the plutocratic version of perfection promulgated by JDR3 and Laurance.
After a period
in Brazil working on poverty alleviation, she was involved in
similar programs in Boston and New York. Since the 1980s, however, a
mellowing of Dulany's opinions has been more than apparent, as she
has joined many of the organizations in which her father has played
such a key role, including the CFR, the Overseas Development Council
and the Rockefeller Foundation.
27
Firstly, there
is David Rockefeller's key role in the Global Philanthropists
Circle, a Synergos subsidiary - surely a case of the fox guarding the
hen house, given David's own admitted role in conceiving the
so-called "Washington Consensus", which is behind much of the
poverty in Latin America. And secondly, Synergos's focus on
enhancing the role and reach of philanthropy throughout those
regions seems more a case of enhancing the role of non-state actors
into a global enterprise - an explicit objective of both David and
JDR3.
Also in 1997, she co-chaired a CFR-sponsored
Independent Task Force on Promoting US Economic Relations with
Africa. Among the recommendations of the task force were:
endorsement of an "Africa Growth and Opportunity Act" to increase US
private investment in Africa and create the groundwork for free
trade agreements in the region; and for the US to pay its
outstanding commitments to "the International Development
Association, the African Development Bank and Fund, and the United
Nations in order to carry a fair share of international cooperation
in support of African development".
30
The Panel's definition of "Civil Society", according to a "contextual paper" prepared by the Panel's Chairman, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, "encompasses a wide variety of non-state actors, including parliamentarians and the private sector" and "non-government organizations".
With relations between the UN and Civil Society beginning to "show signs of strain", there was a need for "greater consistency and coherence" to be "introduced in the rules of engagement with civil society".
Cardoso explicitly linked this goal to the UN's "key role" in "strengthening global governance" and "building a cosmopolitan law". Some UN member states were wary of increased NGO participation in such avenues, Cardoso noted, but the proper response was to undermine those objections to "reduce distrust, demonstrate the effectiveness of collaboration and build consensus…" 31
The aim of the Panel is not to exclude NGOs from decision-making processes, but to formalize and entrench their presence within the UN system, giving them an enduring role in building effective structures of global governance.
Peggy Dulany's participation on the Panel is unlikely to
result in any deviation from this goal.
He is a trustee
and former Chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the
Asian
Cultural Council, an honorary trustee of the Brookings Institution,
a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former President
of the Rockefeller Family Fund. He has also been involved in a
number of environmental organizations, including as a member of the
Pew Oceans Commission, a trustee of the National Park Foundation and
founder of the Alaska Fund for the Future. David Junior's main
business role has been as Director and former Chairman of
Rockefeller & Co., Inc.
In a speech on the relationship between business and the arts in 1997, for example, he observed that:
The answer to this dilemma, he opined, was,
Steven Rockefeller
Steven's prescriptions were perhaps unsurprising, given his role in formulating the Earth Charter, a document released in March 2000 by the Earth Charter Commission.
The purpose of the Charter, according to Steven, who was Chairman of the Earth Charter International Drafting Committee, is to,
Providing overall guidance to those forces, particularly NGOs, which are taking part in the steady erosion of national sovereignty and the undermining of those democratic systems that exist through the construction of more effective international institutions, seems to be a primary objective.
Pointing to the,
The Earth Charter Initiative is no enterprise set up by an otherwise obscure academic, but a joint effort involving Maurice Strong, the Chairman of the Earth Council, and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President of Green Cross International.
Funding for the Earth Charter Initiative has come from the RBF (of which Steven is Chairman), some UN agencies, and the Netherlands government. More importantly, the Charter's authors hope for it to receive endorsement from the UN General Assembly, making it into a "soft law document" - much like the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is a statement of intentions rather than a binding document.
However, as Steven notes,
With this in mind, a "hard
law treaty", the Draft International Covenant on Environment and
Development, has been written in tandem with the Charter.
36
According to Steven Rockefeller, besides calling for a "culture of peace" the Charter envisages a "just and sustainable socio-economic order", eradicating poverty, promoting "ecological integrity", "human development in the fullest sense", but in a manner that is "consistent with the flourishing of Earth's ecological systems".
The ultimate objective of this Utopian document is an Arcadia, a
perfect world made possible when we all think alike.
Leading this effort are the Rockefeller Brothers
Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation and the less-well-known
Rockefeller
Family Fund and Laurance Rockefeller Charitable Trust. Each of these
organizations promotes the globalist agenda, some more obviously
than others.
These programs were occasionally adjusted, and in 1983 the RBF adopted a "One World" strategy with an "explicitly global perspective and an emphasis on the convergence of national and international frameworks".
Some 15 years later, O'Neill observed,
During the 1980s, the RBF's "One World" programs focused on nuclear non-proliferation and international relations, development, trade and finance.
In 1996, following the end of the Cold War, the RBF revised its "One World" strategy, launching what was intended to be a two-year review of its grant-making. To help develop new guidelines, a "Project on World Security" was started.
The RBF also funded a program of research on "transnational governance" at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The RBF's new guidelines for its "Global Security Program", released in 1999, committed the Fund to building,
A look at the Global Security Program's grants for 1999 and 2000 reveals the RBF gave grants to:
One of the first reports of the RBF's Global Interdependence Initiative, "Global Interdependence and the Need for Social Stewardship" (1997), noted with alarm the "waning of public and political support" within the US for "cooperative international engagement".
To remedy this, the report recommended that US leaders work to convince the American public that such an approach was consistent with their values and interests. And to support the leadership, a wide-ranging "public" constituency should be built, combining NGOs, businesses, educators, unions, the media, religious groups and philanthropic foundations.
NGOs would be "central to any constituency-building effort" and could also be used by multilateral and bilateral institutions to "bypass corrupt governments". 41
As
with all Rockefeller efforts, changing public attitudes is the key.
The implications of this report and others in this project are
simple: public attitudes, especially in the US, must be changed to
make "One World" possible.
In 1999, however,
the Rockefeller Foundation announced a "new global mission" of
helping "poor people excluded from globalization's benefits".
Though we might note that as this last "theme", actually designated a "cross-theme", is "global inclusion", the ultimate objective is easy to discern: to draw those outside of the evolving "One World" into its grasp.
Beyond including "poor people" in "decisions that
may affect their lives" is the implicit acknowledgement that if
their lives are already not being affected by globalization then
they soon will be.
The even more obscure Laurance Rockefeller Charitable Trust funds activist groups, such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an organization that has targeted the fast food industry for legal action in its determination to force people to eat healthy foods. 44
The purpose of this funding is always the same:
to increase the pressures on governments and to mould public opinion
in service of the broader Utopian goal of "One World".
Underlying this analysis is an assumption, gleaned from the various primary documents cited, that the Rockefeller strategy for a New World Order or "One World" has two essential mutually reinforcing components:
The origins of this agenda can be traced to the ideas of US President Woodrow Wilson, which were then passed on to John D. Rockefeller, Junior, by his adviser, Raymond B. Fosdick.
Junior's sons, especially David and Nelson, have done
the most to promote, expand and implement this agenda. The current
generation of Rockefellers, in contrast, seems little more than
guardians of a legacy - one that the network of Rockefeller
philanthropies and policy-planning groups continues to endorse.
He has devoted the resources of his main
philanthropic organization, the Open Society Institute,
to this goal.
Whether we just watch it unfold is another matter…
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