Quotes From The Nefarious
“Birth Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science… as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.” - Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood
Read her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, for more startling insights into Planned Parenthood and eugenics in America.
“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself… Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.” - H. L. Mencken
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march toward world government.” - David Rockefeller, address to the Trilateral Commission, June 1991
“The twenty-first century will be the era of the World Controllers… The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles, and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work…most 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.” - Aldous Huxley, from his book Brave New World Revisited
Huxley wasn’t just writing a fictional story in Brave New World. This is the dream of the elite. He should know, his brother, Sir Julian Huxley, was Vice President and subsequently President of the British Eugenics Society, and the first director of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Read this article to learn about the connections between UNESCO, eugenics, world government, media, and education, or get a copy of Sir Huxley’s paper, “UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy” from 1946 and read it from the horse’s mouth.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” - Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins, Nov 21, 1864
“Call your enemy what you are, and always tell the exact opposite of the truth.” - Vladmir Lenin
“George Bush is a master hypnotist who skillfully puts people under his ’spell’… Bush mesmerizes people by using simple, repetitive phrases. To quote Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels: ‘Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious… keep repeating them in this simplified form despite the objections of the intellectuals.’ Bush’s talking points, his buzz words, are his ‘incantations’ These ‘magic words’ act as opiates to the fearful masses. To quote ex-Harvard University President James Bryant conant: ‘Some of mankind’s most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.’ This is, again, the power of the word. And how do we make a word? We ’spell’ it.” - Paul Levy from Breaking Bush’s Spell
“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights. Rather the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” - Julius Caesar
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; The second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity and both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.” - Ernest Hemmingway
“I’ll never apologize for the United States of America… never. I don’t care what the facts are.” - President George W. Bush
“Blow them all away, in the name of the Lord.” - Jerry Falwell
“We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.” - Arthur Schlessinger, Jr.
“There is no such thing as an independent press in America… Not a man among you dares to utter his honest opinion. Were you to utter it, you know that it would never appear in print… I am paid to keep my honest opinion out of the newspaper for which I write… Were I to permit a single edition of the newspaper for which I write to contain an honest opinion, my occupation… would be gone in less than twenty-four hours. The man who would be foolish enough to write his honest opinion would soon be walking the streets in search of another job. It is the duty of the New York journalist to lie, distort. to destroy, to revile, to toady at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country, and his race, for his daily bread, or what amounts to the same, for his salary. We are tools and vessels of the rich (International Bankers and their affiliates such as the C.F.R.) behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our capacities, are all property of these men - we are intellectual prostitutes.” - John Swinton, speaking at the annual dinner of the American Press Association 1914
“We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” - Katherine Graham, publisher of Washington Post, in a speech made at CIA headquarters, 1988
“Claim everything. Explain nothing. Deny everything.” - Senator Prescott Bush, grandfather of President George W. Bush
Sen Jack Brooks: “Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of government in the advent of a major disaster?”
(interrupted by Chairman)
Chairman: “I believe the question touches upon a highly classified and sensitive area, so may I request that you not touch upon that Sir…”
Sen Brooks: “I was particularly concerned, Chairman, because I had read… that there had been a plan developed at that same agency, a contingency plan, in the event of an emergency, that would suspend the American Constitution. I was deeply concerned about it…”
Chairman: “May I respectfully request that the matter not be touched upon at this stage…”
from the Senate Committee Hearings on Iran-Contra, questioning Colonel Oliver North
“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” - Henry Kissinger
“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt [Adam 'Spartacus' Weishaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776] to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kim (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.” - Winston Churchill, in an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald (London) on February 8, 1920
“Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being, granted to them by their world government.” - Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberg meeting at Evian, France, May 21, 1992
Still Dont Believe In The New World Order? Heres some quotes if youre still confused.
Revelations From Great And Powerful Men
PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE THESE QUOTES EVERYWHERE!
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"We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in Foreign Affairs (July/August 1995)
THAT quotation and the following - and many others like them - clearly demonstrate that the words "new world order" are deadly serious and furthermore, have been in use for decades. They did not originate with President George Bush in 1990. The "old world order" is one based on independent nation-states. The "new world order" involves the elimination of the sovereignty and independence of nation-states and some form of world government. This means the end of the United States of America, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights as we now know them. Most of the new world order proposals involve the conversion of the United Nations and its agencies to a world government, complete with a world army, a world parliament, a world court, global taxation, and numerous other agencies to control every aspect of human life (education, nutrition, health care, population, immigration, communications, transportation, commerce, agriculture, finance, the environment, etc.). The various notions of the "new world order" differ as to details and scale, but agree on the basic principle and substance.
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"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e., an "extraterrestrial" invasion], whether real or *promulgated* [emphasis mine], that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent." Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down by the Soviets
"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries." David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.
"The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies [marxism/fascism/socialism v. democracy/capitalism] to enable them [the Illuminati] to divide larger and larger portions of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other." Myron Fagan
"No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation." David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations
"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press....They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.
"An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers." U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917
"The world can therefore seize the opportunity [Persian Gulf crisis] to fulfill the long-held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind." George Herbert Walker Bush
"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasnt such a great idea after all." Strobe Talbot, President Clintons Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.
"We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent." Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, in a novel he published in 1844 called Coningsby, the New Generation
"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments plans. " British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had mens views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." Woodrow Wilson,The New Freedom (1913)
"What is important is to dwell upon the increasing evidence of the existence of a secret conspiracy, throughout the world, for the destruction of organized government and the letting loose of evil." Christian Science Monitor editorial, June 19th, l920
"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties." New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922
"From the days of Sparticus, Wieskhopf, Karl Marx, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemberg, and Emma Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire." Winston Churchill, stated to the London Press, in l922.
"We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world." Professor Arnold Toynbee, in a June l931 speech before the Institute for the Study of International Affairs in Copenhagen.
"The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semi-occult power which.....pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I." British military historian Major General J.F.C. Fuller, l941
"For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didnt.. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations-One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support.
"The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.
"The depression was the calculated shearing of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market....The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank." Curtis Dall, FDRs son-in-law as quoted in his book, My Exploited Father-in-Law
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson." A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, l933
"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes." Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952
"Fifty men have run America, and thats a high figure." Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, in the July 26th, l936 issue of The New York Times.
"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite." Senator William Jenner, 1954
"The case for government by elites is irrefutable." Senator William Fulbright, Former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated at a 1963 symposium entitled: The Elite and the Electorate - Is Government by the People Possible?
"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical. What the Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nationstates involved. As managers and creators of the system, they will rule the future." U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater in his l964 book: With No Apologies.
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (Macmillan Company, 1966,) Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University, highly esteemed by his former student, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton.
"The Council on Foreign Relations is "the establishment." Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship." Former Congressman John Rarick 1971
"The directors of the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) make up a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation." The Christian Science Monitor, September 1, l961
"The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down...but in the end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault." CFR member Richard Gardner, writing in the April l974 issue of the CFRs journal, Foreign Affairs.
"The planning of UN can be traced to the secret steering committee established by Secretary [of State Cordell] Hull in January 1943. All of the members of this secret committee, with the exception of Hull, a Tennessee politician, were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. They saw Hull regularly to plan, select, and guide the labors of the [State] Departments Advisory Committee. It was, in effect, the coordinating agency for all the State Departments postwar planning." Professors Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, writing in their study of the CFR, "Imperial Brain Trust: The CFR and United States Foreign Policy." (Monthly Review Press, 1977).
"The most powerful clique in these (CFR) groups have one objective in common: they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the U.S. They want to end national boundaries and racial and ethnic loyalties supposedly to increase business and ensure world peace. What they strive for would inevitably lead to dictatorship and loss of freedoms by the people. The CFR was founded for "the purpose of promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government." Harpers, July l958
"The old world order changed when this war-storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that days sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow." Nicholas Murray Butler, in an address delivered before the Union League of Philadelphia, Nov. 27, 1915
"The peace conference has assembled. It will make the most momentous decisions in history, and upon these decisions will rest the stability of the new world order and the future peace of the world." M. C. Alexander, Executive Secretary of the American Association for International Conciliation, in a subscription letter for the periodical International Conciliation (1919)
"If there are those who think we are to jump immediately into a new world order, actuated by complete understanding and brotherly love, they are doomed to disappointment. If we are ever to approach that time, it will be after patient and persistent effort of long duration. The present international situation of mistrust and fear can only be corrected by a formula of equal status, continuously applied, to every phase of international contacts, until the cobwebs of the old order are brushed out of the minds of the people of all lands." Dr. Augustus O. Thomas, president of the World Federation of Education Associations (August 1927), quoted in the book International Understanding: Agencies Educating for a New World (1931)
"... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the new world order ... and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people." H. G. Wells, in his book entitled The New World Order (1939)
"The term Internationalism has been popularized in recent years to cover an interlocking financial, political, and economic world force for the purpose of establishing a World Government. Today Internationalism is heralded from pulpit and platform as a League of Nations or a Federated Union to which the United States must surrender a definite part of its National Sovereignty. The World Government plan is being advocated under such alluring names as the New International Order, The New World Order, World Union Now, World Commonwealth of Nations, World Community, etc. All the terms have the same objective; however, the line of approach may be religious or political according to the taste or training of the individual." Excerpt from A Memorial to be Addressed to the House of Bishops and the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies of the Protestant Episcopal Church in General Convention (October 1940)
"In the first public declaration on the Jewish question since the outbreak of the war, Arthur Greenwood, member without portfolio in the British War Cabinet, assured the Jews of the United States that when victory was achieved an effort would be made to found a new world order based on the ideals of justice and peace." Excerpt from article entitled "New World Order Pledged to Jews," in The New York Times (October 1940)
"If totalitarianism wins this conflict, the world will be ruled by tyrants, and individuals will be slaves. If democracy wins, the nations of the earth will be united in a commonwealth of free peoples, and individuals, wherever found, will be the sovereign units of the new world order." The Declaration of the Federation of the World, produced by the Congress on World Federation, adopted by the Legislatures of North Carolina (1941), New Jersey (1942), Pennsylvania (1943), and possibly other states.
"New World Order Needed for Peace: State Sovereignty Must Go, Declares Notre Dame Professor"
Title of article in The Tablet (Brooklyn) (March 1942)
"Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles tonight called for the early creation of an international organization of anti-Axis nations to control the world during the period between the armistice at the end of the present war and the setting up of a new world order on a permanent basis." Text of article in The Philadelphia Inquirer (June 194
"The statement went on to say that the spiritual teachings of religion must become the foundation for the new world order and that national sovereignty must be subordinate to the higher moral law of God." American Institute of Judaism, excerpt from article in The New York Times (December 1942)
"There are some plain common-sense considerations applicable to all these attempts at world planning. They can be briefly stated: 1. To talk of blueprints for the future or building a world order is, if properly understood, suggestive, but it is also dangerous. Societies grow far more truly than they are built. A constitution for a new world order is never like a blueprint for a skyscraper." Norman Thomas, in his book What Is Our Destiny? (1944)
"He [John Foster Dulles] stated directly to me that he had every reason to believe that the Governor [Thomas E. Dewey of New York] accepts his point of view and that he is personally convinced that this is the policy that he would promote with great vigor if elected. So it is fair to say that on the first round the Sphinx of Albany has established himself as a prima facie champion of a strong and definite new world order." Excerpt from article by Ralph W. Page in The Philadelphia Bulletin (May 1944)
"Alchemy for a New World Order" Article by Stephen John Stedman in Foreign Affairs (May/June 1995)
"The United Nations, he told an audience at Harvard University, has not been able--nor can it be able--to shape a new world order which events so compellingly demand. ... The new world order that will answer economic, military, and political problems, he said, urgently requires, I believe, that the United States take the leadership among all free peoples to make the underlying concepts and aspirations of national sovereignty truly meaningful through the federal approach." Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, in an article entitled "Rockefeller Bids Free Lands Unite: Calls at Harvard for Drive to Build New World Order" -- The New York Times (February 1962)
"The developing coherence of Asian regional thinking is reflected in a disposition to consider problems and loyalties in regional terms, and to evolve regional approaches to development needs and to the evolution of a new world order." Richard Nixon, in Foreign Affairs (October 1967)
"He [President Nixon] spoke of the talks as a beginning, saying nothing more about the prospects for future contacts and merely reiterating the belief he brought to China that both nations share an interest in peace and building a new world order." Excerpt from an article in The New York Times (February 1972)
"If instant world government, 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 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 ... 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." Richard N. Gardner, in Foreign Affairs (April 1974)
"The existing order is breaking down at a very rapid rate, and the main uncertainty is whether mankind can exert a positive role in shaping a new world order or is doomed to await collapse in a passive posture. We believe a new order will be born no later than early in the next century and that the death throes of the old and the birth pangs of the new will be a testing time for the human species." Richard A. Falk, in an article entitled "Toward a New World Order: Modest Methods and Drastic Visions," in the book On the Creation of a Just World Order (1975)
"My countrys history, Mr. President, tells us that it is possible to fashion unity while cherishing diversity, that common action is possible despite the variety of races, interests, and beliefs we see here in this chamber. Progress and peace and justice are attainable. So we say to all peoples and governments: Let us fashion together a new world order." Henry Kissinger, in address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, October 1975)
"At the old Inter-American Office in the Commerce Building here in Roosevelts time, as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs under President Truman, as chief whip with Adlai Stevenson and Tom Finletter at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, Nelson Rockefeller was in the forefront of the struggle to establish not only an American system of political and economic security but a new world order." Part of article in The New York Times (November 1975)
"A New World Order" Title of article on commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania by Hubert H. Humphrey, printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette (June 1977)
"Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order." Mikhail Gorbachev, in an address at the United Nations (December 1988)
"We believe we are creating the beginning of a new world order coming out of the collapse of the U.S.-Soviet antagonisms." Brent Scowcroft (August 1990), quoted in The Washington Post (May 1991)
"We can see beyond the present shadows of war in the Middle East to a new world order where the strong work together to deter and stop aggression. This was precisely Franklin Roosevelts and Winston Churchills vision for peace for the post-war period." Richard Gephardt, in The Wall Street Journal (September 1990)
"If we do not follow the dictates of our inner moral compass and stand up for human life, then his lawlessness will threaten the peace and democracy of the emerging new world order we now see, this long dreamed-of vision weve all worked toward for so long." President George Bush (January 1991)
"But it became clear as time went on that in Mr. Bushs mind the New World Order was founded on a convergence of goals and interests between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so strong and permanent that they would work as a team through the U.N. Security Council." Excerpt from A. M. Rosenthal, in The New York Times (January 1991)
"I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for a comprehensive Middle East settlement and for a new world order based not on Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court." George McGovern, in The New York Times (February 199
"... its Bushs baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler new order root; F.D.R. used the phrase earlier." William Safire, in The New York Times (February 1991)
"How I Learned to Love the New World Order" Article by Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in The Wall Street Journal (April 1992)
"How to Achieve The New World Order" Title of book excerpt by Henry Kissinger, in Time magazine (March 1994)
"The Final Act of the Uruguay Round, marking the conclusion of the most ambitious trade negotiation of our century, will give birth - in Morocco - to the World Trade Organization, the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund." Part of full-page advertisement by the government of Morocco in The New York Times (April 1994)
"New World Order: The Rise of the Region-State" Title of article by Kenichi Ohmae, political reform leader in Japan, in The Wall Street Journal (August 1994)
"The new world order that is in the making must focus on the creation of a world of democracy, peace and prosperity for all." Nelson Mandela, in The Philadelphia Inquirer (October 1994)
"The renewal of the nonproliferation treaty was described as important "for the welfare of the whole world and the new world order." President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, in The New York Times (April 1995)
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One World Order supporters....
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrations), too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." Thomas Jefferson
"...This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of "one world government....National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept..." Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter.
"It is the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance." President George Bush addressing the General Assembly of the U.N., February 1,1992.
"...This program is the fixed, determined and approved policy of the government of the United States." Senator Joseph S. Clark speaking on the floor of the Senate, March 1, 1962, about PL 87-297 which calls for the disbanding of all armed forces and the prohibition of their re-establishment in any form whatsoever.
"Let me control a peoples currency and I care not who makes their laws...." Meyer Nathaniel Rothchild in a speech to a gathering of world bankers February 12, 1912.The following year, we subscribed to the "services" of the newly incorporated Federal Reserve, headed by Mr. Rothchild.
"By the end of this decade (2000 AD) we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations ... a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable." Pope John Paul II quoted by Malachi Martin in the book "The Keys of This Blood"
"The New World Order is a world that has a supernational authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization that would control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that would replace the dollar; a World Development Fund that would make funds available to free and Communist nations alike; and an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World Order." Former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, former chairman of the Fifth-Socialist International, who chaired the Brandt Commission in the late 1980s.
"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." David Rockefeller
"But this present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts to erect an enduring structure of global interdependence." David Rockefeller, speaking at the Business Council for the United Nations, September 14, 1994.
"A colossal event is upon us, the birth of a New World Order." Brent Scowcroft, George Bushs National Security Advisor, said on the eve of the Gulf War.
"The Persian Gulf crisis is a rare opportunity to forge new bonds with old enemies (the Soviet Union)...Out of these troubled times a New World Order can emerge under a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders." President George Bush, September 11, 1990.
"The world can therefore seize the opportunity (the Persian Gulf crisis) to fulfill the long held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind." President George Bush in his State of the Union Address, January 29, 1991.
"NAFTA is a major stepping stone to the New World Order." Henry Kissinger when campaigning for the passage of NAFTA.
"Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order." Mikhail Gorbachev, in an address at the United Nations, December 1988.
"We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in "Foreign Affairs," July/August 1995.
"...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." Richard N. Gardner, in "Foreign Affairs," April 1974.
"... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people - will hate the new world order - and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people." H. G. Wells, in his book entitled "The New World Order" (1939).
"Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed." Sara Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control, to Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, The National Educator, January 1994, Page 3.
"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans... and so a lot of people say theres too much personal freedom. When personal freedoms being abused, you have to move to limit it. Thats what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how were going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." President Bill Clinton, 3-22-94, MTVs "Enough is Enough"
"We cant be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)
"Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Maos leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history." David Rockefeller, statement in 1973 about Mao Tse-tung: (NY Times 8-10-73)
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
"War to the hilt between communism and capitalism is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will come in thirty or forty years. To win, we shall need the element of surprise. The Western world will need to be put to sleep. So we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There shall be electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate to their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our clenched fist." Dmitrii Z. Manuilskii (Lenin School of Political Warfare, Moscow, 1931)
"There is no reason for anyone in this country, anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun....And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution." Michael Gartner, 1992 in USA Today
"The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed." H. J. Res. 438Introduced by Rep. Major Owens, 1992
Vice President Al Gore as he traveled to Marrakech, Morocco, in April for the signing of the new world trade agreement. Gore appeared hours after U.S. planes enforcing an allied no fly zone over northern Iraq accidentally shot down two U.S. helicopters, killing 15 Americans and 11 foreign officials. I want to extend condolences, Gore said, to the families of those who died in the service of the United Nations." (Los Angeles Times, 6/12/94)
"There is nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine . . . been here 4 1/2 billion years. Weve been here, what, a 100,000 years, maybe 200,000. And weve only been engaged in heavy industry a little over 200 years. 200 years versus 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow were a threat? The planet isnt going away. We are." George Carlin
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." Thomas Jefferson
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken
"Nuclear power must be dealt with irrationally. . . . Nuclear plants are carcinogens. Lets get that story out. . . . Their lies will catch up to them. We need endless Chernobyl reminders." Ralph Nader
Cannibalism is a "radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation." Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995
"Protecting the Environment is a ruse. The goal is the political and economic subjugation of most men by the few, under the guise of preserving nature." J. H. Robbins
"...the only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We cant let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. And it is important to the rest of the world to make sure that they dont suffer economically by virtue of our stopping them." Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
"The necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite." M. N. Rothbard
Global Sustainability requires: "the deliberate quest of poverty . . . reduced resource consumption . . . and set levels of mortality control." Professor Maurice King
"Allowing the EPA to condone continued use of a chemical whenever the benefits outweighs the risks is absolutely anathema to the environmental community." Janet Hathaway, Natural Resources Defense Council
The Environmentalists Dream is an Egalitarian Society based on: rejection of economic growth, a smaller population, eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally. Aaron Wildavsky
"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect." Richard Benedict, State Dept. employee working on assignment from the Conservation Foundation
"Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent o f giving an idiot child a machine gun." Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
"The secret to David McTaggarts (early officer in Greanpeace) success is the secret to Greenpeaces success: It doesnt matter what is true . . . . it only matters what people believe is true . . . . You are what the media define you to be. [Greenpeace] became a myth, and a myth-generating machine.." Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
". . . a year is about one-fifth of the time we have left if we are going to preserve any kind of quality in our world." Garrett de Bell (1970)
"The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency." Pope John Paul I
"The move toward cotnrolling less and less pollution at greater and greater expense -- until you are spending everything to control nothing -- is one of the big water quality problems we are facing in the future." Ernest Rosenberg
"Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover the source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it." Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
". . . the Planning Commission must say no to development . . . Austin, Texas, is showing us about land use . . . . " Judge Armstrong, Kentucky County
"It is easy to be conspicuously compassionate if others are being forced to pay the cost." M. N. Rothbard
"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
"Weve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing -- in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)
"We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects . . . We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land." David Foreman, Earth First!
". . . There is no such thing in America as an independent press . . . We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes . . . Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." John Swinton, former New York Times Chief of Staff
"We have the opportunity to avoid choices like nuclear power which will come back to haunt us 30 years from now." Russell Peterson, National Audobon Society President
". . . The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans." Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project
"One-fourth of humanity must be eliminated from the social body. We are in charge of Gods selection process for planet earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death." Psychologist Barbara Marx Hubbard - member and futurist/strategist of Task Force Delta; a United States Army think tank.
". . . as radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but as a necessary solution." Miss Ann Thropy (pseudonym), Earth First! Journal
"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing . . . This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run." Economist editorial
"I suspect that the politicians and businessmen who are jumping on the environment bandwagon dont have the slightest idea of what they are getting into. They are talking about emission control devices on automobiles, while we are talking about bans on automobiles." Dennis Hayes, Earth Day Agenda (1970)
"The invention of the concept of sustainable human development and that of so-called human security, as opposed to territorial security of nation- states, and its promotion by the UN is in clear contradiction to all that we, the Group of 77, and the UN Charter itself consider inalienable, namely national sovereignty and security." Pranab Mukherjee, Indias Minister of Commerce, Earth Times, 15 October 1994
"Its (the prospect of cheap fusion energy) the worst thing that could happen to the planet." Jeremy Rifkin
"No case for expensive policies for safeguarding species can be made without more extensive analysis." Endangered Species Blueprint, National Wilderness Institute
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken
"If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
"They want timid, helpless people who are anxious to get in touch with their inner child, enter twelve-step programs, and run to the government with every little problem." Clark Stooksbury
". . . Our production and consumption is not sustainable . . . Agenda 21 is to be implemented . . . The Texas Sustainable Energy Development Council will develop the Texas Plan . . . The money will come from milking the utilities and redirecting oil overcharge funds . . . . " Commissioner Karl Rabago, Texas Public Utilities Commission
"Isnt the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isnt it our responsibility to bring that about?" Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing the new elite at the top of a new hierachy of power." M.. N. Rothbard
"Pure guesswork has become the basis of a forecast that has been published in newspapers to be read and understood as a scientific statement." Endangered Species Blueprint, National Wilderness Institute
"Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian Religious tradition." Peter Singer, the "Father of Animal Rights"
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas, former U.S. Socialist Presidential Candidate
"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day." Dr. Jacques Cousteau
"I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems." John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
"Measured on virtually any scale, the world is in worse shape than it was 20 years ago." Dennis Hayes, Chairman of Earth Day 1990
"The world has cancer, and the cancer is man." A. Gregg, Mankind at the Turning Point
"People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them, and this (ban of DDT) is as good a way as any." Charles Wurster, Environmental Defense Fund
"This is a political game. It has nothing to do with science. It has nothing to do with health and safety." Sherry Neddick, Greenpeace
"Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth." Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists
"The system of private property is the most important guaranty to freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because of the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that no one has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what we do for ourselves." Friedrich A. Hayck
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect mans rights . . ." Ayn Rand
"We reject the idea of private property." Peter Berle, President of the National Audobon Society
"Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion." Murray Rothbard
"No government knows any limits to its power except the endurance of the people." Lysander Spooner
"The real culprits are those who created a system that makes it dangerous to work and safe to loaf." Thomas Sowell
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Lakewood, Fort Lewis start police liaison program
Lakewood, Fort Lewis start police liaison program
Published: 03/10/09 12:05 am | Updated: 03/10/09 11:37 am
Fort Lewis and Lakewood police are working together to build a better understanding of what happens on ‘the other side.’ Lakewood police are enlisting the help of Fort Lewis for times when city cops need to cooperate with the Army, including when soldiers get in trouble off post.
Meanwhile, another partnership will let the local Army post receive the city’s assistance in civilian police training for soldiers bound for Iraq this fall.
Fort Lewis has assigned a full-time military liaison police officer position to the Lakewood Police Department. Police Lt. Steve Mauer said the soldier won’t patrol with city officers, but will serve as a resource.
Fort Lewis sent a pair of military police officers to get oriented with the Lakewood Police Department last week. They will split time in the single position.
The soldier, who will work five days a week including Friday and Saturday nights, will serve as a point of contact for city police who need to get information from Fort Lewis.
The types of police calls that could benefit from Fort Lewis’ help include bad behavior at bars and collisions in cars, Mauer said.
Lt. Col. Ted Solonar, Fort Lewis’ provost marshal who helped forge the Law Enforcement Liaison program, said post officials want to exchange knowledge with their neighboring city.
Solonar said Lakewood police contacted the post to see how the two sides could bridge the fence that separates them. They decided on the liaison program, which is already used at Army installations such as Fort Carson, Colo.
The military police officer, most likely a lieutenant, will spend most of the work week learning from Lakewood officers, Solonar said.
During weekends, if city officers need help with soldiers behaving badly at a local bar, for instance, they could call on the liaison to help calm tensions. Young soldiers might listen better to a commanding officer because they are trained to follow the Army chain of command, he said.
“If there’s a situation where a soldier is celebrating too hard, we’ll be there to diffuse the situation and, if necessary, transport them back to Fort Lewis,” Solonar said.
Jeff Corbin, owner of Maggie O’Toole’s Pub & Grub in Lakewood, said he welcomes the extra help. He said obnoxious behavior among soldiers isn’t an ongoing problem, but the military police officer’s presence will help when it occurs.
“If a sergeant major is telling a guy to do it, the guy is probably going to do it,” Corbin said.
Help between the post and the neighboring police department will also go the other way.
The city has agreed that five to 10 soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division will ride with Lakewood officers on patrols every week.
The Stryker brigade soldiers will observe community-policing tactics, evidence gathering and other police techniques they can use on their deployment this fall. It will be their second tour of Iraq in the last three years.
The ride-alongs will continue until the 4-2’s deployment. In Iraq, soldiers will have to work with Iraqi civilians – skills they can improve by watching Lakewood officers interact with community members, Mauer said.
“The point of it is actual training,” he said. “It really does serve a purpose.”
Fort Lewis and Lakewood police have worked together on a case-by-case basis for years, from helping track down soldiers who are absent without leave to investigating the 2005 murder of a soldier and another soldier’s wife in a parking lot outside a Lakewood bar.
They also share the occasional oddball case, like when a citizen dropped off an Iraqi AK-47 assault rifle at a Lakewood police station in January.. The city later turned it over to the Army.
But placing the military liaison officer and Stryker brigade soldiers in Lakewood will bring more formality to the relationship.
Solonar said exchanging knowledge between Fort Lewis and its largest neighboring city is a good thing.
“As we cross back and forth over our borders with one another,” he said, “it gives us a better idea what’s happening on the other side.”
Brent Champaco: 253-597-8653
Published: 03/10/09 12:05 am | Updated: 03/10/09 11:37 am
Fort Lewis and Lakewood police are working together to build a better understanding of what happens on ‘the other side.’ Lakewood police are enlisting the help of Fort Lewis for times when city cops need to cooperate with the Army, including when soldiers get in trouble off post.
Meanwhile, another partnership will let the local Army post receive the city’s assistance in civilian police training for soldiers bound for Iraq this fall.
Fort Lewis has assigned a full-time military liaison police officer position to the Lakewood Police Department. Police Lt. Steve Mauer said the soldier won’t patrol with city officers, but will serve as a resource.
Fort Lewis sent a pair of military police officers to get oriented with the Lakewood Police Department last week. They will split time in the single position.
The soldier, who will work five days a week including Friday and Saturday nights, will serve as a point of contact for city police who need to get information from Fort Lewis.
The types of police calls that could benefit from Fort Lewis’ help include bad behavior at bars and collisions in cars, Mauer said.
Lt. Col. Ted Solonar, Fort Lewis’ provost marshal who helped forge the Law Enforcement Liaison program, said post officials want to exchange knowledge with their neighboring city.
Solonar said Lakewood police contacted the post to see how the two sides could bridge the fence that separates them. They decided on the liaison program, which is already used at Army installations such as Fort Carson, Colo.
The military police officer, most likely a lieutenant, will spend most of the work week learning from Lakewood officers, Solonar said.
During weekends, if city officers need help with soldiers behaving badly at a local bar, for instance, they could call on the liaison to help calm tensions. Young soldiers might listen better to a commanding officer because they are trained to follow the Army chain of command, he said.
“If there’s a situation where a soldier is celebrating too hard, we’ll be there to diffuse the situation and, if necessary, transport them back to Fort Lewis,” Solonar said.
Jeff Corbin, owner of Maggie O’Toole’s Pub & Grub in Lakewood, said he welcomes the extra help. He said obnoxious behavior among soldiers isn’t an ongoing problem, but the military police officer’s presence will help when it occurs.
“If a sergeant major is telling a guy to do it, the guy is probably going to do it,” Corbin said.
Help between the post and the neighboring police department will also go the other way.
The city has agreed that five to 10 soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division will ride with Lakewood officers on patrols every week.
The Stryker brigade soldiers will observe community-policing tactics, evidence gathering and other police techniques they can use on their deployment this fall. It will be their second tour of Iraq in the last three years.
The ride-alongs will continue until the 4-2’s deployment. In Iraq, soldiers will have to work with Iraqi civilians – skills they can improve by watching Lakewood officers interact with community members, Mauer said.
“The point of it is actual training,” he said. “It really does serve a purpose.”
Fort Lewis and Lakewood police have worked together on a case-by-case basis for years, from helping track down soldiers who are absent without leave to investigating the 2005 murder of a soldier and another soldier’s wife in a parking lot outside a Lakewood bar.
They also share the occasional oddball case, like when a citizen dropped off an Iraqi AK-47 assault rifle at a Lakewood police station in January.. The city later turned it over to the Army.
But placing the military liaison officer and Stryker brigade soldiers in Lakewood will bring more formality to the relationship.
Solonar said exchanging knowledge between Fort Lewis and its largest neighboring city is a good thing.
“As we cross back and forth over our borders with one another,” he said, “it gives us a better idea what’s happening on the other side.”
Brent Champaco: 253-597-8653
The Bilderberg Group
By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 3/15/09 6:53 AM EDT - Politico.com
The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people.
It sounds crazy, but that’s what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.
It turns out that Sebelius – like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross – is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group.
The group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media from North America and Western Europe once a year to discuss world affairs. It doesn’t issue policy statements or resolutions, nor does it hold any events other than an annual meeting.
Past participants have included Margaret Thatcher, who attended the 1975 meeting at Turkey’s Golden Dolphin Hotel, former media mogul Conrad Black, who has been to more than a dozen conferences, and Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, King Juan Carlos of Spain and top officials of BP, IBM, Barclays and the Bank of England.
It is precisely that exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who for decades have viewed the Bilderberg conference as a devious corporate-globalist scheme.
The fulminating is aggravated by Obama's preference for surrounding himself with well-credentialed, well-connected, and well-traveled elites. His personnel choices have touched a populist, even paranoid nerve among those who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a new world order.
Their worldview, characterized by a deep and angry suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and a collection of Internet websites.
The video sharing website YouTube alone is home to thousands of Bilderberg-related videos.
“I don’t laugh at the people who claim that they understand the connections, but I’ve never really spent much time tracing that through,” said Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former presidential candidate whose libertarian sensibilities have made him a darling of the Bilderberg conspiracists.
“The one thing that concerns me is that the people who surround Obama or Bush generally come from the same philosophic viewpoint and they have their organizations – they have the Trilateral Commission, the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and the Bilderbergers, and they’ve been around a long time. And my biggest concern is what they preach: Keynesian economics and interventionism and world planning,” he said.
While it's easy to dismiss the Bilder-busters as cranks, these voices have a way of making themselves heard on the margins of the debate in ways that can prove to be a real, if minor, distraction to Obama’s political team. Bill Clinton had trouble shaking rumors that he was behind a shady criminal syndicate operating out of the Mena airport. George W. Bush was sometimes portrayed as the puppet of clandestine Middle Eastern oil interests.
Obama’s selection of numerous Bilderbergers for key posts “certainly would verify their suspicions,” said Paul, referring to fears of the group’s influence.
“And I don’t think it’s just Obama. Whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats – Goldman Sachs generally has somebody in treasury. And the big banks generally have somebody in the Federal Reserve. And they’re international people, too. And they’re probably working very hard this weekend, with the G20. And they get involved in the IMF. But that is their stated goal. They do believe in a powerful centralized government and we believe in the opposite.”
One popular website, “Prison Planet,” greeted Sebelius’ nomination with the headline “Obama Picks Bilderberger for Health Secretary.”
It’s obvious why Bilderberg is a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, who’ve credited it with anointing aspiring presidents, selecting their running mates, creating the European Union and instigating the war in Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, among other coups.
Bilderberg meetings are closed to the press, participants are asked not to publicly discuss the proceedings and the attendee list is only occasionally released. As a result, the group has come to be viewed as a more publicity-shy cousin to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations – other influential international think tanks that are staples of fringe group conversation.
Unlike Bilderberg, though, those organizations have opened their proceedings to public scrutiny, maintain websites and have long listed their members.
The Bilderberg group, in a rare press release last year, laid out a benign if vague mission: creating “a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations.”
“Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced,” read the press release, which noted that a list of participants would be available by phone request between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on the second and third days of the conference.
The Bilderberg conspiracists first pounced on the Obama connection during the 2008 campaign, when news leaked in May that the candidate, who at the time was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, had initially tapped former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson, a top Bilderberger, to help him select a running mate.
IRS filings show that Johnson as recently as 2006 was the treasurer of a non-profit group called American Friends of Bilderberg. The group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to pay for meetings--including $125,000 in total contributions from Bilderberg stalwarts Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller in 2005 and 2006 plus $25,000 in 2005 from the Washington Post, whose chairman Don Graham has attended in the past.
Johnson did not return a message inquiring about his role at Bilderberg..
“The news further puts to rest any delusions that Bilderberg is a mere talking shop where no decisions are made,” reported Prison Planet.. “It also ridicules once again any notion that an Obama presidency would bring ‘change’ to the status quo of America being ruled by an unelected corporate and military-industrial complex elite.”
One month later, in June, Johnson was joined at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting by Geithner, Holbrooke, Summers and Ross, as well as Obama’s first choice for HHS secretary, Tom Daschle, and Sebelius, who at the time was included on some short lists of prospective Obama running mates and who also attended the 2007 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.
According to the Bilderberg press release, the meeting was designed to “deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.” Approximately two-thirds of the 140 expected attendees came from Europe, according to the release, and the rest from North America.
Had the meeting been held outside the United States, that might have been the end of the Obama angle. But the conference, which took place from June 5 through 8, was held at a heavily guarded hotel in Chantilly, Va. in suburban Washington—coincidentally overlapping with an Obama campaign event in the area.
While Obama’s schedule indicated he was to fly home to Chicago for the weekend—and journalists were herded on a campaign plane under the impression they were headed there along with Obama—the future president slipped away for a private meetings and never actually boarded the flight
As it turned out, Obama secretly met that evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, D.C., but not before raising alarms among the Bilder-busters, who were convinced something was rotten in Chantilly.
Prison Planet connected the dots and concluded Obama and Clinton met at the Bilderberg meeting, declaring that “the complete failure of the mainstream media to report on the fact, once again betrays the super-secretive nature and influential reputation that the 54-year-old organization still maintains.”
“It is now seems increasingly likely that the secret meetings with Bilderberg this weekend will herald the decision to name Hillary Clinton as Obama's VP candidate,” predicted a sister site, Infowars.net.
Even the snarky D.C.-based Wonkette blog weighed in, half-seriously positing that “really, it sounds like” Obama and Clinton rendezvoused “at that creepy Bilderberg Group meeting, which is happening now, and which is so secret that nobody will admit they’re going, even though everybody who is anybody goes to Bilderberg.”
Curiously, though, the episode wasn’t the first time a Bilderberg meeting intersected with vice presidential selection machinations.
In 2004, both Time magazine and the New York Times noted that then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C) had impressed Bilderbergers at that year’s conference in Stresa, Italy—roughly one month prior to his selection as Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) running mate-- when Edwards debated Republican Ralph Reed. Then, as in 2008, Jim Johnson led the vice presidential vetting.
Time reported that then-Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Holbrooke attended and called Kerry “with rave reviews” about Edwards' debate skills.
In its tick-tock of the vice-presidential selection process, the New York Times also noted the Bilderberg effect.
''His performance at Bilderberg was important,'' a friend of Kerry told the Times. ''He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.''
An attendee of the 2004 meeting dismissed the notion that Edwards’ Bilderberg performance helped land him on the Democratic ticket.
“It wasn’t because of his performance at the meeting – he was at the meeting because he was going to get picked” said the attendee, who did not want to be identified breaching Bilderberg’s off-the-record rule. “He was there as a surrogate for Kerry” and to boost his foreign policy bona fides, said the attendee.
Either way, the attendee contended, the Bilderberg conspiracy theories don’t make sense on their face, if only because the wide array of ideologies represented would make it difficult to reach consensus.
“There were so many different people there with so many different viewpoints that it belied the opportunity to really conspire, because obviously a Kissinger and a [prominent neoconservative Richard] Perle are going to come down in a very different place than say a Holbrooke or a Johnson,” the attendee said.
Besides, the attendee observed, it’s almost impossible to name a Bilderberger-free Cabinet.
“You’d be hard pressed to find an administration that hasn’t reached into those ranks into the last 20, 30, 40 years. “
Source: Politico.com
The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people.
It sounds crazy, but that’s what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.
It turns out that Sebelius – like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross – is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group.
The group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media from North America and Western Europe once a year to discuss world affairs. It doesn’t issue policy statements or resolutions, nor does it hold any events other than an annual meeting.
Past participants have included Margaret Thatcher, who attended the 1975 meeting at Turkey’s Golden Dolphin Hotel, former media mogul Conrad Black, who has been to more than a dozen conferences, and Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, King Juan Carlos of Spain and top officials of BP, IBM, Barclays and the Bank of England.
It is precisely that exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who for decades have viewed the Bilderberg conference as a devious corporate-globalist scheme.
The fulminating is aggravated by Obama's preference for surrounding himself with well-credentialed, well-connected, and well-traveled elites. His personnel choices have touched a populist, even paranoid nerve among those who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a new world order.
Their worldview, characterized by a deep and angry suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and a collection of Internet websites.
The video sharing website YouTube alone is home to thousands of Bilderberg-related videos.
“I don’t laugh at the people who claim that they understand the connections, but I’ve never really spent much time tracing that through,” said Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former presidential candidate whose libertarian sensibilities have made him a darling of the Bilderberg conspiracists.
“The one thing that concerns me is that the people who surround Obama or Bush generally come from the same philosophic viewpoint and they have their organizations – they have the Trilateral Commission, the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and the Bilderbergers, and they’ve been around a long time. And my biggest concern is what they preach: Keynesian economics and interventionism and world planning,” he said.
While it's easy to dismiss the Bilder-busters as cranks, these voices have a way of making themselves heard on the margins of the debate in ways that can prove to be a real, if minor, distraction to Obama’s political team. Bill Clinton had trouble shaking rumors that he was behind a shady criminal syndicate operating out of the Mena airport. George W. Bush was sometimes portrayed as the puppet of clandestine Middle Eastern oil interests.
Obama’s selection of numerous Bilderbergers for key posts “certainly would verify their suspicions,” said Paul, referring to fears of the group’s influence.
“And I don’t think it’s just Obama. Whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats – Goldman Sachs generally has somebody in treasury. And the big banks generally have somebody in the Federal Reserve. And they’re international people, too. And they’re probably working very hard this weekend, with the G20. And they get involved in the IMF. But that is their stated goal. They do believe in a powerful centralized government and we believe in the opposite.”
One popular website, “Prison Planet,” greeted Sebelius’ nomination with the headline “Obama Picks Bilderberger for Health Secretary.”
It’s obvious why Bilderberg is a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, who’ve credited it with anointing aspiring presidents, selecting their running mates, creating the European Union and instigating the war in Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, among other coups.
Bilderberg meetings are closed to the press, participants are asked not to publicly discuss the proceedings and the attendee list is only occasionally released. As a result, the group has come to be viewed as a more publicity-shy cousin to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations – other influential international think tanks that are staples of fringe group conversation.
Unlike Bilderberg, though, those organizations have opened their proceedings to public scrutiny, maintain websites and have long listed their members.
The Bilderberg group, in a rare press release last year, laid out a benign if vague mission: creating “a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations.”
“Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced,” read the press release, which noted that a list of participants would be available by phone request between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on the second and third days of the conference.
The Bilderberg conspiracists first pounced on the Obama connection during the 2008 campaign, when news leaked in May that the candidate, who at the time was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, had initially tapped former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson, a top Bilderberger, to help him select a running mate.
IRS filings show that Johnson as recently as 2006 was the treasurer of a non-profit group called American Friends of Bilderberg. The group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to pay for meetings--including $125,000 in total contributions from Bilderberg stalwarts Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller in 2005 and 2006 plus $25,000 in 2005 from the Washington Post, whose chairman Don Graham has attended in the past.
Johnson did not return a message inquiring about his role at Bilderberg..
“The news further puts to rest any delusions that Bilderberg is a mere talking shop where no decisions are made,” reported Prison Planet.. “It also ridicules once again any notion that an Obama presidency would bring ‘change’ to the status quo of America being ruled by an unelected corporate and military-industrial complex elite.”
One month later, in June, Johnson was joined at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting by Geithner, Holbrooke, Summers and Ross, as well as Obama’s first choice for HHS secretary, Tom Daschle, and Sebelius, who at the time was included on some short lists of prospective Obama running mates and who also attended the 2007 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.
According to the Bilderberg press release, the meeting was designed to “deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.” Approximately two-thirds of the 140 expected attendees came from Europe, according to the release, and the rest from North America.
Had the meeting been held outside the United States, that might have been the end of the Obama angle. But the conference, which took place from June 5 through 8, was held at a heavily guarded hotel in Chantilly, Va. in suburban Washington—coincidentally overlapping with an Obama campaign event in the area.
While Obama’s schedule indicated he was to fly home to Chicago for the weekend—and journalists were herded on a campaign plane under the impression they were headed there along with Obama—the future president slipped away for a private meetings and never actually boarded the flight
As it turned out, Obama secretly met that evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, D.C., but not before raising alarms among the Bilder-busters, who were convinced something was rotten in Chantilly.
Prison Planet connected the dots and concluded Obama and Clinton met at the Bilderberg meeting, declaring that “the complete failure of the mainstream media to report on the fact, once again betrays the super-secretive nature and influential reputation that the 54-year-old organization still maintains.”
“It is now seems increasingly likely that the secret meetings with Bilderberg this weekend will herald the decision to name Hillary Clinton as Obama's VP candidate,” predicted a sister site, Infowars.net.
Even the snarky D.C.-based Wonkette blog weighed in, half-seriously positing that “really, it sounds like” Obama and Clinton rendezvoused “at that creepy Bilderberg Group meeting, which is happening now, and which is so secret that nobody will admit they’re going, even though everybody who is anybody goes to Bilderberg.”
Curiously, though, the episode wasn’t the first time a Bilderberg meeting intersected with vice presidential selection machinations.
In 2004, both Time magazine and the New York Times noted that then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C) had impressed Bilderbergers at that year’s conference in Stresa, Italy—roughly one month prior to his selection as Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) running mate-- when Edwards debated Republican Ralph Reed. Then, as in 2008, Jim Johnson led the vice presidential vetting.
Time reported that then-Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Holbrooke attended and called Kerry “with rave reviews” about Edwards' debate skills.
In its tick-tock of the vice-presidential selection process, the New York Times also noted the Bilderberg effect.
''His performance at Bilderberg was important,'' a friend of Kerry told the Times. ''He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.''
An attendee of the 2004 meeting dismissed the notion that Edwards’ Bilderberg performance helped land him on the Democratic ticket.
“It wasn’t because of his performance at the meeting – he was at the meeting because he was going to get picked” said the attendee, who did not want to be identified breaching Bilderberg’s off-the-record rule. “He was there as a surrogate for Kerry” and to boost his foreign policy bona fides, said the attendee.
Either way, the attendee contended, the Bilderberg conspiracy theories don’t make sense on their face, if only because the wide array of ideologies represented would make it difficult to reach consensus.
“There were so many different people there with so many different viewpoints that it belied the opportunity to really conspire, because obviously a Kissinger and a [prominent neoconservative Richard] Perle are going to come down in a very different place than say a Holbrooke or a Johnson,” the attendee said.
Besides, the attendee observed, it’s almost impossible to name a Bilderberger-free Cabinet.
“You’d be hard pressed to find an administration that hasn’t reached into those ranks into the last 20, 30, 40 years. “
Source: Politico.com
The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile
The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile
Posted by sakerfa on March 16, 2009
It’s no secret that the US educational system doesn’t do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America’s schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can’t find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don’t know who Abraham Lincoln was.Fingers are pointed at various aspects of the schooling system—overcrowded classrooms, lack of funding, teachers who can’t pass competency exams in their fields, etc. But these are just secondary problems. Even if they were cleared up, schools would still suck. Why? Because they were designed to.
How can I make such a bold statement? How do I know why America’s public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America’s formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing.
Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain. Luckily for us, John Taylor Gatto tracked them down. Gatto was voted the New York City Teacher of the Year three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. But he became disillusioned with schools—the way they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning. So he began to dig into terra incognita, the roots of America’s educational system.
In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee’s report stated, “We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes.”
By the turn of the century, America’s new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn’t to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.
In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”
The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:
In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:
The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places…. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.
Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
Writes Gatto: “Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about ‘the perfect organization of the hive.’”
While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by “certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process.”
In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.
This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren’t often publicly expressed, they’re apparently still known within education circles. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001:
I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn’t have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, “They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world.”
John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling (New York: Oxford Village Press, 2001), is the source for all of the above historical quotes. It is a profoundly important, unnerving book, which I recommend most highly. You can order it from Gatto’s Website, which now contains the entire book online for free.
The final quote above is from page 74 of Bruce E. Levine’s excellent book Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2001).
Source: http://newsfromthewest.blogspot.com/2009/03/educational-system-was-designed-to-keep.html
Source: dprogram.net
Posted by sakerfa on March 16, 2009
It’s no secret that the US educational system doesn’t do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America’s schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can’t find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don’t know who Abraham Lincoln was.Fingers are pointed at various aspects of the schooling system—overcrowded classrooms, lack of funding, teachers who can’t pass competency exams in their fields, etc. But these are just secondary problems. Even if they were cleared up, schools would still suck. Why? Because they were designed to.
How can I make such a bold statement? How do I know why America’s public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America’s formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing.
Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain. Luckily for us, John Taylor Gatto tracked them down. Gatto was voted the New York City Teacher of the Year three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. But he became disillusioned with schools—the way they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning. So he began to dig into terra incognita, the roots of America’s educational system.
In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee’s report stated, “We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes.”
By the turn of the century, America’s new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn’t to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.
In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”
The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:
In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:
The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places…. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.
Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
Writes Gatto: “Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about ‘the perfect organization of the hive.’”
While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by “certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process.”
In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.
This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren’t often publicly expressed, they’re apparently still known within education circles. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001:
I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn’t have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, “They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world.”
John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling (New York: Oxford Village Press, 2001), is the source for all of the above historical quotes. It is a profoundly important, unnerving book, which I recommend most highly. You can order it from Gatto’s Website, which now contains the entire book online for free.
The final quote above is from page 74 of Bruce E. Levine’s excellent book Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2001).
Source: http://newsfromthewest.blogspot.com/2009/03/educational-system-was-designed-to-keep.html
Source: dprogram.net
Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover
Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover
9 03 2009
Rod Beckström, the Department of Homeland Security’s controversial cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power grabs and bureaucratic infighting.
Beckström — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named last year to head up the new National Cybersecurity Center, or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckström isn’t an expert in security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to help coordinate the nation’s often-dysfunctional network defenses.
Part of the Department of Homeland Security — for now, the government’s lead agency for cyber protection — the Center was supposed to be the one place where the defense of civilian, military and intelligence networks could all be marshaled together.
At least, that was the idea. But the Center never had a chance to even start doing its job, Beckström complained in a resignation letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that has been obtained by Danger Room. The Center “did not receive appropriate support” from the Department of Homeland Security to help coordinate network defenses, he said.
“During the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget.”
What’s more, Beckström said, it is a fiction that DHS is in charge of the country’s cyber security. That power, he asserts, is held by the National Security Agency — the supersecret signals intelligence service — that “currently dominates most national cyber efforts.” And that, he says, is not a good idea..
Read the rest of this entry »
Source: wearechangeseattle.org
9 03 2009
Rod Beckström, the Department of Homeland Security’s controversial cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power grabs and bureaucratic infighting.
Beckström — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named last year to head up the new National Cybersecurity Center, or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckström isn’t an expert in security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to help coordinate the nation’s often-dysfunctional network defenses.
Part of the Department of Homeland Security — for now, the government’s lead agency for cyber protection — the Center was supposed to be the one place where the defense of civilian, military and intelligence networks could all be marshaled together.
At least, that was the idea. But the Center never had a chance to even start doing its job, Beckström complained in a resignation letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that has been obtained by Danger Room. The Center “did not receive appropriate support” from the Department of Homeland Security to help coordinate network defenses, he said.
“During the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget.”
What’s more, Beckström said, it is a fiction that DHS is in charge of the country’s cyber security. That power, he asserts, is held by the National Security Agency — the supersecret signals intelligence service — that “currently dominates most national cyber efforts.” And that, he says, is not a good idea..
Read the rest of this entry »
Source: wearechangeseattle.org
Only One Third of Americans Can Name Three Branches of Government
Only One Third of Americans Can Name Three Branches of Government
The Colonnade
March 8, 2009
On Tuesday night former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Today Show with Jon Stewart,” to discuss her recent work.
Since leaving the Supreme Court in 2006, O’Connor has dedicated her time to encouraging American youths to study civics. But it was about a minute and a half into the interview that O’Connor revealed the scary state of apathy that currently plagues our nation.
“I thought that perhaps a lot of Americans had stopped understanding the three branches of government,” the 78-year-old former justice told Stewart. “Actually, the Annenberg Foundation took some polls: only a third of Americans can even name the three branches of government, much less say what they do.”
One-third, that is roughly 103 million of 305 million Americans that can simply name the three branches of government: judicial, legislative and executive for those of you keeping score.
The Colonnade staff is shocked.
We are constantly reminded that today’s society is drowning in lethargic waters, but are two-thirds of Americans really the dolts that this statistic points to, or do they simply lack education?
For many, there is no excuse, but for some a failing education system is the obvious blame.
Unfortunately, in this country many public schools, especially in low-income areas, do not provide the education necessary to rid students of the ignorance that leads to such an astonishing statistic.
In order for a republic, “by the people, for the people,” to properly work, that ignorance must be erased.
Unfortunately, that most likely will never be fully realized, but you can help.
It’s really quite simple: take some time out of your day and just see what is going on in the world. Brush up on your knowledge of how the American government system works, although many find it boring, it really can be quite fascinating (and understanding how the government works will help you in your everyday life).
The old saying that “ignorance is bliss,” shouldn’t ring true in this “information age.” Because, really, how can we expect to make the world better, if we cannot make ourselves a little better.
Source: The Colonnade
The Colonnade
March 8, 2009
On Tuesday night former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Today Show with Jon Stewart,” to discuss her recent work.
Since leaving the Supreme Court in 2006, O’Connor has dedicated her time to encouraging American youths to study civics. But it was about a minute and a half into the interview that O’Connor revealed the scary state of apathy that currently plagues our nation.
“I thought that perhaps a lot of Americans had stopped understanding the three branches of government,” the 78-year-old former justice told Stewart. “Actually, the Annenberg Foundation took some polls: only a third of Americans can even name the three branches of government, much less say what they do.”
One-third, that is roughly 103 million of 305 million Americans that can simply name the three branches of government: judicial, legislative and executive for those of you keeping score.
The Colonnade staff is shocked.
We are constantly reminded that today’s society is drowning in lethargic waters, but are two-thirds of Americans really the dolts that this statistic points to, or do they simply lack education?
For many, there is no excuse, but for some a failing education system is the obvious blame.
Unfortunately, in this country many public schools, especially in low-income areas, do not provide the education necessary to rid students of the ignorance that leads to such an astonishing statistic.
In order for a republic, “by the people, for the people,” to properly work, that ignorance must be erased.
Unfortunately, that most likely will never be fully realized, but you can help.
It’s really quite simple: take some time out of your day and just see what is going on in the world. Brush up on your knowledge of how the American government system works, although many find it boring, it really can be quite fascinating (and understanding how the government works will help you in your everyday life).
The old saying that “ignorance is bliss,” shouldn’t ring true in this “information age.” Because, really, how can we expect to make the world better, if we cannot make ourselves a little better.
Source: The Colonnade
Sustainable Development
A movement of vital proportion, ignored by the major media, kept off-limits from the general public, has been on the United Nations (UN) drawing board for well over ten years. This movement would nullify our Constitutional structure with its freedoms and prerogatives enshrined in the Bill of Rights, including our unhampered right to religious freedom. It masquerades behind the facade of "sustainable development."
In December 1983, Javier Perez de Cuellar, UN Secretary-General, asked Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway, to chair a World Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED) focusing on "long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond."1 Previously she had been Prime Minister of Norway and had served on other UN Commissions - the Brandt Commission on North-South Issues and the Palme Commission on security and disarmament. Now she was asked "to help formulate a third and compelling call for political action" on environment and development."2
Here a one-world pattern begins to emerge: the Brandt Commission bore the title "Program for Survival and Common Crisis"; the Palme Commission "Common Security"; and the Brundtland Commission, "Common Future"3 There is also a political cord common to the chairmen: Willy Brandt, former Prime Minister of Germany, was until his death president of the Socialist International. Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was a socialist leader and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party who was assassinated in Stockholm. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway was also a "member of the Socialist International." These chairmen shared the bond of socialism, a bond at variance with both the U.S. Constitution and the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The Resolution adopted at the UN General Assembly in 1983 directed the chair and vice-chair of the new UNCED to "jointly appoint the remaining members of the Commission, half of whom were to be selected from the developing world."4 Members of the Brundtland Commission came from 21 "very different nations" and included Jim McNeill and Maurice Strong from Canada and the American, William D. Ruckelshaus, the first head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (ERA). He is also a member of the Business Council for Sustainable Development launched in 1990 by Maurice Strong. The Business Council called for "new forms of cooperation between government, business and society to achieve sustainable development."5
What Is Meant By Sustainable Development?
The Brundtland Commission describes Sustainable Development as "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."6 It is further defined: ". . . Sustainable Development can only be pursued if demographic developments are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem."7 And again, . . . "at a minimum Sustainable Development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth - the waters, the soils, and the living beings" The pattern that begins to surface here becomes more pronounced in the body of the Commission's report which was presented to the UN General Assembly in 1987.
The thrust of the "unanimous report" after three years of hearings held on five continents appears in the Chairman's Foreword in comments such as "the rights of people to adequate food, sound housing, safe water, to access to means of choosing the size of their families" (xi); ". . . survival issues relating to uneven development, poverty and population growth" (xii); "the need for 'major changes' . . . in attitudes and in the way our societies are organized" (xiii).8
Following the Chairman's Foreword, an "Overview By The Commission Members" becomes more specific: ". . . Sustainable Development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change. . . . We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward. Painful choices have to be made. Thus in the final analysis, sustainable development must rest on political will."9 "Governments that need to do so should develop long-term multifaceted population policies and a campaign to pursue broad demographic goals to strengthen social, cultural and economic motivations for family planning, and to provide to all who want them the education, contraceptives and services required."10
Dispersed throughout the 400 pages of Our Common Future are so many references to population: "Population and Human Resources," "The Population Perspective," "Managing Population Growth," as to suggest a pre-conceived agenda. At the conclusion of its final meeting held in Tokyo in 1987, the Commission recommended "principles to guide their policy actions" including Principle #4 to "Ensure a Sustainable Level of Population" "Population policies should be formulated and integrated with other economic and social development programmes. . . . Increased access to family planning services is itself a form of social development that allows couples, and women in particular, the right to self-determination."11
A Brundtland Commission recommendation that the UN General Assembly prepare a "Universal Declaration on environmental protection and sustainable development" resulted in the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Canadian, Maurice Strong, a radical environmentalist who had served on the Brundtland Commission, was selected secretary-general. "According to an Associated Press report, Strong declared: 'the United States is the greatest threat to the world's ecological health. . . . In effect, the United States is committing environmental aggression against the rest of the world.'"12
At the opening session of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (The Earth Summit) Maurice Strong, the UNCED Secretary-General, bemoaned the world's "explosive increase in Population" and warned "we have been the most successful species ever; we are now a species out of control. Population must be stabilized and rapidly."13
Sustainable America - A New Consensus
A few months after his inauguration as President of the United States, Bill Clinton, June 23, 1993, created by Executive Order #12852, the President's Council on Sustainable Development which identifies with the Brundtland Commission. The Council's We Believe Statement "is a set of fundamental beliefs the members share that provide the foundations for its recommendations." Statement #11 is concerned with population: "The United States should have policies and programs that contribute to stabilizing global human population; this objective is critical if we hope to have the resources needed to ensure a high quality of life for future generations."14
This emphasis continues under "U.S. Population and Sustainability":
"A sustainable United States is one where all Americans have access to family planning and reproductive health services. . . "
"Population growth will make the objective of sustainable development more difficult"15
"Continued population growth in the United States steadily makes more difficult the job of mitigating the environmental impact of American resources and waste production patterns."16
"As recognized at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 all nations have responsibility for managing population growth. The United States must provide leadership by setting an example."17
"Involving as it does difficult issues as personal childbearing decisions, contraceptive methods, teenage sexual behavior and the high rate of abortion in the United States . . . the Council believes these issues . . . must be addressed . . . in a way that is consistent with the various religious and ethical values and cultural background of the American people. . . . The Council has not discussed nor do its recommendations relate to or take a position on the issue of abortion."18
"The nation's family assistance efforts must provide education and outreach to prevent unintended pregnancies. . . . An effective way to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and births in the United States is to expand access to family planning education and related reproductive health services. . . . Family planning is highly cost-effective compared with the social and public costs of unintended pregnancy, and it helps assure that every child is a wanted child."19
The President's Council Acknowledges Gore's Role
The leadership role Vice President Al Gore has acquired in promoting the environmental picture is recognized in the President's Council on Sustainable Development's (PCSD) Building On Consensus - Progress Report on Sustainable America. It declares that sustainable development is "both urgent and important" and "will be a foundation for both domestic and foreign policy.."21 Gore is given credit for "champion(ing) the cause of sustainable development at the Earth Summit" in Rio.22 As Vice President, Gore created an Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development which provided the President with "the raw material needed to ensure that the goals and principles of sustainable development (were) integrated into (his) second term agenda."23
Upon receipt of the PCSD report, Clinton requested among three items "that the Vice President lead the effort to implement recommendations with the administration."24
In 1992 Gore had authored the book Earth In The Balance: Ecology And The Human Spirit. In the chapter "Environmentalism of the Spirit" he questions whether God "when giving us dominion over the Earth . .. . chose an appropriate technology."25 Gore wrote "that monotheism was once useful because it was a profoundly empowering idea" However, he says " 'empowerment' must now be obtained by consulting 'the wisdom instilled by all faiths.'" "This panreligious perspective" he continues, "may prove especially important where our global civilization's responsibility for the earth is concerned."26
"We must all become partners in a bold effort to change the very foundation of our civilization. . . . We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."27 These are disturbing statements. The use of the word "must" should not be dismissed lightly especially in the context of changing the very foundation of our civilization.
"THE FAMILY - THE HEART OF THE CULTURE OF LIFE" - John Paul II
Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has on numerous occasions directed attention to the Church's constant teaching on the dignity of the human person and the assault on that God-given dignity by national governments and the United Nations.
In 1991, four years after the publication of the Brundtland Commission report. Pope John Paul II commemorated the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum by promulgating the encyclical Centisimus Annus. This doctrinal teaching is also relevant to the President's Council on Sustainable Development which identifies with the Brundtland Commission report.
Centisimus Annus teaches: "Although people are rightly worried . . . about preserving the natural habitat of the various animal species . . . too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic 'human ecology' " (n. 38 emphasis in original). "The first and fundamental structure for 'human ecology' is the family. . . . Here we mean the family founded on marriage. . . . But it often happens that people are discouraged from creating the proper conditions for human reproduction and are led to consider themselves and their lives as a series of sensations to be experienced rather than a work to be accomplished" (n. 39).
". . . In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life. Human ingenuity seems to be directed more towards limiting, suppressing or destroying the source of life - including recourse to abortion. . . . The encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis denounced systematic anti-child-bearing campaigns which on the basis of a distorted view of the demographic problem (forces the parties involved) . . . to submit to new form(s) of oppression" (n.39).
In June 1997, the Holy See was represented at a UN General Assembly reviewing that body's commitment made at the 1992 Rio Summit on Environment and Development. Archbishop Jean-Louis Taurant, Vatican Secretary for Relations with States, speaking at the plenary session, directed attention to the "reservations and interpretations made by the Holy See at the time of the recent international conferences of the United Nations which let us not forget - are included in the same conference reports" (emphasis added).
"I am thinking specifically of the interpretation of terms such as 'reproductive health,' 'sexual health,' and 'family planning' which we find in this meeting's document."28
Science And Religion: An Ecological Alliance
Beginning in 1982, plans were crafted to draw religious leaders into the UN orbit on the environmental issue, using a series of UN-sponsored committees and meetings. A UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development was created "to provide information on global survival issues to parliamentarians, spiritual leaders and the media, and to fund network meetings at national, regional and global levels' This committee was funded by the UN Population Fund and a special trust fund established by the UN Development Fund.29
A Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders On Human Survival formed in 1988 was cosponsored by the Temple of Understanding and the above-mentioned UN Global Committee. The president of the Temple of Understanding (located at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City) is the Very Reverend James Parks Morton, former Dean of the Cathedral and co-chair of the Council of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival. This Global Forum held meetings at Oxford, England (1988) and in Moscow (1990).
The principal speaker at Oxford, James Lovelock, a Fellow of the Lindisfarne Association (a New Age group headquartered at the Cathedral) had authored the book The Ages of Gaia. He told his Oxford audience "on Earth she (Gaia) is the source of everlasting life and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her"30 Lovelock believes "Orthodox Christianity properly understood is a distortion of the pure forms of religious truth" and that "we must immediately return to the worship of the Earth goddess if we are to save ourselves from destruction."31
The Moscow Forum in 1990 "featured Mikhail Gorbachev and the then-UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. It was sponsored by the Supreme Soviet and the International Foundation for Survival and Development along with the UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.32 Gorbachev called for "each nation to produce state of the environment reports at the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and he reiterated his earlier call for a UN 'Green Cross. .. . .'" "The primary thrust of this Forum was to explore the role the news media could play in promoting global survival 'and especially sustainable development'."33
An appeal was also launched for "science and religion to 'join hands' in a new ecological alliance." The Rev. James P. Morton, former Dean of the Cathedral and co-chair of the Forum said, "We welcome the scientists' appeal and are eager to explore as soon as possible concrete, specific forms of collaboration and action. The Earth itself calls us to new levels of joint commitment."34
Among religious leaders who signed the appeal document were (the late) Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, and the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh. President Emeritus of Notre Dame University.
Religious Leaders Targeted To Create Consensus
Following the Moscow Forum Joint Appeal, a conference was held in May of 1990, in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology. "Designed to help the religious community enter into the environmental movement," an elaborate program took place at the Episcopal Washington National Cathedral and the Omni Shoreham Hotel under the banner "Caring for Creation." One of the stated goals was "to develop leadership networks for a regenerated Earth Community."
A special attraction was the appearance of Prince Philip of Edinburgh. The keynote address was delivered by Brian Swimme billed as "an expert on science and creation spirituality." Swimme, an associate for many years of the former priest Matthew Fox, has collaborated with the self-styled "geologian" priest Thomas Berry. The Director of the UN Environment Program was a speaker and the subject of another address was "Science and Religion Joining Hands to Save the Environment" Thus, links were established with the Moscow and Oxford Forums, the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Survival, and the Temple of Understanding.35
The official program quoted both Thomas Berry and Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairman of the UN Commission that produced the report Our Common Future.. A "reception honoring environmentally-concerned elected officials" was also an attraction: Senator Al Gore one of the two so honored.
Again in 1990, a coalition of 200 environmental organizations following the guidance of the Director of the Temple of Understanding's Joint Appeal, invited the "then-Senator Al Gore to a breakfast symposium . . . before he delivered a Sunday sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine." And in October, Senator Gore and three other senators arranged a Congressional breakfast that resulted in a decision to expand the Joint Appeal to initiate environmental programs; to measure interest in grassroots religious environmental activity; and to facilitate formal consultation between religious leaders and scientists."36
In June 1991, at a meeting of religious leaders, scientists, and members of Congress a conclusion was reached: "We believe a consensus now exists at the highest levels of religious tradition that the cause of environmental integrity and justice must occupy a position of utmost priority for people of faith."37
And thus the National Religious Partnership for the Environment came to be.
This Partnership is a "formal agreement" among four of the nation's largest religious organizations:
•U. S. Catholic Conference
•National Council of Churches of Christ
•Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
•Evangelical Environmental Network
The Union of Concerned Scientists enjoys a "special consultative relationship" with this National Partnership.
This Partnership is in the process of mailing "education and action kits to 53,000 congregations" estimated to "reach 100 million church goers" Paul Gorman, the Executive Director of the Partnership (and the 1990 Director of the Temple of Understanding's Joint Appeal) is quoted as saying "how people of faith engage the environmental crisis will have much to do with the future well-being of the planet and in all likelihood with the future of religion as well."38
A 1993 press conference that followed the formal announcement of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment featured Vice President Gore who said this Partnership "will trigger the beginning of grassroots activity in tens of thousands of religious congregations across the country."39
Dignitaries attending this announcement included Bishop James Malone, Youngstown, Ohio, and Dean James P. Morton who praised Gore "for the role he played in bringing the Partnership to life."40
"Every Catholic parish plus every Reform and Conservative Synagogue in the nation is to receive Partnership kits, as well as teleconference and videos for Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools."41
NCCB/USCC Endorse Sustainable Development
The U.S. Catholic Bishops, in November, 1995, approved a program prepared by the USCC Department of Social Development and World Peace titled, "Let The Earth Bless The Lord: God's Creation And Our Responsibility." A cover letter included in this "parish resource kit" expressed gratitude "for the essential interfaith collaboration made possible through our membership in the National Religious Partnership for the Environment" It was signed by Most Rev. Theodore E. McCarrick, Chairman of the International Policy Committee and Most Rev. William S. Skystad. Chairman of the Domestic Policy Committee.
Although "sustainable development" appears repeatedly in this USCC "parish resource kit," no mention is made of the 400-page UN book Our Common Future, which the World Commission On Environment and Development published in 1987 which popularized the concept "sustainable development."
The title given the USCC article, "The Flourishing Of The Human Family - Protecting The Environment: the Sustainable Development Model," is itself a misnomer, a misconception. It fails to document that population control is the objective of the international body. This is an incredible lack of scholarship and a disservice to the laity which reflects poorly on the oversight responsibilities of the two archbishops who chair the international and domestic committees involved. (Note: See Section titled, "What Is Meant By Sustainable Development" above.)
Targeting Catholic Religious Orders For Consensus Building
In this unfolding documentation, religion emerges as an important factor in consensus building. A key-note actor in this development is 25-year-old, New-York-City-based Global Education Associates; Patricia M. Mische, president. In 1973, "when many religious orders sought GEA help in revisioning their charisms, missions and constitution in light of Vatican II mandates for bringing religious life into the Modern World," a GEA Partnership was formed.
GEA recognized "that religious orders with their dedicated members committed to global spirituality and a more humane and ecologically responsible world order represent(ed) a unique and providential fiber for the work of global systemic change. . . . The GEA Religious Orders Partnership provide(d) the forum through which the charism of religious life can address the global agenda and serve the global community."42 Today, 150 religious orders comprise this group.
The role Partnership plays in furthering the goals of GEA is shown in its Board of Trustees and its International Advisory Council. The 1997 Board of Trustees includes Patricia Mische, President; Sharon Frisch, C.S.J., Secretary-Treasurer; Dr. John Healey, Fordham University; Miriam Therese MacGillis, O.P., Director of Genesis Farm, Blairstown, N.J., a center for education in Earth stewardship.
Among the many names listed on GEA's International Advisory Council are Catholics usually identified as of the "left": Joan Chittister, O.S.B.; Robert Drinan, S.J.; Thomas Gumbleton, Auxiliary Bishop, Detroit; Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus Notre Dame University; Fr. Thomas Berry, who has stated: "I am united with GEA in its mission of building partnerships to influence the development of a more just and sustainable world order."43
Berry, "a long-time friend," co-authored the 1992 book The Universe Story with Brian Swimme who teaches at the Institution on Creation Spirituality, Oakland CA, under the leadership of the former Dominican (now Episcopalian) priest, Matthew Fox. Donna Steichen in her landmark book. Ungodly Rage, finds a common bond between Fox and Berry in that both hold that "a post-Christian belief system is taking over - one that sees the earth as a living being -mythologically, as Gaia, Earth Mother - with mankind as her consciousness." Steichen remarks: "Such worship of the universe is properly called cosmolatry."44
Berry, who also authored The Dream Of The Earth, commented recently: "Earth is a mystical presence' an illuminated presence; a sacred Presence. That's the way divinity works. We return to our Mother the Earth."45 This remark gives substance to Steichen's observation.
"Thomas Berry's wisdom has been foundational in educating toward Earth literacy . . .. Through the insight of The Universe Story . . . students at Genesis Farm have gained a self-identification that is Earth-centered."46 Genesis Farm founder, Sr. Miriam Therese MacGillis, O.P., is a close associate of Berry and promoter of his work, and is on the Board of Trustees of GEA as mentioned above.
At the 1997 GEA Religious Orders Partnership annual meeting, the keynote address was given by Nancy Sylvester, I.H.M., who for many years directed NETWORK, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby. Other Catholic speakers mentioned were Ethel Howley, S.S.N.D., a NGO representative; Monica McGloin, O.P.., associated with Earth Centers; Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., who gave an analysis of religious life as a "social movement."47 (emphasis added)
The 1997-1999 Partnership for Action includes the following:
•To "promote and foster Earth spirituality and engage in activities that are ecologically responsive";
•To "initiate, facilitate and maintain communication between and among religious congregations who are responding to ecological concerns";
•To "collaboratively promote a UN Earth Charter";
•To "foster learning about global citizenship";
•To "promote support for the United Nations."48
Promoting Partnership Between Un Agencies And Religious Groups
During May 3-7, 1997, GEA held a Religion and World Order Symposium co-sponsored by Fordham University Institute on Religion and Culture and the Center for Mission Research Study at Maryknoll. This was a "program of the Religious Council of Project 2000," which in turn is a "partnership between UN agencies and secular and religious nongovernmental organizations (NGO)." Initiated by GEA in 1990, the Symposium carries the endorsement of UNESCO's program on the Contribution of Religion to a Culture of Peace. "40 scholars from different religious traditions' approved recommendations that:
•A People's Assembly be established; The Security Council be restructured and the veto power be abolished;
•An Economic Security Council be established with democratic representation of the world's nations in addition to the G-7;
•The World Court of Justice be strengthened and all members of the United Nations accept its jurisdiction;
•New and reliable sources of financing be found;
•The establishment of a World Court on the Environment: an Earth Charter to complement the UN Charter; full support for and strengthening of the United Nations Environmental Program and full support of the 'Education For All' project of several UN agencies;
•We urge our religious leaders to give full support to the non-governmental organizations, (NGOs).. ..
This statement was signed by Dr. Patricia Mische, President of Global Education Associates; Dr. John Healey, Director of Fordham University Institute on Religion and Culture; Dr. Anne Reissner, Director of Study, Center for Mission Research and Study, at Maryknoll.49
Both these sets of recommendations illustrate how GEA has used its Catholic Religious Orders Partnership as an instrument to promote "global systemic change"; to restructure and strengthen the UN; and through its "Earth Covenant" initiative to create worldwide support for the Earth Charter, all the while enhancing its own stature at the UN edifice on the East River.
Inasmuch as Global Education Associates is a UN accredited NGO, its influence in that body is substantial. Mische was one of seven NGO leaders invited to address the Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organizations (DPI/NGO) conference at the United Nations September, 1996. She recommended strengthening the role of NGOs in order "to advance a more effective and democratic United Nations."50
The GEA Partnership agenda involving Catholic religious orders as well as the United States Catholic Conference (USCC), in association with the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (documented previously), should be matters of grave concern for all Catholics - laity, clergy and hierarchy. This Forum Focus issue highlights one of the significant factors contributing to the demise of religious orders in the United States. It reveals a virus infecting the life blood of our religious orders, namely, entanglement in advancing the UN political agenda.
The Earth Charter For Gaia And The Cosmos
GEA describes its 1998 Earth Covenant as a "Citizens' Treaty"; as a "process" for "building a broad-based movement for ecological security, sustainable development and systems of responsible global governance. . . ." Putting UN-speak aside, the objective of this consensus building is to give the impression of widespread public support for a UN Earth Charter.
This Earth Charter initiative was launched in 1994. "Backed by a grant from the Netherlands government, two international non-governmental organizations"
spearheaded the "process: the Earth Council chaired by Maurice Strong, and Green Cross International headed by Mikhail Gorbachev." The final step will lead "to the proclamation of a binding Earth Charter by January of the year 2000." Gorbachev's "Green Cross International, Global Education Associates and Project Global 2000 are working in partnership to achieve this goal" (emphasis added)51
Should the "promoters of the Earth Charter" succeed, their "notion of sustainable development would become a matter of international law. . . . It is "presented as a holistic concept - the UN conferences held during the 1990s . . . have been aimed at building a global consensus.' " As noted throughout this documentation, in all these conferences, "the top priority is accorded to curbing population growth, since the expansion of world population is deemed the root cause of world poverty and the greatest threat to global security."52
Maurice Strong insists that this Earth Charter should set out the "basic principles for the conduct of nations and of peoples with respect to the environment and development, to ensure the future viability and integrity of the earth as a hospitable home for humans and other forms of life." As the Catholic World Report points out, it is intended to be a "historic document," a "new code of conduct," a "New Social Contract" aimed at imposing new standards on the activities of governments and even religious or-ganizations.53
The introductory words of the Earth Charter (Benchmark Draft of March 18, 1997) read: "Earth is our home and home to all living beings. Earth itself is alive. We are part of an evolving universe"54
There is a noticeable similarity here to comments made by the English scientist, James Lovelock, author of the book. The Ages of Gaia. He told his audience at the 1988 Global Forum at Oxford, England: "On Earth she (Gaia) is the source of everlasting life and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her" (Note: See section titled, "Science and Religion: an Ecological Alliance" above.)
In like manner, Gorbachev has stated: "We are part of the Cosmos . . . Cosmos is my God. Nature is my God. . . I believe that the 21st century will be the century of the environment, the century when all of us will have to find an answer to how to harmonize relations between man and the rest of Nature . . . We are part of Nature. . . "55
And Maurice Strong, addressing the Rio Earth Summit called attention "to the declaration of the Sacred Earth" which had been part of the pre-Summit ceremonies: "The changes in behavior and directions called for here must be rooted in our deepest spiritual, moral and ethical values" The declaration states: "We must. . . transform our attitudes and values, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature."56
Francis Cardinal Stafford, while Archbishop of Denver, Co., writing in 1993 on "The New Age Movement" specifically mentioned paganism as a basic quality of this theosophy: New Agers "find their ideological allies in the 'Gaia' variant of the ecological movement. . . . The characteristic feature of the various expressions of (this movement)" he notes, "is their common reversion to the ancient pagan morality of responsibility to the cosmos."57
The accuracy of the Archbishop's analysis is confirmed in the Gaia Peace Atlas, a radical socialist New Age publication which argues, "We need a radical change of direction - to global self-governance, decentralized societies and a partnership between human and Gaian ecosystems, leading to a peaceful world that encourages social justice through sustainable development."58
In his Foreword to this Gaia Peace Atlas, the then UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar stated: "A consensus has emerged during the past forty years" that "a reliable system of international security, progressive disarmament and sustainable economic growth are acknowledged goals of all peoples of the world" He expressed the "hope that this fine document will make a significant contribution to knowledge of these goals both urgent and achievable."59
The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, during the tenure of Dean James Parks Morton, is well-known for its earth-bound spirituality. Each year it offers a "Winter Solstice Whole Earth Christmas Celebration" which "puts the event in the church, but takes the church out of the event," as succinctly stated in the New York Times (Dec. 26, 1992). He also commissioned a Missa Gaia (Earth Mass) which is performed each year for the Feast of St. Francis, replete with singers, dancers, pets galore and as a high point, an elephant, camel and llama are paraded up the center aisle for a blessing. Widely known as the "green dean" Morton, founder of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, retired in January, 1997, but remains active in ecological matters.
New Age Spirituality At Baca Grande
Maurice Strong, a shrewd millionaire capitalist "with a passion for socialist one-world causes, is a radical environmentalist and New Age devotee.."60 As the result of a business deal. Strong acquired ownership of a "200,000 acre ranch called Baca Grande in Colorado. Now a 'New Age' center run by his wife Hanne" it attracts "Zen and Tibetan Buddhist monks, a breakaway order of Carmelite nuns and followers of a Hindu guru. . . "61
Both the New Age Aspen Institute and the Lindisfarne Association are part of the Baca Grande spiritual center located in this San Luis Valley. Maurice Strong, the Director of Finance of the Lindisfarne Association, is on its Board of Directors as was James P. Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St.. John the Divine. Lindisfarne, it should be noted, is patterned after New Age Findhorn in Scotland.
Strong and his wife see "the Baca serving as a model for the way the world should be - and they say - must be - if humankind is to survive."62 Hanne Strong "supports her husband's work on the Earth Charter by promoting 'spiritually based environmental education.'" She founded the Wisdom Keepers which convened for the first time at the Rio conference, then again at the UN Istanbul Habitat II conference in 1996.
The Earth Charter, Hanne Strong maintains, must "come to terms with the very concrete question of how we can develop the basis for sustainable life on earth." The Earth Charter therefore, must "articulate a new relationship between people and the earth."63 The exemplary analysis in the Catholic World Report discloses that Hanne Strong's Wisdom Keepers authored the Declaration of Sacred Earth. A key sentence in that declaration "explains that the global crisis 'transcends all national, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic boundaries.'" The Catholic World Report observes: "If the crisis transcends religious boundaries, it follows that religion must bow before the solution to the crisis. If necessary, religions must sacrifice their own particular principles."64 (emphasis added)
In Maurice Strong's April 8, 1997 speech introducing the Earth Charter to the UN, he said: "There is a need to address the fundamental ethical imperatives of sustainable development." And what are these ethical imperatives? Strong "spoke of 'ethics of participation'. . . and 'ethics of inclusion'. . . in order to 'foster a healthy balance between quality of life and quality of environment - because development must henceforth be in balance with 'Mother Earth.' It will 'develop a sense of belonging to the universe."'65 Thus the Earth Charter and sustainable development are part of the same package, which it should be repeated includes population control. The tenets of the New Age Movement are threaded throughout this documentation.
World Goodwill, New Age Theosophy Permeate The United Nations
The proposed Earth Charter melds neatly with the 1980 UN report. The New International Economic Order: A Spiritual Imperative which clearly was influenced by Alice Bailey. The 1980 report states ". . . Today a new understanding of spirituality is emerging which recognizes that all efforts to uplift humanity are spiritual in nature. Alice Bailey said, 'That is spiritual which lies beyond the point of present achievement'; . . . Given this new understanding of spirituality, the work of the United Nations can be seen within the entire evolutionary unfolding of humanity. The work of the UN is indeed spiritual and holds profound import for the future of civilization."66
Alice Bailey, a theosophist along with her husband Foster, established much of what is now known as the New Age Movement. Originally, they founded the Lucifer Publishing Company but shortly thereafter, discretion dictated the name change to Lucis Trust (cf. Forum Focus, Oct. 1991 issue The New Age Movement). It has served as a catalyst for a number of New Age organizations including World Goodwill. One of Goodwill's stated objectives is "to support the work of the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies as the best hope of a united and peaceful world"; another is "to make available up-to-date information on constructive current conditions in the main areas of human life through publication of a quarterly newsletter." It also publishes Occasional World Goodwill Papers.
As an accredited UN non-governmental Organization (NGO) it maintains relations with a wide range of national and international NGOs. The World Good' will Newsletter which highlights UN addresses also featured excerpts from Alice Bailey's writings. A few examples will suffice: A 1988 Newsletter on Global Survival held at Oxford to which World Goodwill was a media guest featured James Lovelock speaking on "Gaia and the Reintegration of Religion and Science." In addition. Dean James P. Morton was interviewed about the Oxford conference in regard to ways in which "parliamentary and spiritual leaders" could work together "for the salvation of the planet."
A 1989 Occasional Paper presented "A Cosmo-logical Vision of the Future" an address given by Robert Muller, who had served in the UN bureaucracy for 38 years and was an Assistant Secretary-General from 1982 to 1985. He now heads the United Nations University in Costa Rica. In his remarks he mentioned the Gaia hypothesis. ". . . We are part of a living planetary organization . . . When we die we return to the Earth . . . We are Earth alive . .. . All over the world a kind of Earth democracy is taking shape" He mentioned Fr. Thomas Berry's book. The Universe Story, and the need for a "world of cosmic spirituality."
A 1991 Occasional Paper contained the address given at Cambridge, England, by Gro Harlem Brundtland on "Environmental Challenges of the 1990's: Our Responsibilities Toward Future Generations" which echoed the UN book. Our Common Future, the report of the commission she had chaired. (Note: On Jan. 27 of this year, Gro Harlem Brundtland was appointed chairman of the UN World Health Organization which places her in a key position for the implementation of sustainable development on a worldwide basis.)
World Goodwill interviewed Maurice Strong for another 1991 Newsletter which concentrated on the Rio Summit conference. He repeated his position that ". . . the earth is incapable of supporting a global population of approximately twice today's numbers that demographers predict . . . Sustainable development implies a balance between our personal aspirations and a consideration of the ecosystem on which our survival depends."
A 1995 Newsletter under the caption "Recommended Reading" mentions a 1995 book co-authored by Patricia Mische titled. The United Nations In An Interdependent World. This report from a six day symposium organized by GEA with the support of 15 UN agencies and 10 NGOs reveals where GEA's interest really is.
A 1996 Newsletter on Universal Ethics includes "Reflections" by Mikhail Gorbachev who comments on conditions for preserving life on Earth: "Honouring diversity and honouring the Earth create the basis for genuine unity."
Patricia Mische states: "We do not need a return to the external facades of religiosity. But we do need to resume the spiritual journey . . . with new, global parameters" All these UN supporters speak with the same voice - the voice of theosophy that rejects Christianity. Patricia Mische's earlier Catholicism is alluded to in the September-December, 1997, issue of GEA's Breakthrough News in regard to the death of Bishop Joseph Francis, auxiliary of Newark, NJ, who had confirmed her three daughters in his private chapel.
An example of the unity of purpose that pervades much of this documentation is the announcement GEA will present the 1998 Jerry Mische Global Service Award to Thomas Berry.
The United Nations Association of the US (UNA-USA), "the premier pro-UN lobby group in America claims . .. a 135 member Council of Organizations and operates in New York and Washington, D.C. . . . and is now 'creating a powerful national constituency for an even better UN/ Some of the 135 member groups include the American Humanist Association, Planned Parenthood Federation and the U.S. Catholic Conference."67
The willingness of the USCC (the civil arm of the Bishops' Conference) to be "politically correct," as mentioned previously in regard to its membership in the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and its incredible endorsement of "sustainable development" is indicative of a lack of scholarship.
John Paul II's Address To Un General Assembly
In contrast, our Holy Father's message of October, 1995, delivered to the United Nations General Assembly imparts profound wisdom and encouragement for American Catholics. He stated, "The United Nations Organization needs to rise more and more above the cold status of an administrative institute and become a moral center where all the nations of the world . . . develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a 'family of nations'" (n. 14).
"The politics of nations, with which your organization is principally concerned, can never ignore the transcendent spiritual dimension of the human experience and could never ignore it without banning the cause of man and the cause of human freedom" (n. 16).
"We must overcome our fear of the future. . . . The answer to that fear is neither coercion nor repression, nor the imposing of one social 'model' on the entire world. The answer to that fear . . . is the common effort to build the civilization of love. . ." (n. 18).68
George Weigel writing in Crisis magazine December, 1995, noted: "The Holy Father knows full well that the UN bureaucracy and its functional agencies . . . are shot through with corruption. Then there was the attempt by the international lifestyle Left, aided and abetted by the UN bureaucracy, to highjack the 1994 UN population conference at Cairo, the 1995 Copenhagen 'Social Summit,' and the Beijing world conference on women . . . the Pope knew to whom he was talking at Turtle Bay. And as one who believes that his own peacemaking efforts in the Balkans have, at times, been obstructed by the UN, John Paul knows all about the organization's deficiencies in fulfilling its charter's basic mandate. . . ."
"Thus the Pope's call to the UN to develop a shared awareness of being . . . a 'family of nations' should be taken as a polite demur on the UN's grandiose plans to turn the UN into a world government. . . ."69
His stirring words to Catholics of America are a beacon and a challenge in countering the UN concept of "sustainable development" that has penetrated our Church and society:
"Always be convincing witnesses to the truth. Stir into a flame the gift of God . . . Light your nation - Light the world - with the power of that flame. Amen"
In December 1983, Javier Perez de Cuellar, UN Secretary-General, asked Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway, to chair a World Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED) focusing on "long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond."1 Previously she had been Prime Minister of Norway and had served on other UN Commissions - the Brandt Commission on North-South Issues and the Palme Commission on security and disarmament. Now she was asked "to help formulate a third and compelling call for political action" on environment and development."2
Here a one-world pattern begins to emerge: the Brandt Commission bore the title "Program for Survival and Common Crisis"; the Palme Commission "Common Security"; and the Brundtland Commission, "Common Future"3 There is also a political cord common to the chairmen: Willy Brandt, former Prime Minister of Germany, was until his death president of the Socialist International. Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was a socialist leader and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party who was assassinated in Stockholm. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway was also a "member of the Socialist International." These chairmen shared the bond of socialism, a bond at variance with both the U.S. Constitution and the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The Resolution adopted at the UN General Assembly in 1983 directed the chair and vice-chair of the new UNCED to "jointly appoint the remaining members of the Commission, half of whom were to be selected from the developing world."4 Members of the Brundtland Commission came from 21 "very different nations" and included Jim McNeill and Maurice Strong from Canada and the American, William D. Ruckelshaus, the first head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (ERA). He is also a member of the Business Council for Sustainable Development launched in 1990 by Maurice Strong. The Business Council called for "new forms of cooperation between government, business and society to achieve sustainable development."5
What Is Meant By Sustainable Development?
The Brundtland Commission describes Sustainable Development as "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."6 It is further defined: ". . . Sustainable Development can only be pursued if demographic developments are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem."7 And again, . . . "at a minimum Sustainable Development must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth - the waters, the soils, and the living beings" The pattern that begins to surface here becomes more pronounced in the body of the Commission's report which was presented to the UN General Assembly in 1987.
The thrust of the "unanimous report" after three years of hearings held on five continents appears in the Chairman's Foreword in comments such as "the rights of people to adequate food, sound housing, safe water, to access to means of choosing the size of their families" (xi); ". . . survival issues relating to uneven development, poverty and population growth" (xii); "the need for 'major changes' . . . in attitudes and in the way our societies are organized" (xiii).8
Following the Chairman's Foreword, an "Overview By The Commission Members" becomes more specific: ". . . Sustainable Development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change. . . . We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward. Painful choices have to be made. Thus in the final analysis, sustainable development must rest on political will."9 "Governments that need to do so should develop long-term multifaceted population policies and a campaign to pursue broad demographic goals to strengthen social, cultural and economic motivations for family planning, and to provide to all who want them the education, contraceptives and services required."10
Dispersed throughout the 400 pages of Our Common Future are so many references to population: "Population and Human Resources," "The Population Perspective," "Managing Population Growth," as to suggest a pre-conceived agenda. At the conclusion of its final meeting held in Tokyo in 1987, the Commission recommended "principles to guide their policy actions" including Principle #4 to "Ensure a Sustainable Level of Population" "Population policies should be formulated and integrated with other economic and social development programmes. . . . Increased access to family planning services is itself a form of social development that allows couples, and women in particular, the right to self-determination."11
A Brundtland Commission recommendation that the UN General Assembly prepare a "Universal Declaration on environmental protection and sustainable development" resulted in the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Canadian, Maurice Strong, a radical environmentalist who had served on the Brundtland Commission, was selected secretary-general. "According to an Associated Press report, Strong declared: 'the United States is the greatest threat to the world's ecological health. . . . In effect, the United States is committing environmental aggression against the rest of the world.'"12
At the opening session of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (The Earth Summit) Maurice Strong, the UNCED Secretary-General, bemoaned the world's "explosive increase in Population" and warned "we have been the most successful species ever; we are now a species out of control. Population must be stabilized and rapidly."13
Sustainable America - A New Consensus
A few months after his inauguration as President of the United States, Bill Clinton, June 23, 1993, created by Executive Order #12852, the President's Council on Sustainable Development which identifies with the Brundtland Commission. The Council's We Believe Statement "is a set of fundamental beliefs the members share that provide the foundations for its recommendations." Statement #11 is concerned with population: "The United States should have policies and programs that contribute to stabilizing global human population; this objective is critical if we hope to have the resources needed to ensure a high quality of life for future generations."14
This emphasis continues under "U.S. Population and Sustainability":
"A sustainable United States is one where all Americans have access to family planning and reproductive health services. . . "
"Population growth will make the objective of sustainable development more difficult"15
"Continued population growth in the United States steadily makes more difficult the job of mitigating the environmental impact of American resources and waste production patterns."16
"As recognized at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 all nations have responsibility for managing population growth. The United States must provide leadership by setting an example."17
"Involving as it does difficult issues as personal childbearing decisions, contraceptive methods, teenage sexual behavior and the high rate of abortion in the United States . . . the Council believes these issues . . . must be addressed . . . in a way that is consistent with the various religious and ethical values and cultural background of the American people. . . . The Council has not discussed nor do its recommendations relate to or take a position on the issue of abortion."18
"The nation's family assistance efforts must provide education and outreach to prevent unintended pregnancies. . . . An effective way to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and births in the United States is to expand access to family planning education and related reproductive health services. . . . Family planning is highly cost-effective compared with the social and public costs of unintended pregnancy, and it helps assure that every child is a wanted child."19
The President's Council Acknowledges Gore's Role
The leadership role Vice President Al Gore has acquired in promoting the environmental picture is recognized in the President's Council on Sustainable Development's (PCSD) Building On Consensus - Progress Report on Sustainable America. It declares that sustainable development is "both urgent and important" and "will be a foundation for both domestic and foreign policy.."21 Gore is given credit for "champion(ing) the cause of sustainable development at the Earth Summit" in Rio.22 As Vice President, Gore created an Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development which provided the President with "the raw material needed to ensure that the goals and principles of sustainable development (were) integrated into (his) second term agenda."23
Upon receipt of the PCSD report, Clinton requested among three items "that the Vice President lead the effort to implement recommendations with the administration."24
In 1992 Gore had authored the book Earth In The Balance: Ecology And The Human Spirit. In the chapter "Environmentalism of the Spirit" he questions whether God "when giving us dominion over the Earth . .. . chose an appropriate technology."25 Gore wrote "that monotheism was once useful because it was a profoundly empowering idea" However, he says " 'empowerment' must now be obtained by consulting 'the wisdom instilled by all faiths.'" "This panreligious perspective" he continues, "may prove especially important where our global civilization's responsibility for the earth is concerned."26
"We must all become partners in a bold effort to change the very foundation of our civilization. . . . We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."27 These are disturbing statements. The use of the word "must" should not be dismissed lightly especially in the context of changing the very foundation of our civilization.
"THE FAMILY - THE HEART OF THE CULTURE OF LIFE" - John Paul II
Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has on numerous occasions directed attention to the Church's constant teaching on the dignity of the human person and the assault on that God-given dignity by national governments and the United Nations.
In 1991, four years after the publication of the Brundtland Commission report. Pope John Paul II commemorated the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum by promulgating the encyclical Centisimus Annus. This doctrinal teaching is also relevant to the President's Council on Sustainable Development which identifies with the Brundtland Commission report.
Centisimus Annus teaches: "Although people are rightly worried . . . about preserving the natural habitat of the various animal species . . . too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic 'human ecology' " (n. 38 emphasis in original). "The first and fundamental structure for 'human ecology' is the family. . . . Here we mean the family founded on marriage. . . . But it often happens that people are discouraged from creating the proper conditions for human reproduction and are led to consider themselves and their lives as a series of sensations to be experienced rather than a work to be accomplished" (n. 39).
". . . In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life. Human ingenuity seems to be directed more towards limiting, suppressing or destroying the source of life - including recourse to abortion. . . . The encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis denounced systematic anti-child-bearing campaigns which on the basis of a distorted view of the demographic problem (forces the parties involved) . . . to submit to new form(s) of oppression" (n.39).
In June 1997, the Holy See was represented at a UN General Assembly reviewing that body's commitment made at the 1992 Rio Summit on Environment and Development. Archbishop Jean-Louis Taurant, Vatican Secretary for Relations with States, speaking at the plenary session, directed attention to the "reservations and interpretations made by the Holy See at the time of the recent international conferences of the United Nations which let us not forget - are included in the same conference reports" (emphasis added).
"I am thinking specifically of the interpretation of terms such as 'reproductive health,' 'sexual health,' and 'family planning' which we find in this meeting's document."28
Science And Religion: An Ecological Alliance
Beginning in 1982, plans were crafted to draw religious leaders into the UN orbit on the environmental issue, using a series of UN-sponsored committees and meetings. A UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development was created "to provide information on global survival issues to parliamentarians, spiritual leaders and the media, and to fund network meetings at national, regional and global levels' This committee was funded by the UN Population Fund and a special trust fund established by the UN Development Fund.29
A Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders On Human Survival formed in 1988 was cosponsored by the Temple of Understanding and the above-mentioned UN Global Committee. The president of the Temple of Understanding (located at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City) is the Very Reverend James Parks Morton, former Dean of the Cathedral and co-chair of the Council of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival. This Global Forum held meetings at Oxford, England (1988) and in Moscow (1990).
The principal speaker at Oxford, James Lovelock, a Fellow of the Lindisfarne Association (a New Age group headquartered at the Cathedral) had authored the book The Ages of Gaia. He told his Oxford audience "on Earth she (Gaia) is the source of everlasting life and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her"30 Lovelock believes "Orthodox Christianity properly understood is a distortion of the pure forms of religious truth" and that "we must immediately return to the worship of the Earth goddess if we are to save ourselves from destruction."31
The Moscow Forum in 1990 "featured Mikhail Gorbachev and the then-UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. It was sponsored by the Supreme Soviet and the International Foundation for Survival and Development along with the UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.32 Gorbachev called for "each nation to produce state of the environment reports at the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and he reiterated his earlier call for a UN 'Green Cross. .. . .'" "The primary thrust of this Forum was to explore the role the news media could play in promoting global survival 'and especially sustainable development'."33
An appeal was also launched for "science and religion to 'join hands' in a new ecological alliance." The Rev. James P. Morton, former Dean of the Cathedral and co-chair of the Forum said, "We welcome the scientists' appeal and are eager to explore as soon as possible concrete, specific forms of collaboration and action. The Earth itself calls us to new levels of joint commitment."34
Among religious leaders who signed the appeal document were (the late) Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, and the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh. President Emeritus of Notre Dame University.
Religious Leaders Targeted To Create Consensus
Following the Moscow Forum Joint Appeal, a conference was held in May of 1990, in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology. "Designed to help the religious community enter into the environmental movement," an elaborate program took place at the Episcopal Washington National Cathedral and the Omni Shoreham Hotel under the banner "Caring for Creation." One of the stated goals was "to develop leadership networks for a regenerated Earth Community."
A special attraction was the appearance of Prince Philip of Edinburgh. The keynote address was delivered by Brian Swimme billed as "an expert on science and creation spirituality." Swimme, an associate for many years of the former priest Matthew Fox, has collaborated with the self-styled "geologian" priest Thomas Berry. The Director of the UN Environment Program was a speaker and the subject of another address was "Science and Religion Joining Hands to Save the Environment" Thus, links were established with the Moscow and Oxford Forums, the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Survival, and the Temple of Understanding.35
The official program quoted both Thomas Berry and Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairman of the UN Commission that produced the report Our Common Future.. A "reception honoring environmentally-concerned elected officials" was also an attraction: Senator Al Gore one of the two so honored.
Again in 1990, a coalition of 200 environmental organizations following the guidance of the Director of the Temple of Understanding's Joint Appeal, invited the "then-Senator Al Gore to a breakfast symposium . . . before he delivered a Sunday sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine." And in October, Senator Gore and three other senators arranged a Congressional breakfast that resulted in a decision to expand the Joint Appeal to initiate environmental programs; to measure interest in grassroots religious environmental activity; and to facilitate formal consultation between religious leaders and scientists."36
In June 1991, at a meeting of religious leaders, scientists, and members of Congress a conclusion was reached: "We believe a consensus now exists at the highest levels of religious tradition that the cause of environmental integrity and justice must occupy a position of utmost priority for people of faith."37
And thus the National Religious Partnership for the Environment came to be.
This Partnership is a "formal agreement" among four of the nation's largest religious organizations:
•U. S. Catholic Conference
•National Council of Churches of Christ
•Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
•Evangelical Environmental Network
The Union of Concerned Scientists enjoys a "special consultative relationship" with this National Partnership.
This Partnership is in the process of mailing "education and action kits to 53,000 congregations" estimated to "reach 100 million church goers" Paul Gorman, the Executive Director of the Partnership (and the 1990 Director of the Temple of Understanding's Joint Appeal) is quoted as saying "how people of faith engage the environmental crisis will have much to do with the future well-being of the planet and in all likelihood with the future of religion as well."38
A 1993 press conference that followed the formal announcement of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment featured Vice President Gore who said this Partnership "will trigger the beginning of grassroots activity in tens of thousands of religious congregations across the country."39
Dignitaries attending this announcement included Bishop James Malone, Youngstown, Ohio, and Dean James P. Morton who praised Gore "for the role he played in bringing the Partnership to life."40
"Every Catholic parish plus every Reform and Conservative Synagogue in the nation is to receive Partnership kits, as well as teleconference and videos for Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools."41
NCCB/USCC Endorse Sustainable Development
The U.S. Catholic Bishops, in November, 1995, approved a program prepared by the USCC Department of Social Development and World Peace titled, "Let The Earth Bless The Lord: God's Creation And Our Responsibility." A cover letter included in this "parish resource kit" expressed gratitude "for the essential interfaith collaboration made possible through our membership in the National Religious Partnership for the Environment" It was signed by Most Rev. Theodore E. McCarrick, Chairman of the International Policy Committee and Most Rev. William S. Skystad. Chairman of the Domestic Policy Committee.
Although "sustainable development" appears repeatedly in this USCC "parish resource kit," no mention is made of the 400-page UN book Our Common Future, which the World Commission On Environment and Development published in 1987 which popularized the concept "sustainable development."
The title given the USCC article, "The Flourishing Of The Human Family - Protecting The Environment: the Sustainable Development Model," is itself a misnomer, a misconception. It fails to document that population control is the objective of the international body. This is an incredible lack of scholarship and a disservice to the laity which reflects poorly on the oversight responsibilities of the two archbishops who chair the international and domestic committees involved. (Note: See Section titled, "What Is Meant By Sustainable Development" above.)
Targeting Catholic Religious Orders For Consensus Building
In this unfolding documentation, religion emerges as an important factor in consensus building. A key-note actor in this development is 25-year-old, New-York-City-based Global Education Associates; Patricia M. Mische, president. In 1973, "when many religious orders sought GEA help in revisioning their charisms, missions and constitution in light of Vatican II mandates for bringing religious life into the Modern World," a GEA Partnership was formed.
GEA recognized "that religious orders with their dedicated members committed to global spirituality and a more humane and ecologically responsible world order represent(ed) a unique and providential fiber for the work of global systemic change. . . . The GEA Religious Orders Partnership provide(d) the forum through which the charism of religious life can address the global agenda and serve the global community."42 Today, 150 religious orders comprise this group.
The role Partnership plays in furthering the goals of GEA is shown in its Board of Trustees and its International Advisory Council. The 1997 Board of Trustees includes Patricia Mische, President; Sharon Frisch, C.S.J., Secretary-Treasurer; Dr. John Healey, Fordham University; Miriam Therese MacGillis, O.P., Director of Genesis Farm, Blairstown, N.J., a center for education in Earth stewardship.
Among the many names listed on GEA's International Advisory Council are Catholics usually identified as of the "left": Joan Chittister, O.S.B.; Robert Drinan, S.J.; Thomas Gumbleton, Auxiliary Bishop, Detroit; Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus Notre Dame University; Fr. Thomas Berry, who has stated: "I am united with GEA in its mission of building partnerships to influence the development of a more just and sustainable world order."43
Berry, "a long-time friend," co-authored the 1992 book The Universe Story with Brian Swimme who teaches at the Institution on Creation Spirituality, Oakland CA, under the leadership of the former Dominican (now Episcopalian) priest, Matthew Fox. Donna Steichen in her landmark book. Ungodly Rage, finds a common bond between Fox and Berry in that both hold that "a post-Christian belief system is taking over - one that sees the earth as a living being -mythologically, as Gaia, Earth Mother - with mankind as her consciousness." Steichen remarks: "Such worship of the universe is properly called cosmolatry."44
Berry, who also authored The Dream Of The Earth, commented recently: "Earth is a mystical presence' an illuminated presence; a sacred Presence. That's the way divinity works. We return to our Mother the Earth."45 This remark gives substance to Steichen's observation.
"Thomas Berry's wisdom has been foundational in educating toward Earth literacy . . .. Through the insight of The Universe Story . . . students at Genesis Farm have gained a self-identification that is Earth-centered."46 Genesis Farm founder, Sr. Miriam Therese MacGillis, O.P., is a close associate of Berry and promoter of his work, and is on the Board of Trustees of GEA as mentioned above.
At the 1997 GEA Religious Orders Partnership annual meeting, the keynote address was given by Nancy Sylvester, I.H.M., who for many years directed NETWORK, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby. Other Catholic speakers mentioned were Ethel Howley, S.S.N.D., a NGO representative; Monica McGloin, O.P.., associated with Earth Centers; Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., who gave an analysis of religious life as a "social movement."47 (emphasis added)
The 1997-1999 Partnership for Action includes the following:
•To "promote and foster Earth spirituality and engage in activities that are ecologically responsive";
•To "initiate, facilitate and maintain communication between and among religious congregations who are responding to ecological concerns";
•To "collaboratively promote a UN Earth Charter";
•To "foster learning about global citizenship";
•To "promote support for the United Nations."48
Promoting Partnership Between Un Agencies And Religious Groups
During May 3-7, 1997, GEA held a Religion and World Order Symposium co-sponsored by Fordham University Institute on Religion and Culture and the Center for Mission Research Study at Maryknoll. This was a "program of the Religious Council of Project 2000," which in turn is a "partnership between UN agencies and secular and religious nongovernmental organizations (NGO)." Initiated by GEA in 1990, the Symposium carries the endorsement of UNESCO's program on the Contribution of Religion to a Culture of Peace. "40 scholars from different religious traditions' approved recommendations that:
•A People's Assembly be established; The Security Council be restructured and the veto power be abolished;
•An Economic Security Council be established with democratic representation of the world's nations in addition to the G-7;
•The World Court of Justice be strengthened and all members of the United Nations accept its jurisdiction;
•New and reliable sources of financing be found;
•The establishment of a World Court on the Environment: an Earth Charter to complement the UN Charter; full support for and strengthening of the United Nations Environmental Program and full support of the 'Education For All' project of several UN agencies;
•We urge our religious leaders to give full support to the non-governmental organizations, (NGOs).. ..
This statement was signed by Dr. Patricia Mische, President of Global Education Associates; Dr. John Healey, Director of Fordham University Institute on Religion and Culture; Dr. Anne Reissner, Director of Study, Center for Mission Research and Study, at Maryknoll.49
Both these sets of recommendations illustrate how GEA has used its Catholic Religious Orders Partnership as an instrument to promote "global systemic change"; to restructure and strengthen the UN; and through its "Earth Covenant" initiative to create worldwide support for the Earth Charter, all the while enhancing its own stature at the UN edifice on the East River.
Inasmuch as Global Education Associates is a UN accredited NGO, its influence in that body is substantial. Mische was one of seven NGO leaders invited to address the Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organizations (DPI/NGO) conference at the United Nations September, 1996. She recommended strengthening the role of NGOs in order "to advance a more effective and democratic United Nations."50
The GEA Partnership agenda involving Catholic religious orders as well as the United States Catholic Conference (USCC), in association with the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (documented previously), should be matters of grave concern for all Catholics - laity, clergy and hierarchy. This Forum Focus issue highlights one of the significant factors contributing to the demise of religious orders in the United States. It reveals a virus infecting the life blood of our religious orders, namely, entanglement in advancing the UN political agenda.
The Earth Charter For Gaia And The Cosmos
GEA describes its 1998 Earth Covenant as a "Citizens' Treaty"; as a "process" for "building a broad-based movement for ecological security, sustainable development and systems of responsible global governance. . . ." Putting UN-speak aside, the objective of this consensus building is to give the impression of widespread public support for a UN Earth Charter.
This Earth Charter initiative was launched in 1994. "Backed by a grant from the Netherlands government, two international non-governmental organizations"
spearheaded the "process: the Earth Council chaired by Maurice Strong, and Green Cross International headed by Mikhail Gorbachev." The final step will lead "to the proclamation of a binding Earth Charter by January of the year 2000." Gorbachev's "Green Cross International, Global Education Associates and Project Global 2000 are working in partnership to achieve this goal" (emphasis added)51
Should the "promoters of the Earth Charter" succeed, their "notion of sustainable development would become a matter of international law. . . . It is "presented as a holistic concept - the UN conferences held during the 1990s . . . have been aimed at building a global consensus.' " As noted throughout this documentation, in all these conferences, "the top priority is accorded to curbing population growth, since the expansion of world population is deemed the root cause of world poverty and the greatest threat to global security."52
Maurice Strong insists that this Earth Charter should set out the "basic principles for the conduct of nations and of peoples with respect to the environment and development, to ensure the future viability and integrity of the earth as a hospitable home for humans and other forms of life." As the Catholic World Report points out, it is intended to be a "historic document," a "new code of conduct," a "New Social Contract" aimed at imposing new standards on the activities of governments and even religious or-ganizations.53
The introductory words of the Earth Charter (Benchmark Draft of March 18, 1997) read: "Earth is our home and home to all living beings. Earth itself is alive. We are part of an evolving universe"54
There is a noticeable similarity here to comments made by the English scientist, James Lovelock, author of the book. The Ages of Gaia. He told his audience at the 1988 Global Forum at Oxford, England: "On Earth she (Gaia) is the source of everlasting life and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her" (Note: See section titled, "Science and Religion: an Ecological Alliance" above.)
In like manner, Gorbachev has stated: "We are part of the Cosmos . . . Cosmos is my God. Nature is my God. . . I believe that the 21st century will be the century of the environment, the century when all of us will have to find an answer to how to harmonize relations between man and the rest of Nature . . . We are part of Nature. . . "55
And Maurice Strong, addressing the Rio Earth Summit called attention "to the declaration of the Sacred Earth" which had been part of the pre-Summit ceremonies: "The changes in behavior and directions called for here must be rooted in our deepest spiritual, moral and ethical values" The declaration states: "We must. . . transform our attitudes and values, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature."56
Francis Cardinal Stafford, while Archbishop of Denver, Co., writing in 1993 on "The New Age Movement" specifically mentioned paganism as a basic quality of this theosophy: New Agers "find their ideological allies in the 'Gaia' variant of the ecological movement. . . . The characteristic feature of the various expressions of (this movement)" he notes, "is their common reversion to the ancient pagan morality of responsibility to the cosmos."57
The accuracy of the Archbishop's analysis is confirmed in the Gaia Peace Atlas, a radical socialist New Age publication which argues, "We need a radical change of direction - to global self-governance, decentralized societies and a partnership between human and Gaian ecosystems, leading to a peaceful world that encourages social justice through sustainable development."58
In his Foreword to this Gaia Peace Atlas, the then UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar stated: "A consensus has emerged during the past forty years" that "a reliable system of international security, progressive disarmament and sustainable economic growth are acknowledged goals of all peoples of the world" He expressed the "hope that this fine document will make a significant contribution to knowledge of these goals both urgent and achievable."59
The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, during the tenure of Dean James Parks Morton, is well-known for its earth-bound spirituality. Each year it offers a "Winter Solstice Whole Earth Christmas Celebration" which "puts the event in the church, but takes the church out of the event," as succinctly stated in the New York Times (Dec. 26, 1992). He also commissioned a Missa Gaia (Earth Mass) which is performed each year for the Feast of St. Francis, replete with singers, dancers, pets galore and as a high point, an elephant, camel and llama are paraded up the center aisle for a blessing. Widely known as the "green dean" Morton, founder of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, retired in January, 1997, but remains active in ecological matters.
New Age Spirituality At Baca Grande
Maurice Strong, a shrewd millionaire capitalist "with a passion for socialist one-world causes, is a radical environmentalist and New Age devotee.."60 As the result of a business deal. Strong acquired ownership of a "200,000 acre ranch called Baca Grande in Colorado. Now a 'New Age' center run by his wife Hanne" it attracts "Zen and Tibetan Buddhist monks, a breakaway order of Carmelite nuns and followers of a Hindu guru. . . "61
Both the New Age Aspen Institute and the Lindisfarne Association are part of the Baca Grande spiritual center located in this San Luis Valley. Maurice Strong, the Director of Finance of the Lindisfarne Association, is on its Board of Directors as was James P. Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St.. John the Divine. Lindisfarne, it should be noted, is patterned after New Age Findhorn in Scotland.
Strong and his wife see "the Baca serving as a model for the way the world should be - and they say - must be - if humankind is to survive."62 Hanne Strong "supports her husband's work on the Earth Charter by promoting 'spiritually based environmental education.'" She founded the Wisdom Keepers which convened for the first time at the Rio conference, then again at the UN Istanbul Habitat II conference in 1996.
The Earth Charter, Hanne Strong maintains, must "come to terms with the very concrete question of how we can develop the basis for sustainable life on earth." The Earth Charter therefore, must "articulate a new relationship between people and the earth."63 The exemplary analysis in the Catholic World Report discloses that Hanne Strong's Wisdom Keepers authored the Declaration of Sacred Earth. A key sentence in that declaration "explains that the global crisis 'transcends all national, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic boundaries.'" The Catholic World Report observes: "If the crisis transcends religious boundaries, it follows that religion must bow before the solution to the crisis. If necessary, religions must sacrifice their own particular principles."64 (emphasis added)
In Maurice Strong's April 8, 1997 speech introducing the Earth Charter to the UN, he said: "There is a need to address the fundamental ethical imperatives of sustainable development." And what are these ethical imperatives? Strong "spoke of 'ethics of participation'. . . and 'ethics of inclusion'. . . in order to 'foster a healthy balance between quality of life and quality of environment - because development must henceforth be in balance with 'Mother Earth.' It will 'develop a sense of belonging to the universe."'65 Thus the Earth Charter and sustainable development are part of the same package, which it should be repeated includes population control. The tenets of the New Age Movement are threaded throughout this documentation.
World Goodwill, New Age Theosophy Permeate The United Nations
The proposed Earth Charter melds neatly with the 1980 UN report. The New International Economic Order: A Spiritual Imperative which clearly was influenced by Alice Bailey. The 1980 report states ". . . Today a new understanding of spirituality is emerging which recognizes that all efforts to uplift humanity are spiritual in nature. Alice Bailey said, 'That is spiritual which lies beyond the point of present achievement'; . . . Given this new understanding of spirituality, the work of the United Nations can be seen within the entire evolutionary unfolding of humanity. The work of the UN is indeed spiritual and holds profound import for the future of civilization."66
Alice Bailey, a theosophist along with her husband Foster, established much of what is now known as the New Age Movement. Originally, they founded the Lucifer Publishing Company but shortly thereafter, discretion dictated the name change to Lucis Trust (cf. Forum Focus, Oct. 1991 issue The New Age Movement). It has served as a catalyst for a number of New Age organizations including World Goodwill. One of Goodwill's stated objectives is "to support the work of the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies as the best hope of a united and peaceful world"; another is "to make available up-to-date information on constructive current conditions in the main areas of human life through publication of a quarterly newsletter." It also publishes Occasional World Goodwill Papers.
As an accredited UN non-governmental Organization (NGO) it maintains relations with a wide range of national and international NGOs. The World Good' will Newsletter which highlights UN addresses also featured excerpts from Alice Bailey's writings. A few examples will suffice: A 1988 Newsletter on Global Survival held at Oxford to which World Goodwill was a media guest featured James Lovelock speaking on "Gaia and the Reintegration of Religion and Science." In addition. Dean James P. Morton was interviewed about the Oxford conference in regard to ways in which "parliamentary and spiritual leaders" could work together "for the salvation of the planet."
A 1989 Occasional Paper presented "A Cosmo-logical Vision of the Future" an address given by Robert Muller, who had served in the UN bureaucracy for 38 years and was an Assistant Secretary-General from 1982 to 1985. He now heads the United Nations University in Costa Rica. In his remarks he mentioned the Gaia hypothesis. ". . . We are part of a living planetary organization . . . When we die we return to the Earth . . . We are Earth alive . .. . All over the world a kind of Earth democracy is taking shape" He mentioned Fr. Thomas Berry's book. The Universe Story, and the need for a "world of cosmic spirituality."
A 1991 Occasional Paper contained the address given at Cambridge, England, by Gro Harlem Brundtland on "Environmental Challenges of the 1990's: Our Responsibilities Toward Future Generations" which echoed the UN book. Our Common Future, the report of the commission she had chaired. (Note: On Jan. 27 of this year, Gro Harlem Brundtland was appointed chairman of the UN World Health Organization which places her in a key position for the implementation of sustainable development on a worldwide basis.)
World Goodwill interviewed Maurice Strong for another 1991 Newsletter which concentrated on the Rio Summit conference. He repeated his position that ". . . the earth is incapable of supporting a global population of approximately twice today's numbers that demographers predict . . . Sustainable development implies a balance between our personal aspirations and a consideration of the ecosystem on which our survival depends."
A 1995 Newsletter under the caption "Recommended Reading" mentions a 1995 book co-authored by Patricia Mische titled. The United Nations In An Interdependent World. This report from a six day symposium organized by GEA with the support of 15 UN agencies and 10 NGOs reveals where GEA's interest really is.
A 1996 Newsletter on Universal Ethics includes "Reflections" by Mikhail Gorbachev who comments on conditions for preserving life on Earth: "Honouring diversity and honouring the Earth create the basis for genuine unity."
Patricia Mische states: "We do not need a return to the external facades of religiosity. But we do need to resume the spiritual journey . . . with new, global parameters" All these UN supporters speak with the same voice - the voice of theosophy that rejects Christianity. Patricia Mische's earlier Catholicism is alluded to in the September-December, 1997, issue of GEA's Breakthrough News in regard to the death of Bishop Joseph Francis, auxiliary of Newark, NJ, who had confirmed her three daughters in his private chapel.
An example of the unity of purpose that pervades much of this documentation is the announcement GEA will present the 1998 Jerry Mische Global Service Award to Thomas Berry.
The United Nations Association of the US (UNA-USA), "the premier pro-UN lobby group in America claims . .. a 135 member Council of Organizations and operates in New York and Washington, D.C. . . . and is now 'creating a powerful national constituency for an even better UN/ Some of the 135 member groups include the American Humanist Association, Planned Parenthood Federation and the U.S. Catholic Conference."67
The willingness of the USCC (the civil arm of the Bishops' Conference) to be "politically correct," as mentioned previously in regard to its membership in the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and its incredible endorsement of "sustainable development" is indicative of a lack of scholarship.
John Paul II's Address To Un General Assembly
In contrast, our Holy Father's message of October, 1995, delivered to the United Nations General Assembly imparts profound wisdom and encouragement for American Catholics. He stated, "The United Nations Organization needs to rise more and more above the cold status of an administrative institute and become a moral center where all the nations of the world . . . develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a 'family of nations'" (n. 14).
"The politics of nations, with which your organization is principally concerned, can never ignore the transcendent spiritual dimension of the human experience and could never ignore it without banning the cause of man and the cause of human freedom" (n. 16).
"We must overcome our fear of the future. . . . The answer to that fear is neither coercion nor repression, nor the imposing of one social 'model' on the entire world. The answer to that fear . . . is the common effort to build the civilization of love. . ." (n. 18).68
George Weigel writing in Crisis magazine December, 1995, noted: "The Holy Father knows full well that the UN bureaucracy and its functional agencies . . . are shot through with corruption. Then there was the attempt by the international lifestyle Left, aided and abetted by the UN bureaucracy, to highjack the 1994 UN population conference at Cairo, the 1995 Copenhagen 'Social Summit,' and the Beijing world conference on women . . . the Pope knew to whom he was talking at Turtle Bay. And as one who believes that his own peacemaking efforts in the Balkans have, at times, been obstructed by the UN, John Paul knows all about the organization's deficiencies in fulfilling its charter's basic mandate. . . ."
"Thus the Pope's call to the UN to develop a shared awareness of being . . . a 'family of nations' should be taken as a polite demur on the UN's grandiose plans to turn the UN into a world government. . . ."69
His stirring words to Catholics of America are a beacon and a challenge in countering the UN concept of "sustainable development" that has penetrated our Church and society:
"Always be convincing witnesses to the truth. Stir into a flame the gift of God . . . Light your nation - Light the world - with the power of that flame. Amen"
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