Chinese Power Play rumblings?

China: Rumors of the Central Bank Chief's Defection

August 30, 2010
   Rumors have circulated in China that People’s Bank of China (PBC) Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan may have left the country. The rumors appear to have started following reports on Aug. 28 which cited Ming Pao, a Hong Kong-based news agency, saying that because of an approximately $430 billion loss on U.S. Treasury bonds, the Chinese government may punish some individuals within PBC, including Zhou. Although Ming Pao on Aug. 30 published a report on its website indicating that the prior report was fabricated by a mainland news site that had attributed the false information to Ming Pao, rumors of Zhou’s defection have spread around China intensively, and Zhou’s name has been blocked from Internet search engines in China.
   STRATFOR has received no confirmation of the rumor, and reports by state-run Chinese media appeared to send strong indications that Zhou is in no trouble at the moment. However, the release of this rumor and its dispersion throughout the public is significant, particularly as the Communist Party of China (CPC) is preparing for a leadership transition in 2012.
   Chinese state-run media and official government websites have run several high-profile reports about Zhou, which should be seen as a move to refute the rumors. The PBC website published two articles on its homepage reporting on Zhou’s meeting with visiting Japanese Financial Services Minister Shozaburo Jimi during the third China-Japan high-level economic dialogue as well as a meeting with an Italian delegation. Xinhua news agency reported that Zhou told the PBC Party Committee Enlargement Meeting on Aug. 30 it should “continue to implement justice, and strengthen legislative work in financial system.” Prior to this news, Zhou appeared at the 2nd annual conference of the heads of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean central banks held on Aug. 3, and his most recent public appearance was Aug. 10 for China’s Financial System Anti-corruption Construction Exhibition.
    Zhou is known to have lofty political ambitions and is believed to be a close ally to former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, as well as a core figure for Jiang’s “Shanghai Gang.” There has been no shortage of rumors about Zhou’s possible dismissal in the past five years, as he is believed to be associated with several high-level financial scandals. For example, Zhou was rumored to be under “shuanggui,” a form of house arrest administered by the CPC, during the massive crackdown of Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu in 2006, which was perceived in the country as a crackdown of the Shanghai Gang and part of Hu’s effort to consolidate power ahead of the 2007 power transition. There was also a rumor that he might have been detained following the investigation and arrest of Wang Yi, the vice governor of the China Development Bank, along with several other officials in the financial circle. Currently, several financial scandals are still under investigation, and it is likely that Zhou, as PBC governor and one of the most powerful economic players in the country, could be associated with some cases. Therefore, whether or not the rumor is true at this time, the leaking of this news is very likely to be associated with a power struggle within the Communist Party’s economic hierarchy.

Courtesy of:

STRATFOR

221 W. 6th Street, Suite 400
Austin, TX 78701 US
http://www.stratfor.com/

. . . All The Information Available

  I Believe it is imperative that we make decisions after we have all the information available, and not just follow the crowd. Even if you believe you have made your decision on the Mosque near Ground Zero question, this article has information you possibly don't have. 
   There are only two mentions of religion in the Constitution, or the amendments thereto. The first in in Article VI of the Constitution, last paragraph:
   "The Senators and the Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution: but no Religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
   The second mention is the first clause of Amendment I to the Constitution of The United States of America:
   "Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."
   What seems on the surface, to be an easy choice, is not so easy when all the facts are known. I am torn between the Constitution, which I believe affords the right to build the mosque, but whereas the same 1st Amendment gives the right to free speech, we can't, won't and don't condone someone shouting "Fire" in a crowded building. Just because the right is given by the Bill of Rights.
   I am for the peaceable worship of God via any religion. I know that already sets me against various other religions which don't believe in any god or gods, or whose ways of worship are repugnant to me, However, I acknowledge their right to worship the way they want in The United States, because of that wonderful 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights. I must say here, as I say often, that I don't condone radicals in any religion, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zen, Wicca, or whatever. It is my opinion it is the radicals who cause the problems because of their overzealousness. They are the ones shouting fire.
   I set out on this dialogue to point out there are multiple sides to every question. I do not believe the building of a mosque at or near Ground Zero is shouting fire. There is a malady called Islamophobia in the United States today which should be directed at Radical Muslims, not all Muslims. In years hence we will look back at the outcome of this controversy, and only then will we really know what the answer should have been. I am a Constitutionalist, and I strongly support their right to build it there.
   Dave Skibowski

Build the Ground Zero Mosque
by Fareed Zakaria
August 06, 2010

   Ever since 9/11, liberals and conservatives have agreed that the lasting solution to the problem of Islamic terror is to prevail in the battle of ideas and to discredit radical Islam, the ideology that motivates young men to kill and be killed. Victory in the war on terror will be won when a moderate, mainstream version of Islam—one that is compatible with modernity—fully triumphs over the world view of Osama bin Laden.
   As the conservative Middle Eastern expert Daniel Pipes put it, “The U.S. role [in this struggle] is less to offer its own views than to help those Muslims with compatible views, especially on such issues as relations with non-Muslims, modernization, and the rights of women and minorities.” To that end, early in its tenure the Bush administration began a serious effort to seek out and support moderate Islam. Since then, Washington has funded mosques, schools, institutes, and community centers that are trying to modernize Islam around the world. Except, apparently, in New York City .
   The debate over whether an Islamic center should be built a few blocks from the World Trade Center has ignored a fundamental point. If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the proposed institute. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it.
   The man spearheading the center, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a moderate Muslim clergyman. He has said one or two things about American foreign policy that strike me as overly critical —but it’s stuff you could read on The Huffington Post any day. On Islam, his main subject, Rauf’s views are clear: he routinely denounces all terrorism—as he did again last week, publicly. He speaks of the need for Muslims to live peacefully with all other religions. He emphasizes the commonalities among all faiths. He advocates equal rights for women, and argues against laws that in any way punish non-Muslims. His last book, What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America, argues that the United States is actually the ideal Islamic society because it encourages diversity and promotes freedom for individuals and for all religions. His vision of Islam is bin Laden’s nightmare.
   Rauf often makes his arguments using interpretations of the Quran and other texts. Now, I am not a religious person, and this method strikes me as convoluted and Jesuitical. But for the vast majority of believing Muslims, only an argument that is compatible with their faith is going to sway them. The Somali-born “ex-Muslim” writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s advice to Muslims is to convert to Christianity. That may create buzz, but it is unlikely to have any effect on the 1.2 billion devout Muslims in the world.
   The much larger issue that this center raises is, of course, of freedom of religion in America . Much has been written about this, and I would only urge people to read Michael Bloomberg’s speech on the subject last week. Bloomberg’s eloquent, brave, and carefully reasoned address should become required reading in every civics classroom in America . It probably will.
   Bloomberg’s speech stands in stark contrast to the bizarre decision of the Anti-Defamation League to publicly side with those urging that the center be moved. The ADL’s mission statement says it seeks “to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.” But Abraham Foxman, the head of the ADL, explained that we must all respect the feelings of the 9/11 families, even if they are prejudiced feelings. “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted,” he said. First, the 9/11 families have mixed views on this mosque. There were, after all, dozens of Muslims killed at the World Trade Center . Do their feelings count? But more important, does Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they’re victims? Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?
   Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But I cannot in good conscience keep it anymore. I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. I urge the ADL to reverse its decision. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain a reputation.
  

Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations

Here is an article by George Friedman, expert on geopolitics & founder of STRATFOR. Dr. Friedman presents his unique perspective on the immigration issue

Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations

Dr. George Friedman
August 5, 2010
   Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration went into effect last week, albeit severely limited by a federal court ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court undoubtedly will settle the matter, which may also trigger federal regulations. However that turns out, the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context.
   Until the Mexican-American War, it was not clear whether the dominant power in North America would have its capital in Washington or Mexico City. Mexico was the older society with a substantially larger military. The United States, having been founded east of the Appalachian Mountains, had been a weak and vulnerable country. At its founding, it lacked strategic depth and adequate north-south transportation routes. The ability of one colony to support another in the event of war was limited. More important, the United States had the most vulnerable of economies: It was heavily dependent on maritime exports and lacked a navy able to protect its sea-lanes against more powerful European powers like England and Spain. The War of 1812 showed the deep weakness of the United States. By contrast, Mexico had greater strategic depth and less dependence on exports.
     The Centrality of New Orleans
   The American solution to this strategic weakness was to expand the United States west of the Appalachians, first into the Northwest Territory ceded to the United States by the United Kingdom and then into the Louisiana Purchase, which Thomas Jefferson ordered bought from France. These two territories gave the United States both strategic depth and a new economic foundation. The regions could support agriculture that produced more than the farmers could consume. Using the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river system, products could be shipped south to New Orleans. New Orleans was the farthest point south to which flat-bottomed barges from the north could go, and the farthest inland that oceangoing ships could travel. New Orleans became the single most strategic point in North America. Whoever controlled it controlled the agricultural system developing between the Appalachians and the Rockies. During the War of 1812, the British tried to seize New Orleans, but forces led by Andrew Jackson defeated them in a battle fought after the war itself was completed.
   Jackson understood the importance of New Orleans to the United States. He also understood that the main threat to New Orleans came from Mexico. The U.S.-Mexican border then stood on the Sabine River, which divides today’s Texas from Louisiana. It was about 200 miles from that border to New Orleans and, at its narrowest point, a little more than 100 miles from the Sabine to the Mississippi.
   Mexico therefore represented a fundamental threat to the United States. In response, Jackson authorized a covert operation under Sam Houston to foment an uprising among American settlers in the Mexican department of Texas with the aim of pushing Mexico farther west. With its larger army, a Mexican thrust to the Mississippi was not impossible — nor something the Mexicans would necessarily avoid, as the rising United States threatened Mexican national security.
   Mexico’s strategic problem was the geography south of the Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo). This territory consisted of desert and mountains. Settling this area with large populations was impossible. Moving through it was difficult. As a result, Texas was very lightly settled with Mexicans, prompting Mexico initially to encourage Americans to settle there. Once a rising was fomented among the Americans, it took time and enormous effort to send a Mexican army into Texas. When it arrived, it was weary from the journey and short of supplies. The insurgents were defeated at the Alamo and Goliad, but as the Mexicans pushed their line east toward the Mississippi, they were defeated at San Jacinto, near present-day Houston.
   The creation of an independent Texas served American interests, relieving the threat to New Orleans and weakening Mexico. The final blow was delivered under President James K. Polk during the Mexican-American War, which (after the Gadsden Purchase) resulted in the modern U.S.-Mexican border. That war severely weakened both the Mexican army and Mexico City, which spent roughly the rest of the century stabilizing Mexico’s original political order.
     A Temporary Resolution
   The U.S. defeat of Mexico settled the issue of the relative power of Mexico and the United States but did not permanently resolve the region’s status; that remained a matter of national power and will. The United States had the same problem with much of the Southwest (aside from California) that Mexico had: It was a relatively unattractive place economically, given that so much of it was inhospitable. The region experienced chronic labor shortages, relatively minor at first but accelerating over time. The acquisition of relatively low-cost labor became one of the drivers of the region’s economy, and the nearest available labor pool was Mexico. An accelerating population movement out of Mexico and into the territory the United States seized from Mexico paralleled the region’s accelerating economic growth.
   The United States and Mexico both saw this as mutually beneficial. From the American point of view, there was a perpetual shortage of low-cost, low-end labor in the region. From the Mexican point of view, Mexico had a population surplus that the Mexican economy could not readily metabolize. The inclination of the United States to pull labor north was thus matched by the inclination of Mexico to push that labor north.
   The Mexican government built its social policy around the idea of exporting surplus labor — and as important, using remittances from immigrants to stabilize the Mexican economy. The U.S. government, however, wanted an outcome that was illegal under U.S. law. At times, the federal government made exceptions to the law. When it lacked the political ability to change the law, the United States put limits on the resources needed to enforce the law. The rest of the country didn’t notice this process while the former Mexican borderlands benefited from it economically. There were costs to the United States in this immigrant movement, in health care, education and other areas, but business interests saw these as minor costs while Washington saw them as costs to be borne by the states.
   Three fault lines emerged in United States on the topic. One was between the business classes, which benefited directly from the flow of immigrants and could shift the cost of immigration to other social sectors, and those who did not enjoy those benefits. The second lay between the federal government, which saw the costs as trivial, and the states, which saw them as intensifying over time. And third, there were tensions between Mexican-American citizens and other American citizens over the question of illegal migrants. This inherently divisive, potentially explosive mix intensified as the process continued.
     Borderlands and the Geopolitics of Immigration
   Underlying this political process was a geopolitical one. Immigration in any country is destabilizing. Immigrants have destabilized the United States ever since the Scots-Irish changed American culture, taking political power and frightening prior settlers. The same immigrants were indispensible to economic growth. Social and cultural instability proved a low price to pay for the acquisition of new labor.
   That equation ultimately also works in the case of Mexican migrants, but there is a fundamental difference. When the Irish or the Poles or the South Asians came to the United States, they were physically isolated from their homelands. The Irish might have wanted Roman Catholic schools, but in the end, they had no choice but to assimilate into the dominant culture. The retention of cultural hangovers did not retard basic cultural assimilation, given that they were far from home and surrounded by other, very different, groups.
   This is the case for Mexican-Americans in Chicago or Alaska, whether citizens, permanent residents or illegal immigrants. In such locales, they form a substantial but ultimately isolated group, surrounded by other, larger groups and generally integrated into the society and economy. Success requires that subsequent generations follow the path of prior immigrants and integrate. This is not the case, however, for Mexicans moving into the borderlands conquered by the United States just as it is not the case in other borderlands around the world. Immigrant populations in this region are not physically separated from their homeland, but rather can be seen as culturally extending their homeland northward — in this case not into alien territory, but into historically Mexican lands.
   This is no different from what takes place in borderlands the world over. The political border moves because of war. Members of an alien population suddenly become citizens of a new country. Sometimes, massive waves of immigrants from the group that originally controlled the territory politically move there, undertaking new citizenship or refusing to do so. The cultural status of the borderland shifts between waves of ethnic cleansing and population movement. Politics and economics mix, sometimes peacefully and sometimes explosively.
   The Mexican-American War established the political boundary between the two countries. Economic forces on both sides of the border have encouraged both legal and illegal immigration north into the borderland — the area occupied by the United States. The cultural character of the borderland is shifting as the economic and demographic process accelerates. The political border stays where it is while the cultural border moves northward.
   The underlying fear of those opposing this process is not economic (although it is frequently expressed that way), but much deeper: It is the fear that the massive population movement will ultimately reverse the military outcome of the 1830s and 1840s, returning the region to Mexico culturally or even politically. Such borderland conflicts rage throughout the world. The fear is that it will rage here.
   The problem is that Mexicans are not seen in the traditional context of immigration to the United States. As I have said, some see them as extending their homeland into the United States, rather than as leaving their homeland and coming to the United States. Moreover, by treating illegal immigration as an acceptable mode of immigration, a sense of helplessness is created, a feeling that the prior order of society was being profoundly and illegally changed. And finally, when those who express these concerns are demonized, they become radicalized. The tension between Washington and Arizona — between those who benefit from the migration and those who don’t — and the tension between Mexican-Americans who are legal residents and citizens of the United States and support illegal immigration and non-Mexicans who oppose illegal immigration creates a potentially explosive situation.
   Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.
   Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not. The land was seized from Mexico by force, territory now experiencing a massive national movement — legal and illegal — changing the cultural character of the region. It should come as no surprise that this is destabilizing the region, as instability naturally flows from such forces.
   Jewish migration to modern-day Israel represents a worst-case scenario for borderlands. An absence of stable political agreements undergirding this movement characterized this process. One of the characteristics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is mutual demonization. In the case of Arizona, demonization between the two sides also runs deep. The portrayal of supporters of Arizona’s new law as racist and the characterization of critics of that law as un-American is neither new nor promising. It is the way things would sound in a situation likely to get out of hand.
   Ultimately, this is not about the Arizona question. It is about the relationship between Mexico and the United States on a range of issues, immigration merely being one of them. The problem as I see it is that the immigration issue is being treated as an internal debate among Americans when it is really about reaching an understanding with Mexico. Immigration has been treated as a subnational issue involving individuals. It is in fact a geopolitical issue between two nation-states. Over the past decades, Washington has tried to avoid turning immigration into an international matter, portraying it rather as an American law enforcement issue. In my view, it cannot be contained in that box any longer.
  

Read more: Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations
STRATFOR

Influencing American government:

Council on foreign relations:

Despite promises of "change," as uttered by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and now Barack Obama, successive presidential administrations have in common the fact that important posts are staffed by individuals from the same small organizations who direct our nation's policies

by James Perloff
August 3, 2009

Due to space limitations, this article includes only a sketch of the history of the CFR's impact on American government. For details and documentation, see the author's book The Shadows of Power


   During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama consistently promised Americans "change." Such promises aren't new to the voting public. When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he said: "The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get ... changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders." And top Carter aide Hamilton Jordan promised: "If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I'd quit." Yet Carter selected Vance as Secretary of State and Brzezinski as National Security Adviser; the "same group of insiders" had been shifted around; and Jordan did not quit.
   Carter's administration was dominated by members of the Trilateral Commission, which had been founded by Brzezinski and David Rockefeller. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Carter, he protested:

   I don't believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group, but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don't think that any Administration of the U.S. Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction.

   Yet after his election, President Reagan picked 10 Trilateralists for his transition team, and included in his administration such Trilateralists as Vice President George Bush, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, U.S. Trade Representative William Brock, and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Yet the entire North American membership of the Trilateral Commission has never numbered much over 100.
   The reason that presidential candidates' promises of "change" go largely unfulfilled once in office: they draw their top personnel from the same establishment groups--of which the Trilateral Commission is only one.
   Chief among these groups is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of what some have called the American establishment. Members of the council have dominated the administrations of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the cabinet and subcabinet level. It does not matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican. As we will later see, Barack Obama is no exception to CFR influence.
     Power Behind the Throne
   In theory, America's government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, for the people." While this concept rang true in early America, and many individuals still trust in it, the last century has seen the reality of power increasingly shift from the people to an establishment rooted in banking, Wall Street, and powerful multinational corporations. Syndicated columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, explained:

   The word "Establishment" is a general term for the power elite in international finance, business, the professions and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most
of the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware of the existence of this "legitimate Mafia." Yet the power of the Establishment makes itself felt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a cabinet post or State Department job. It affects the nation's policies in almost every area.

   Roosevelt added that this group's goal is "a One World Socialist state governed by 'experts' like themselves."
   David Rockefeller, the longtime chairman (and now chairman emeritus) of the CFR, acknowledged the role of the establishment in trying to lead America in the one-world direction in his 2002 book Memoirs:

   For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build
a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

   Two major means the establishment employs for controlling government policy: (1) through its influence within the two major parties and the mass media, it can usually assure that both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates will be its own hand-picked men; (2) by stacking presidential cabinets with CFR members at key positions--especially those involving defense, finance, foreign policy, and national security--it can assure that America will move in the direction it wants. Since the council's founding in 1921, 21 secretaries of defense or war, 19 secretaries of the treasury, 17 secretaries of state, and 15 CIA directors have hailed from the Council on Foreign Relations.
     Background
   Prior to the CFR's founding, what Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (the father of the famous aviator) called the "Money Trust"--a cabal of international bankers including the houses of Rockefeller, Morgan, and Rothschild--conspired to create the Federal Reserve System. Their agents, such as Paul Warburg and Benjamin Strong, who had secretly planned the Fed at a nine-day meeting on Jekyll Island, were then put in charge of the system itself. This gave them control of American interest rates, and, by virtue of this, control of the stock market, as well as the capacity to have the U.S. government spend without limit by having the Fed create money from nothing. The result has been decades of inflation and skyrocketing national debt. (For full details, see the April 13, 2009 NEW AMERICAN or www.thenewamerican.com/history/american/946.) 
    Not just an accumulation of wealth, but a consolidation of political power was involved. The Money Trust had backed Woodrow Wilson in the presidential elections, and then controlled him through their front man, Edward Mandell House, who lived in the White House. The trust recognized how the power of government could be used to advance their own interests.
   Wilson, surrounded by the bankers, traveled to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which was settling the aftermath of World War I. His chief proposal there, of course, was the League of Nations--a first step toward world government. However, although the League was established by the Versailles Treaty, the United States did not join because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty. 
   In response to this rejection, the bankers' circle, still in Paris, held a series of meetings and proposed to establish a new organization in the United States, whose purpose would be to lead America into the League. This organization was incorporated in New York City two years later as the Council on Foreign Relations.
     Architects of a New World Order
   The CFR's goal was formation of an incrementally stronger world government. Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate of the U.S. Navy, was a CFR member for 16 years before resigning in disgust. He stated: "The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence, and submergence into an all-powerful one-world government." 
   After World War II, the League's successor, the United Nations, was born. Contrary to what the public is commonly told, the UN was not founded by nations who had tired of war. The UN was conceived by a group of CFR members in the State Department calling themselves the Informal Agenda Group. They drafted the original proposal for the UN, and secured the approval of President Roosevelt, who then made establishing the UN his highest postwar priority. When the UN held its founding meeting in San Francisco in 1945, 47 of the American delegates were CFR members.
   Though the UN was not initially set up as a world government, the intent was that it would develop into one over time. John Foster Dulles (CFR), an American delegate to the UN founding meeting who later became Secretary of State under Eisenhower, acknowledged as much in his book War or Peace: "The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization."
   Two other postwar institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, were technically created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. But the initial planning was done by the CFR's Economic and Finance Group, part of their wartime War and Peace Studies Project. The World Bank and IMF act as a loan-guarantee scheme for multinational banks. When a loan to a foreign country goes awry, the World Bank and IMF step in with taxpayer money, ensuring that the private banks continue to receive interest payments. Furthermore, the World Bank and IMF dictate conditions to the countries receiving bailouts, thus giving the bankers a measure of political control over indebted nations.
   Despite what Americans were told, the postwar Marshall Plan was not invented by General George Marshall, though he did announce it in a 1947 Harvard commencement speech. The Marshall Plan was dreamed up at a CFR study group with David Rockefeller as its secretary. Marshall was simply selected to announce the plan because, as a general, he would be perceived as politically neutral and help garner bipartisan congressional support for the plan. Unknown to the public, Marshall Plan funds were circuitously rerouted by John J. McCloy--appointed U.S. High Commissioner to Germany--to Jean Monnet, founder of the Common Market, which evolved into today's European Union, a microcosm of world government. McCloy returned home to become chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1953.
   The tragic Vietnam War was run almost entirely by CFR members. William E Bundy (CFR) drafted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution before the now-discredited Tonkin Gulf Incident even took place. Bundy's father-in-law, Dean Acheson (CFR), as leader of a senior team of advisers nicknamed "the Wise Men," persuaded Lyndon Baines Johnson to dramatically escalate the war beginning in 1965. And Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (CFR) helped develop the "rules of engagement" (e.g., preventing the Air Force from attacking critical targets) that guaranteed the war's disastrous prolongation. This generated a huge slide to the left among American college students. When Bundy left the State Department, David Rockefeller appointed him editor of the CFR's journal Foreign Affairs. And McNamara, one of the leading architects of the Vietnam War debacle, became president of the World Bank.
     Broadening the Scheme
   The CFR is not a uniquely American phenomenon. It has counterpart organizations throughout the world--e.g., the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England, the French Institute of International Relations, etc.
   To help coordinate policy on an international scale, CFR chairman David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973. "Trilateral" refers to the coordination of three global regions: North America, Europe, and Asia. The commission's meetings allow the gathering together of heads of state, banks, multinational corporations, and media. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater called the commission "David Rockefeller's newest cabal," and said, "It 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 commission, like the annual secretive meetings of the Bilderbergers and the notorious Bohemian Grove, enables the international power elite to privately assemble and plan our destiny.
    Jimmy Carter was a member of the commission, hand-picked to be president after meeting with Brzezinski and Rockefeller at the latter's Tarrytown, New York, estate. Carter filled his administration with CFR members and Trilateralists. Indeed, Brzezinski noted in his memoirs that "all the key foreign policy decision makers of the Carter Administration had previously served in the Trilateral Commission." Carter then embarked on a destructive course of foreign policy that included betraying the Shah of Iran, leading to the installment of Ayatollah Khomeini and the U.S. hostage crisis; betraying President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, resulting in a Marxist dictatorship under the Sandinistas; and betraying Taiwan in order to recognize Communist China--a move previously set up by Richard Nixon's overtures to China, dictated by his own CFR advisers.
   Under Bill Clinton (a CFR member who selected 12 CFR members for his cabinet), the United States enacted NAFTA, an economic alliance with Mexico and Canada. This arrangement was created by the establishment, not by the American people, who did not suspect the game being played on them. Not only did NAFTA swamp us with cheap, job destroying imports, but it was designed to be the foundation for a continental economic union leading to political union. Robert Pastor (CFR), a key architect of North American integration, acknowledged in the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs: "NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America." And Andrew Reding of the World Policy Institute said: "NAFTA will signal the formation, however tentatively, of a new political unit--North America. With economic integration will come political integration. By whatever name, this is an incipient form of international government. Following the lead of the Europeans, North Americans should begin considering formation of a continental parliament." [Emphasis added.]
   A similar stratagem had been used against the peoples of Europe--by first deceptively hooking them into an "economic" alliance called the Common Market, which then, requiring common laws to regulate trade, transformed via a series of steps into the European Union, the super-national government of Europe that is swallowing up national sovereignty.
   Following the initial step enacted under Clinton, President George W. Bush, whose father was a CFR director, moved toward politicizing the NAFTA alliance. On March 23, 2005, he met Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to launch the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the rudiments of a North American Union. CNN's Lou Dobbs said of it: "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it."
   Furthermore, regional alliances such as the European Union and proposed North American Union are not ends, but only steppingstones to world government. As CFR/Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: "We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. The precondition for genuine globalization is progressive regionalization."
   In furtherance of this, on April 30, 2007, President Bush stood at the White House beside Angela Merkel, president of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and announced the signing of a new agreement to "strengthen transatlantic economic integration." It called for "joint work in the areas of regulatory cooperation, financial markets, trade and transport security, innovation and technological development, intellectual property rights, energy, investment, competition, services, and government procurement," and various other steps toward economic integration. But as usual, "economic integration" is the predecessor of political integration. CFR members have dreamed of a political union between the United States and Europe since the 1950s, when the CFR-dominated Atlantic Union Committee promoted a merger they called "Atlantica."
     Enter Obama
   Candidate Barack Obama revealed he would proceed with the Bush initiatives. In a speech in Berlin on July 24, 2008, he stated:


   That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.... Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.... In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more-not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

   Obama had only been president for a little over two months when he traveled to Europe for a series of meetings with European leaders. He attended the G20 Summit, which ended with a tentative agreement to launch a new global financial system, using as the rationale for this major step toward global government the recent Fed- and government spawned financial meltdown.
   Henry Kissinger--foreign policy mouthpiece of the establishment for four decades--wrote an article for the January 12, 2009 issue of the International Herald Tribune entitled "The Chance for a New World Order." He stated:

   As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.... Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being.... The alternative to a new international 
order is chaos.

   Kissinger also stated on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street": "The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously.... His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It's a great opportunity, it isn't just a crisis."
   Past statements reveal that the establishment wants a single currency for the world, just as the EU has consolidated its currencies into the "euro." As far back as the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, John Maynard Keynes proposed a world currency he dubbed bancor. Richard L. Gardner (CFR) wrote in the Fall 1984 Foreign Affairs: "I suggest a radical alternative scheme for the next century: the creation of common currency for all the industrial democracies and a joint Bank of Issue to determine that Monetary Policy."
   In March of this year, Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with reporters at the White House. Brown announced that "there is the possibility in the next few months of a global new deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system." Obama added that

   Globalization can be an enormous force for good.... But what is also true is ... we still have a 1930s regulatory system in place in most countries designed from the last great crisis, that we've got to update our institutions, our regulatory frameworks, so that the power of globalization is channeled for the benefit of ordinary men and women.

If trends continue, however, the changes can be expected to benefit a tiny handful of the global elite, not "ordinary men and women." Further evidence that Obama's administration will simply continue the globalist agenda is indicated by his appointments.
     CFR Domination Continues
   During his campaign, Obama selected the ubiquitous Zbigniew Brzezinski (CFR), Promoter of the "regional" approach to world government, as one of his top foreign policy advisors. Obama called Brzezinski "one of our more outstanding thinkers" and "somebody I have learned an immense amount from." Presumably Brzezinski's teachings included the world government he advocates.
   For Treasury Secretary, Obama chose Timothy Geithner: Senior Fellow in International Economics at the CFR, Bilderberger, former head of the New York Federal Reserve, and former employee of both the IMF and Kissinger Associates. One doesn't get more establishment than that! It is Geithner who is managing the bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer dollars. Assisting Geithner at Treasury in overseeing the auto industry bailout is fellow CFR member Stephen Rattner.
   For Director of the National Economic Council--a U.S. government agency created by a Bill Clinton executive order--Obama selected Lawrence Summers (CFR, Bilderberger). Former Chief Economist at the World Bank, his last position was at the investment firm of D. E. Shaw & Co, where he earned $5.2 million in one year while working one day per week. Henry Kissinger had said Summers should "be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas."
   For Defense Secretary, Obama elected to continue with Bush pick Robert Gates (CFR, Bilderberger). During the Carter administration, Gates served as a special assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski. In 2004, he co-chaired a CFR Task Force on Iran with Brzezinski, who lauded Gates in Time in 2008. Joining Gates in the Defense Department are fellow CFR members Michele Flournoy (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy), Jeh C. Johnson (Defense Department General Counsel), and Kathleen Hicks (Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Forces).
   For Secretary of State, Obama chose Hillary Clinton, who has attended the top-secret Bilderberger meetings. Hillary is not a CFR member, but husband Bill is, and her State Department is laden with CFR members, including James B. Steinberg (Deputy Secretary of State), William J. Burns (Under Secretary for Political Affairs), Susan Rice (U.S. Ambassador to the UN), Jacob J. Lew (Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources), Todd Stern (Special Envoy for Climate Change), and many others.
   The Department of Homeland Security, which many Americans fear may turn our country into an Orwellian surveillance society, was conceived before 9/11 by a task force called the U.S. Commission on National Security, nine of whose 12 members belonged to the CFR. The administration of the department under Obama is particularly heavy with CFR members, including Janet Napolitano (Secretary), Jane Holl Lute (Deputy Secretary), Juliette Kayyem (Assistant Secretary, Office of Intergovernmental Programs), and Alan Bersin (Assistant Secretary, Office of International Affairs).
   Thus the CFR continues to dominate our government's key areas: finance, defense, foreign policy, and security. To this may be added various other Obama CFR appointees, such as Mona Sutphen (White House Deputy Chief of Staff), Paul Volcker (Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board), Peter Cowbey, (Senior Counsel, Office of U.S. Trade Representative), and Eric Shinseki (Secretary of Veterans Affairs). 
      The Future
   The idea that Barack Obama became president from a "grass-roots" movement is illusory. American government policy continues to be largely dictated by the rich and the few. This is generally unknown to the public--not because it is a bizarre conspiracy theory, but because the same power elite who run our government, mega-banks, and multinational corporations also run the major media, as an inspection of the CFR membership roster would reveal.
   Membership in the CFR, of course, is not an automatic condemnation. A few people are added as "window dressing" to give the group distinction and a veneer of diversity. An example is movie star Angelina Jolie. No one suspects Jolie knows much about foreign affairs or is a conspirator for world government. But within the CFR are hardcore globalists who, linked with their foreign counterparts through the Bilderbergers and Brilateral Commission, head the drive for one-world government.
   Though numerically small (less than 1,000 members during the Kennedy years, less than 4,500 today), this organization has dominated every administration for over seven decades.
   As long as the CFR controls our government, we can anticipate more of the same: diminishing national sovereignty; free flow of immigration (which confuses national identity and weakens national loyalties); increasing jobs losses through multinational trade agreements; further internationalization of law (Law of the Sea Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, World Court, global taxation, etc.); increasing loss of freedoms in a "surveillance society"; progressive organization of the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union; and ultimately, broader merger into a world government where all power will be concentrated in the hands of the elite.
   Eternal vigilance continues to be the price of freedom.

COPYRIGHT 2009 American Opinion Publishing, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning