The Global Elite: Who Are They?

By Patrick Wood - Editor of August Forecast & Review

Intro­duc­tion

"There are two common mis­con­cep­tions held by those who are crit­ical of globalism.

The first error is that there is a very small group of people who secretly run the world with all-powerful and unre­strained dic­ta­to­rial powers. The second error is that there is a large amor­phous and secret orga­ni­za­tion that runs the world. In both cases, the use of the word “they” becomes the cul­prit for all our trou­bles, who­ever “they” might be. If taxes go up, it is “they” that did it. If the stock market goes down, “they” are to blame. Of course, nobody really knows who “they” are so a few fig­ure­heads (people or orga­ni­za­tions) are often made out to be the scapegoats.

Depending on a person’s pol­i­tics and phi­los­ophy, the scape­goats could be the U.S. Pres­i­dent, the ACLU, the Ford Foun­da­tion, or Vladimir Putin. The point is, the real power struc­ture is not cor­rectly defined, and thus escapes exposure.

These mis­con­cep­tions are under­stand­able because when things are wrong, we all have a dri­ving need to know who to blame! In some cases, elitist slight-of-hand ini­ti­ates and then per­pet­u­ates false assumptions.

This writer has never been accused of charging that all large cor­po­ra­tions are guilty of ini­ti­ating and per­pet­u­ating glob­al­iza­tion. There are many busi­nesses, including banks, who are led by moral, eth­ical and good-hearted busi­nessmen or busi­ness­women. Just because a com­pany might touch glob­alism does not mean it and its man­age­ment or employees are evil.

Every bit of thirty-five years of research indi­cates that there is a rel­a­tively small yet diverse group of global players who have been the plan­ners and insti­ga­tors behind glob­al­iza­tion for many decades. The pri­mary dri­ving force that moves this “clique” is greed; the sec­ondary force is the lust for power. In the case of the aca­d­e­mics who are key to glob­alism, a third force is pro­fes­sional recog­ni­tion and accep­tance (a subtle form of egoism and power.)

It is also impor­tant to under­stand that core glob­al­ists have full under­standing of their goals, plans and actions. They are not dimwitted, igno­rant, mis­in­formed or naive.

The global elite march in three essen­tial columns: Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical and Aca­d­emic. For the sake of clarity, these names will be used herein to refer to these three groups.

In gen­eral, the goals for glob­alism are cre­ated by Cor­po­rate. Aca­d­emic then pro­vides studies and white papers that jus­tify Corporate’s goals. Polit­ical sells Academic’s argu­ments to the public and if nec­es­sary, changes laws to accom­mo­date and facil­i­tate Cor­po­rate in get­ting what it wants.

An impor­tant ancil­lary player in glob­alism is the media, which we will call Press in this report. Press is nec­es­sary to filter Cor­po­rate, Aca­d­emic and Political’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the public. Press is not a fourth column, how­ever, because it’s pur­pose is merely reflec­tive. How­ever, we will see that Press is dom­i­nated by mem­bers of Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical and Aca­d­emic who sit on the var­ious boards of direc­tors of major Press organizations.

This report will attempt to iden­tify and label the core players in the glob­al­iza­tion process. The intent is to show the makeup and pat­tern of the core, not to list every person in it. Nev­er­the­less, many people will be named and their asso­ci­a­tions and con­nec­tions revealed. This is done for two reasons.

First, it will equip the reader be able to accu­rately iden­tify other core players as they are brought into focus. Sec­ondly, the reader will be able to pass over minor players who may sound like “big fish” but in fact are only pedestrians.

Orga­ni­za­tional Memberships

The old saying, “Birds of a feather, flock together” is appro­priate for the per­pe­tra­tors of glob­alism. Soci­o­log­i­cally speaking, they are like any other people group with like inter­ests: they nat­u­rally tend to form soci­eties that will help them achieve their common inter­ests. A side-benefit of fel­low­ship is mutual sup­port and encour­age­ment. Once formed, such groups tend to be self-perpetuating, at least as long as common inter­ests remain.

In modern his­tory, the pin­nacle of global dri­vers has been the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Founded in 1973 by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski, this group is cred­ited with being the founder of the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order that has given rise to the glob­al­iza­tion we see today.

The Council on For­eign Relations

Prior to the founding of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, the Council on For­eign Rela­tions (CFR) was the most sig­nif­i­cant body of global-minded elit­ists in the United States. As far back as 1959, the CFR was explicit about a need for world government:

“The U.S. must strive to build a new inter­na­tional order… including states labeling them­selves as ‘socialist’… to main­tain and grad­u­ally increase the authority of the United Nations.”

The site for the United Nations head­quar­ters in New York was orig­i­nally donated by the Rock­e­feller family, and the CFR world archi­tects worked for many years to use the U.N. as a means to develop an image of world order. Indeed, the CFR mem­ber­ship roster has been, and still is a Who’s Who of the elitist eastern establishment.

The first problem with the CFR is that it became too large and too diverse to act as a “cut­ting edge” in global policy cre­ation. The second problem is that it’s mem­ber­ship was lim­ited to north America: What group could effect global changes without a global membership?

The CFR con­tinues to be sig­nif­i­cant in the sense that politi­cians often look to its mem­ber­ship when searching for people to fill var­ious appoint­ments in gov­ern­ment. It also con­tinues to be a policy mill through its offi­cial organ, For­eign Affairs.

While there are a sev­eral core global elit­ists in the ranks of the CFR, they rep­re­sent a very small per­centage of the total mem­ber­ship. Con­versely, there are many CFR mem­bers who are only lightly involved with glob­alism. For this reason, we do not count the CFR as being cen­tral to glob­al­iza­tion today.

The Tri­lat­eral Commission

David Rock­e­feller rec­og­nized the short­com­ings of the CFR when he founded the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973 with Zbig­niew Brzezinski. Rock­e­feller rep­re­sented Cor­po­rate and Brzezinski rep­re­sented Academic.

Together, they chose approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers from north America, Europe and Japan, whom they viewed as being their “birds of a feather.” These mem­bers were at the pin­nacle of their pro­fes­sion, whether Cor­po­rate, Aca­d­emic, Polit­ical or Press. It is a tes­ti­mony to the influ­ence of Rock­e­feller and Brzezinski that they could get this many people to say “Yes” when they were tapped for membership.

Out of the 54 orig­inal U.S. mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Jimmy Carter was fronted to win the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 1976. Once inau­gu­rated, Carter brought no less than 18 fellow mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion into top-level cab­inet and gov­ern­ment agencies.

Per­haps no one has described the Tri­lat­eral oper­a­tion as suc­cinctly as vet­eran reporter Jere­miah Novak in the Chris­tian Sci­ence Mon­itor (Feb­ruary 7, 1977):

“Today a new crop of econ­o­mists, working in an orga­ni­za­tion known as the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, is on the verge of cre­ating a new inter­na­tional eco­nomic system, one designed by men as bril­liant as Keynes and White. Their names are not well known, but these modern thinkers are as impor­tant to our age as Keynes and White were to theirs.

“More­over, these econ­o­mists, like their World War II coun­ter­parts, are working closely with high gov­ern­ment offi­cials, in this case Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter and Vice Pres­i­dent Walter Mon­dale. And what is now being dis­cussed at the highest levels of gov­ern­ment, in both the United States and abroad, is the cre­ation of a new world eco­nomic system – a system that will affect jobs in America and else­where, the prices con­sumers pay, and the freedom of indi­vid­uals, cor­po­ra­tions, and nations to enter into a truly plan­e­tary eco­nomic system. Indeed, many observers see the advent of the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and what is now being called the “Tri­lat­eral” cab­inet as the har­binger of this new era.”¹

The per­ni­cious influ­ence of the Com­mis­sion and its dom­i­nance of the U.S. Exec­u­tive branch remains unchal­lenged to this day.

Ronald Reagan was not a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but his Vice Pres­i­dent, George H. W. Bush, was a member. The Commission’s influ­ence was safely per­pet­u­ated into the Reagan years.

The 1988 elec­tion of George H.W. Bush to the pres­i­dency fur­ther con­sol­i­dated Tri­lat­eral influ­ence in the U.S.

In 1992, Tri­lat­eral member William Jef­ferson Clinton fol­lowed in the pres­i­dency and con­tributed greatly to the cause of globalization.

In 2000, George W. Bush assumed the pres­i­dency. While it can be demon­strated that Bush is closely aligned with and totally ded­i­cated to Tri­lat­eral goals, he is not a member of the Com­mis­sion. How­ever, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney is a member of the Commission.

Obvi­ously, Corporate’s part­ner­ships with Polit­ical, Aca­d­emic and Press has been very suc­cessful." (snip) ...

NOTE: This lengthy article is originally posted at this website:

http://www.augustforecast.com/2005/11/14/the_global_elite_who_are_they_

Main Website: http://www.augustforecast.com