<div><strong>All:</strong></div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div><strong>The article referenced below makes the case, with documentation, to put it bluntly, that we are pawns in the chess game played by the richest and most powerful players in the global economic system... Though there may be exaggeration of the extent of control of the economic elites, there is no doubt this trend is a major factor controlling the domestic agenda of many nations. The increasing globalization of national economies linked to a class of super rich and powerful individuals invested heavily in the largest multinational corporations have a degree of power that weakens the egalitarian ideals of participatory national democracies who assume they control their domestic agendas.
</strong></div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div><strong>Quick summary of the article's conclusion:</strong></div>
<div> </div>
<div>The credo of The August Review is "Follow the money, follow the power." In this view, the United States has literally been hijacked by less than 300 greedy and self-serving global elitists who have little more than contempt for the citizens of the countries they would seek to dominate. According to Trilateralist Richard Gardner's viewpoint, this incremental takeover (rather than a frontal approach) has been wildly successful:
</div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div><a href="http://www.augustreview.com/issues/general/toward_a_north_american_union_200608181/?gclid=CJvYzqSi-44CFReQgQodchpexQ">http://www.augustreview.com/issues/general/toward_a_north_american_union_200608181/?gclid=CJvYzqSi-44CFReQgQodchpexQ
</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>A partial excerpt from this article:</div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div><strong>The Best Government that Money Can Buy </strong></div>
<p>Modern day globalization was launched with the creation of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Its membership consisted of just over 300 powerful elitists from North America, Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Trilateral Commission was to foster a "New International Economic Order" that would supplant the historical economic order.
</p>
<p>In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Trilateral Commission nonetheless established a headlock on the Executive Branch of the U.S. government with the election of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a presidential candidate by Brzezinski, Carter was personally tutored in globalist philosophy and foreign policy by Brzezinski himself. Subsequently, when Carter was sworn in as President, he appointed no less than one-third of the
U.S. members of the Commission to his Cabinet and other high-level posts in his Administration. Such was the genesis of the Trilateral Commission's domination of the Executive Branch that continues to the present day.
</p>
<p>With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Trilateral Commission member George H.W. Bush was introduced to the White House as vice-president. Through Bush's influence, Reagan continued to select key appointments from the ranks of the Trilateral Commission.
</p>
<p>In 1988, George H.W. Bush began his four-year term as President. He was followed by fellow Trilateral Commission member William Jefferson Clinton, who served for 8 years as President and appointed fourteen fellow Trilateral members to his Administration.
</p>
<p>The election of George W. Bush in 2000 should be no surprise. Although Bush was not a member of the Trilateral Commission, his vice-president Dick Cheney <em>is</em>. In addition, Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, is also a member of the Commission in her own right.
</p>
<p>The <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('A trade-related term indicating the dominance of one group over another such that the dominant group can dictate the terms of trade to its own advantage. ', CAPTION, 'Hegemony',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">Hegemony</font></a> of the Trilateral Commission over the Executive Branch of the U.S. government is unmistakable. Critics argue that this scenario is merely circumstantial, that the most qualified political "talent" quite naturally tends to belong to groups like the Trilateral Commission in the first place. Under examination, such explanations are quite hollow.
</p>
<p>Why would the Trilateral Commission seek to dominate the Executive Branch? Quite simply - Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would have been impossible to accomplish through the only moderately successful lobbying efforts of the past; power to use the government as a bully platform to modify political behavior throughout the world.
</p>
<p>Of course, the obvious corollary to this hegemony is that the influence and impact of the citizenry is virtually eliminated. </p>
<p><strong>Modern Day "World Order" Strategy</strong></p>
<p>After its founding in 1973, Trilateral Commission members wasted no time in launching their globalist strategy. But, what was that strategy? </p>
<p>Richard Gardner was an original member of the Trilateral Commission, and one of the prominent architects of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, his article "The Hard Road to World Order" appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. With obvious disdain for anyone holding nationalistic political views, Gardner proclaimed,
</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>"In short, the 'house of world order' would 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
<strong>an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.</strong>"</em><span class="style1"><sup>1</sup></span> [emphasis added] </p>
<blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>In Gardner's view, using treaties and trade agreements (such as General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs or <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade', CAPTION, 'GATT',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">GATT</font></a>) would bind and supercede constitutional law piece by piece, which is exactly what has happened. In addition, Gardner highly esteemed the role of the United Nations as a third-party legal body that could be used to erode the national sovereignty of individual nations.
</p>
<p>Gardner concluded that "the case-by-case approach can produce some remarkable concessions of 'sovereignty' that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis"<span class="style1"><sup>2</sup></span>
</p>
<p>Thus, the end result of such a process is that the U.S. would eventually capitulate its sovereignty to the newly proposed world order. It is not specifically mentioned who would control this new order, but it is quite obvious that the only 'players' around are Gardner and his Trilateral cronies.
</p>
<p>It should again be noted that the formation of the Trilateral Commission by Rockefeller and Brzezinski was a response to the general frustration that globalism was going nowhere with the status quo prior to 1973. The "frontal assault " had failed, and a new approach was needed. It is a typical mindset of the global elite to view any roadblock as an opportunity to stage an "end-run" to get around it. Gardner confirms this frustration:
</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>"Certainly the gap has never loomed larger between the objectives and the capacities of the international organizations that were supposed to get mankind on the road to world order. We are witnessing an outbreak of shortsighted nationalism that seems oblivious to the economic, political and moral implications of interdependence. Yet never has there been such widespread recognition by the world's intellectual leadership of the necessity for cooperation and planning on a truly global basis, beyond country, beyond region, especially beyond social system."
</em><span class="style1"><sup>3</sup></span></p>
<blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>The "world's intellectual leadership" apparently refers to academics such as Gardner and Brzezinski. Outside of the Trilateral Commission and the <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('Council on Foreign Relations - Founded in 1921 and quickly became a major influence on U.S. foreign policy. Membership grew over the years to about 4,000. Its primary publication, Foreign Affairs, continues to be a most likely source of globalist theories. David Rockefeller is Honorary Chairman. ', CAPTION, 'CFR',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">CFR</font></a>, the vast majority of academic thought at the time was opposed to such notions as mentioned above.
</p>
<p><strong>Laying the Groundwork: <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('<p> A procedure <br /> adopted by the US Congress, at the request of the President, committing <br /> Congress to vote to pass or reject a trade agreement without amendment. <br /> Critics argue that this procedure is undemocratic because Congress <br /> members cannot amend or reject objectionable clauses before agreements <br /> are passed. Fast Track was first introduced in the Trade Act of <br /> 1974. <br /> <br /></p>', CAPTION, 'Fast Track',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">Fast Track</font></a> Authority </strong></p>
<p>In Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, authority is granted to Congress "<em>To regulate <a title="Commerce Clause" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause">
<font color="#0081bf">commerce</font></a> with foreign nations</em>." An end-run around this insurmountable obstacle would be to convince Congress to voluntarily turn over this power to the President. With such authority in hand, the President could freely negotiate treaties and other trade agreements with foreign nations, and then simply present them to Congress for a straight up or down vote, with no amendments possible. This again points out elite disdain for a Congress that is elected to be representative "of the people, by the people and for the people."
</p>
<p>So, the first "Fast Track" legislation was passed by Congress in 1974, just one year after the founding of the Trilateral Commission. It was the same year that Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed as Vice President under President Gerald Ford, neither of whom were elected by the
U.S. public. As Vice-President, Rockefeller was seated as the president of the U.S. Senate. </p>
<p>According to Public Citizen, the bottom line of Fast Track is that... </p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>"...the White House signs and enters into trade deals before Congress ever votes on them. Fast Track also sets the parameters for congressional debate on any trade measure the President submits, requiring a vote within a certain time with no amendments and only 20 hours of debate."
<span class="style1"><sup>4</sup></span></em></p>
<blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>When an agreement is about to be given to Congress, high-powered lobbyists and political hammer-heads are called in to manipulate congressional hold-outs into voting for the legislation. (*See <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('Central American Free Trade Argeement', CAPTION, 'CAFTA',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">CAFTA</font></a> Lobbying Efforts) With only 20 hours of debate allowed, there is little opportunity for public involvement.
</p>
<p><strong></strong>Congress clearly understood the risk of giving up this power to the President, as evidenced by the fact that they put an automatic expiration date on it. Since the expiration of the original Fast Track, there been a very contentious trail of Fast Track renewal efforts. In 1996, President Clinton utterly failed to re-secure Fast Track after a bitter debate in Congress. After another contentious struggle in 2001/2002, President Bush was able to renew Fast Track for himself in the Trade Act of 2002, just in time to negotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and insure its passage in 2005.
</p>
<p>It is startling to realize that since 1974, Fast Track has <em>not</em> been used in the majority of trade agreements. Under the Clinton presidency, for instance, some 300 separate trade agreements were negotiated and passed normally by Congress, but only
<em>two</em> of them were submitted under Fast Track: NAFTA and the GATT <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('A series of trade negotiations between 1986-1994 that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).', CAPTION, 'Uruguay Round',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">Uruguay Round</font></a>. In fact, from 1974 to 1992, there were only three instances of Fast Track in action: GATT Tokyo Round,
U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Thus, NAFTA was only the <em>fourth</em> invocation of Fast Track.</p>
<p>Why the selectivity? Does it suggest a very narrow agenda? Most certainly. These trade and legal bamboozles didn't stand a ghost of a chance to be passed without it, and the global elite knew it. Fast Track was created as a very specific legislative tool to accomplish a very specific executive task -- namely, to "fast track" the creation of the "New International Economic Order" envisioned by the Trilateral Commission in 1973!
</p>
<p>Article Six of the U.S. Constitution states that "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Because international treaties supersede national law, Fast Track has allowed an enormous restructuring of
U.S. law without resorting to a Constitutional convention (Ed. note: Both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski called for a constitutional convention as early as 1972, which could clearly be viewed as a failed "frontal assault"). As a result, national sovereignty of the United States has been severely compromised - even if some Congressmen and Senators are aware of this, the general public is still generally ignorant.
</p>
<p><strong>North American Free Trade Agreement</strong></p>
<div>NAFTA was negotiated under the executive leadership of Republican President George H.W. Bush. Carla Hills is widely credited as being the primary architect and negotiator of NAFTA. Both Bush and Hills were members of the Trilateral Commission!
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<p>With Bush's first presidential term drawing to a close and Bush desiring political credit for NAFTA, an "initialing" ceremony of NAFTA was staged (so Bush could take credit for NAFTA) in October, 1992. Although very official looking, most Americans did not understand the difference between initialing and signing; at the time, Fast Track was not implemented and Bush did not have the authority to actually sign such a trade agreement.
</p>
<p>Bush subsequently <a class="mosinfopop" onmouseover="return overlib('<p>United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea - Provides universal control for the management of marine natural resources and shipping rights. Opened for signature on December 10, 1982 </p>', CAPTION, 'LOST',BELOW,RIGHT, WIDTH, 300, FGCOLOR, '#CCCCFF', BGCOLOR, '#333399', TEXTCOLOR, '#000000', CAPCOLOR, '#FFFFFF', OFFSETX, 10, OFFSETY, 10);" style="CURSOR: help; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px dotted" onmouseout="return nd();" href="javascript:void(0)">
<img src="http://www.augustreview.com/mambots/content/glossarbot/info.gif" align="top" border="0"><font color="#0081bf">LOST</font></a> a publicly contentious presidential race to democrat William Jefferson Clinton, but they were hardly polar opposites on the issue of Free Trade and NAFTA: The reason? Clinton was
<em>also</em> a seasoned member of the Trilateral Commission. </p>
<p>Immediately after inauguration, Clinton became the champion of NAFTA and orchestrated its passage with a massive Executive Branch effort. </p>
<p><strong>Some Unexpected Resistance to NAFTA</strong> </p>
<p>Prior to the 1992 election, there was a fly in the elite's ointment -- namely, presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, founder and chairman of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Perot was politically independent, vehemently anti-NAFTA and chose to make it a major campaign issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge sums of money to overcome the negative publicity that Perot gave to NAFTA.
</p>
<p>At the time, some political analysts believed that Perot, being a billionaire, was somehow put up to this task by the same elitists who were pushing NAFTA. Presumably, it would accumulate all the anti-globalists in one tidy group, thus allowing the elitists to determine who their true enemies really were. It's moot today whether he was sincere or not, but it did have that outcome, and Perot became a lightning rod for the whole issue of free trade.
</p>
<p>Perot hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nationally televised campaign speeches:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>"If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature workforce - pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care - that's the most expensive single element in making a car - have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you didn't care about anything but making money,
<strong>there will be a giant sucking sound going south..."</strong><span class="style1"><sup>5</sup></span> </em>[emphasis added] </p>
<blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>Perot's message struck a nerve with millions of Americans, but it was unfortunately cut short when he entered into public campaign debates with fellow candidate Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot's lunch, not so much on the issues themselves, but on having superior debating skills. As organized as Perot was, he was no match for a politically and globally seasoned politician like Al Gore.
</p>
<p><strong>The Spin Machine gears up</strong> </p>
<p>To counter the public relations damage done by Perot, all the stops were pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite, the President unleashed the biggest and most expensive spin machine the country had ever seen.
</p>
<p>Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra, carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better Jobs. Better Wages", all of which have turned out to be empty promises
</p>
<p>Bill Clinton invited three former presidents to the White House to stand with him in praise and affirmation NAFTA. This was the first time in U.S. history that four presidents had ever appeared together. Of the four, three were members of the Trilateral Commission: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George
H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Commissioner, but was nevertheless a confirmed globalist insider. After Ford's accession to the presidency in 1974, he promptly nominated Nelson Rockefeller (David Rockefeller's oldest brother) to fill the Vice Presidency that Ford had just vacated.
</p>
<p>The academic community was enlisted when, according to Harper's Magazine publisher John MacArthur,</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>...there was a pro-NAFTA petition, organized and written my MIT's Rudiger Dornbusch, addressed to President Clinton and signed by all twelve living Nobel laureates in economics, and exercise in academic logrolling that was expertly converted by Bill Daley and the A-Team into PR gold on the front page of The New York Times on September 14. 'Dear Mr. President,' wrote the 283 signatories..."
<span class="style1"><sup>6</sup></span></em></p>
<blockquote>
<p><em></em></p></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>Lastly, prominent Trilateral Commission members themselves took to the press to promote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Commissioners Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>"[NAFTA] would be the most constructive measure the United States would have undertaken in our hemisphere in this century."<span class="style1"><sup>7</sup></span></em></p>
<blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>Two months later, Kissinger went further, </p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p><em>"It will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere." [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the
<strong>architecture of a new international system.</strong>"</em><span class="style1"><sup>8</sup></span> [emphasis added]</p>
<blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>It is hardly fanciful to think that Kissinger's hype sounds quite similar to the Trilateral Commission's original goal of creating a <em>New International Economic Order</em>. </p>
<p><em>On January 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track procedures, the house had passed it by 234-200 (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61-38. </em></p>
<p><em>-----</em></p>
<p><em>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</em></p></div>