Mallory Factor
At a time when stories and rumors about the treatment of detainees captured in the global War on terror dominate the headlines, it's important to separate facts from sensationalist fictions. I had a chance to do just that on a recent trip to Iraq when I got an inside look at our detention and interrogation facility at our huge military base Camp Cropper near the airport in Baghdad.The good (and completely unsurprising) news is this: the men and women of our military detention unit in Baghdad treat Iraqi detainees with the highest standards of professionalism and human decency. But perhaps the standards are even toohigh; there is a war on after all.
Our Baghdad detention facility holds security detainees (mostly suspected terrorists) and is operated by the United States Army. It currently holds about 2,000 detainees--Saddam Hussein was detained there after his capture. From accounts in the news media, you might think we detain suspected terrorists in dank cells and accord them cruel treatment. But instead of a series of "torture chambers" that would horrify Stephen King, I saw pleasant interrogation facilities that would make your grandmother feel comfortable.
The detainees are treated very gently -- some of the interrogation rooms even have soft couches and artificial flowers. Detainees may be offered soft drinks and biscuits during their interrogation. Treating detainees gently during interrogation is, of course, an interrogation technique in itself--to encourage the less hard-bitten ones to talk. And some claim that this gentle treatment prevents us from making more terrorists in our detention facilities.
But detainees quickly learn that they have nothing to fear from the Americans -- unlike their counterparts in Saddam's Iraq or other countries in the region today. And our interrogators may find it difficult to extract information if the detainees themselves are aware that the interrogators' only tool is gentle treatment. And when the facility is handed over the Iraqis in the near future, surely the gentle policies will leave with the Americans.
The rights given to detainees at our Baghdad detention facility are specific, extensive and clearly spelled out to the detainees themselves. Detainees receive a medical exam before every interrogation and another when it is finished. There is an officer present for each interrogation and observers watch through a two-way mirror. All interrogations are recorded and reviewed.Camp Cropper reminds me of a community college, with the detainees able to take English lessons, receive job training, and engage in sports and games. Cell blocks elect their leaders -- kind of like student government. Detainees are even entitled to receive cigarettes after every meal. Some might call that torture, of a kind -- and you can't do that in America!
And as Congress debates universal health care, the detainees in Iraq receive medical care that would be the envy of most of the world -- and the uninsured in America. The detainees receive the same medical care that our troops receive, including dental and vision care, all free and on demand. In fact, the doctors, treatments, and high-tech equipment are the same for our soldiers and for suspected terrorists. That's unprecedented in wartime -- and America is still at war.Many detainees from poor backgrounds have never had access to medical or dental care in their lives. Some families have even asked our military to keep holding their sons until they can complete their free medical and dental treatments.
A dental plan for terrorists? Is America going soft? I am reminded of Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men," when he says, "You can't handle the truth." The American people may say they want the truth -- but they just can't handle the truth about war anymore and what it takes to win a war, and I think it will get us in a heap of trouble.
There's a military custom of posts and units issuing souvenir coins to give to visitors. Camp Cropper's is instructive and sums up the whole philosophy behind detainee operations. At the edge of the coin, around a montage of the Iraqi and U.S flags, appear these words: "Respect," "Care," "Custody," "Dignity," and, at the bottom, "Return with Honor."
Make no mistake -- our soldiers in the detention unit at Camp Cropper have a job to do, and they do it professionally. Now it's up to the brass and the politicians to be sure they have all the tools they need as they play their important part in protecting America.
It's no joking matter that our current political leaders have severely limited the tools that our military and the CIA can use to obtain valuable information from suspected (or actual) terrorists and protect our nation. We need effective interrogation tools to protect Americans and others around the world, such as the citizens of London, Madrid, Mumbai, Istanbul, and Jakarta who have suffered so much from terrorist attacks.
America should think twice before we let politicians sitting in Washington hamper our military interrogators and the CIA so severely in war zones. It's past time to have a real debate on these issues, void of sensationalism and partisan attacks, and to ask: How do we best protect our country?
Mallory Factor is the co-chairman and co-founder of the Monday Meeting, an influential meeting of economic conservatives, journalists and corporate leaders in New York City. Mr. Factor is a well-known merchant banker and speaks and writes frequently on economic and fiscal topics for news stations, leading newspapers and other print and online publications.
Monday, August 31, 2009
REVOLUTION BREWING - August 28 Sacramento Tea Party Express 2009
My friend
Sharon O'Brien-Lykins
CameraHorse.Com
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Glenn Beck: Speak Without Fear
August 27, 2009 - 0:04 ET
Watch Glenn Beck weekdays at 5p & 2a ET on FOX News Channel
We're halfway through the week and here are just a few of the things we've learned so far:
Congress, beyond not reading these bills, is not even writing these bills. They are being written by a vast network that is not conspiratorial — it is completely out and wide open — yet the media refuses to report on them.
Organizations that are filled with socialists, communists, revolutionaries. Organizations that pull their members from legitimate businesses, politicians and from groups that most Americans have never heard of, like Movement for a Democratic Society — a group started by members of the Communist Party USA, other radicals and Socialists of America.
I have demonstrated these radicals are not only instrumental in shaping legislation that's being jammed through, but are also -- by invitation -- personally advising the president of the United States.
And again the media remains silent.
These are facts — not opinions. I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts — they just attack me personally.
Day 3 and the White House remains silent. Yet they have e-mailed my show during the broadcast, only to refute that these people are not "czars," they are "special advisers." One would think if all of this weren't true, they would worry about the labels "communist" or "revolutionary," not "special adviser."
I've also showed you the framework that — to quote Barack Obama — is "fundamentally transforming America." But this is much bigger than Barack Obama. Powerful special interest groups began to lay this framework over the last few years.
Remember the Green Jobs Act during the Bush administration? Many on Capitol Hill voted for it because they claimed it was unfunded with meaningless language, tucked into a 900-page bill. Heck, it only asked for $125 million (requested by the special interest group, the Apollo Alliance).
Now, that meaningless, unfunded, green act doesn't have $125 million, but rather $500 million that was — to use green jobs "czar" Van Jones' word — "smuggled" into the stimulus bill.
That money is now being funneled by Van Jones (a self-proclaimed revolutionary communist) to organizations and programs of his design and choosing. Oh, and he sits on the board of the Apollo Alliance.
What new "harmless compromises" do we have to look forward to in the health care bills with these radical wolves that are about to devour our republic?
I've told you the three mottos that I have personally adopted: Question with boldness; hold to the truth, and speak without fear.
This information is not being reported on just because the media can't be piece together quickly enough what is happening or they somehow agree with this revolutionary agenda — but fear also plays a big role. People have too much to lose.
As a recovering alcoholic, I've already lost everything once; I'm better and stronger for it. I didn't need a bailout; I needed to rediscover my principles. I've told my audience for years after I sobered up that I was a dirt-bag — I try my hardest not to be now, but I still make mistakes. They can take my job or my wealth — that's OK because I've been rich and I've been poor. But I was only truly miserable when I was lying to myself or others. And because some of those principles that I've rediscovered and applied to my life are the founding principles of this country.
I know that even if the current powers that be succeed in making me poor again, I will only be stronger for it. And American ingenuity will find another way to get this message out on a platform 1,000 times more powerful.
Because of my faith, I know how this story ends: America prepare to witness mighty, powerful miracles in your lifetime.
I am going to offer up evidence that part of the strategy of the fundamental transformation of America is to silence dissent.
Let me show you one of the most diabolical hidden parts of the plan, that quite honestly when I finished my research on it last week, I wrote to a friend that for the first time, I am truly frightened.
It involves the new diversity "czar" at the FCC.
I have told you for a long time: Pay no attention to the Fairness Doctrine that would shut down voices like mine on the radio or voices like mine and Bill O'Reilly on TV. It's too obvious. They will do it through what's called "localism" and "diversity." The final piece of the argument will be against these giant corporate broadcast groups that have too much power (one of which will never be G.E.)
This has been my warning and my theory. A week and a half ago, I began to look into our FCC diversity "czar" Mark Lloyd. In his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote:
"It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press.... This freedom is all too often an exaggeration.... At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."
Freedom of speech... is a distraction?
Localism boards are being created. Our diversity "czar" has just proposed that radio companies pay 100 percent of their operating budget, yearly. A 100 percent tax which would then be transferred to the state-run radio of NPR. If you can't pay that, you'd lose your license and it would be sold to minority group.
(In a completely unrelated fact, the FCC just approved the sale of another radio station — this one on Long Island — to ACORN.)
Speak without fear.
On global warming, people didn't speak because they didn't want to be seen as a Holocaust denier or a flat-Earther. So they passed "harmless legislation." Now we have half a billion dollars in the hands of a communist revolutionary, who describes his job as:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAN JONES, GREEN JOBS CZAR: What I do, to kinda make it simple, I'm basically a community organizer inside the federal government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And now because no one in their right mind is against diversity, people will be afraid of being called a racist or a bigot or a hatemonger.
Speak without fear or more "harmless legislation" will be passed and you will not be able to speak and you will experience the kind of fear that no one in this country has experienced before.
All it will take is an "emergency."
God help us all.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29753/?ck=1
Watch Glenn Beck weekdays at 5p & 2a ET on FOX News Channel
We're halfway through the week and here are just a few of the things we've learned so far:
Congress, beyond not reading these bills, is not even writing these bills. They are being written by a vast network that is not conspiratorial — it is completely out and wide open — yet the media refuses to report on them.
Organizations that are filled with socialists, communists, revolutionaries. Organizations that pull their members from legitimate businesses, politicians and from groups that most Americans have never heard of, like Movement for a Democratic Society — a group started by members of the Communist Party USA, other radicals and Socialists of America.
I have demonstrated these radicals are not only instrumental in shaping legislation that's being jammed through, but are also -- by invitation -- personally advising the president of the United States.
And again the media remains silent.
These are facts — not opinions. I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts — they just attack me personally.
Day 3 and the White House remains silent. Yet they have e-mailed my show during the broadcast, only to refute that these people are not "czars," they are "special advisers." One would think if all of this weren't true, they would worry about the labels "communist" or "revolutionary," not "special adviser."
I've also showed you the framework that — to quote Barack Obama — is "fundamentally transforming America." But this is much bigger than Barack Obama. Powerful special interest groups began to lay this framework over the last few years.
Remember the Green Jobs Act during the Bush administration? Many on Capitol Hill voted for it because they claimed it was unfunded with meaningless language, tucked into a 900-page bill. Heck, it only asked for $125 million (requested by the special interest group, the Apollo Alliance).
Now, that meaningless, unfunded, green act doesn't have $125 million, but rather $500 million that was — to use green jobs "czar" Van Jones' word — "smuggled" into the stimulus bill.
That money is now being funneled by Van Jones (a self-proclaimed revolutionary communist) to organizations and programs of his design and choosing. Oh, and he sits on the board of the Apollo Alliance.
What new "harmless compromises" do we have to look forward to in the health care bills with these radical wolves that are about to devour our republic?
I've told you the three mottos that I have personally adopted: Question with boldness; hold to the truth, and speak without fear.
This information is not being reported on just because the media can't be piece together quickly enough what is happening or they somehow agree with this revolutionary agenda — but fear also plays a big role. People have too much to lose.
As a recovering alcoholic, I've already lost everything once; I'm better and stronger for it. I didn't need a bailout; I needed to rediscover my principles. I've told my audience for years after I sobered up that I was a dirt-bag — I try my hardest not to be now, but I still make mistakes. They can take my job or my wealth — that's OK because I've been rich and I've been poor. But I was only truly miserable when I was lying to myself or others. And because some of those principles that I've rediscovered and applied to my life are the founding principles of this country.
I know that even if the current powers that be succeed in making me poor again, I will only be stronger for it. And American ingenuity will find another way to get this message out on a platform 1,000 times more powerful.
Because of my faith, I know how this story ends: America prepare to witness mighty, powerful miracles in your lifetime.
I am going to offer up evidence that part of the strategy of the fundamental transformation of America is to silence dissent.
Let me show you one of the most diabolical hidden parts of the plan, that quite honestly when I finished my research on it last week, I wrote to a friend that for the first time, I am truly frightened.
It involves the new diversity "czar" at the FCC.
I have told you for a long time: Pay no attention to the Fairness Doctrine that would shut down voices like mine on the radio or voices like mine and Bill O'Reilly on TV. It's too obvious. They will do it through what's called "localism" and "diversity." The final piece of the argument will be against these giant corporate broadcast groups that have too much power (one of which will never be G.E.)
This has been my warning and my theory. A week and a half ago, I began to look into our FCC diversity "czar" Mark Lloyd. In his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote:
"It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press.... This freedom is all too often an exaggeration.... At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."
Freedom of speech... is a distraction?
Localism boards are being created. Our diversity "czar" has just proposed that radio companies pay 100 percent of their operating budget, yearly. A 100 percent tax which would then be transferred to the state-run radio of NPR. If you can't pay that, you'd lose your license and it would be sold to minority group.
(In a completely unrelated fact, the FCC just approved the sale of another radio station — this one on Long Island — to ACORN.)
Speak without fear.
On global warming, people didn't speak because they didn't want to be seen as a Holocaust denier or a flat-Earther. So they passed "harmless legislation." Now we have half a billion dollars in the hands of a communist revolutionary, who describes his job as:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAN JONES, GREEN JOBS CZAR: What I do, to kinda make it simple, I'm basically a community organizer inside the federal government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And now because no one in their right mind is against diversity, people will be afraid of being called a racist or a bigot or a hatemonger.
Speak without fear or more "harmless legislation" will be passed and you will not be able to speak and you will experience the kind of fear that no one in this country has experienced before.
All it will take is an "emergency."
God help us all.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29753/?ck=1
CIA Inspector: Cheney Never Pressured Me
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney never attempted to influence or intimidate the CIA's inspectors in order to get the findings he wanted on the CIA's review of enhanced interrogation techniques, the agency's inspector general has told FOX News.
In a rare response for a request to comment, CIA IG John Helgerson confirmed Tuesday that he met personally with Cheney during the course of the investigation, and despite allegations on Web blogs, the former vice president made no effort to influence his work.
"The VP (whom I had long known reasonably well, as, in a non-IG capacity, I used to brief the House Intelligence Committee on a weekly basis when he was an active Member) received me graciously and asked a number of good and appropriate questions. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, he did not attempt in any way whatsoever to intimidate me or influence what we were finding, concluding and recommending," Helgerson wrote in an e-mail to FOX News.
"Only infrequently do IG reports take on such significance that they need to be briefed to the VP, and when this is the case, normally White House or NSC Counsel, or the VP's own staff, receive the material first and then inform the VP as they see fit," he wrote.
Helgerson said that at the time the review had been completed, he and others in the spy agency briefed a number of key parties about the program and the IG's findings. They included members of the White House, the National Security Council, Congress and the Department of Justice.
He said he briefed the vice president because he thought it was "important that he know what was up for a number of reasons, including the elementary bureaucratic fact, for us in the Executive Branch, that the VP should know the same things senior Members in Congress were being told about a program that was as sensitive as this one."
Asked if his work as IG was obstructed, Helgerson wrote: "No, I did not feel that there was any obstruction put up by the Agency. Not surprisingly, those directly involved in the events we were looking at were apprehensive throughout, and there were those who limited their cooperation to answering direct questions. Most individuals engaged constructively with our team."
Helgerson wrote that some members "at the heart of the program" in fact expressed relief that a rigorous review was happening. Based on the IG report, some CIA employees were anxious about the program, which was unprecedented, and they wanted to be sure whatever they did was properly vetted -- reducing the risk to them.
Helgerson said he received "a great many expressions of support for the Office of Inspector General and its work" and that CIA employees for the most part understood the role of the IG and the need for complete access.
"In a few cases I turned to the Office of General Counsel and asked them to explain to a given employee or component what their legal obligations were, and this quickly brought cooperation. Despite all this, there was enough disorganization in the program, including confused record-keeping in the early months, that the Agency sometimes had considerable difficulty responding in a timely way to our needs for information. Overall, I would say that I received as full cooperation as any IG can reasonably expect, given the complex nature of the matters being reviewed," he wrote.
Helgerson is one of the few people to have reviewed the 92 videotapes, documenting some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed and have been the subject of an investigation by John Durham, a career prosecutor, who is now tapped to lead the Justice Department's preliminary review into CIA employees who may have broken the law during the course of interrogations.
Asked whether the paper record summarizing the substance of the videotapes presents a complete record of events, Helgerson wrote that he is "not personally expert on the fine points of this one. But it is safe to say, I know, that a great deal was learned from the written record and a great deal was learned from the tapes. ... As you read in the declassified report, the tapes were not all complete, and the written record naturally varied in thoroughness depending on a number of human factors. IGs work from all sources of information--in this case, we were fortunate to have the combination of the tapes, written record, and interviews."
A U.S. intelligence official told FOX News that the agency is reviewing the former vice president's request for the release of documents, and another one not released earlier this week. It's being reviewed, but the official said it is similar in content to what is already released and is not a smoking gun.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/26/cia-inspector-cheney-pressured/
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney never attempted to influence or intimidate the CIA's inspectors in order to get the findings he wanted on the CIA's review of enhanced interrogation techniques, the agency's inspector general has told FOX News.
In a rare response for a request to comment, CIA IG John Helgerson confirmed Tuesday that he met personally with Cheney during the course of the investigation, and despite allegations on Web blogs, the former vice president made no effort to influence his work.
"The VP (whom I had long known reasonably well, as, in a non-IG capacity, I used to brief the House Intelligence Committee on a weekly basis when he was an active Member) received me graciously and asked a number of good and appropriate questions. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, he did not attempt in any way whatsoever to intimidate me or influence what we were finding, concluding and recommending," Helgerson wrote in an e-mail to FOX News.
"Only infrequently do IG reports take on such significance that they need to be briefed to the VP, and when this is the case, normally White House or NSC Counsel, or the VP's own staff, receive the material first and then inform the VP as they see fit," he wrote.
Helgerson said that at the time the review had been completed, he and others in the spy agency briefed a number of key parties about the program and the IG's findings. They included members of the White House, the National Security Council, Congress and the Department of Justice.
He said he briefed the vice president because he thought it was "important that he know what was up for a number of reasons, including the elementary bureaucratic fact, for us in the Executive Branch, that the VP should know the same things senior Members in Congress were being told about a program that was as sensitive as this one."
Asked if his work as IG was obstructed, Helgerson wrote: "No, I did not feel that there was any obstruction put up by the Agency. Not surprisingly, those directly involved in the events we were looking at were apprehensive throughout, and there were those who limited their cooperation to answering direct questions. Most individuals engaged constructively with our team."
Helgerson wrote that some members "at the heart of the program" in fact expressed relief that a rigorous review was happening. Based on the IG report, some CIA employees were anxious about the program, which was unprecedented, and they wanted to be sure whatever they did was properly vetted -- reducing the risk to them.
Helgerson said he received "a great many expressions of support for the Office of Inspector General and its work" and that CIA employees for the most part understood the role of the IG and the need for complete access.
"In a few cases I turned to the Office of General Counsel and asked them to explain to a given employee or component what their legal obligations were, and this quickly brought cooperation. Despite all this, there was enough disorganization in the program, including confused record-keeping in the early months, that the Agency sometimes had considerable difficulty responding in a timely way to our needs for information. Overall, I would say that I received as full cooperation as any IG can reasonably expect, given the complex nature of the matters being reviewed," he wrote.
Helgerson is one of the few people to have reviewed the 92 videotapes, documenting some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed and have been the subject of an investigation by John Durham, a career prosecutor, who is now tapped to lead the Justice Department's preliminary review into CIA employees who may have broken the law during the course of interrogations.
Asked whether the paper record summarizing the substance of the videotapes presents a complete record of events, Helgerson wrote that he is "not personally expert on the fine points of this one. But it is safe to say, I know, that a great deal was learned from the written record and a great deal was learned from the tapes. ... As you read in the declassified report, the tapes were not all complete, and the written record naturally varied in thoroughness depending on a number of human factors. IGs work from all sources of information--in this case, we were fortunate to have the combination of the tapes, written record, and interviews."
A U.S. intelligence official told FOX News that the agency is reviewing the former vice president's request for the release of documents, and another one not released earlier this week. It's being reviewed, but the official said it is similar in content to what is already released and is not a smoking gun.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/26/cia-inspector-cheney-pressured/
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Glenn Beck: Reasonable questions for unreasonable times
August 25, 2009 - 2:05 ET
Watch Glenn Beck weekdays at 5p and 2a ET on the Fox News Channel...
Am I hateful if I ask:
- Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?
- We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink?
- The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN. How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy?
- If it was so important for congress to pass the stimulus bill before they even had time to read it why has only a fraction of the stimulus money been spent 6 months later?
- Bush said he had to abandon free market principles in order to save them, how exactly does that work?
- Why won’t members of Congress read the bills before they vote on them?
- Why are citizens mocked and laughed at when they ask their congressman to read the bills before they vote on them?
- Was the cash-for-clunkers program meant to save the earth or the economy? Did it accomplish either?
- How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?
- Did President Obama know of Van Jones’ radical political beliefs when he named him special advisor?
- The Apollo Alliance claimed credit for writing the stimulus bill—why was this group allowed to write any portion of this bill?
- If politicians aren’t writing the bills and aren’t reading the bills, do they have any idea what these 1000 page plus bills actually impose on the American people?
- If the ‘public option’ health care plan is so good why won’t politicians agree to have that as their plan?
- If town hall meetings are intended for the politicians to learn what’s on our mind—why do they spend so much time talking instead of listening?
- Politicians are refusing to attend town hall meetings complaining, without evidence, that they are scripted. Does that mean we shouldn’t come out and vote for you since every campaign stop, baby kiss and speech you give is scripted?
- Why would you want to overwhelm the system?
- Is using the economic crises to rush legislation through congress what Rahm Emanuel meant when he talked about "not letting a crises go to waste"?
- What are the czars paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29631/?ck=1
Watch Glenn Beck weekdays at 5p and 2a ET on the Fox News Channel...
Am I hateful if I ask:
- Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?
- We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink?
- The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN. How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy?
- If it was so important for congress to pass the stimulus bill before they even had time to read it why has only a fraction of the stimulus money been spent 6 months later?
- Bush said he had to abandon free market principles in order to save them, how exactly does that work?
- Why won’t members of Congress read the bills before they vote on them?
- Why are citizens mocked and laughed at when they ask their congressman to read the bills before they vote on them?
- Was the cash-for-clunkers program meant to save the earth or the economy? Did it accomplish either?
- How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?
- Did President Obama know of Van Jones’ radical political beliefs when he named him special advisor?
- The Apollo Alliance claimed credit for writing the stimulus bill—why was this group allowed to write any portion of this bill?
- If politicians aren’t writing the bills and aren’t reading the bills, do they have any idea what these 1000 page plus bills actually impose on the American people?
- If the ‘public option’ health care plan is so good why won’t politicians agree to have that as their plan?
- If town hall meetings are intended for the politicians to learn what’s on our mind—why do they spend so much time talking instead of listening?
- Politicians are refusing to attend town hall meetings complaining, without evidence, that they are scripted. Does that mean we shouldn’t come out and vote for you since every campaign stop, baby kiss and speech you give is scripted?
- Why would you want to overwhelm the system?
- Is using the economic crises to rush legislation through congress what Rahm Emanuel meant when he talked about "not letting a crises go to waste"?
- What are the czars paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29631/?ck=1
Interesting Organization: The Bilderberg Group
The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an unofficial, annual, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of politics, business, and banking.
The group meets annually at luxury hotels or resorts throughout the world — normally in Europe, and once every four years in the United States or Canada. The 2009 Bilderberg meeting took place from 14-16 May in Athens, Greece.
Origin
The original Bilderberg conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg, near Arnhem in The Netherlands, from 29 May to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several people, including Denis Healey and Józef Retinger, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting understanding between the cultures of United States of America and Western Europe. Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who agreed to promote the idea, together with Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland, and the head of Unilever at that time, the Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser C. D. Jackson to deal with the suggestion. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from eleven countries in Western Europe attended the first conference along with eleven American invitees.
The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.
Organizational structure
Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of around eighteen nations. Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General. There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". In addition to the Committee, there also exists a separate Advisory Group, though membership overlaps.
Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel took over as permanent secretary in 1960, upon the death of Retinger. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment, William Bundy of Princeton, Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
[edit] Chairmen
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1954 - 1975)
Alec Douglas-Home (1977 - 1980)
Walter Scheel
Eric Roll (1986 - 1989)
Lord Carrington (1990 - 1998)
Étienne Davignon
[edit] Participants
Main article: List of Bilderberg participants
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke leaving the 2008 Bilderberg ConferenceThe steering committee does not publish a list of attendees, though some participants have publicly discussed their attendance. Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards politicians, bankers, and directors of large businesses.
Heads of state have attended meetings, including Juan Carlos I of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.[6] Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees. In recent years, board members from many large publicly-traded corporations have attended, including IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler.
The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen[16]; U.S. State Department number two, James Steinberg; U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner; World Bank president, Robert Zoellick; European Commission head, José Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
Conspiracy theories
Because of its secrecy and refusal to issue news releases, the group is frequently accused of secretive and nefarious world plots. Critics include the John Birch Society, the Canadian writer Daniel Estulin, British writer David Icke, American writer Jim Tucker and radio host Alex Jones.
Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, Denis Healey has said:
To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.
According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt "mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran".
Origins of conspiracy theories
Jonathan Duffy, writing in BBC News Online Magazine states:
No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted... In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg.
This secrecy, and lack of reporters in attendance was also noted by Guardian writer Charlie Skelton in his reports on the 2009 conference held in Athens, Greece. Skelton himself was detained by police on three occasions for taking photographs in the vicinity of the conference resort.
According to the investigative journalist Chip Berlet, the origins of Bilderberger conspiracy theories can be traced to activist Phyllis Schlafly. In his 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by Political Research Associates, he writes:
The views on intractable godless communism expressed by Schwarz were central themes in three other bestselling books which were used to mobilize support for the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. The best known was Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo which suggested a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose policies would pave the way for global communist conquest.
Meetings
Main article: List of Bilderberg meetings
Recent meetings:
2005 ( 5 – 8 May) at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Germany[24]
2006 ( 8 – 11 June) at the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
2007 (31 May – 3 June) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel,[26] in Şişli, Istanbul, Turkey.
2008 ( 5 – 8 June) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, United States[10][27]
2009 (14 – 16 May) at the Astir Palace resort in Athens, Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group
The group meets annually at luxury hotels or resorts throughout the world — normally in Europe, and once every four years in the United States or Canada. The 2009 Bilderberg meeting took place from 14-16 May in Athens, Greece.
Origin
The original Bilderberg conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg, near Arnhem in The Netherlands, from 29 May to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several people, including Denis Healey and Józef Retinger, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting understanding between the cultures of United States of America and Western Europe. Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who agreed to promote the idea, together with Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland, and the head of Unilever at that time, the Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser C. D. Jackson to deal with the suggestion. The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from eleven countries in Western Europe attended the first conference along with eleven American invitees.
The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.
Organizational structure
Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of around eighteen nations. Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General. There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". In addition to the Committee, there also exists a separate Advisory Group, though membership overlaps.
Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel took over as permanent secretary in 1960, upon the death of Retinger. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment, William Bundy of Princeton, Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
[edit] Chairmen
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1954 - 1975)
Alec Douglas-Home (1977 - 1980)
Walter Scheel
Eric Roll (1986 - 1989)
Lord Carrington (1990 - 1998)
Étienne Davignon
[edit] Participants
Main article: List of Bilderberg participants
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke leaving the 2008 Bilderberg ConferenceThe steering committee does not publish a list of attendees, though some participants have publicly discussed their attendance. Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards politicians, bankers, and directors of large businesses.
Heads of state have attended meetings, including Juan Carlos I of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.[6] Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees. In recent years, board members from many large publicly-traded corporations have attended, including IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler.
The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen[16]; U.S. State Department number two, James Steinberg; U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner; World Bank president, Robert Zoellick; European Commission head, José Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
Conspiracy theories
Because of its secrecy and refusal to issue news releases, the group is frequently accused of secretive and nefarious world plots. Critics include the John Birch Society, the Canadian writer Daniel Estulin, British writer David Icke, American writer Jim Tucker and radio host Alex Jones.
Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, Denis Healey has said:
To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.
According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt "mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran".
Origins of conspiracy theories
Jonathan Duffy, writing in BBC News Online Magazine states:
No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted... In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg.
This secrecy, and lack of reporters in attendance was also noted by Guardian writer Charlie Skelton in his reports on the 2009 conference held in Athens, Greece. Skelton himself was detained by police on three occasions for taking photographs in the vicinity of the conference resort.
According to the investigative journalist Chip Berlet, the origins of Bilderberger conspiracy theories can be traced to activist Phyllis Schlafly. In his 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by Political Research Associates, he writes:
The views on intractable godless communism expressed by Schwarz were central themes in three other bestselling books which were used to mobilize support for the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. The best known was Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo which suggested a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose policies would pave the way for global communist conquest.
Meetings
Main article: List of Bilderberg meetings
Recent meetings:
2005 ( 5 – 8 May) at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Germany[24]
2006 ( 8 – 11 June) at the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
2007 (31 May – 3 June) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel,[26] in Şişli, Istanbul, Turkey.
2008 ( 5 – 8 June) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, United States[10][27]
2009 (14 – 16 May) at the Astir Palace resort in Athens, Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group
Interesting Organization: Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American bipartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921. Located at 58 East 68th Street (Park Avenue) in New York City, with an office in Washington, D.C. Some international journalists believe it to be 'the most influential foreign-policy think tank.' It publishes a bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs. It has an extensive website, featuring links to its think tank, The David Rockefeller Studies Program, a new geoeconomic center, Emmy award-winning multimedia Crisis Guides Foreign Affairs, and many other projects, publications, history, biographies of notable directors and other board members, corporate members, and press releases.
Mission
The Council's mission is promoting understanding of foreign policy and the United States' role in the world. Meetings are convened at which government officials, global leaders and prominent members debate major foreign-policy issues. It has a think tank that employs prominent scholars in international affairs and it commissions subsequent books and reports. A central aim of the Council, it states, is to "find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders." It established "Independent Task Forces" in 1995, which encourage policy debate. Comprising experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise, these task forces seek consensus in making policy recommendations on critical issues; to date, the Council has convened more than fifty times.
The internal think tank is The David Rockefeller Studies Program, which grants fellowships and whose programs are described as being integral to the goal of contributing to the ongoing debate on foreign policy; fellows in this program research and write on the most important challenges facing the United States and the world.[6]
At the outset of the organization, founding member Elihu Root said the group's mission, epitomized in its journal Foreign Affairs, should be to "guide" American public opinion. In the early 1970s, the CFR changed the mission, saying that it wished instead to "inform" public opinion.[7]
[edit] Early history
The earliest origin of the Council stemmed from a working fellowship of about 150 scholars, called "The Inquiry," tasked to brief President Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world when Germany was defeated. Through 1917–1918, this academic band, including Wilson's closest adviser and long-time friend Col. Edward M. House, as well as Walter Lippmann, gathered at 155th Street and Broadway at the Harold Pratt House in New York City, to assemble the strategy for the postwar world. The team produced more than 2,000 documents detailing and analyzing the political, economic, and social facts globally that would be helpful for Wilson in the peace talks. Their reports formed the basis for the Fourteen Points, which outlined Wilson's strategy for peace after war's end.[8]
These scholars then traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 that would end the war; it was at one of the meetings of a small group of British and American diplomats and scholars, on May 30, 1919, at the Hotel Majestic, that both the Council and its British counterpart, the Chatham House in London, were born.[9]
Some of the participants at that meeting, apart from Edward House, were Paul Warburg, Herbert Hoover, Harold Temperley, Lionel Curtis, Lord Eustace Percy, Christian Herter, and American academic historians James Thomson Shotwell of Columbia University, Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard, and Charles Seymour of Yale.
In 1938 they created various Committees on Foreign Relations throughout the country. These later became governed by the American Committees on Foreign Relation in Washington, D.C.
[edit] About the organization
From its inception the Council was non-partisan, welcoming members of both Democratic and Republican parties. It also welcomed Jews and African Americans, although women were initially barred from membership. Its proceedings were almost universally private and confidential.[10] A study by two critics of the organization, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council.[11]
Today it has about 5,000 members (including five-year term members between the ages of 35-40), which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures. As a private institution however, the CFR maintains through its official website that it is not a formal organization engaged in U.S. foreign policy-making, and its reports regularly take issue with U.S. government policy.[citation needed]
In 1962, the group began a program of bringing select Air Force officers to the Harold Pratt House to study alongside its scholars. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps requested they start similar programs for their own officers.
Vietnam created a rift within the organization. When Hamilton Fish Armstrong announced in 1970 that he would be leaving the helm of Foreign Affairs after 45 years, new chairman David Rockefeller approached a family friend, William Bundy, to take over the position. Anti-war advocates within the Council rose in protest against this appointment, claiming that Bundy's hawkish record in the State and Defense Departments and the CIA precluded him from taking over an independent journal. Some considered Bundy a war criminal for his prior actions.
Seven American presidents have addressed the Council, two while still in office – Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The Council says that it has never sought to serve as a receptacle for government policy papers that cannot be shared with the public, and they do not encourage government officials who are members to do so. The Council says that discussions at its headquarters remain confidential, not because they share or discuss secret information, but because the system allows members to test new ideas with other members.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his book on the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days, wrote that Kennedy was not part of what he called the "New York establishment":
"In particular, he was little acquainted with the New York financial and legal community-- that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs."
Influence on foreign policy
Beginning in 1939 and lasting for five years, the Council achieved much greater prominence with government and the State Department when it established the strictly confidential War and Peace Studies, funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation.[15] The secrecy surrounding this group was such that the Council members (total at the time: 663) who were not involved in its deliberations were completely unaware of the study group's existence.
It was divided into four functional topic groups: economic and financial, security and armaments, territorial, and political. The security and armaments group was headed by Allen Welsh Dulles who later became a pivotal figure in the CIA's predecessor, the OSS. It ultimately produced 682 memoranda for the State Department, marked classified and circulated among the appropriate government departments. As a historical judgment, its overall influence on actual government planning at the time is still said to remain unclear.
In an anonymous piece called "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1947, CFR study group member George Kennan coined the term "containment." The essay would prove to be highly influential in US foreign policy for seven upcoming presidential administrations. 40 years later, Kennan explained that he had never meant to contain the Soviet Union because it might be able to physically attack the United States; he thought that was obvious enough that he didn't need to explain it in his essay. William Bundy credited the CFR's study groups with helping to lay the framework of thinking that led to the Marshall Plan and NATO. Due to new interest in the group, membership grew towards 1,000.
Dwight D. Eisenhower chaired a CFR study group while he served as President of Columbia University. One member later said, "whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics, he has learned at the study group meetings."[16] The CFR study group devised an expanded study group called "Americans for Eisenhower" to increase his chances for the presidency. Eisenhower would later draw many Cabinet members from CFR ranks and become a CFR member himself. His primary CFR appointment was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles gave a public address at the Harold Pratt House in which he announced a new direction for Eisenhower's foreign policy: "There is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power." After this speech, the council convened a session on "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" and chose Henry Kissinger to head it. Kissinger spent the following academic year working on the project at Council headquarters. The book of the same name that he published from his research in 1957 gave him national recognition, topping the national bestseller lists.
On 24 November 1953, a study group heard a report from political scientist William Henderson regarding the ongoing conflict between France and Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces, a struggle that would later become known as the First Indochina War. Henderson argued that Ho's cause was primarily nationalist in nature and that Marxism had "little to do with the current revolution." Further, the report said, the United States could work with Ho to guide his movement away from Communism. State Department officials, however, expressed skepticism about direct American intervention in Vietnam and the idea was tabled. Over the next twenty years, the United States would find itself allied with anti-Communist South Vietnam and against Ho and his supporters in Vietnam War.
The Council served as a "breeding ground" for important American policies such as mutual deterrence, arms control, and nuclear non-proliferation.
A four-year long study of relations between America and China was conducted by the Council between 1964 and 1968. One study published in 1966 concluded that American citizens were more open to talks with China than their elected leaders. Kissinger had continued to publish in Foreign Affairs and was appointed by President Nixon to serve as National Security Adviser in 1969. In 1971, he embarked on a secret trip to Beijing to broach talks with Chinese leaders. Nixon went to China in 1972, and diplomatic relations were completely normalized by President Carter's Secretary of State, another Council member, Cyrus Vance.
In November 1979, while chairman of the CFR, David Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the State Department to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the US for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life.
Global Governance: World Order in the 21st Century
The CFR started a program in 2008 to last for 5 years called "International Institutions and Global Governance: World Order in the 21st Century" which aims in setting up global institutions in different levels to foster a global governance, in order to tackle different trans-national problems.
Countering Transnational Threats, including terrorism, proliferation of WMD, and infectious disease
Protecting the Environment and Promoting Energy Security
Managing the Global Economy
Preventing and Responding to Violent Conflict
In August 2009, Obama's government urged cooperation with UN to tackle the same points covered by CFR plan's. "The Obama administration will work with the United Nations to fight terrorism and other major world challenges...like nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, the global financial crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, pandemics and global warming."
Membership
Main article: Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
There are two types of membership: life, and term membership, which lasts for 5 years and is available to those between 30 and 36. Only U.S. citizens (native born or naturalised) and permanent residents who have applied for U.S. citizenship are eligible. A candidate for life membership must be nominated in writing by one Council member and seconded by a minimum of three others.
Corporate membership (250 in total) is divided into "Basic", "Premium" ($25,000+) and "President's Circle" ($50,000+). All corporate executive members have opportunities to hear distinguished speakers, such as overseas presidents and prime ministers, chairmen and CEOs of multinational corporations, and U.S. officials and Congressmen. President and premium members are also entitled to other benefits, including attendance at small, private dinners or receptions with senior American officials and world leaders.
Board of directors
OFFICE NAME
Co-Chairman of the Board Carla A. Hills
Co-Chairman of the Board Robert E. Rubin
Vice Chairman Richard E. Salomon
President Richard N. Haass
Board of Directors
Director Peter Ackerman
Director Fouad Ajami
Director Madeleine Albright
Director Charlene Barshefsky
Director Henry Bienen
Director Alan Blinder
Director Stephen W. Bosworth
Director Tom Brokaw
Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell
Director Frank J. Caufield
Director Kenneth Duberstein
Director Richard N. Foster
Director Stephen Friedman
Director Ann M. Fudge
Director Maurice R. Greenberg
Director J. Tomilson Hill
Director Richard Holbrooke
Director Alberto Ibargüen
Director Shirley Ann Jackson
Director Henry Kravis
Director Jami Miscik
Director Joseph Nye
Director Ronald L. Olson
Director James W. Owens
Director Colin Powell
Director David Rubenstein
Director George E. Rupp
Director Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director Joan E. Spero
Director Vin Weber
Director Christine Todd Whitman
Director Fareed Zakaria
The Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations is composed in total of thirty-six officers. Peter G. Peterson and David Rockefeller are Directors Emeriti (Chairman Emeritus and Honorary Chairman, respectively). It also has an International Advisory Board consisting of thirty-five distinguished individuals from across the world.
Corporate Members
ABC News
Alcoa
American Express
AIG
Bank of America
Bloomberg L.P.
Boeing
BP
CA, Inc.
Chevron
Citigroup
Coca-Cola
De Beers
Deutsche Bank
Duke Energy
ExxonMobil
FedEx
Ford Motor
General Electric
GlaxoSmithKline
Google
Halliburton
Heinz
Hess
IBM
JPMorgan Chase
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
Lockheed Martin
MasterCard
McGraw-Hill
McKinsey
Merck
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley
Motorola
NASDAQ
News Corp
Nike
PepsiCo
Pfizer
Shell Oil
Sony Corporation of America
Tata Group
Time Warner
Total S.A.
Toyota Motor North America
UBS
United Technologies
United States Chamber of Commerce
U.S. Trust Corporation
Verizon
Visa
[edit] Notable current council members
Erin Burnett - CNBC News Anchor[24]
Timothy Shriver[25]
Ruth J. Simmons - President of Brown University
Katrina vanden Heuvel - Editor of The Nation Magazine
[edit] Notable historical members
Graham Allison
Robert Orville Anderson
Les Aspin
Kenneth Bacon (1944-2009), Department of Defense spokesman who later served as president of Refugees International.[26]
J. Bowyer Bell[27]
W. Michael Blumenthal
Amy Bondurant
Harold Brown
Zbigniew Brzezinski
William P. Bundy
George H. W. Bush
Dick Cheney
William S. Cohen
Warren Christopher
E. Gerald Corrigan
William J. Crowe
Kenneth W. Dam
John W. Davis
Norman Davis
C. Douglas Dillon
Thomas R. Donahue
Lewis W. Douglas
Elizabeth Drew
Peggy Dulany
Allen Welsh Dulles
Dianne Feinstein
Tom Foley
Leslie H. Gelb
David Gergen
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Joachim Gfoeller
Maurice R. Greenberg
Alan Greenspan
Chuck Hagel
Najeeb E. Halaby
W. Averell Harriman
Theodore M. Hesburgh
Carla A. Hills
Stanley Hoffmann
Richard Holbrooke
James R. Houghton
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Bobby Ray Inman
Otto H. Kahn
Nicholas Katzenbach
Lane Kirkland
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Roger T. Moritz
Walter Lippmann
Winston Lord
Charles Mathias, Jr.
John McCain
John J. McCloy
William J. McDonough
Donald F. McHenry
George J. Mitchell
Bill Moyers
Peter George Peterson
Frank Polk
John S. Reed
Elliot L. Richardson
Alice M. Rivlin
David Rockefeller
Jay Rockefeller
Robert Roosa
Elihu Root
William D. Ruckelshaus
Brent Scowcroft
Donna E. Shalala
George P. Shultz
Theodore Sorensen
George Soros
Adlai E. Stevenson
Strobe Talbott
Peter Tarnoff
Fred Thompson
Garrick Utley
Cyrus Vance
Paul Volcker
Paul M. Warburg
Paul Warnke
Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Owen D. Young
Robert Zoellick
Source: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996:Historical Roster of Directors and Officers
[edit] List of chairmen and chairwomen
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1946-1953
John J. McCloy 1953-1970
David Rockefeller 1970-1985
Peter George Peterson 1985-2007
Carla A. Hills (co-chairwoman) 2007-
Robert E. Rubin (co-chairman) 2007-
[edit] List of presidents
John W. Davis 1921-1933
George W. Wickersham 1933-1936
Norman Davis 1936-1944
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1944-1946
Allen Welsh Dulles 1946-1950
Henry Merritt Wriston 1951-1964
Grayson L. Kirk 1964-1971
Bayless Manning 1971-1977
Winston Lord 1977-1985
John Temple Swing 1985-1986 (Pro tempore)
Peter Tarnoff 1986-1993
Alton Frye 1993
Leslie Gelb 1993-2003
Richard N. Haass 2003-
Source:The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996: Historical Roster of Directors and Officers
[edit] Alternative Perspective
The Council has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, as shown in the 2006 film by Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism and a 2007 documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie. This is partly due to the number of high-ranking government officials in its membership, along with world business leaders, its secrecy clauses, and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, beginning with Wilson's Fourteen Points. The John Birch Society believes that the CFR plans a one-world government.[30] Wilson's Fourteen Points speech was the first in which he suggested a worldwide security organization to prevent future world wars.
Historian Carroll Quigley included the CFR in his discussion of the Anglo-American Establishment's efforts to shape international developments during the 20th century. His book "Tragedy and Hope" was cited by conspiracy theorists as showing that the CFR was engaged in a conspiracy against American interests, though Quigley himself denied this.
Systems theorists working with tools developed at MIT by Jay Forrester counter David Rockefeller's support for his goals with the claim that an attempt to build an integrated global political and economic structure is a serious danger to humanity's freedom and prosperity. They argue that a dearth of distributed systems on a global scale would mean, first, a globe more susceptible to total economic and/or resource calamity, and second, a world in which lack of competition between rival political systems would make totalitarianism—if ever globally established—extremely difficult to challenge. Supporting the former charge, they cite the recession of 2008, which was exacerbated by the global nature of capital and derivative markets, as an example of the dangers of extreme economic interdependency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations
Mission
The Council's mission is promoting understanding of foreign policy and the United States' role in the world. Meetings are convened at which government officials, global leaders and prominent members debate major foreign-policy issues. It has a think tank that employs prominent scholars in international affairs and it commissions subsequent books and reports. A central aim of the Council, it states, is to "find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders." It established "Independent Task Forces" in 1995, which encourage policy debate. Comprising experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise, these task forces seek consensus in making policy recommendations on critical issues; to date, the Council has convened more than fifty times.
The internal think tank is The David Rockefeller Studies Program, which grants fellowships and whose programs are described as being integral to the goal of contributing to the ongoing debate on foreign policy; fellows in this program research and write on the most important challenges facing the United States and the world.[6]
At the outset of the organization, founding member Elihu Root said the group's mission, epitomized in its journal Foreign Affairs, should be to "guide" American public opinion. In the early 1970s, the CFR changed the mission, saying that it wished instead to "inform" public opinion.[7]
[edit] Early history
The earliest origin of the Council stemmed from a working fellowship of about 150 scholars, called "The Inquiry," tasked to brief President Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world when Germany was defeated. Through 1917–1918, this academic band, including Wilson's closest adviser and long-time friend Col. Edward M. House, as well as Walter Lippmann, gathered at 155th Street and Broadway at the Harold Pratt House in New York City, to assemble the strategy for the postwar world. The team produced more than 2,000 documents detailing and analyzing the political, economic, and social facts globally that would be helpful for Wilson in the peace talks. Their reports formed the basis for the Fourteen Points, which outlined Wilson's strategy for peace after war's end.[8]
These scholars then traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 that would end the war; it was at one of the meetings of a small group of British and American diplomats and scholars, on May 30, 1919, at the Hotel Majestic, that both the Council and its British counterpart, the Chatham House in London, were born.[9]
Some of the participants at that meeting, apart from Edward House, were Paul Warburg, Herbert Hoover, Harold Temperley, Lionel Curtis, Lord Eustace Percy, Christian Herter, and American academic historians James Thomson Shotwell of Columbia University, Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard, and Charles Seymour of Yale.
In 1938 they created various Committees on Foreign Relations throughout the country. These later became governed by the American Committees on Foreign Relation in Washington, D.C.
[edit] About the organization
From its inception the Council was non-partisan, welcoming members of both Democratic and Republican parties. It also welcomed Jews and African Americans, although women were initially barred from membership. Its proceedings were almost universally private and confidential.[10] A study by two critics of the organization, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council.[11]
Today it has about 5,000 members (including five-year term members between the ages of 35-40), which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures. As a private institution however, the CFR maintains through its official website that it is not a formal organization engaged in U.S. foreign policy-making, and its reports regularly take issue with U.S. government policy.[citation needed]
In 1962, the group began a program of bringing select Air Force officers to the Harold Pratt House to study alongside its scholars. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps requested they start similar programs for their own officers.
Vietnam created a rift within the organization. When Hamilton Fish Armstrong announced in 1970 that he would be leaving the helm of Foreign Affairs after 45 years, new chairman David Rockefeller approached a family friend, William Bundy, to take over the position. Anti-war advocates within the Council rose in protest against this appointment, claiming that Bundy's hawkish record in the State and Defense Departments and the CIA precluded him from taking over an independent journal. Some considered Bundy a war criminal for his prior actions.
Seven American presidents have addressed the Council, two while still in office – Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The Council says that it has never sought to serve as a receptacle for government policy papers that cannot be shared with the public, and they do not encourage government officials who are members to do so. The Council says that discussions at its headquarters remain confidential, not because they share or discuss secret information, but because the system allows members to test new ideas with other members.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his book on the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days, wrote that Kennedy was not part of what he called the "New York establishment":
"In particular, he was little acquainted with the New York financial and legal community-- that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs."
Influence on foreign policy
Beginning in 1939 and lasting for five years, the Council achieved much greater prominence with government and the State Department when it established the strictly confidential War and Peace Studies, funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation.[15] The secrecy surrounding this group was such that the Council members (total at the time: 663) who were not involved in its deliberations were completely unaware of the study group's existence.
It was divided into four functional topic groups: economic and financial, security and armaments, territorial, and political. The security and armaments group was headed by Allen Welsh Dulles who later became a pivotal figure in the CIA's predecessor, the OSS. It ultimately produced 682 memoranda for the State Department, marked classified and circulated among the appropriate government departments. As a historical judgment, its overall influence on actual government planning at the time is still said to remain unclear.
In an anonymous piece called "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1947, CFR study group member George Kennan coined the term "containment." The essay would prove to be highly influential in US foreign policy for seven upcoming presidential administrations. 40 years later, Kennan explained that he had never meant to contain the Soviet Union because it might be able to physically attack the United States; he thought that was obvious enough that he didn't need to explain it in his essay. William Bundy credited the CFR's study groups with helping to lay the framework of thinking that led to the Marshall Plan and NATO. Due to new interest in the group, membership grew towards 1,000.
Dwight D. Eisenhower chaired a CFR study group while he served as President of Columbia University. One member later said, "whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics, he has learned at the study group meetings."[16] The CFR study group devised an expanded study group called "Americans for Eisenhower" to increase his chances for the presidency. Eisenhower would later draw many Cabinet members from CFR ranks and become a CFR member himself. His primary CFR appointment was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles gave a public address at the Harold Pratt House in which he announced a new direction for Eisenhower's foreign policy: "There is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power." After this speech, the council convened a session on "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" and chose Henry Kissinger to head it. Kissinger spent the following academic year working on the project at Council headquarters. The book of the same name that he published from his research in 1957 gave him national recognition, topping the national bestseller lists.
On 24 November 1953, a study group heard a report from political scientist William Henderson regarding the ongoing conflict between France and Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces, a struggle that would later become known as the First Indochina War. Henderson argued that Ho's cause was primarily nationalist in nature and that Marxism had "little to do with the current revolution." Further, the report said, the United States could work with Ho to guide his movement away from Communism. State Department officials, however, expressed skepticism about direct American intervention in Vietnam and the idea was tabled. Over the next twenty years, the United States would find itself allied with anti-Communist South Vietnam and against Ho and his supporters in Vietnam War.
The Council served as a "breeding ground" for important American policies such as mutual deterrence, arms control, and nuclear non-proliferation.
A four-year long study of relations between America and China was conducted by the Council between 1964 and 1968. One study published in 1966 concluded that American citizens were more open to talks with China than their elected leaders. Kissinger had continued to publish in Foreign Affairs and was appointed by President Nixon to serve as National Security Adviser in 1969. In 1971, he embarked on a secret trip to Beijing to broach talks with Chinese leaders. Nixon went to China in 1972, and diplomatic relations were completely normalized by President Carter's Secretary of State, another Council member, Cyrus Vance.
In November 1979, while chairman of the CFR, David Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the State Department to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the US for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life.
Global Governance: World Order in the 21st Century
The CFR started a program in 2008 to last for 5 years called "International Institutions and Global Governance: World Order in the 21st Century" which aims in setting up global institutions in different levels to foster a global governance, in order to tackle different trans-national problems.
Countering Transnational Threats, including terrorism, proliferation of WMD, and infectious disease
Protecting the Environment and Promoting Energy Security
Managing the Global Economy
Preventing and Responding to Violent Conflict
In August 2009, Obama's government urged cooperation with UN to tackle the same points covered by CFR plan's. "The Obama administration will work with the United Nations to fight terrorism and other major world challenges...like nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, the global financial crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, pandemics and global warming."
Membership
Main article: Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
There are two types of membership: life, and term membership, which lasts for 5 years and is available to those between 30 and 36. Only U.S. citizens (native born or naturalised) and permanent residents who have applied for U.S. citizenship are eligible. A candidate for life membership must be nominated in writing by one Council member and seconded by a minimum of three others.
Corporate membership (250 in total) is divided into "Basic", "Premium" ($25,000+) and "President's Circle" ($50,000+). All corporate executive members have opportunities to hear distinguished speakers, such as overseas presidents and prime ministers, chairmen and CEOs of multinational corporations, and U.S. officials and Congressmen. President and premium members are also entitled to other benefits, including attendance at small, private dinners or receptions with senior American officials and world leaders.
Board of directors
OFFICE NAME
Co-Chairman of the Board Carla A. Hills
Co-Chairman of the Board Robert E. Rubin
Vice Chairman Richard E. Salomon
President Richard N. Haass
Board of Directors
Director Peter Ackerman
Director Fouad Ajami
Director Madeleine Albright
Director Charlene Barshefsky
Director Henry Bienen
Director Alan Blinder
Director Stephen W. Bosworth
Director Tom Brokaw
Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell
Director Frank J. Caufield
Director Kenneth Duberstein
Director Richard N. Foster
Director Stephen Friedman
Director Ann M. Fudge
Director Maurice R. Greenberg
Director J. Tomilson Hill
Director Richard Holbrooke
Director Alberto Ibargüen
Director Shirley Ann Jackson
Director Henry Kravis
Director Jami Miscik
Director Joseph Nye
Director Ronald L. Olson
Director James W. Owens
Director Colin Powell
Director David Rubenstein
Director George E. Rupp
Director Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director Joan E. Spero
Director Vin Weber
Director Christine Todd Whitman
Director Fareed Zakaria
The Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations is composed in total of thirty-six officers. Peter G. Peterson and David Rockefeller are Directors Emeriti (Chairman Emeritus and Honorary Chairman, respectively). It also has an International Advisory Board consisting of thirty-five distinguished individuals from across the world.
Corporate Members
ABC News
Alcoa
American Express
AIG
Bank of America
Bloomberg L.P.
Boeing
BP
CA, Inc.
Chevron
Citigroup
Coca-Cola
De Beers
Deutsche Bank
Duke Energy
ExxonMobil
FedEx
Ford Motor
General Electric
GlaxoSmithKline
Halliburton
Heinz
Hess
IBM
JPMorgan Chase
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
Lockheed Martin
MasterCard
McGraw-Hill
McKinsey
Merck
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley
Motorola
NASDAQ
News Corp
Nike
PepsiCo
Pfizer
Shell Oil
Sony Corporation of America
Tata Group
Time Warner
Total S.A.
Toyota Motor North America
UBS
United Technologies
United States Chamber of Commerce
U.S. Trust Corporation
Verizon
Visa
[edit] Notable current council members
Erin Burnett - CNBC News Anchor[24]
Timothy Shriver[25]
Ruth J. Simmons - President of Brown University
Katrina vanden Heuvel - Editor of The Nation Magazine
[edit] Notable historical members
Graham Allison
Robert Orville Anderson
Les Aspin
Kenneth Bacon (1944-2009), Department of Defense spokesman who later served as president of Refugees International.[26]
J. Bowyer Bell[27]
W. Michael Blumenthal
Amy Bondurant
Harold Brown
Zbigniew Brzezinski
William P. Bundy
George H. W. Bush
Dick Cheney
William S. Cohen
Warren Christopher
E. Gerald Corrigan
William J. Crowe
Kenneth W. Dam
John W. Davis
Norman Davis
C. Douglas Dillon
Thomas R. Donahue
Lewis W. Douglas
Elizabeth Drew
Peggy Dulany
Allen Welsh Dulles
Dianne Feinstein
Tom Foley
Leslie H. Gelb
David Gergen
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Joachim Gfoeller
Maurice R. Greenberg
Alan Greenspan
Chuck Hagel
Najeeb E. Halaby
W. Averell Harriman
Theodore M. Hesburgh
Carla A. Hills
Stanley Hoffmann
Richard Holbrooke
James R. Houghton
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Bobby Ray Inman
Otto H. Kahn
Nicholas Katzenbach
Lane Kirkland
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Roger T. Moritz
Walter Lippmann
Winston Lord
Charles Mathias, Jr.
John McCain
John J. McCloy
William J. McDonough
Donald F. McHenry
George J. Mitchell
Bill Moyers
Peter George Peterson
Frank Polk
John S. Reed
Elliot L. Richardson
Alice M. Rivlin
David Rockefeller
Jay Rockefeller
Robert Roosa
Elihu Root
William D. Ruckelshaus
Brent Scowcroft
Donna E. Shalala
George P. Shultz
Theodore Sorensen
George Soros
Adlai E. Stevenson
Strobe Talbott
Peter Tarnoff
Fred Thompson
Garrick Utley
Cyrus Vance
Paul Volcker
Paul M. Warburg
Paul Warnke
Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Owen D. Young
Robert Zoellick
Source: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996:Historical Roster of Directors and Officers
[edit] List of chairmen and chairwomen
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1946-1953
John J. McCloy 1953-1970
David Rockefeller 1970-1985
Peter George Peterson 1985-2007
Carla A. Hills (co-chairwoman) 2007-
Robert E. Rubin (co-chairman) 2007-
[edit] List of presidents
John W. Davis 1921-1933
George W. Wickersham 1933-1936
Norman Davis 1936-1944
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1944-1946
Allen Welsh Dulles 1946-1950
Henry Merritt Wriston 1951-1964
Grayson L. Kirk 1964-1971
Bayless Manning 1971-1977
Winston Lord 1977-1985
John Temple Swing 1985-1986 (Pro tempore)
Peter Tarnoff 1986-1993
Alton Frye 1993
Leslie Gelb 1993-2003
Richard N. Haass 2003-
Source:The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996: Historical Roster of Directors and Officers
[edit] Alternative Perspective
The Council has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, as shown in the 2006 film by Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism and a 2007 documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie. This is partly due to the number of high-ranking government officials in its membership, along with world business leaders, its secrecy clauses, and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, beginning with Wilson's Fourteen Points. The John Birch Society believes that the CFR plans a one-world government.[30] Wilson's Fourteen Points speech was the first in which he suggested a worldwide security organization to prevent future world wars.
Historian Carroll Quigley included the CFR in his discussion of the Anglo-American Establishment's efforts to shape international developments during the 20th century. His book "Tragedy and Hope" was cited by conspiracy theorists as showing that the CFR was engaged in a conspiracy against American interests, though Quigley himself denied this.
Systems theorists working with tools developed at MIT by Jay Forrester counter David Rockefeller's support for his goals with the claim that an attempt to build an integrated global political and economic structure is a serious danger to humanity's freedom and prosperity. They argue that a dearth of distributed systems on a global scale would mean, first, a globe more susceptible to total economic and/or resource calamity, and second, a world in which lack of competition between rival political systems would make totalitarianism—if ever globally established—extremely difficult to challenge. Supporting the former charge, they cite the recession of 2008, which was exacerbated by the global nature of capital and derivative markets, as an example of the dangers of extreme economic interdependency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations
Interesting Organization:The Trilateral Commission
The Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation between the United States, Europe and Japan. It was founded in July 1973 at the initiative of David Rockefeller, who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaking at the Chase Manhattan International Financial Forums in London, Brussels, Montreal, and Paris, Rockefeller proposed the creation of an International Commission of Peace and Prosperity in early 1972 (which would later become the Trilateral Commission). At the 1972 Bilderberg meeting, the idea was widely accepted, but elsewhere, it got a cool reception. According to Rockefeller, the organization could "be of help to government by providing measured judgment."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Columbia University and a Rockefeller advisor who was a specialist on international affairs, left his post to organize the group along with:
Henry D. Owen (a Foreign Policy Studies Director with the Brookings Institution)
George S. Franklin
Robert R. Bowie (of the Foreign Policy Association and Director of the Harvard Center for International Affairs)
Gerard C. Smith (Salt I negotiator, Rockefeller in-law, and its first North American Chairman)
Marshall Hornblower
William Scranton (former Governor of Pennsylvania)
Edwin Reischauer (a professor at Harvard)
Max Kohnstamm (European Policy Centre)
Other founding members included Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, both eventually heads of the Federal Reserve system.
Funding for the group came from David Rockefeller, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.
[edit] Activity history
In July 1972, Rockefeller called his first meeting, which was held at Rockefeller's Pocantico compound in New York's Hudson Valley. It was attended by about 250 individuals who were carefully selected and screened by Rockefeller and represented the very elite of finance and industry.
Its first executive committee meeting was held in Tokyo in October 1973. The Trilateral Commission was officially initiated, holding biannual meetings.
A Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, presented at the 1975 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, called An Outline for Remaking World Trade and Finance, said: "Close Trilateral cooperation in keeping the peace, in managing the world economy, and in fostering economic development and in alleviating world poverty, will improve the chances of a smooth and peaceful evolution of the global system." Another Commission document read:
"The overriding goal is to make the world safe for interdependence by protecting the benefits which it provides for each country against external and internal threats which will constantly emerge from those willing to pay a price for more national autonomy. This may sometimes require slowing the pace at which interdependence proceeds, and checking some aspects of it. More frequently however, it will call for checking the intrusion of national government into the international exchange of both economic and non-economic goods."
In May 1976, the first plenary meeting of all of the Commission's regional groups took place in Kyoto, attended by Jimmy Carter.[3] Today it consists of approximately 300–350 private citizens from Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and North America, and exists to promote closer political and economic cooperation between these areas, which are the primary industrial regions in the world.[3] Its official journal from its founding is a magazine called Trialogue.
Membership is divided into numbers proportionate to each of its three regional areas. These members include corporate CEOs, politicians of all major parties, distinguished academics, university presidents, labor union leaders and not-for-profits involved in overseas philanthropy. Members who gain a position in their respective country's government must resign from the Commission. The North American continent is represented by 107 members (15 Canadian, seven Mexican and 85 U.S. citizens). The European group has reached its limit of 150 members, including citizens from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.[citation needed]
At first, Asia and Oceania were represented only by Japan. However, in 2000 the Japanese group of 85 members expanded itself, becoming the Pacific Asia group, composed of 117 members: 75 Japanese, 11 South Koreans, seven Australian and New Zealand citizens, and 15 members from the ASEAN nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The Pacific Asia group also includes nine members from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
[edit] US Administration ties
In his book Radical Priorities, Noam Chomsky said this:
“ Perhaps the most striking feature of the new Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission. The mass media had little to say about this matter during the Presidential campaign -- in fact, the connection of the Carter group to the Commission was recently selected as "the best censored news story of 1976" -- and it has not received the attention that it might have since the Administration took office. All of the top positions in the government -- the office of President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Defense and Treasury -- are held by members of the Trilateral Commission, and the National Security Advisor was its director. Many lesser officials also came from this group. It is rare for such an easily identified private group to play such a prominent role in an American Administration. ”
—The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality, Excerpted from Radical Priorities, 1981 Noam Chomsky[4]
[edit] Criticism
The John Birch Society believes that the Trilateral Commission is dedicated to the formation of one world government.[5]
Certain critics, such as Alex Jones, an American paleoconservative of "The Obama Deception" documentary, claim the "Commission constitutes a conspiracy seeking to gain control of the U.S. Government to create a new world order." Mike Thompson, Chairman of the Florida Conservative Union, said: "It puts emphasis on interdependence, which is a nice euphemism for one-world government."
Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote in his book With No Apologies: "In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future."
In his 2008 book "Making Government Work," former South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings cited the Trilateral Commission as a negative influence on President Carter in his pro free trade and U.S. textile policies.
[edit] Membership
Trilateral Commission statutes exclude persons holding public office from membership.[3]
"Several of whom had been involved with the Trilateral Commission, but then that's almost everybody at one time or another."[6] This comment was made during an exit interview by the White House Adviser on Domestic and Foreign Policy, Hedley Donovan, under President Jimmy Carter, in reference to when he was gathering a group of foreign policy figures to convene during the Soviet brigade in Cuba.[4][5]
While never a Trilateral member, “President Reagan ultimately came to understand Trilateral’s value and invited the entire membership to a reception at the White House in April 1984”, noted David Rockefeller in his memoirs.[7]
[edit] Current Chairmen
North America: Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Chair, National Intelligence Council and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.[8]
Europe: Peter Sutherland, Irish businessman and former politician associated with the Fine Gael party; former Attorney General of Ireland and European Commissioner in the first Delors Commission; former Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to the World Trade Organization; Chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International.[9]
Pacific Asia: Yotaro Kobayashi, Chief Corporate Adviser, Fuji Xerox Company, Ltd.;[10] Board member of Callaway Golf Company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Sony Corporation, and American Productivity & Quality Center; life-time trustee of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives); Chairman of the Aspen Institute, Japan.
[edit] Current Deputy Chairmen
North America:
Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Adviser, Bennett Jones LLP, Toronto, ON; Chairman, Sotheby's, Canada; former Canadian Ambassador to the United States[13]
Lorenzo Zambrano, Chairman and CEO, Cemex SAB de CV, Monterrey, Mexico (since 1985); board member at IBM and Citigroup
Europe:
Herve de Carmoy, Chairman, Almatis, Frankfurt-am-Main; former Partner, Rhône Group, New York & Paris; Honorary Chairman, Banque Industrielle et Mobilière Privée, Paris; former Chief Executive, Société Générale de Belgique
Andrzej Olechowski, Founder, Civic Platform; former Chairman, Bank Handlowy; former Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Finance, Warsaw
Pacific Asia:
Han Sung-Joo, President, Korea University, Seoul; former Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs; former Korean Ambassador to the United States
Shijuro Ogata, Former Deputy Governor, Japan Development Bank; former Deputy Governor for International Relations, Bank of Japan
Current directors
North America: Michael J. O'Neil
Europe: Paul Révay[19]
Pacific Asia: Tadashi Yamaoto
Former Chairmen
North America:
Thomas S. Foley (2001-2008)
Paul A. Volcker (1991-2001) Honorary and former North American Chairman;[21] Chairman of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board;[22] former Chairman, Board of Governors, U.S. Federal Reserve System[8] from 1979 to 1987; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Group of Thirty; former Chairman, Wolfensohn & Co., Inc., New York; Frederick H. Schultz Professor Emeritus, International Economic Policy, Princeton University;
David Rockefeller (1977-91) Founder of the Trilateral Commission and Honorary North American Chairman; Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank board from 1969 to 1981; Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1970 to 1985, now honorary Chairman; a life member of the Bilderberg Group.
Gerard C. Smith (1973-77)
Europe:
Otto Graf Lambsdorff (1992-2001) Honorary European Chairman
Georges Berthoin (1976-92) Honorary European Chairman[25]
Max Kohnstamm (1973-76)
Pacific Asia:
Kiichi Miyazawa, Acting Chairman (1993-97)
Akio Morita (1992-93)
Isamu Yamashita (1985-92)
Takeshi Watanabe (1973-85)
[edit] Former directors
North America:
Zbigniew Brzezinski (1973-1976), U.S. National Security Advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter (1977 - 1981); Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies[9], Washington DC; Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; Policy Planning Council of the Department of State (1966 - 1968).
Europe:
Pacific Asia:
Executive Committee
Erik Belfrage, Senior Vice President, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken; Director, Investor AB, Stockhol
C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
Georges Berthoin, International Honorary Chairman, European Movement; Honorary Chairman, The Jean Monnet Association; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral Commission
Jorge Braga de Macedo, President, Tropical Research Institute, Lisbon; Professor of Economics, Nova University at Lisbon; Chairman, Forum Portugal Global; former Minister of Finance
François Bujon de l'Estang, Ambassadeur de France; Chairman, Citigroup France, Paris; former Ambassador to the United States
Richard Conroy, Chairman, Conroy Diamonds & Gold, Dublin; Member of Senate, Republic of Ireland
Vladimir Dlouhy, Senior Advisor, ABB Group; International Advisor, Goldman Sachs; former Czechoslovak Minister of Economy; former Czech Minister of Industry & Trade, Prague
Bill Emmott, former Editor, The Economist, London
Nemesio Fernandez-Cuesta, Executive Director of Upstream, Repsol-YPF; former Chairman, Prensa Española, Madrid
Michael Fuchs, Member of the German Bundestag; former President, National Federation of German Wholesale & Foreign Trade, Berlin
Antonio Garrigues Walker, Chairman, Garrigues Abogados y Asesores Tributarios, Madrid
Toyoo Gyohten, President, The Institute for International Monetary Affairs; Senior Advisor, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, UFJ, Ltd., Tokyo
Stuart Harris, Professor of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University; former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canberra
Carla A. Hills, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hills & Company, Washington, DC; board member, Time Warner Inc. with Ted Turner; former U.S. Trade Representative[18] (1989 - 1993); former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development[19]; former United States Assistant Attorney General; chair, The Inter American Dialogue and of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, co-chair, The International Advisory Board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, member, The Executive Committee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics
Karen Elliott House, Writer, Princeton, NJ; Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government[21], Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and Publisher, The Wall Street Journal
Mugur Isărescu, Governor, National Bank of Romania, Bucharest; former Prime Minister of Romania
Baron Daniel Janssen, Honorary Chairman, Solvay, Brussels
Béla Kadar, Member of the Hungarian Academy Budapest; Member of the Monetary Council of the National Bank; President of the Hungarian Economic Association; former Ambassador of Hungary to the O.E.C.D., Paris; former Hungarian Minister of International Economic Relations and Member of Parliament
The Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Deputy Chairman and Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of Royal Dutch Shell; Member of the House of Lords; Director of Rio Tinto, the Scottish American Investment Trust, London; former Secretary General, European Convention[26], Brussels; former Permanent Under-Secretary of State and Head of the Diplomatic Service, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London; former British Ambassador to the United States
Sixten Korkman, Managing Director, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy[28] (ETLA) and Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), Helsinki
Count Otto Lambsdorff, Partner, Wessing Lawyers, Düsseldorf; Chairman, Friedrich Naumann Foundation[29], Berlin; former Member of German Bundestag; Honorary Chairman, Free Democratic Party; former Federal Minister of Economy; former President of the Liberal International; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral Commission, Paris[19]
Lee Hong-Koo, Chairman, Seoul Forum for International Affairs; former Prime Minister of Korea; former Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United Stat
Marianne Lie, Director General, Norwegian Shipowners Association, Oslo
Cees Maas, Honorary Vice Chairman of the ING Group and former Chief Financial Officer, Amsterdam; former Treasurer of the Dutch Government
Roy MacLaren, former Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom; former Canadian Minister of International Trade[30]; Toronto, ON
Minoru Makihara, Senior Corporate Advisor, Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo
Sir Deryck C. Maughan, Managing Director and Chairman, KKR Asia, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., New York, NY; former Vice Chairman, Citigroup
Minoru Murofushi, Counselor, ITOCHU Corporation, Tokyo
Indra K. Nooyi, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo, Inc., Purchase, NY[19]
Yoshio Okawara, President, Institute for International Policy Studies, Tokyo; former Japanese Ambassador to the United States
Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration; Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies and Global Economy and Development Programs, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council; foreign policy advisor to President Barack Obama
Luis Rubio, President, Center of Research for Development (CIDAC), Mexico City, DF[19]
Silvio Scaglia, Founder, Chairman and Financial Backer of Babelgum, London; Chairman, S.M.S. Finance S.A., Luxembourg
Guido Schmidt-Chiari, Chairman, Supervisory Board, Constantia Group; former Chairman, Creditanstalt Bankverein, Vienna
Carlo Secchi, Professor of European Economic Policy and former Rector, Bocconi University; Vice President, ISPI, Milan; former Member of the Italian Senate and of the European Parliament
Tøger Seidenfaden, Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Copenhagen
Petar Stoyanov, former President of the Republic of Bulgaria; Member of the Bulgarian Parliament; Chairman, Parliamentary Group of United Democratic Forces; Chairman, Union of the Democratic Forces (Bulgaria); Sofia
Harri Tiido, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tallinn; former Ambassador of Estonia and Head of the Estonian Mission to NATO[32], Brussels
George Vassiliou, former Head of the Negotiating Team for the Accession of Cyprus to the European Union; former President of the Republic of Cyprus, former Member of Parliament and Leader of United Democrats; Nicosia
Marko Voljc, Chief Executive Officer, K & H Bank, Budapest; former General Manager of Central Europe Directorate, KBC Bank Insurance Holding, Brussels; former Chief Executive Officer, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, Ljubljana
Panagis Vourloumis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hellenic Tellecommunications Organization (O.T.E.), Athens
Jusuf Wanandi, Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees; Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta
Serge Weinberg, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Accor; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Weinberg Capital Partners; former Chairman Management Board, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR); former President, Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IRIS), Paris
Heinrich Weiss[33], Chairman, SMS, Düsseldorf; former Chairman, Federation of German Industries, Berlin
[edit] Others who are or have been members
Krister Ahlström: Chairman, Ahlstrom Corp.; Vice Chairman, Stora Enso & Fortum; former Chairman, Finnish Employers Confederation
Rona Ambrose: Member of Parliament, Canada
Bodil Nyboe Andersen: Denmark Nationalbank, Copenhagen (Attendee 2005)
John B. Anderson: former US Congressman
Bruce Babbitt: Interior Secretary under Clinton[32]
Francisco Pinto Balsemão
Jim Balsillie: Chairman and Co-CEO of Research In Motion.
Raymond Barre: former French Prime Minister
Lloyd Bentsen: former US Senator and Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton[1]
Georges Berthoin: International Chairman of the European Movement from 1978–1981.
Catherine Ann Bertini: Former United Nations Under Secretary General in Management, former Director of World Food Program.
Maurizio Bevilacqua: Member of Parliament, Canada
Ritt Bjerregaard: Mayor of Copenhagen, Denmark. Danish Social Democrat MP, former Secretary of Education, member of various cabinets; European Commissioner for Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection in the Santer Commission from 1995 to 1999. (Attendee 1992,1998,2002). Also a Bilderberg attendee.
Tom Bradley (politician): former Mayor of Los Angeles
John H. Bryan: former CEO of Sara Lee bakeries, affiliated with the World Economic Forum and a director on the Boards of Sara Lee, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, British Petroleum and Bank One.
James E. Burke: CEO of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989.
Sven Burmester: Writer and Explorer, Denmark; former Representative, United Nations Population (Attendee 1998,2002,2005)
George H.W. Bush: Former President of the U.S.[33]
Guido Carli: former Governor of the Banca d'Italia from 1960-1975
Frank Carlucci: President of Carlyle Group, U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989.
Hervé de Carmoy
Jimmy Carter: Former President of the U.S.[34]
Gerhard Casper: Constitutional scholar, faculty member and former President at Stanford University; successor trustee of Yale University and part of the Board of Trustees of the Central European University in Hungary.
Dick Cheney: Former Vice President of the U.S.[33]
Warren Christopher: former Secretary of State under Clinton and Deputy Secretary of State under Carter
Henry Cisneros: HUD Secretary under Clinton[32]
Joe Clark: former Canadian Prime Minister
Bill Clinton: Former President of the U.S.
William Cohen: former Republican Congressman and US Senator, U.S. Secretary of Defense under President Clinton.
Tim Collins: CEO of Ripplewood Holdings LLC investment company; also part of the Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Management board of advisors and U.S.-Japan non-profit organizations.
John Danforth: former US Senator
André Desmarais: President and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Power Corporation of Canada, Montréal, QC; Deputy Chairman, Power Financial Corporation[35]
Hedley Donovan: (deceased) former editor-in-chief of Time magazine,[36] White House Advisor on Domestic and Foreign Policy under Carter, Trilateral Commission founding member[32][34]
Lawrence Eagleburger: former Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush
Bill Emmott: Former editor of The Economist magazine.
Aatos Erkko: Chairman, SanomaWSOY
Lene Espersen: Danish Minister of Culture, former Minister of Justice (Attendee 2002,2005)
Daniel J. Evans: former Governor of Washington
Gaston Eyskens: former Prime Minister of Belgium
Dianne Feinstein: Democratic U.S. Senator, former Mayor of San Francisco, member of the Council on Foreign Relations; chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.
Martin Feldstein: Professor of economics at Harvard University; president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984; former director of the Council on Foreign Relations; member of the Bilderberg Group and of the World Economic Forum.
Hugh Fletcher: Chancellor of Auckland University and CEO of Fletcher Challenge.
Lykke Friis: Pro-Rector University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Former Head of European Department, Federation of Danish Industries. (Attendee 2005)
Ross Garnaut: Head, Department of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
David Gergen: (personal website) Political consultant and presidential advisor during the Republican administrations of Nixon, Ford and Reagan; also served as advisor to Bill Clinton.[37]
John Glenn: former astronaut, former US Senator and U.S. Presidential candidate[32]
Maldonado Gonelha
Allan Gotlieb: Canadian Ambassador to Washington from 1981 to 1989, chairman of the Canada Council from 1989 to 1994.
Bill Graham: former Canadian Minister of National Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Paul Martin; for most of 2006, interim parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party.
Hank Greenberg: Former chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), the world's largest insurance and financial services corporation.
Alan Greenspan: Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve
John Gutfreund: Former CEO of Salomon Brothers
Alexander Haig: former Secretary of State under Reagan
Sirkka Hämäläinen: Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank, Frankfurt-am-Main; former Governor, Bank of Finland
Edward Heath: former British Prime Minister
Mugur Isărescu: Governor of the National Bank of Romania since 1990 and Prime Minister from December 1999 to November 2000; he worked for the Minister of Foreign Affairs then for the Romanian Embassy in the U.S. after the 1989 Romanian revolution.
Max Jakobson: former Finnish ambassador to the United States
Sergei Karaganov: Presidential Advisor to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin; member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2005.
Henry Kissinger: U.S. diplomat, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations; former Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of JP Morgan Chase.
Horst Kohler: President of Germany
Max Kohnstamm: Diplomat and historian, son of Philip Kohnstamm.
Joseph Kraft: syndicated columnist[32]
Otto Graf Lambsdorff: Chairman of the German Free Democratic Party from 1993 to 1998; Minister for Economic Affairs for West Germany from 1977 to 1984.
Liam Lawlor: Irish politician who resigned from the Fianna Fáil party; died in a car-crash in Moscow in 2005.
Pierre Lellouche: French MP of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement party led by Nicolas Sarkozy.
Gerald M. Levin: Former CEO of Time Warner, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Peter Lougheed: former Premier of Alberta
Allan MacEachen: former Leader of the Government in the Senate (Canada)
Whitney MacMillan: Chairman Emeritus of Cargill
Jorge Braga de Macedo
Francis Maude: MP for Horsham, the only British MP currently a member of the Trilateral Commission, former Conservative Party Chairman, son of the late Sir Angus Maude MP
Kiichi Miyazawa: Japanese Prime Minister in 1991–1993; Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1976, Chief Cabinet Secretary from 1984 to 1986, Minister of Finance in 1987 and again from 1999 to 2002.
Walter Mondale: former Vice President of the U.S. under Carter[32]
Akio Morita: Co-founder of Sony Corporation; vice chairman of the Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) and member of the Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group.
Brian Mulroney: former Canadian Prime Minister
Lowell Murray: Canadian Senator
Indra Nooyi: CEO of PepsiCo
Shijuro Ogata: Former Deputy Governor, Bank of Japan
Andrzej Olechowski: Polish director of Euronet, USA; on the supervisory boards of Citibank Handlowy and Europejski Fundusz Hipoteczny; president of the Central European Forum; Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Poland from 1989 to 1991; Minister of Foreign Economic Relations from 1991 to 1992; Minister of Finance in 1992 and of Foreign Affairs from 1993 to 1995; economic advisor to President Lech Wałęsa from 1992 to 1993 and in 1995, etc.
Paul H. O'Neill: former Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush and former chairman of Alcoa
Henry D. Owen: former Brookings Institution Director and Ambassador at Large for Economic Summit Affairs.
Lucas Papademos: European Central Bank Vice President
Gerry Parsky
Martha Piper: Former Chancellor of UBC
Lee Raymond: Former CEO and Chairman, ExxonMobil, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Enterprise Institute, director of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., director and member of the Executive Committee and Policy Committee of the American Petroleum Institute.
Paul Révay
Charles Robb: former US Senator
Mary Robinson: President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997 as a candidate for the Labour Party; United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.
Dufferin Roblin: former Premier of Manitoba
Carl Rowan: syndicated columnist
Jorgen Schleimann: Denmark. (Attendee 1992,1998,2002)
Brent Scowcroft: former National Security Advisor under former Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush; Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc.
William Scranton: former Governor of Pennsylvania
Tøger Seidenfaden: Editor-in-Chief, Politiken,Denmark . Member since 2005. Also a Bilderberg attendee since 1995
Donna Shalala: Secretary of Health and Human Services under Clinton[32]
Gerard C. Smith: First U.S. Chairman of the Trilateral Commission; chief U.S. delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of 1969.
Anthony M. Solomon: former President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Miguel Sousa Soares: Management Consultant, EMPORDEF, MDN (Portugal) from 2005.
Ted Sorensen: former special adviser to President Kennedy[3]
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa: Leader of the Social Democratic Party (Portugal) from 1996 to 1999.
Ron Southern: Chairman of the Board and majority shareholder of ATCO
Jessica Stern: Former United States National Security Council staff member, author, and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Thorvald Stoltenberg: Norwegian politician, holds a seat on the Trilateral Commission's Executive Committee.
Peter Straarup: Chairman of the Executive Board, Danske Bank, Copenhagen, Denmark; Chairman, the Danish Bankers Association. (Attendee 2002,2005)
Han Sung-Joo
Robert Taft Jr.: former US Senator
James R. Thompson: former Governor of Illinois
Niels Thygesen: Denmark. (Attendee: 1992,1998,2002)
George Vasiliou: President of the Republic of Cyprus from 1988 to 1993, founder and leader of the Cypriot United Democrats party.
Takeshi Watanabe
Caspar Weinberger: Secretary of Defense under Reagan
Paul Wolfowitz: Former President of the World Bank, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and a prominent member of the neo-conservatives in Washington.
Tadashi Yamamoto
Isamu Yamashita
Andrew Young: former United States Ambassador to the United Nations
Robert Zoellick: President of the World Bank, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, former U.S. Trade Representative[37].
Karel Schwarzenberg: former chancellor of Czech President and current Minister of Foreign Affairs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission
Speaking at the Chase Manhattan International Financial Forums in London, Brussels, Montreal, and Paris, Rockefeller proposed the creation of an International Commission of Peace and Prosperity in early 1972 (which would later become the Trilateral Commission). At the 1972 Bilderberg meeting, the idea was widely accepted, but elsewhere, it got a cool reception. According to Rockefeller, the organization could "be of help to government by providing measured judgment."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Columbia University and a Rockefeller advisor who was a specialist on international affairs, left his post to organize the group along with:
Henry D. Owen (a Foreign Policy Studies Director with the Brookings Institution)
George S. Franklin
Robert R. Bowie (of the Foreign Policy Association and Director of the Harvard Center for International Affairs)
Gerard C. Smith (Salt I negotiator, Rockefeller in-law, and its first North American Chairman)
Marshall Hornblower
William Scranton (former Governor of Pennsylvania)
Edwin Reischauer (a professor at Harvard)
Max Kohnstamm (European Policy Centre)
Other founding members included Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, both eventually heads of the Federal Reserve system.
Funding for the group came from David Rockefeller, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.
[edit] Activity history
In July 1972, Rockefeller called his first meeting, which was held at Rockefeller's Pocantico compound in New York's Hudson Valley. It was attended by about 250 individuals who were carefully selected and screened by Rockefeller and represented the very elite of finance and industry.
Its first executive committee meeting was held in Tokyo in October 1973. The Trilateral Commission was officially initiated, holding biannual meetings.
A Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, presented at the 1975 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, called An Outline for Remaking World Trade and Finance, said: "Close Trilateral cooperation in keeping the peace, in managing the world economy, and in fostering economic development and in alleviating world poverty, will improve the chances of a smooth and peaceful evolution of the global system." Another Commission document read:
"The overriding goal is to make the world safe for interdependence by protecting the benefits which it provides for each country against external and internal threats which will constantly emerge from those willing to pay a price for more national autonomy. This may sometimes require slowing the pace at which interdependence proceeds, and checking some aspects of it. More frequently however, it will call for checking the intrusion of national government into the international exchange of both economic and non-economic goods."
In May 1976, the first plenary meeting of all of the Commission's regional groups took place in Kyoto, attended by Jimmy Carter.[3] Today it consists of approximately 300–350 private citizens from Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and North America, and exists to promote closer political and economic cooperation between these areas, which are the primary industrial regions in the world.[3] Its official journal from its founding is a magazine called Trialogue.
Membership is divided into numbers proportionate to each of its three regional areas. These members include corporate CEOs, politicians of all major parties, distinguished academics, university presidents, labor union leaders and not-for-profits involved in overseas philanthropy. Members who gain a position in their respective country's government must resign from the Commission. The North American continent is represented by 107 members (15 Canadian, seven Mexican and 85 U.S. citizens). The European group has reached its limit of 150 members, including citizens from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.[citation needed]
At first, Asia and Oceania were represented only by Japan. However, in 2000 the Japanese group of 85 members expanded itself, becoming the Pacific Asia group, composed of 117 members: 75 Japanese, 11 South Koreans, seven Australian and New Zealand citizens, and 15 members from the ASEAN nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The Pacific Asia group also includes nine members from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
[edit] US Administration ties
In his book Radical Priorities, Noam Chomsky said this:
“ Perhaps the most striking feature of the new Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission. The mass media had little to say about this matter during the Presidential campaign -- in fact, the connection of the Carter group to the Commission was recently selected as "the best censored news story of 1976" -- and it has not received the attention that it might have since the Administration took office. All of the top positions in the government -- the office of President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Defense and Treasury -- are held by members of the Trilateral Commission, and the National Security Advisor was its director. Many lesser officials also came from this group. It is rare for such an easily identified private group to play such a prominent role in an American Administration. ”
—The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality, Excerpted from Radical Priorities, 1981 Noam Chomsky[4]
[edit] Criticism
The John Birch Society believes that the Trilateral Commission is dedicated to the formation of one world government.[5]
Certain critics, such as Alex Jones, an American paleoconservative of "The Obama Deception" documentary, claim the "Commission constitutes a conspiracy seeking to gain control of the U.S. Government to create a new world order." Mike Thompson, Chairman of the Florida Conservative Union, said: "It puts emphasis on interdependence, which is a nice euphemism for one-world government."
Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote in his book With No Apologies: "In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future."
In his 2008 book "Making Government Work," former South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings cited the Trilateral Commission as a negative influence on President Carter in his pro free trade and U.S. textile policies.
[edit] Membership
Trilateral Commission statutes exclude persons holding public office from membership.[3]
"Several of whom had been involved with the Trilateral Commission, but then that's almost everybody at one time or another."[6] This comment was made during an exit interview by the White House Adviser on Domestic and Foreign Policy, Hedley Donovan, under President Jimmy Carter, in reference to when he was gathering a group of foreign policy figures to convene during the Soviet brigade in Cuba.[4][5]
While never a Trilateral member, “President Reagan ultimately came to understand Trilateral’s value and invited the entire membership to a reception at the White House in April 1984”, noted David Rockefeller in his memoirs.[7]
[edit] Current Chairmen
North America: Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Chair, National Intelligence Council and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.[8]
Europe: Peter Sutherland, Irish businessman and former politician associated with the Fine Gael party; former Attorney General of Ireland and European Commissioner in the first Delors Commission; former Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to the World Trade Organization; Chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International.[9]
Pacific Asia: Yotaro Kobayashi, Chief Corporate Adviser, Fuji Xerox Company, Ltd.;[10] Board member of Callaway Golf Company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Sony Corporation, and American Productivity & Quality Center; life-time trustee of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives); Chairman of the Aspen Institute, Japan.
[edit] Current Deputy Chairmen
North America:
Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Adviser, Bennett Jones LLP, Toronto, ON; Chairman, Sotheby's, Canada; former Canadian Ambassador to the United States[13]
Lorenzo Zambrano, Chairman and CEO, Cemex SAB de CV, Monterrey, Mexico (since 1985); board member at IBM and Citigroup
Europe:
Herve de Carmoy, Chairman, Almatis, Frankfurt-am-Main; former Partner, Rhône Group, New York & Paris; Honorary Chairman, Banque Industrielle et Mobilière Privée, Paris; former Chief Executive, Société Générale de Belgique
Andrzej Olechowski, Founder, Civic Platform; former Chairman, Bank Handlowy; former Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Finance, Warsaw
Pacific Asia:
Han Sung-Joo, President, Korea University, Seoul; former Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs; former Korean Ambassador to the United States
Shijuro Ogata, Former Deputy Governor, Japan Development Bank; former Deputy Governor for International Relations, Bank of Japan
Current directors
North America: Michael J. O'Neil
Europe: Paul Révay[19]
Pacific Asia: Tadashi Yamaoto
Former Chairmen
North America:
Thomas S. Foley (2001-2008)
Paul A. Volcker (1991-2001) Honorary and former North American Chairman;[21] Chairman of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board;[22] former Chairman, Board of Governors, U.S. Federal Reserve System[8] from 1979 to 1987; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Group of Thirty; former Chairman, Wolfensohn & Co., Inc., New York; Frederick H. Schultz Professor Emeritus, International Economic Policy, Princeton University;
David Rockefeller (1977-91) Founder of the Trilateral Commission and Honorary North American Chairman; Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank board from 1969 to 1981; Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1970 to 1985, now honorary Chairman; a life member of the Bilderberg Group.
Gerard C. Smith (1973-77)
Europe:
Otto Graf Lambsdorff (1992-2001) Honorary European Chairman
Georges Berthoin (1976-92) Honorary European Chairman[25]
Max Kohnstamm (1973-76)
Pacific Asia:
Kiichi Miyazawa, Acting Chairman (1993-97)
Akio Morita (1992-93)
Isamu Yamashita (1985-92)
Takeshi Watanabe (1973-85)
[edit] Former directors
North America:
Zbigniew Brzezinski (1973-1976), U.S. National Security Advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter (1977 - 1981); Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies[9], Washington DC; Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; Policy Planning Council of the Department of State (1966 - 1968).
Europe:
Pacific Asia:
Executive Committee
Erik Belfrage, Senior Vice President, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken; Director, Investor AB, Stockhol
C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
Georges Berthoin, International Honorary Chairman, European Movement; Honorary Chairman, The Jean Monnet Association; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral Commission
Jorge Braga de Macedo, President, Tropical Research Institute, Lisbon; Professor of Economics, Nova University at Lisbon; Chairman, Forum Portugal Global; former Minister of Finance
François Bujon de l'Estang, Ambassadeur de France; Chairman, Citigroup France, Paris; former Ambassador to the United States
Richard Conroy, Chairman, Conroy Diamonds & Gold, Dublin; Member of Senate, Republic of Ireland
Vladimir Dlouhy, Senior Advisor, ABB Group; International Advisor, Goldman Sachs; former Czechoslovak Minister of Economy; former Czech Minister of Industry & Trade, Prague
Bill Emmott, former Editor, The Economist, London
Nemesio Fernandez-Cuesta, Executive Director of Upstream, Repsol-YPF; former Chairman, Prensa Española, Madrid
Michael Fuchs, Member of the German Bundestag; former President, National Federation of German Wholesale & Foreign Trade, Berlin
Antonio Garrigues Walker, Chairman, Garrigues Abogados y Asesores Tributarios, Madrid
Toyoo Gyohten, President, The Institute for International Monetary Affairs; Senior Advisor, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, UFJ, Ltd., Tokyo
Stuart Harris, Professor of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University; former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canberra
Carla A. Hills, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hills & Company, Washington, DC; board member, Time Warner Inc. with Ted Turner; former U.S. Trade Representative[18] (1989 - 1993); former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development[19]; former United States Assistant Attorney General; chair, The Inter American Dialogue and of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, co-chair, The International Advisory Board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, member, The Executive Committee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics
Karen Elliott House, Writer, Princeton, NJ; Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government[21], Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and Publisher, The Wall Street Journal
Mugur Isărescu, Governor, National Bank of Romania, Bucharest; former Prime Minister of Romania
Baron Daniel Janssen, Honorary Chairman, Solvay, Brussels
Béla Kadar, Member of the Hungarian Academy Budapest; Member of the Monetary Council of the National Bank; President of the Hungarian Economic Association; former Ambassador of Hungary to the O.E.C.D., Paris; former Hungarian Minister of International Economic Relations and Member of Parliament
The Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Deputy Chairman and Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of Royal Dutch Shell; Member of the House of Lords; Director of Rio Tinto, the Scottish American Investment Trust, London; former Secretary General, European Convention[26], Brussels; former Permanent Under-Secretary of State and Head of the Diplomatic Service, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London; former British Ambassador to the United States
Sixten Korkman, Managing Director, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy[28] (ETLA) and Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), Helsinki
Count Otto Lambsdorff, Partner, Wessing Lawyers, Düsseldorf; Chairman, Friedrich Naumann Foundation[29], Berlin; former Member of German Bundestag; Honorary Chairman, Free Democratic Party; former Federal Minister of Economy; former President of the Liberal International; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral Commission, Paris[19]
Lee Hong-Koo, Chairman, Seoul Forum for International Affairs; former Prime Minister of Korea; former Korean Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United Stat
Marianne Lie, Director General, Norwegian Shipowners Association, Oslo
Cees Maas, Honorary Vice Chairman of the ING Group and former Chief Financial Officer, Amsterdam; former Treasurer of the Dutch Government
Roy MacLaren, former Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom; former Canadian Minister of International Trade[30]; Toronto, ON
Minoru Makihara, Senior Corporate Advisor, Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo
Sir Deryck C. Maughan, Managing Director and Chairman, KKR Asia, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., New York, NY; former Vice Chairman, Citigroup
Minoru Murofushi, Counselor, ITOCHU Corporation, Tokyo
Indra K. Nooyi, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo, Inc., Purchase, NY[19]
Yoshio Okawara, President, Institute for International Policy Studies, Tokyo; former Japanese Ambassador to the United States
Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration; Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies and Global Economy and Development Programs, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council; foreign policy advisor to President Barack Obama
Luis Rubio, President, Center of Research for Development (CIDAC), Mexico City, DF[19]
Silvio Scaglia, Founder, Chairman and Financial Backer of Babelgum, London; Chairman, S.M.S. Finance S.A., Luxembourg
Guido Schmidt-Chiari, Chairman, Supervisory Board, Constantia Group; former Chairman, Creditanstalt Bankverein, Vienna
Carlo Secchi, Professor of European Economic Policy and former Rector, Bocconi University; Vice President, ISPI, Milan; former Member of the Italian Senate and of the European Parliament
Tøger Seidenfaden, Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Copenhagen
Petar Stoyanov, former President of the Republic of Bulgaria; Member of the Bulgarian Parliament; Chairman, Parliamentary Group of United Democratic Forces; Chairman, Union of the Democratic Forces (Bulgaria); Sofia
Harri Tiido, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tallinn; former Ambassador of Estonia and Head of the Estonian Mission to NATO[32], Brussels
George Vassiliou, former Head of the Negotiating Team for the Accession of Cyprus to the European Union; former President of the Republic of Cyprus, former Member of Parliament and Leader of United Democrats; Nicosia
Marko Voljc, Chief Executive Officer, K & H Bank, Budapest; former General Manager of Central Europe Directorate, KBC Bank Insurance Holding, Brussels; former Chief Executive Officer, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, Ljubljana
Panagis Vourloumis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hellenic Tellecommunications Organization (O.T.E.), Athens
Jusuf Wanandi, Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees; Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta
Serge Weinberg, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Accor; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Weinberg Capital Partners; former Chairman Management Board, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR); former President, Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IRIS), Paris
Heinrich Weiss[33], Chairman, SMS, Düsseldorf; former Chairman, Federation of German Industries, Berlin
[edit] Others who are or have been members
Krister Ahlström: Chairman, Ahlstrom Corp.; Vice Chairman, Stora Enso & Fortum; former Chairman, Finnish Employers Confederation
Rona Ambrose: Member of Parliament, Canada
Bodil Nyboe Andersen: Denmark Nationalbank, Copenhagen (Attendee 2005)
John B. Anderson: former US Congressman
Bruce Babbitt: Interior Secretary under Clinton[32]
Francisco Pinto Balsemão
Jim Balsillie: Chairman and Co-CEO of Research In Motion.
Raymond Barre: former French Prime Minister
Lloyd Bentsen: former US Senator and Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton[1]
Georges Berthoin: International Chairman of the European Movement from 1978–1981.
Catherine Ann Bertini: Former United Nations Under Secretary General in Management, former Director of World Food Program.
Maurizio Bevilacqua: Member of Parliament, Canada
Ritt Bjerregaard: Mayor of Copenhagen, Denmark. Danish Social Democrat MP, former Secretary of Education, member of various cabinets; European Commissioner for Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection in the Santer Commission from 1995 to 1999. (Attendee 1992,1998,2002). Also a Bilderberg attendee.
Tom Bradley (politician): former Mayor of Los Angeles
John H. Bryan: former CEO of Sara Lee bakeries, affiliated with the World Economic Forum and a director on the Boards of Sara Lee, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, British Petroleum and Bank One.
James E. Burke: CEO of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989.
Sven Burmester: Writer and Explorer, Denmark; former Representative, United Nations Population (Attendee 1998,2002,2005)
George H.W. Bush: Former President of the U.S.[33]
Guido Carli: former Governor of the Banca d'Italia from 1960-1975
Frank Carlucci: President of Carlyle Group, U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989.
Hervé de Carmoy
Jimmy Carter: Former President of the U.S.[34]
Gerhard Casper: Constitutional scholar, faculty member and former President at Stanford University; successor trustee of Yale University and part of the Board of Trustees of the Central European University in Hungary.
Dick Cheney: Former Vice President of the U.S.[33]
Warren Christopher: former Secretary of State under Clinton and Deputy Secretary of State under Carter
Henry Cisneros: HUD Secretary under Clinton[32]
Joe Clark: former Canadian Prime Minister
Bill Clinton: Former President of the U.S.
William Cohen: former Republican Congressman and US Senator, U.S. Secretary of Defense under President Clinton.
Tim Collins: CEO of Ripplewood Holdings LLC investment company; also part of the Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Management board of advisors and U.S.-Japan non-profit organizations.
John Danforth: former US Senator
André Desmarais: President and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Power Corporation of Canada, Montréal, QC; Deputy Chairman, Power Financial Corporation[35]
Hedley Donovan: (deceased) former editor-in-chief of Time magazine,[36] White House Advisor on Domestic and Foreign Policy under Carter, Trilateral Commission founding member[32][34]
Lawrence Eagleburger: former Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush
Bill Emmott: Former editor of The Economist magazine.
Aatos Erkko: Chairman, SanomaWSOY
Lene Espersen: Danish Minister of Culture, former Minister of Justice (Attendee 2002,2005)
Daniel J. Evans: former Governor of Washington
Gaston Eyskens: former Prime Minister of Belgium
Dianne Feinstein: Democratic U.S. Senator, former Mayor of San Francisco, member of the Council on Foreign Relations; chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.
Martin Feldstein: Professor of economics at Harvard University; president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984; former director of the Council on Foreign Relations; member of the Bilderberg Group and of the World Economic Forum.
Hugh Fletcher: Chancellor of Auckland University and CEO of Fletcher Challenge.
Lykke Friis: Pro-Rector University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Former Head of European Department, Federation of Danish Industries. (Attendee 2005)
Ross Garnaut: Head, Department of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
David Gergen: (personal website) Political consultant and presidential advisor during the Republican administrations of Nixon, Ford and Reagan; also served as advisor to Bill Clinton.[37]
John Glenn: former astronaut, former US Senator and U.S. Presidential candidate[32]
Maldonado Gonelha
Allan Gotlieb: Canadian Ambassador to Washington from 1981 to 1989, chairman of the Canada Council from 1989 to 1994.
Bill Graham: former Canadian Minister of National Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Paul Martin; for most of 2006, interim parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party.
Hank Greenberg: Former chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), the world's largest insurance and financial services corporation.
Alan Greenspan: Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve
John Gutfreund: Former CEO of Salomon Brothers
Alexander Haig: former Secretary of State under Reagan
Sirkka Hämäläinen: Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank, Frankfurt-am-Main; former Governor, Bank of Finland
Edward Heath: former British Prime Minister
Mugur Isărescu: Governor of the National Bank of Romania since 1990 and Prime Minister from December 1999 to November 2000; he worked for the Minister of Foreign Affairs then for the Romanian Embassy in the U.S. after the 1989 Romanian revolution.
Max Jakobson: former Finnish ambassador to the United States
Sergei Karaganov: Presidential Advisor to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin; member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2005.
Henry Kissinger: U.S. diplomat, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations; former Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of JP Morgan Chase.
Horst Kohler: President of Germany
Max Kohnstamm: Diplomat and historian, son of Philip Kohnstamm.
Joseph Kraft: syndicated columnist[32]
Otto Graf Lambsdorff: Chairman of the German Free Democratic Party from 1993 to 1998; Minister for Economic Affairs for West Germany from 1977 to 1984.
Liam Lawlor: Irish politician who resigned from the Fianna Fáil party; died in a car-crash in Moscow in 2005.
Pierre Lellouche: French MP of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement party led by Nicolas Sarkozy.
Gerald M. Levin: Former CEO of Time Warner, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Peter Lougheed: former Premier of Alberta
Allan MacEachen: former Leader of the Government in the Senate (Canada)
Whitney MacMillan: Chairman Emeritus of Cargill
Jorge Braga de Macedo
Francis Maude: MP for Horsham, the only British MP currently a member of the Trilateral Commission, former Conservative Party Chairman, son of the late Sir Angus Maude MP
Kiichi Miyazawa: Japanese Prime Minister in 1991–1993; Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1976, Chief Cabinet Secretary from 1984 to 1986, Minister of Finance in 1987 and again from 1999 to 2002.
Walter Mondale: former Vice President of the U.S. under Carter[32]
Akio Morita: Co-founder of Sony Corporation; vice chairman of the Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) and member of the Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group.
Brian Mulroney: former Canadian Prime Minister
Lowell Murray: Canadian Senator
Indra Nooyi: CEO of PepsiCo
Shijuro Ogata: Former Deputy Governor, Bank of Japan
Andrzej Olechowski: Polish director of Euronet, USA; on the supervisory boards of Citibank Handlowy and Europejski Fundusz Hipoteczny; president of the Central European Forum; Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Poland from 1989 to 1991; Minister of Foreign Economic Relations from 1991 to 1992; Minister of Finance in 1992 and of Foreign Affairs from 1993 to 1995; economic advisor to President Lech Wałęsa from 1992 to 1993 and in 1995, etc.
Paul H. O'Neill: former Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush and former chairman of Alcoa
Henry D. Owen: former Brookings Institution Director and Ambassador at Large for Economic Summit Affairs.
Lucas Papademos: European Central Bank Vice President
Gerry Parsky
Martha Piper: Former Chancellor of UBC
Lee Raymond: Former CEO and Chairman, ExxonMobil, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Enterprise Institute, director of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., director and member of the Executive Committee and Policy Committee of the American Petroleum Institute.
Paul Révay
Charles Robb: former US Senator
Mary Robinson: President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997 as a candidate for the Labour Party; United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.
Dufferin Roblin: former Premier of Manitoba
Carl Rowan: syndicated columnist
Jorgen Schleimann: Denmark. (Attendee 1992,1998,2002)
Brent Scowcroft: former National Security Advisor under former Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush; Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc.
William Scranton: former Governor of Pennsylvania
Tøger Seidenfaden: Editor-in-Chief, Politiken,Denmark . Member since 2005. Also a Bilderberg attendee since 1995
Donna Shalala: Secretary of Health and Human Services under Clinton[32]
Gerard C. Smith: First U.S. Chairman of the Trilateral Commission; chief U.S. delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of 1969.
Anthony M. Solomon: former President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Miguel Sousa Soares: Management Consultant, EMPORDEF, MDN (Portugal) from 2005.
Ted Sorensen: former special adviser to President Kennedy[3]
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa: Leader of the Social Democratic Party (Portugal) from 1996 to 1999.
Ron Southern: Chairman of the Board and majority shareholder of ATCO
Jessica Stern: Former United States National Security Council staff member, author, and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Thorvald Stoltenberg: Norwegian politician, holds a seat on the Trilateral Commission's Executive Committee.
Peter Straarup: Chairman of the Executive Board, Danske Bank, Copenhagen, Denmark; Chairman, the Danish Bankers Association. (Attendee 2002,2005)
Han Sung-Joo
Robert Taft Jr.: former US Senator
James R. Thompson: former Governor of Illinois
Niels Thygesen: Denmark. (Attendee: 1992,1998,2002)
George Vasiliou: President of the Republic of Cyprus from 1988 to 1993, founder and leader of the Cypriot United Democrats party.
Takeshi Watanabe
Caspar Weinberger: Secretary of Defense under Reagan
Paul Wolfowitz: Former President of the World Bank, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and a prominent member of the neo-conservatives in Washington.
Tadashi Yamamoto
Isamu Yamashita
Andrew Young: former United States Ambassador to the United Nations
Robert Zoellick: President of the World Bank, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, former U.S. Trade Representative[37].
Karel Schwarzenberg: former chancellor of Czech President and current Minister of Foreign Affairs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission
Now I KNOW I'm crazy!
Okay, I know that I now sound like A TOTAL right-wing-conspiracy-theorist-nut-job but some pieces of a puzzle are fitting together in a really crazy way...
1. Do you remember when George Bush signed the Executive Order #13422 giving the White House power over Federal Agencies, excluding Congressional input? Remember how odd it was that he signed it in 2007, when he was was heading towards the end of his final term? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz6NEoKZRMY, http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/07-293.pdf
2. Do you wonder why Obama is acting like he's willing to throw his own Democratic Congress under a bus in order to pass through as much enormous legislation as quickly as possible? Even his own party is now acting concerned by his behavior. He doesn't even seem concerned about what the American people think...like his term will last forever.
3. Wonder why Obama has appointed between 40-50 czars when the most any president has ever had is 5? They all have titles relating to Federal agencies and are advisors to Obama on those agencies....bypassing Congressional vetting, etc.
4. Wonder why all of this lengthy legislation (Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, etc.) was already written and ready to push through when Obama had just been elected? Wonder who wrote it or why Obama said that the stimulus money had to go through immediately or we would all die...and yet many months later, much of it hasn't even been distributed?
What if....
Glenn Beck has said that all of this legislation may be being pushed through in order to collapse the system so that it can be redesigned with government playing a bigger role. However, what if instead, Obama is trying to create confusion and chaos in order to:
1.position himself to expand the executive branch of government,
2. place his czars in control of federal agencies, and
3. eliminate the judicial branch of government (Congress and Senate)?
What if this has been in the works for a long time, which would explain George Bush's actions and Executive Order #13422?
Interesting, huh? I'm probably just crazy and need to get out more...
L.A.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)