Friday, June 12, 2015

Rockefeller Road: Paved With Good Intentions

The good die young.  It's a cliche repeated thousands of times throughout the ages to memorialize the exit of important or beloved people who leave us too soon.  But if it's true, is the reverse true of those who stay far too long?  Check out this murderer's row of imperial blowhards yet to kick the bucket: President George H. W. Bush just turned 91 today, Henry Kissinger is 92, Andrew Marshall, the "Yoda" of the RAND Corporation whose proteges include Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, is 93, George Schultz is 94, and Licio Gelli, Grandmaster of the P2 Lodge behind the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and Operation Gladio's "strategy of tension" in Italy, and an original "Black Shirt" fascist who was a liaison between Mussolini's government and the Third Reich, is 96 years old.

They're all young bucks compared to David Rockefeller.  Son of John D. Rockefeller Jr., the only child of original oil monopolist John D. Rockefeller Sr. who lived to be 97, David just turned 100 today.  Among his many accomplishments in a century of life on this planet, David is probably most well known for being the chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation and one of the founders of the Trilateral Commission.  Perhaps you might be familiar with these quotes that have been splashed across the internet over the years:





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That last quote is reportedly something he said at a Bilderberg conference in 1991.  Since all Bilderberg conferences are conducted in secret, it is impossible to authenticate.  But as someone who joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as their youngest director in 1949, who is the founder and honorary chairman of such policy groups as Americas Society, Council of the Americas and the previously mentioned Trilateral Commission, and the only member of the Member Advisory Group for Bilderberg Meetings, it certainly fits within the character of the first quote.  And that quote is authenticated; it is from Rockefeller's own Memoirs that he wrote in 2002 on page 405.

I suppose it is too easy to read those words of being "proud of" "conspiring" "to build a more integrated global political and economic structure; one world, if you will" as the glib arrogance of an evil overlord who sees himself above reproach.  It's certainly something I've been guilty of in the past with many of the other names I mentioned above, it's way too easy to look at the Machiavellian misdeeds of Kissinger or Gelli for example, stamp it as evil and cluck away with moral indignation.  But the reality is much more complex.  With some exceptions, they usually don't see themselves, or the actions that they take, as being evil at all.  They not only see themselves as good people (or when feeling particularly proud, exceptional people) but view their own plans and actions within a visionary or even missionary context.

To understand David Rockefeller in this context, it is important to understand his brother Nelson Rockefeller.  I highly recommend reading Thy Will Be Done The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett* for a more thorough comprehension of the phenomenon, particularly how the Rockefeller family worked with actual missionaries William Cameron Townsend and his Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) to pacify tribes where the Rockefellers were attempting to develop the economies of Latin American countries.  Both brothers really were the figurative Twin Towers of globalist nation-building during the mid-20th century.  Perhaps it should be no surprise then that both brothers were responsible for building the actual Twin Towers, the World Trade Center; according to PBS, New Yorkers nicknamed both towers David and Nelson.  To some degree, Nelson was the giant in the political sphere and David was his herculean counterpart in the economic sphere, though on many occasions those roles would overlap.  In the case of Latin America, it might be helpful to consider Nelson as the Coordinator and David as the Facilitator.

During World War II, Nelson was head of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA).  It was essentially a propaganda department that would saturate Latin America with news and feature stories by expanding shortwave broadcasting facilities to Latin America, producing newsreels, political cartoons and films featuring American culture with a positive spin.  The hidden economic agenda was to draw Latin America into the economic matrix of the war-supplies programs being run by corporate leaders.  After World War II, he brought his brother David into a broader development plan for Latin America.  As senior vice president of Chase National Bank in 1948, David convinced his uncle, Chase National Chairman Winthrop Aldrich, to found a Latin American Department with David at the helm.  Targeting countries that might be soft on communism, David and Nelson selected two for special treatment: Venezuela for its oil and Brazil for its size and natural resources.

Part of the plan for "development" of its natural resources involved deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, hauling away lumber to be replaced by cattle ranches.  Another part included exploration, exploitation and refining of oil.  The Rockefeller efforts in this arena began producing results by the 1950s; the CIA became involved in a broad front of covert action as Latin America emerged as an area of the Cold War.  Both Rockefeller brothers had extensive CIA connections: David, through associations with Richard Helms and Allen Dulles, whose brother John Foster was an in-law of the Rockefeller family, and Nelson, through chairing the Special Group, which oversaw such CIA activity as spying on American citizens at home, instigation of coups in Iran and Guatemala, and expansion of MKULTRA mind control experiments for programming assassins, among many other reprehensible activities.  The Rockefeller efforts produced more results by the 1960s; in 1964, President Joao Goulart was overthrown in a coup after advocating the nationalization of Brazil's mineral resources and replaced with a military dictatorship.  The CIA's pointman on this coup was Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division J.C. King, who worked with Nelson at CIAA during the 1940s.  King, as CEO of the Amazon Natural Drug Company, scoured the rainforest for samples of poisons and hallucinogenic flora and fauna for potential profits in agricultural, medical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as specimens for MKULTRA mind control experiments.

In the wake of this coup, as well as instability in other Latin American countries that made them ripe for corporate profits, David Rockefeller stepped up his leadership.  In 1965, he became chairman of the finance committee for the National Committee for the Alliance for Progress, chairman of Business Group on Latin America and the International Executive Services Committee.  After reporting to President Johnson on his trip to Rio to understand the financial needs of the Brazilian junta's development plans, Johnson appointed David in April 1965 to a special review panel on AID (which often fronts CIA activities) called the General Advisory Committee on Foreign Assistance Programs.  This AID review panel gave the Rockefellers strong influence on policy deliberations, along with David's founding of the Council of the Americas, which united more than 200 corporations with more than 80% of U.S. investments in Latin America into a common business front.  David used the CFR's influential magazine Foreign Affairs to explain what was happening: the "emphasis on economic development" was restoring the confidence of companies considering investments in Latin America through the removal of tariff protections for local industries and agriculture replaced with free trade in a hemispheric community.  Free trade would spur "modernization, diversification and expansion of agriculture" based not on redistribution of land to the peasants who worked it, but on the transformation of landed estates into capital intensive commercial farms using modern machinery and fertilizers for purposes such as a "scientific program of seeding, feeding and breeding" cattle.

So what was the end result of all this "development"?  One result was genocide.  More than $62 million worth of Indian property were stolen throughout the decade of the 1960s.  Attacks by outsiders using everything from poisoned food to clothing infected with smallpox resulted in deaths of men, women, and children ranging anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000.  Another result that continues to this day is the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.  This ongoing destruction, which is visible from space, is destroying the origin of 25% of all pharmaceuticals that benefit the world, as well as much of the world's species of plants and animals and whole groups of people.  To understand the full importance of this, I'll quote from Thy Will Be Done on page 822-823:

The source of much of the world's oxygen lies within the 1 million square miles of the Amazon basin: almost two-thirds of the trees on the planet.  Yet, despite this role as as the lung of the earth, much of the Amazon rain forest is being burned down and turned into the source of dangerous increases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  In 1992 Canadian investigators reported that Brazil's rain forest alone was being burned at a rate of an acre every minute; every thirty seconds, an area the size of a football field was being destroyed by fire; every year, the equivalent of one-half the size of California was being devoured by flames.

Whatever the actual rate of destruction, most observers agree that the gases released into the upper atmosphere are creating a greenhouse effect, allowing the sun's rays to enter and preventing heating from escaping.  Soil protected for centuries by the forest's 200-foot-high canopy is now exposed to the sun and increasing doses of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.  Its fertility has declined, often leaving a sun-baked wasteland and prompting still further slashing and burning of virgin forest.  Fortunes are being made, but not by small farmers or would-be settlers.


That was written in the 90s.  How are things 20 years later?  The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing the ability to regulate the climate.  Depending on which study you consult, "the lung of the earth" may only be around for a matter of decades, not centuries.

Whoever said "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" really had no idea how destructive that path could be until Rockefeller Road was paved.



*Footnote: Not only do I have admiration for Charlotte Dennett for the wonderful book she wrote, but also for being the only nominee to date to run for public office with the platform of prosecuting the Bush administration for murder as detailed by the late great Vincent Bugliosi in his book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder when she ran for Attorney General in the state of Vermont in 2008.  As I wrote in a previous blog entry, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Bugliosi and receiving his autograph on my copy of that book.  I know it must have troubled him that more public officials weren't taking that template that he crafted and running with it.  That Charlotte Dennett wasn't elected is a loss of justice for everyone.