Rockefeller – Controlling the Game (34 page)

A
Global Surveillance State

In 2010, the EU project FuturICT was launched, with the aim of using information technology and data analysis to be able to understand and control complex, global, socially complex systems and achieve sustainability and resilience by anticipating crises and future opportunities. The project included a large number of universities and received financial support from both the European Commission and private philanthropists such as George Soros.
The head of FuturICT, Professor Dirk Helbing, later warned that a new global fascism based on surveillance was being introduced through the technological platform he himself had helped build.

We are faced with the emergence of a new kind of totalitarianism of global dimensions that must be stopped immediately. ‘An emergency operation is inevitable, if we want to save democracy, freedom, and human dignity,’ I warned. ‘Arguments such as terrorism, cyber threats and climate change have been used to undermine our privacy, our rights, and our democracy.’
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The implications of the emerging digital society could become devastating to man. Helbing mentioned British security service system Karma Police which analyses what you are watching and listening to and noted that all the features of fascism have been already been implemented digitally and could be utilised on a society-wide scale at any time. The features of fascism include:

1. mass surveillance
   

1. unethical experiments with humans
   

1. social engineering
   

1. forced conformity
   

1. propaganda and censorship
   

1. ‘benevolent’ dictatorship
   

1. (predictive) policing
   

1. different valuation of people
   

1. relativity of human rights
   

1. and even euthanasia for the expected times of crisis in our unsustainable world.
   

Helbing poses the question if the sustainability agenda can be seen as totalitarianism clad in nice wording. To stay within the planetary boundaries while maintaining growth, the world's population may need to be reduced by one-third. Systems such as Social Credits can, in the face of a “digital doomsday" where an AI makes decisions about life and death, be used to evaluate the benefit of each citizen and determine who should have access to food and resources. Despite these risks, professor Helbing is nevertheless hopeful, believing that an alternative and democratic digital society with a new economic system could solve the problems of humanity.

Global Governance

In order to manage the new global technological challenges, both WEF and RBF keep hammering home the message of transnational institutions.

Humankind faces unprecedented challenges from global warming, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, declining trust in government, eroding faith in democracy, and extreme economic inequality, as well as profound questions arising from advances in technology, social media, and artificial intelligence—to name just a few. The institutions and systems on which we have relied, in some cases for centuries, and in others for decades, seem increasingly anachronistic and, therefore, unable to manage the nature and pace of global developments. (Stephen Heintz, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 2016)
⁶⁷⁰

The problems are said to be ju too many and too severe to be handled by individual nations.

But how should an effective Global Governance be implemented? What problems could arise? World Economic Forum's policy advisor Olivier Woeffray had analysed the risk of public rule and the “tyranny of the majority" in relation to the implementation of the seventeen sustainable development goals.

The changes brought about by the
Fourth Industrial Revolution
 will hopefully be largely positive, but empowerment can bring about unintended consequences. For these we’ll need new governance models that are more effective, accountable and inclusive. New questions will arise. Can we trust the crowd? How can we manage the risk of the tyranny of the majority? How do we ensure reflexivity and long term-thinking in a fast-paced environment? How can we ensure effective collaboration while including more actors? (Olivier Woeffray, 2016)
⁶⁷¹

It was clear that decision-making should not be left to the “ignorant” masses, incapable of making the “correct" decisions.

A Global Despotic Council

According to Global Challenges Foundation, one way of dealing with the problems was to “raise awareness of global, catastrophic risks and accelerate the emergence of a global governance that can handle them.” GCF also warned of “future bad global governance" i.e. either failing to solve major problems and instead creating worse outcomes, or the development of a world dictatorship with total surveillance. The latter risk should, however, be weighed against the risks of
insufficient
global governance which could result in “several billion victims or a total system collapse” – a difficult choice, according to report author, Dennis Pamlin.
⁶⁷²
(Comments had been obtained from experts such as Johan Rockström, László Szombatfalvy and Nick Bostrom and GLOBE International helped promote the report.)
⁶⁷³

During the 2010s, the demands for Global Governance would keep increasing. In 2010, James Lovelock had concluded that the climate change could be “an issue as serious as war" and that it might be “necessary to put democracy on hold for some time.”
⁶⁷⁴

In April 2018, the organisation Democracy Without Borders published the book
A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century,
by Jo Leinen & Andreas Bummel.

More than at any time in history, all the people in the world are linked together in a shared civilization, encompassing the entire planet. Their multiple interconnections generate mutual dependencies and affinities. Humanity now has a common destiny. Global challenges such as war, poverty, inequality, climate change and environmental destruction are overwhelming nation-states and today’s international institutions. Doing the right thing requires more than having the right policies; it requires having the right political structures to implement them.
⁶⁷⁵

Andreas Bummel is co-founder and Director of Democracy Without Borders, co-founder the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, council member of the World Federalist Movement’s Institute for Global Policy in New York, a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, and an honorary member of the Society for Threatened Peoples. Jo Leinen (Social Democratic Party), is a member of the Advisory Council of Democracy Without Borders, member of GLOBE EU, and president of the Union of European Federalists since 1997.

In December 2018, Swedish philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö, author of
Global Democracy: A Case for World Government
(2008), took the even more extreme position of calling for an actual
coup d’état
and establishing a global enlightened despotic council, forcing nation states to cease to exist, in order to halt the disaster highlighted by Johan Rockström and colleagues.
⁶⁷⁶

Rockström, who in 2018 succeeded Schellnhuber as head of the Potsdam Institute, had also on several occasions called for authority to be transferred from national to global level in order to effectively implement the transition to a sustainable development within the nine planetary boundaries.

I cannot see any other way than 200 nations having to surrender some of their decision-making sovereignty to a global institutional administration. We have to work with the institutions we have, and there is only one institution that is global, the UN. (Johan Rockström, 2015)
⁶⁷⁷

This echoed the visions of 16th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, with a
Leviathan
to monitor the technological system and provide security to the people. In 1946, professor Oliver Reiser wrote,

If society is not to collapse from unresolved conflicts and resulting failures at integration, the nations of the world must surrender some measure of their sovereignty and begin to function within the texture of a world whole. The social nervous system, center of intellectual–social unification, is called the world brain.
⁶⁷⁸

This vision was also reflected in the “singleton" concept developed by Nick Bostrom, founder of the Future of Humanity Institute (see Chapter 12).

Once formed, a future singleton might be perpetually stable. This could happen if surveillance, mind control, and other security technologies develop in such a way as to enable a singleton to effectively prevent the emergence of internal challenges.
⁶⁷⁹

This was the vision of the all-seeing eye. The efforts to provide the World Brain with an effective leadership would continue.

G20 as an Emerging World Government

In 2016, during the Chinese chairmanship in Hangzhou, the G20 group committed to the implementation of Agenda 2030 with its 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (see Appendix C). Efforts to find new solutions intensified. The ambition was now, among other things, for G20 to develop from a management discussion group into an executive body for “the great transformation."

With the 2019 G20 Summit in Japan, the Sustainable Development Goals became even more closely linked with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, under the motto “Society 5.0 for SDGs.” G20 also got a more solid foundation with its complementary meetings for interest groups – all with the stated objective of influencing the G20-leaders into creating “a New International Economic Order.”
⁶⁸⁰

Despite the SDG goals of inclusiveness, none of these engagement groups, with the possible exception of mayors, have been given the mandate by popular vote to represent their particular segments of society (such as all the world’s youth or all the world’s women). The whole setup appears rather like a way of circumventing traditional democratic procedures and institutions.

The use of external engagement groups happens to coincide precisely with the strategy outlined by RBF in 2010.

As the Fund began to seriously pursue the goal of securing climate policy at the federal level in 2005, staff recognized that meaningful climate policy at the federal level would only be possible when the majority of those calling for action were from outside the environmental community and, therefore, set out to diversify the voices calling for action on climate change.

The RBF has supported ‘allied voices for climate action’ that include businesses, investors, evangelicals, farmers, sportsmen, labor, military leaders, national security hawks, veterans, youth, and governors and mayors. Each of these constituencies has an important role to play.

In addition to the grantmaking aimed at supporting individual constituency groups, a core piece of the RBF’s strategy throughout this period has been to enable coordination among organizations to generate the necessary pressure to encourage a strong national policy response. (Rockefeller Brothers Fund, “Building Constituency Support for Policy Action
”,
Sustainable Development Program Review 2005–2010
)
⁶⁸¹

In June 2019, the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio gathered leaders from politics, business and civil society,

…to explore how technological developments will impact the future of the state, the future of capitalism and the future of international cooperation. We will look to answer some of the most pressing and difficult questions in a bid to figure out how to ultimately upgrade the system.
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However, it was not just the global system that was about to be upgraded. The Brave New World would require both a technologically improved human and a reduction of the population to sustainable levels.

12. HOMO UNIVERSALIS

There is truly the quantum disruptive technology, if you talk about technology. Take robotics—think of Ray Kurzweil's work—and add biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, space development, zero-point energy research, and put that together with spiritual and social evolution. We become what I call a 'universal species.' Homo universalis. (Barbara Marx Hubbard)
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POPULATION CONTROL

Perfectly in line with the Neo-Malthusian, transhumanist and eugenics views of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and John D. Rockefeller III in the early 1900s, modern-day solutions to he planet’s problems still include population control and a radical transformation of the human species. All under the watchful eye of an Artificial Intelligence. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, with its rapid advances in automation and Artificial Intelligence, had once again brought to the fore the Rockefeller family’s key concern; how many people will actually be needed in the Brave New World of our near future.

ATCA and Philanthropia

In 2011, the futurist British elite think tank ATCA raised the question:

What is globalised human society going to do with the mass of under-employed or unemployed human beings that are rendered irrelevant or redundant by the fast approaching Super Convergence of the Bio–Info–Nano Singularity?
⁶⁸⁴

ATCA (Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance) was founded in 2011 as a philanthropic expert initiative aiming to solve global problems and build a “wisdom based" global economy through Socratic dialogue. The organisation has over 5,000 select members, including politicians, scholars, and business leaders and NGO representatives. It was founded by Indian engineer and IT guru, D. K. Matai (founder of the London-based security consultancy, mi2g), Mark Lewis (lawyer at Berwin Leighton Paisner), and the VP of the Trilateral Commission Europe, Hervé de Carmoy (a protegé of David Rockefeller’s and earlier CEO of Chase Manhattan).
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Connected to ATCA is also the global network Philanthropia with 1,000 philanthropists (Ultra High Networth Individuals, foundations, private banks and NGOs) focusing on global challenges such as climate change, poverty, and supporting young global leadership through science and technology. The Philanthropia network includes government leaders from the G10 group, British MPs, American Senators, and European MEPs, as well as David Rockefeller’s dotter Peggy Dulany (chairman of Synergos), Michael Northrop (head of RBF’s Sustainability Programme), Deepak Chopra (Alliance for a New Humanity), and Edward Goldsmith (
The Ecologist
).
⁶⁸⁶

ATCA’s question was a chilling example of an elitist and misanthropic world view shared and propagated by numerous NGOs, think tanks, scientists, and prominent influencers.

The Sixth Mass Extinction

According to Professor Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University, if we do not choose the right path away from anthropogenic climate change and stay within the nine planetary boundaries, we will face the sixth mass extinction of life on earth.
⁶⁸⁷
Ehrlich, who has been spreading the view of mankind as a cancer on the planet since 1968, has argued for an ideal population of 1.5 to 2 billion to ensure the well-being of the planet and mankind.
⁶⁸⁸
This clearly means a very sharp reduction in the world's population.

Similar views were expressed by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in 1998.

It is conceivable, on the other hand, that geocybernetics will follow completely different (or complementary) courses that lie more in the realm of social management. Here the demographic issue overrides other themes: Is there an optimal number of human beings to be supported by the ecosphere?
⁶⁸⁹

A decade later, Schellnhuber made a controversial statement at the Copenhagen Climate Summit 2009, where he said that the planet's planetary boundaries can only tolerate a population of less than 1 billion people.

In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something—namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people.
⁶⁹⁰

He later claimed that this statement has been misinterpreted and only applies to a scenario where we fail to gain control over the climate through more effective management of the earth's resources and people, and where national sovereignty is relinquished to a Global Governance under the UN. Whichever path we take, however, the world, according to Schellnhuber, is facing a complete transformation.

Whatever we do or don’t do, the world as we know it will soon cease to exist. (Hans Joachim Schellnhuber)
⁶⁹¹

Global Challenges Foundation, with board member Johan Rockström, (Schellnhuber’s successor as director of the Potsdam Institute), also view population growth as a crucial problem causing environmental degradation and higher CO
₂
emissions.
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The Unfinished Agenda

The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.
(David Rockefeller in acceptance speech at Business Council for the United Nations, 1994)
⁶⁹³

John D. Rockefeller III's old agenda from the 1950s, a global plan for controlling population growth – has always been lurking in the background to the climate threat that has been used to sell the bitter medicine. It seems that the time has come to finish the Rockefeller Brothers Funds'
The Unfinished Agenda
(which, in 1977, with panelists such as David Brower, had recommended far-reaching approaches to lowering population growth, and underlying Jimmy Carter's presidential report
Global 2000
).

Apart from the activities of Population Council, population is no longer an open priority for the Rockefeller Foundation's development program. Instead, RF’s close partner Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has taken over and become a leader in this field with its “soft" fertility-reducing methods in the form of vaccination programs, strengthening of women's positions, and the spread of contraceptives in developing countries.

Rockefeller Foundation is, however, still very active in the field of agriculture, including food safety and the development of GMO (including the controversial “golden rice”). Continuing the old pursuit of reforming traditional agriculture over the world into biotech business, RF and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006 founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), with Kofi Annan as Chairman.
⁶⁹⁴
The initiative was criticised in
Voices from Africa
for imposing quick-fix biotech solutions without the involvement of local representatives, and for forcing farmers to buy their seeds from large corporations each year.
⁶⁹⁵

The Rockefeller-initiated petrochemical, later biotechnical, agricultural practices have increased crop yield by 250%. At the same time, RF points out that food production needs to increase by another 70% in order to feed the growing world population in the future.

Agriculture is also classified as having a larger climate impact than all the world's transports taken together.
⁶⁹⁶
Man's need for sustenance is deemed unsustainable.

This issue has been investigated by Johan Rockström, with Jonathan Fowley at the University of Minnesota
et al
. In an article in
Nature
2011, they suggested that it
is
possible to stay within the planetary boundaries with a transition to a climate-smart agriculture.
⁶⁹⁷
This is to be achieved through a more efficient agriculture with reduced waste, no expansion of agricultural land use, strategic use of pesticides, reduced harvest loss and changed dietary habits from meat to vegetable crops.
⁶⁹⁸

…if humanity continues on its current trajectory, it will likely be unable to meet the needs of a world population that is expected to reach at least nine billion by 2050. (Johan Rockström)

In 2015, GMO biotechnology was also presented as a “resilient solution” to the threat of climate change.

While agricultural biotechnology remains controversial, these techniques provide an especially promising set of tools that have produced dramatic improvements in yield and reductions in production costs and input use intensity. Examples of new crops that have benefited agriculture and reduced emissions include genetically modified crops with pest resistance and herbicide tolerance. (Travis Lybbert and Daniel Sumner, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis)
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None, however, address the question of how the world’s population will be fed with an industrial agriculture totally dependent on fossil fuels, if all fossil energy is to be phased out completely by 2050.

The Sustainable Utopia, just as Barbara Marx Hubbard had announced, does not seem to be for everyone.

Earth Overshoot Day

The message from WWF, the Club of Rome and the Global Footprint Network (with a network of interconnected elite-funded organizations) is clear: for every year, Earth Overshoot Day – the day of the year (e.g. August 2) – when that year's total production is consumed, occurs sooner and sooner. During the rest of the year, we either have to live on our savings or grant ourselves an advance on future consumption. According to these organizations' calculations, we live on borrowed capital, increasing our debt each year. In other words, an extensive reduction of the global population is required to create a sustainable society.

Christiana Figueres, closely associated with the Rockefeller sphere, has

made chilling statements about what the United Nations should do:

Really, we should make every effort to change those numbers because we are already, today, already exceeding the planet’s planetary carrying capacity.
⁷⁰⁰

Worldwatch Institute has also called for drastic measures.

Looking past the near-term concerns that have plagued population policy at the political level, it is increasingly apparent that the long-term sustainability of civilization will require not just a levelling-off of human numbers as projected over the coming half-century, but a colossal reduction in both population and consumption. (Professor Ken Smail, Worldwatch Institute, 2004)
⁷⁰¹

Population Matters

Population reduction, originating with Malthus in the 18th century, is also still actively advocated by the British elite.
⁷⁰²
This, despite the horrendous effects of Malthusian views in British colonies in the 19th century.
⁷⁰³

In 1991, David Willey founded the Population Matters, with patrons such as Sir Crispin Tickell, Dame Jane Goodall, Sir David Attenborough, Professor Paul Ehrlich, and James Lovelock. According to Population Matters, the most effective national and global climate strategy to keep global mean temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celcius is limiting the number of child births.
⁷⁰⁴

Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational. (James Lovelock, 2009, Population Matters)

UN High-Level Panel on the Post 2015-Agenda

Population reduction is also a concern for the United Nations new sustainable development goals. In a 2015 discussion paper from the UN High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda, Johan Rockström and Jeffrey Sachs pointed out that fertility must, among other things, be reduced in sub-Saharan Africa. They proposed “soft" and voluntary measures to achieve “sustainable fertility." If this fails, a “Malthusian catastrophe” awaits. Rockström believes that the curves need to be turned down quickly.
⁷⁰⁵
So far, however, the population issue has not received sufficient response as a possible climate policy measure.

In an article in
Science
, August 2018, John Bongaarts, vice-president of Population Council, and Brian O'Neill (of National Center for Atmospheric Research and main author of IPCC's Fourth and Fifth Assessment reports) say that population policy and family planning as a solution to the climate issue have so far been met with a great resistance from conservative interests. This now had to be changed. Like Rockström, the authors highlight the great challenge from sub-Saharan Africa population being expected to increase from one billion to four billion by 2100. By lowering the birth rates in southern Africa, they claim, the quality of education will improve and crime, terrorism, and unemployment can be kept in check, as well as eliminating poverty, reducing the burden on the environment, and reducing CO
₂
emissions. They therefore propose that the IPCC incorporate population policy as part of possible measures to manage climate change and that these be linked to the UN's sustainability goals.
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