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Showing posts with label WTO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTO. Show all posts

Monday, September 14, 2009

CODEX ALIMENTARIUS AND THE IDIOCRACY

by Scott Tips, JD
September 14, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Three years ago a film came out of Hollywood that was conceptually great even if the execution was fatally flawed. Called Idiocracy, this comedy follows the mishaps of a character named Joe Bowers who is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but who, through a government hibernation experiment gone wrong, awakens to a society in the year 2505 that has become so stupid because of mass commercialism that Joe shines as a genius in comparison. After a predictable series of mishaps, the point is clear: We are on the wrong track in pushing dumbed-down, ‘me too’ concepts and products. Society will only worsen, not improve.

Organic vs. Artificial

It is a lesson that modern-day fighters for individual liberty learned decades ago. In ensuring and protecting freedom for the individual, we create a better society. On a pragmatic level, individual liberty is a concept that sees the health and happiness of the parts as leading to the health of the whole – not the reverse. Put another way, individual liberty is organic – when not blocked artificially, it flows naturally and creates healthy relationships in an ever-expanding web of mutually-beneficial interactions among people.

On the other hand, much of today’s political and economic structure is not organic but artificial. It comes from the Top down, not the bottom up. It does not flow naturally, easily, and quickly but with artificial constraints that are marked by dissension, delays, and waste. It is, by nature, coercive. ‘You do what we say because you have to and at the ultimate point of a gun. You do not do it voluntarily.’

With this in mind, we can see that the larger structures being created or expanded in the 21st Century are not geared to preserving or even considering individual freedom. Rather, they are all about mass uniformity and commercialism in their worst forms. Whether it is the European Union or the still-in-utero North American Union, their object is the same: stifling individualism in favour of a collectivistic uniformity. Yes, of course, lip service will be paid to the individual with such hollow slogans as ‘Land of the Free, Home of the Brave’; but it is still the Whole consuming the Parts. It is still artificial, stiff, and unnatural.

Codex Alimentarius

For those readers not familiar with the Codex Alimentarius Commission, it is just one more of these mass-uniformity structures. Originally created in 1962 by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization with the noblest of stated intentions – that is, to protect consumer food health and eliminate barriers to international food trade – the Codex Alimentarius Commission has been engaged in developing food standards and guidelines that will be imposed from the Top down. Captured by interests antithetical to health freedom, Codex is now well on the path to promulgating food rules that will lead to ‘dumbed-down’ health – a kind of health Idiocracy – for individuals throughout the World.

That is precisely why the National Health Federation (NHF), an international nonprofit consumer health-freedom organization, has been sending me to these Codex committee meetings every year for ten years in a row now. Having obtained official Codex observer status, the NHF is able to attend and speak out at these meetings. It is also able to submit, and has submitted, written arguments in favor of health-freedom positions at many of these meetings. As the only health-freedom organization accredited by Codex, NHF has almost always been the lone voice striving to eliminate oppressive standards and guidelines while enhancing consumer freedom of choice. The other delegates and organizations at these meetings are basically FDA-style bureaucrats and trade organizations with their own special commercial interests and agendas.

In particular, NHF has opposed the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplement Guidelines that were adopted in framework form in 2004-2005, and that will limit access to healthy dietary supplements as well as ‘dumb down’ their potencies to non-beneficial levels. These maximum upper permitted limits have not yet been set. However, if the Germans, Danes and others have their way, then ridiculously-low limits will be imposed that will ensure that supplements pose no competition with their pharmaceutical industry. For example, the German Institute (BfR) that has conducted ‘research’ into this area has determined that niacin is dangerous to consumers at levels higher than 17 milligrams per capsule! This is the madness that they would impose upon the rest of us as they die from their drug-and-sausage-induced heart attacks. That is a party we have no intention of joining!

In another area, ironically enough, the EU and NHF have worked together at the Codex Committee on Food Labelling meetings to see that genetically-modified foods are labeled as such for the consumer. In this case, the North Americans, joined by the Argentineans, Australians, and New Zealanders, are the bad actors, contending, as the American delegate has said, that “the consumer is too ignorant to understand GM-labelled foods.” So far, this battle has been a draw but NHF has been aggressively vocal at each of these meetings arguing for the right of the consumer to know what he or she is eating.

Codex guidelines and standards cover many more subjects than those just mentioned. Ranging from oils and food additives to pesticides and natural mineral waters, Codex is involved. And while these standards are ostensibly to be applied to international trade, the Codex Strategic Plan specifically states – and almost all countries agree – that they will be applied domestically as well. It is just a matter of time, they say.

Bigger Is Not Always Better

In the European Union, which began innocently enough as nothing more than a Customs Union, decisions – important decisions – are increasingly made by the European Commission in Brussels. Each year, fewer and fewer decisions are being made in Dublin or London or Paris or Madrid. The natural tendency of governments and their institutions to grow over time is asserting itself, inexorably, like the laws of gravity and space. Power is being sucked in to the Center. It is being increasingly centralized.

And therein lies the major problem, for the more that you distance the power wielders from those over whom they exercise that power, the more corrupt and arrogant they will become and behave. It is ultimately about accountability, and you cannot have true accountability when the rulers are not immediately and directly 
accountable to the citizens.

The problem with the latest attempt to accumulate even more power in the hands of the EU Superstate, through the Lisbon Treaty, is that the rulers and the ruled will become even more distant from one another than they already are! Centralization of power is the bane of freedom. As rulers become less accountable to their subjects – or citizens – they will become more corrupt and more likely to do harm.

But as unlikely as it may seem now, there is another, more important reason to shun centralization: Increased concentration of power attracts sociopaths to it like flames attract moths. Such power in one place is irresistible to those who crave it. This is hard for the average decent person to comprehend, but sociopaths do exist and they do gravitate towards power. A more powerful Brussels will be an even stronger magnet for the future power-mongers of the World. Do we really need to invite another Hitler or Stalin to rain ruin down upon us?

The Banality of Centralization

While some might scoff at a future EU dictator in the same way that the Germans scoffed at a Nazi Germany in the 1920s, even the scoffers must accept the very real risk – I would say certainty – that a more powerful and centralized European Union will result in the banality of life – its ‘dumbing down’ as political, economic, and social life is forced into an artificial, bureaucratically-crafted mold of European uniformity. 

This is already taking place. The heavy hand of distant bureaucrats is felt throughout the EU’s member states over the littlest of details – from weights and measures to employee relations to vitamin and mineral food supplements. Think of any aspect of your life in the European Union and the EU Superstate is involved at some level. Again, distant bureaucrats making important decisions about your life.

Codex and the EU

This, too, is where the worlds of the EU and Codex intersect. Unknown to the average citizen, the Codex Commission and Committees are trundling along, each year, making rule after rule that its member countries, the EU included, are expected to adopt – both in international trade and domestic trade. There are treaties and agreements that exist right now that commit the member states to adopting these Codex ‘guidelines.’ These include, but are not limited to, the Technical Barriers to Trade and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreements, and the EU is a signatory to both of these.

At Codex meetings, the EU representative has been pushing his narrow view that consumers must be protected from vitamin and mineral food supplements. They are too strong in potency and there are too many ‘unproven’ ones, he claims, so they must be ‘dumbed down’ to a level that will be of no benefit to anyone except to the pharmaceutical companies whose profits are protected by the elimination of competition. The EU representative at the Codex Committee dealing with this issue has immense influence; and I have even seen him giving instructions to the Committee Chairman right in front of the other delegates during the meeting. That is how bold it has become!

So the EU Superstate – claiming all the while that it of course has the best interests of the consumers in mind – is pushing reduced potency and variety of supplements within the EU and internationally through Codex. Within the EU, Ireland, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands (being the most liberal countries, permitting the sale of a wider variety and higher potency of supplements) will be the first to fall (at the end of this year through EU Food Supplements Directive – not because of Codex as some misinformed persons will tell you), to be followed later at some as-yet-to-be-determined date by global Codex rules. The United States and Canada, represented as they are by food bureaucrats of their own, are happy enough to be along for the ride.

Unless resisted successfully, the end result will be EU markets full of foods that are less healthy without the availability of food supplements to bridge the gap. The Idiocracy will have arrived – literally – as the general population is starved of real nutrition for their brains and bodies. A compliant, non-rebellious citizenry, what more could our distant Rulers ask for?

© 2009 - Scott Tips - All Rights Reserved

Scott Tips received his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1976, studied at the Sorbonne (Paris I) from 1976-1977, and obtained his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1980, where he was the Managing Editor of the California Law Review. A California-licensed attorney, he has specialized in food-and-drug law and trademark law, but also engages in business litigation, general business law, and nonprofit organizations, with an international clientele.

Since 1989, Mr. Tips has been the General Counsel for the National Health Federation, the World’s oldest health-freedom organization for consumers, and is now its president. He also writes a regular column for NewsWithViews.com and Whole Foods Magazine called Legal Tips, a column he started in 1984. Currently, Mr. Tips is occupying much of his time with health-freedom issues involving the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its and other attempts to limit individual freedom of choice in health matters.

To understand better the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the global food standards and guidelines that it is creating, you must read Codex Alimentarius – Global Food Imperialism. This book is a collection of articles by those few health-freedom activists with first-hand knowledge of Codex and the dangers that it poses to our health and health freedom. Compiled by Scott Tips, this easy-to-read book can be purchased here.



Tuesday, June 30, 2009

WORLD GLOBALIZATION OF THE BANKING & REGULATORY STRUCTURE PART 2

By Joan Veon
June 30, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Concentrating Total Financial Power at the Bank For International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board

BASEL, SWITZERLAND - There are those who have been predicting a time when there would appear a world government structure. That time is here. Many, however, have predicted that it would be political in power. That is not necessarily so. Although the United Nations has been an organizing power worldwide to harmonize national law with international law, they do not issue or print money—for that is the role of central banks. With the new and vast empowerments being given to the central banks of the world and with the restructuring of the Financial Stability Board, it appears that world government is financial and economic. The old adage is true, “He who owns the gold makes the rules.”

The entire banking system of the world, with the exception of a few Muslim countries, is run by private corporations called “central banks.” America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, was founded in 1913. People should understand that it is not Congress which runs America but the Federal Reserve because without the money and credit that it provides to banks and subsequently home owners, farmers, and businesses, would not be able to function. All one has to do is study the various past economic crises to know that they occurred when the national banking system cut off credit. There is no doubt that the 2008 Credit Crisis has helped everyone to see that it is the banks—primarily the international banks and the central banks which run the world. While the names of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve remain secret, many people believe that the large international banks are some of its owners.

As a result of the Credit Crisis, the Bush Administration proposed the “Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure” which was approved by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who then was president of the New York Federal. He is now proposing the Obama regulatory blueprint. Recently released, it calls for many of the same recommendations as the previous blueprint, which can be summarized as a total centralization of power:

A New Financial Services Oversight Council of financial regulators to identify emerging systemic risks and improve interagency cooperation.

New authority for the Federal Reserve to supervise all firms that could pose a threat to the financial stability, even those that do not own banks.

Stronger capital and other prudential standards for all financial firms, and even higher standards for large, interconnected firms.

A new National Bank Supervisor to supervise all federally chartered banks (and other financial institutions currently not under Federal Reserve oversight).

Elimination of the federal thrift charter and other loopholes that allowed some depository institutions to avoid bank holding company regulation by the Federal Reserve.

The registration of advisors of hedge funds and other private pools of Capital with the SEC.

Since most are not acquainted with our financial and regulatory structure, they will not appreciate the incredible transfer of power being given to the Federal Reserve, a private corporation. Once Congress passes the necessary law, the Fed will be given massive powers over the entire financial and economic industry, the insurance industry, non-banking institutions as well as the mortgage industry.

While most Americans are hardly aware of the United Nations or World Bank, let alone the World Health Organization, it will be difficult to understand the two-pronged frontal attack: changing U.S. regulatory laws to correspond to global regulatory laws which are in the process of being strengthened and re-configured. The complexity is enormous and the areas affected are hardly known or at this time or truly understood. Sadly, Congress is so busy adjusting their togas, they do not understand that they no longer have the real power as it was given to the Federal Reserve in 1913.

A very major piece of the new international architecture is the newly configured Financial Stability Board-FSB. At the spring meeting of the IMF/World Bank, NWV had asked former BIS Managing Director, Sir Andrew Crockett, now with JP Morgan, what the role, power and function would be of the FSB. He explained that while the chairs were still being arranged at the table, that it would act at the global level to oversee national stability risks, it would work with other regulators, it would review standards set by various board on the national level, and it would employ a ‘college of regulators’ that would define methodologies. At the inaugural meeting held on June 26-27 in Basel, FSB Chairman Mario Draghi, Governor of the Bank of Italy, provided a detailed report on its new structure. He explained,
The FSB’s mandate is to assess vulnerabilities affecting the financial system; identify and oversee action needed to address them; promote coordination and information exchange among authorities responsible for financial stability; monitor and advise on market developments and their implications for regulatory policy; advise on and monitor best practice in meeting regulatory standards; undertake joint strategic reviews on the policy development work of the international standards setting bodies; set guidelines for and support the establishment of supervisory colleges; manage contingency planning for cross-broader crisis management; and collaborate with the IMF to conduct Early Warning Exercises.
The FSB was given an official “plenary” structure which would be like the structure of any other international body, like the plenary of the United Nations. It will be comprised of G20 central bank ministers, treasury secretaries, and regulatory authorities. It will have a Steering Committee and three Standing Committees: for Vulnerabilities Assessment; Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation; and Standards Implementation.

The Standing Committee for Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation will address coordination issues that arise among supervisors and regulators and set guidelines for and oversee the establishment and effective functioning of supervisory colleges.
A number of questions have been raised with regard to the college of supervisors which will be a key component of the FSB. In April, 2008, the G7 welcomed the idea of the college of supervisors to make the world’s financial markets less risky. Paulson’s blueprint and his recommendation to bring all of the different U.S. regulatory bodies under one agency is key to making the supervisory colleges work. Many on the international level wanted to be the one responsible for suggesting it, Gordon Brown of the UK being one of them. The supervisory college would monitor the world’s top 30 financial firms in order to have “effective cross-border supervision.” This would be formally agreed to by Memorandum of Understanding which would describe how it will function, be organized and coordinate between supervisors, banks, and countries.
The FSB will be comprised of the Group of Seven plus: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey. In addition the European Central Bank and the European Commission, as well a host of international financial institutions and international standard setting, regulatory and supervisory groups with participate.

The above constitutes a total restructuring of the entire financial system, mortgage system, insurance industry, non-banking institutions, and any other entity connected with money on a worldwide basis. While the central banks control the monetary system, they are now being given complete centralization of these financial powers.

Congress can argue about whether or not they will put all of our regulatory agencies under one roof, but the real truth is that they don’t have the power to do that for “he who owns the gold makes the rules.” The Federal Reserve, along with Treasury has already been playing a major role to help set in place the new financial and regulatory infrastructure.

In short, what comes after this will probably be a global currency that will lead to a time of total control under a cashless system. The BIS would not answer NewsWithViews' questions about a change to the Special Drawing Right from the dollar. BIS Managing Director Jaime Caruana commented, “Repairing the financial system and building a more resilient one for the future also requires broad-based efforts involving cooperation between government and the private sector. At the same time, we need to resist the move towards protectionism; mounting that resistance puts a premium on international cooperation and a heightened sense of shared responsibility.”

It is ironic that here in Basle, the home of the Bank for International Settlements, the Rathaus, built in the early 1500s which was the center of town at that time, has written in gold a statement that is timeless, “Freedom is better than gold and silver.” For part one click below.

© 2009 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved



Joan Veon is a businesswoman and international reporter, who has covered over 100 Global meetings around the world since 1994. Please visit her website: www.womensgroup.org. To get a copy of her WTO report, send $10.00 to The Women's International Media Group, Inc. P. O. Box 77, Middletown, MD 21769. For an information packet, please call 301-371-0541

Monday, June 29, 2009

WORLD GLOBALIZATION OF THE BANKING & REGULATORY STRUCTURE

By Joan Veon
June 29, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

BASEL, SWITZERLAND -The power base of the world has shifted…it is no longer in London, New York City, Washington D. C., or Tokyo. Neither is it in Beijing or Moscow. It is Basel, Switzerland. In 1930, the Bank for International Settlements-BIS was set up as a result of the Young Plan which was named after the man who presided over the Allied Reparation Committee, Owen D Young.

Basel was chosen as its location because everyone could get on a train from anywhere in Europe to attend its meetings. When you walk out of the main train station, the BIS is within easy walking distance of one block. A modern 18 story high building belies the power it extends globally. There is nothing about the building that calls anyone’s attention to it other than the plaque near the glass front doors that basically says it is private property. The world’s power brokers walk to the BIS without fanfare and are set apart from the citizenry by their business suit and ID pass.

Yet within its walls the world’s monetary system is being designing and directed by many illuminated and brilliant people from inside and from without, those who visit regularly from all over the world include: central bank ministers, treasury secretaries, regulators, insurance supervisors, deposit insurers and accountants. Truly the BIS is all powerful. Dr. Carroll Quigley in his book, Tragedy and Hope, wrote that,
The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreement, arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland (pp. 324-25).
If this power was not evident before, it is in the process of becoming greater and more immense. While the BIS has always been the focal point of central bank activity globally, it now is finalizing the structure Dr. Quigley wrote about. Bi-monthly, the Group of Ten central bankers, along with those from majoring developing nations come together to discuss global monetary policy, among other things. Over the years it has expanded to the point that every aspect of banking, finance, insurance, deposit insurance, and regulation now constitute its core workings.

In the mid-1990s the word “globalization” came into our vocabularies as we were faced with naming the process whereby the barriers between the countries of the world started to fall. Beginning with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1944, the financial barriers between countries fell; with the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, the political barriers fell; with the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1994, the trade barriers fell; with the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998, the legal barriers fell; and with the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the military and intelligence barriers fell.

Similarly, during the 1990s, the Bank for International Settlements started to set up its own level of globalization. In1998, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors was set up and is comprised of insurance supervisors from all over the world. In 1999, the Financial Stability Forum was set up which was comprised of the Group of Seven treasury secretaries, central bankers, and regulatory agencies.

Recently this organization was expanded to include the Group of Twenty. Then in 2002 the International Association of Deposit Insurers was set up. This organization is comprised of the “FDICs” of the world. Another organization which was set up in 1973 and then reconfigured in 1984 is the International Organization of Security Commissions-IOSCO which is basically a global “security and exchange” commission which has facilitated a global stock exchange.

What the 2008 Credit Crisis has provided is an opportunity to further enhance and empower these organizations which will and are in the process of transferring respective responsibilities from the national level to the global level, thus completing the process of banking, insurance, auditing, accounting, and regulatory globalization. It should be mentioned that in order for the United States to play its role in this process, the Obama Administration will have to set up a single national regulator over our seven different regulators that currently work independently. This is so important a step that the Financial Times recently ran an editorial on June 20 that warned America,
The need for thorough regulatory reform is still pressing. One concern stands out: the risk of the whole financial system breaking down, as it did last autumn. Those who want to give central banks the power and responsibility to monitor systemic risks are right. They include the US Treasury, whose proposals this week seek to turn the Federal Reserve into a systemic super-regulator. These proposals are contested. They should not be; the alternatives are worse. Reforms to rein in systemic risk must not now fall prey to politics. They must be enacted before the memory of last autumn fades.
Let us examine what the first paragraph of the Bank for International Settlements 79th Annual Report stated with regard to the credit crisis:
How could this happen? No one thought that the financial system could collapse. Sufficient safeguards were in place. There was a safety net: central banks that would lend when needed, deposit insurance and investor protections that freed individuals from worrying about the security of their wealth, regulators and supervisors to watch over individual institutions and keep managers and owners from taking on too much risk. Since August 2007, the financial system has experienced a sequence of critical failures.
While it provides their assessment of what went wrong, the report summarizes the problem and the solution this way:
In summary, financial regulators, fiscal authorities, and central bankers face enormous risks. Building a perfect, fail-safe financial system—one capable of maintaining its normal state of operations in the event of a failure—is impossible. Standing in the way are both innovation and the limits of human understanding, especially regarding the complexity of the decentralized financial world. We have no choice but to take up the challenge of first repairing and then reforming the international financial system.
Their recommendations include the BIS standard-setting committees (the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the Central Bank Governance Forum, the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems, and the Markets Committee) and the Financial Stability Board. For our purposes we will discuss the newly centralized power of the Financial Stability Board.

First it should be noted that with this kind of total economic and monetary failure, the entire system should be scrapped and perhaps we should go back to being individual nation-states, but you see for their purposes, they are expanding and empowering another level of control which will move the assets of the entire world into their domain. No physical war, no guns, no bullets—electronic financial warfare.

The Financial Stability Board was originally the Financial Stability Forum-FSF. When it was set up in 1999, I interviewed its Secretary-General, Svein Andresen who told me that there was no guarantee that it would be able to protect the global system from problems. However, it was believed that if you brought the central bank ministers together with the treasury secretaries and the regulatory agencies from the Group of Seven countries that it would provide a framework to protect the global financial system. Obviously they failed in their mission. The alternative instead of liquidating the FSF was to expand and empower it. When I asked FSB Chairman Mario Draghi about the role and input of the international bankers like Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, he replied,
We are in contact with various --say bankers association, market association—banks, hedge funds, securities fora and lots of other bodies. We look at what they do and then we make up our own mind. So it is an interesting context but in the end, ours is a forum where you have the regulators—banking regulators, market regulators, financial ministries and international organization and institutions and standard setters. So it is our own mind in the end which we look at.
It is important to note that the internationalization or globalization of the financial system is here. It constitutes tearing down the final barrier between the countries of the world. It has been almost fully operational for at least 10 years. At this point in the game, the integration between a handful of international organizations is apparent.

The need to coordinate international accounting through the International Accounting Standards Board with the American counterpart, Financial Accounting Standards Board- FASB with the FSB and G20 is already happening. IOSCO is working with the BIS Joint Forum and FSB. In order to develop high quality international standards for auditing, assurance, ethics and education for professional accountants, the Monitoring Group was set up and a Charter was put in place in 2008 by Memorandum of Understanding. Those participating include: IOSCO, the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision, the European Commission, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, the World Bank, the Financial Stability Board and the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators.

There are so many working groups which now comprise a new level of regulatory oversight operating internationally that it is almost impossible to go back to the power of the individual nation-state. The number and the oversight of these groups will make your head spin. Can we go back? Any country who would dare say no would be completely destroyed—ask the 5 Asian countries that chose to say no to the WTO Financial Services Agreement in the mid-1990s. It is now the Financial Stability Board which is now empowered with becoming the “United Nations of Financial and Regulatory Control” over countries.

© 2009 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved



Joan Veon is a businesswoman and international reporter, who has covered over 100 Global meetings around the world since 1994. Please visit her website: www.womensgroup.org. To get a copy of her WTO report, send $10.00 to The Women's International Media Group, Inc. P. O. Box 77, Middletown, MD 21769. For an information packet, please call 301-371-0541

Thursday, April 2, 2009

MUST READ CFR REPORT: International Institutions and Global Governance Program: World Order in the 21st Century

A New Initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has launched a comprehensive five-year program on international institutions and global governance. The purpose of this cross-cutting initiative is to explore the institutional requirements for world order in the twenty-first century. The undertaking recognizes that the architecture of global governance—largely reflecting the world as it existed in 1945—has not kept pace with fundamental changes in the international system, including but not limited to globalization. Existing multilateral arrangements thus provide an inadequate foundation for addressing today’s most pressing threats and opportunities and for advancing U.S. national and broader global interests. The program seeks to identify critical weaknesses in current frameworks for multilateral cooperation; propose specific reforms tailored to new global circumstances; and promote constructive U.S. leadership in building the capacities of existing organizations and in sponsoring new, more effective regional and global institutions and partnerships. This program is made possible by a generous grant from the Robina Foundation.

The program draws on the resources of CFR’s David Rockefeller Studies Program to assess existing regional and global governance mechanisms and offer concrete recommendations for U.S. policymakers on specific reforms needed to improve their performance, both to advance U.S. national interests and to ensure the provision of critical global public goods. The program will take an issue area approach, focusing on arrangements governing state conduct and international cooperation in meeting four broad sets of challenges:

(1) Countering Transnational Threats, including terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and infectious disease;

(2) Protecting the Environment and Promoting Energy Security;

(3) Managing the Global Economy; and

(4) Preventing and Responding to Violent Conflict. In each of these spheres, the program will consider whether the most promising framework for governance is a formal organization with universal membership (e.g., the United Nations); a regional or sub-regional organization; a narrower, informal coalition of like-minded countries; or some combination of all three. Building on these issue-area investigations, the program will also consider the potential to adapt major bedrock institutions (e.g., the UN, G8, NATO, IMF) to meet today’s challenges, as well as the feasibility of creating new frameworks. It will also address the participation of non-state actors.

The program falls squarely within CFR’s historic mission as an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. In fulfilling its mandate, the program draws on the CFR’s unique attributes as a premier think tank on matters of foreign policy; as a prominent forum for convening American and international statesmen and opinion leaders; and as a platform for forging bipartisan consensus on the priorities, terms, and conditions of the nation’s global engagement. Throughout its activities, CFR will engage stakeholders and constituencies in the United States and abroad, including governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society representatives, and the private sector, whose input and endorsement are critical to ensure the appropriateness and feasibility of any institutional reforms. The program is led by Senior Fellow Stewart Patrick. This concept note summarizes the rationale for the program, describes potential areas of research and policy engagement, and outlines the envisioned products and activities. We believe that the research and policy agenda outlined here constitutes a potentially significant contribution to U.S. and international deliberations on the requirements for world order in the twenty-first century.

Read complete report: http://www.cfr.org/content/thinktank/CFR_Global%20_Governance_%20Program.pdf

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government/Global Dictatorship

Bilderberg elitist Zoellick calls for IMF, WTO & World Bank to regulate national policy

World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government 010409top

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, April 1, 2009

World Bank President and Bilderberg elitist Robert Zoellick openly admitted the plan to eliminate national sovereignty and impose a global government during a speech on the eve of the G20 summit.

Speaking about the agenda to increase not just funding but power for international organizations on the back of the financial crisis, Zoellick stated, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”

In other words, give global institutions the power to regulate national policy as part of the creation of global government.

What Zoellick is outlining is essentially the end of national sovereignty and the reclassification of national governments as mere subordinates to a global authority that is completely unaccountable to the voting public of any country.

The more cynical amongst us would call this a global dictatorship. Zoellick couches the plan in flowery rhetoric of helping the poor and alleviating poverty, but as we have documented for years, the global elite’s goal of world government has little to do with saving the planet and everything to do with creating a global fascist state.

Zoellick, former Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae and advisor to Goldman Sachs, is a top elitist who was intimately involved in the Enron scandal and the 2000 presidential election debacle. He was also a signatory to the Project For A New American century document that called for invading Iraq as part of implementing a brutal world empire in 1998. He was later a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush.

As to be expected, Zoellick is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. He also attended the annual invitation-only conferences of the Bilderberg Group in 1991, 2003, 2006 and 2007.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will use the G20 summit in London to extend an olive branch to China, offering them a central role in the construction of a new world order and a global government, according to reports.

“Brown will hold talks with Hu Jintao, China’s president, following discussions with Barack Obama, amid signs that developing countries see the G20 summit as a chance to impose a new world order and end the era of Anglo-European dominance,” reports the Guardian.

Under the proposal, China will vastly increase its IMF funding in return for more voting rights.

A central focus of the G20 summit will be the proposal to supplant the dollar with a new global currency. Both the IMF and the United Nations threw their weight behind the implementation of a new global reserve currency system to replace the dollar, in the same week that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CFR globalists that he was “open” to the idea.

China and Russia brought the issue to the forefront of this week’s G20 when they jointly called for a new global reserve currency a week ago.

Brown has consistently called for global regulation of the financial system as a means towards global governance. In a speech at St Paul’s Cathedral in London yesterday he again called for a new “global society”.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/world-bank-president-admits-agenda-for-global-government.html

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