Club of Rome member David Korten
(This is the final of four blogs about the Club of Rome, which along with Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, is an important think tank in the Round Table network of world elites. Bill Clinton’s mentor Carroll Quigley describes their history and function in his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope.)
Over the past few years, skyrocketing energy and food costs, melting ice caps and unrelenting economic turmoil have clearly borne out the dire predictions Limits to Growth made in 1972. Ironically Lyndon Larouche and other New World Order critics have also been vindicated (to some extent), owing to the regional and global economic consolidation that has occurred with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU), the single currency Eurozone and the western hemisphere trading bloc known as the Free Trade of the Americas Area (FTAA). Most New World Order websites cite the 1973 Club of Rome report entitled “Regionalized Adaptive Model of the Global World System: and their 1976 book Mankind at the Turning Point. Both propose dividing the world into ten regional entities (North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the rest of the developed word, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and China) – under a single global government.
There’s no question that the WTO, the EU, the Eurozone, FTAA, the International Monetary Fund and similar multinational bodies substantially strengthen the hand of corporations seeking to subvert democratically enacted social policy and environmental, labor and civil rights protections. Over the last twelve months the EU and International Monetary Fund IMF have enabled international bankers to totally strip the poorer European nations (especially Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) of their national sovereignty.
Where Elite and Grassroots Interests Coincide
Although the citizen-led sustainability movement and the Club of Rome (COR) share some common concerns around overpopulation, resource scarcity, climate change and economic growth, we must never forget that the COR is a Round Table group of government leaders and corporate elites. There may be times when the goals of corporate elites (at least some of them – the insurance industry is taking a major hit from extreme weather events) correspond with the interests of grassroots environmental and peace a justice groups. I discuss this in my blog about the World Economic Forum Risk Assessment 2012 (see The World Economic Forum Weights In).
However none of this detracts from the reality that business executives who run corporations are required to make profits and shareholders their highest priority under a capitalist economic system. A few more enlightened corporate leaders, especially those involved in FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate industries) industries, may foresee a future time when extreme income inequality, climate change and resource scarcity will affect profitability. However they aren’t going to lose their natural inclination to keep profits high by suppressing wages, benefits and taxes. More importantly, they will never abandon their innate sense of privilege. While they may advocate for moderate reforms, they will always believe they have an innate right to greater material wealth than the rest of us. More importantly, they will fight to their last breath to preserve it.
Why is David Korten in the Club of Rome?
This is why I was startled (and disappointed) to learn that David Korten, co-founder of the Positive Futures Network and Yes! Magazine is a current member of the Club of Rome. I honestly believed Korten was on our side. A former project specialist in Southeast Asia for the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development (which both receive major CIA funding for their “development” work), Korten supposedly saw the error of his ways and left the dark side in 1992. The author of When Corporations Rule the World, he is a popular speaker at anti-corporate and Occupy events. However it now appears he has a foot in both camps.
I ask my self whether a true anti-corporatist would join a Round Table organization of corporate elites. Others may feel differently, but I think not. I can see no beneficial role whatsoever for corporate think tanks in a truly democratic society. No society run by its own citizens is going to allow upper 1% and the so-called intellectuals who work for them to decide how they rest of us should live.The only truly democratic way to enact policy and legislation is from the ground up, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to know someone at the Club of Rome to recommend me for membership if I decide to switch sides. According to the website, prospective Club of Rome members must have expertise in “areas related to the Club” (demographics, economic growth and environmental sustainability) and be proposed by a current member. I don’t know David personally, but I met his wife in 2000, while running a campaign to put a single payer initiative on the Washington State ballot.
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Comments
It is men like him who see that each "side" has a point of view that is, from their own perspective, a correct one. Those who can understand both points of view will be the peacemakers who can eventually, one hopes, get both to the negotiating table.
We, as members, first and foremost, of the tribe of humanity, must learn how to disagree honourably and without disrespect for those who hold ideas and concepts that are opposed to, or different from, our own. We don't do that by declaring "them evil others" to be at fault for all the evils of the world as well as hangnails and pimples on our butts.
When the ship is sinking is not the time to be picking a quarrel with the only ones who can help us get the lifeboats launched. With our economic ship sinking it is rather foolish of us to engage in a competition to see who can kick the most holes in the hull.
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Instead of relying on secrecy they rely on psychological manipulation, complacency and lack of educational opportunities for the majority.
A small sample of this is the insurance industry which pools premiums so that they can pay for those that are in need when something goes wrong. It is a simple matter of math that the more they spend on lobbying, advertising and other bureaucratic expenses; and the more they keep for profit the less they have to pay claims! It doesn't take a genius to realize that this is incompetent and all the "competition" in the world can't change these facts.
I could go on with an enormous amount of simple ideological beliefs that simply don't hold up to simple scrutiny.
Maybe only to spray them with automatic rifle fire when the opportunity arises. David Korten is just another piece of filth dragged in by the main stream media. You mentioned Lyndon LaRouche and said he was vindicated. He never needed to be vindicated with me (well maybe his writing ability). ‘Dope Inc’ is rumored to have caused Henry Kissinger to actually have a nervous breakdown. His headquarters was raided by 200 FBI agents on trumped up charges of failing to pay tax’s on 30 thousand dollars. He spent years in prison for it. Now there is a man who has suffered and bled for the cause. He is practically the only major intellectual (and if you have ever met Candy Crowley you are excluded from that club), among non Jews, who is not making stupid assumptions, like the kings and queens of the earth have traded their thrones for bankers beads, based on the writings of Carroll Quigley. He points his finger directly at the Club of Rome and claims we are in the fourth phase of the Roman Empire, where the greed of the pseudo aristocratic British heirs have finally run it into the ground. LaRouche does struggles with the metaphysical aspect of this whole thing but he has evolved to incorporating Bernhard Riemann and the discovery of the Riemann tensor into his whole repertoire. If I had my way I would make him Emperor tomorrow.
Of course, the 1% feel they are perfectly correct in laying people off, foreclosing on their homes and denying them health care if it increases their profits and dividends.
Those in the Occupy movement disagree with them because they feel they have been cheated and exploited enough. I'm not really sure what the compromise position is here. It's not really possible to be slightly homeless or slightly unemployed.