The Club of Rome (where the buck stops)

So, what exactly is the Club of Rome and who are its members? Founded in 1968 at David Rockefeller’s estate in Bellagio, Italy, the CoR describes itself as “a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity.” It consists of current and former Heads of State, UN beaureacrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe.

Many people have heard of the Tri-Lateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. What do they have in common with the CoR?  They were all founded by Rockefeller. The head hancho’s at each organization sit on the Board of the CoR.  The T-LC and the CFR are really just the Public Relations unit of the CoR, for the CoR is where the buck stops.

I have been tirelessly talking about Agenda 21, so I hope that people are aware of this little nugget of legislation by now. It was the outcome of the Club of Rome, a think-tank that provides ‘suggestions’ to the United Nations.  We are currently seeing all these ‘suggestions’ coming to fruition as current legislation bombards us daily as America is being radically transformed.  This transformation is no accident, and it is not aimless nor mindless.  It has been carefully construed and orchestrated.  It is the work of the Club of Rome.

Their mission can be most readily surmised just by looking at the graphic they designed for their ‘mission statement’ home page….

…and for those with more time on your hands than you care to have, you can expand the synposis and follow the links provided and delve right into their rhetoric:

1.Environment and Resources: This cluster relates climate change, peak oil, ecosystems and water. Radical and rapid social and economic transformations will be needed to avert runaway climate change and ecological breakdown;

2. Globalisation: This cluster relates interdependence, distribution of wealth and income, demographic change, employment, trade and finance. Rising inequalities and imbalances associated with the present path of globalisation risk the breakdown of the world economic and financial systems;

3. World Development: This cluster relates sustainable development, demographic growth, poverty, environmental stress, food production, health and employment. The scandal of abiding poverty, deprivation, inequity and exclusion in a wealthy world must be corrected;

4. Social Transformation: This cluster relates social change, gender equity, values and ethics, religion and spirituality, culture, identity and behaviour. The values and behaviour on which the present path of world development is based must change if peace and progress are to be preserved within the tightening human and environmental limits;

5. Peace and Security: This cluster relates justice, democracy, governance, solidarity, security and peace. The present path of world development risks alienation, polarization, violence and conflict; the preservation of peace is vital in itself but is also a precondition for progress and for the resolution of the issues which threaten the future.

The Club of Rome subsequently founded two sibling organizations, the Club of Budapest and the Club of Madrid. The former is focused on social and cultural aspects of their agenda, while the latter concentrates on the political aspects. All three of these ‘Clubs’ share many common members and hold joint meetings and conferences. As explained in other articles on this website it is abundantly clear that these are three heads of the same beast. The CoR has also established a network of 33 National Associations. Membership of the ‘main Club’ is limited to 100 individuals at any one time. Some members, like Al Gore and Maurice Strong, are affiliated through their respective National Associations (e.g. USACOR, CACOR etc).

I would like to start this analysis of the Club of Rome by listing some prominent members of the CoR and its two sub-groups, the Clubs of Budapest and Madrid. Personally it isn’t what the CoR is that I find so astonishing; it is WHO the CoR is! This isn’t some quirky little group of green activists or obscure politicians. They are the most senior officials in the United Nations, current and ex-world leaders, and the founders of some of the most influential environmental organisations. When you read their reports in the context of who they are – its gives an entirely new, and frightening, context to their extreme claims.

Some current members of the Club of Rome or its two siblings:

Al Gore – former VP of the USA, leading climate change campaigner, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Academy Award winner, Emmy winner. Gore lead the US delegations to the Rio Earth Summit and Kyoto Climate Change conference. He chaired a meeting of the full Club of Rome held in Washington DC in 1997.

Javier Solana – Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, High Representative for EU Foreign Policy.

Maurice Strong – former Head of the UN Environment Programme, Chief Policy Advisor to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the Rio Earth Summit, co-author (with Gorbachev) of the Earth Charter, co-author of the Kyoto Protocol, founder of the Earth Council, devout Baha’i.

Mikhail Gorbachev – CoR executive member, former President of the Soviet Union, founder of Green Cross International and the Gorbachev Foundation, Nobel Peace Prize winner, co-founder (with Hidalgo) of the Club of Madrid, co-author (with Strong) of the Earth Charter.

Diego Hidalgo – CoR executive member, co-founder (with Gorbachev) of the Club of Madrid, founder and President of the European Council on Foreign Relations in association with George Soros.

Ervin Laszlo – founding member of the CoR, founder and President of the Club of Budapest, founder and Chairman of the World Wisdom Council.

Anne Ehrlich – Population Biologist. Married to Paul Ehrlich with whom she has authored many books on human overpopulation. Also aformer director of Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club, and a member of the UN’s Global Roll of Honor.

Hassan bin Talal – President of the CoR, President of the Arab Thought Forum, founder of the World Future Council, recently named as the United Nations ‘Champion of the Earth‘.

Sir Crispin Tickell – former British Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the Security Council, Chairman of the ‘Gaia Society’, Chairman of the Board of the Climate Institute, leading British climate change campaigner.

Kofi Annan – former Secretary General of the United Nations. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Javier Perez de Cuellar – former Secretary General of the United Nations.

Gro Harlem Bruntland – United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change, former President of Norway

Robert Muller – former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, founder and Chancellor of the UN University of Peace.

The Dalai Lama – The ‘Spiritual Leader’ of Tibet. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Father Berry Thomas – Catholic Priest who is one of the leading proponents of deep ecology, ecospirituality and global consciousness.

David Rockefeller – CoR executive member, former Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, founder of the Trilateral Commission, executive member of the World Economic Forum, donated land on which the United Nations stands.

Stephen Schneider – Stanford Professor of Biology and Global Change. Professor Schneider was among the earliest and most vocal proponents of man-made global warming and a lead author of many IPCC reports.

Bill Clinton – former President of the United States, founder of the Clinton Global Iniative.

Jimmy Carter – former President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft, philanthropist

Garret Hardin – Professor of Human Ecology. Originator of the ‘Global Commons‘ concept. Has authored many controversial papers on human overpopulation and eugenics.

Other current influential members:
(these can be found on the membership lists of the COR (here, here, and here), Club of Budapest, Club of Madrid and/or CoR National Association membership pages)

Ted Turner – media mogul, philanthropist, founder of CNN
George Soros – multibillionare, major donor to the UN
Tony Blair – former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Deepak Chopra – New Age Guru
Desmond Tutu – South African Bishop and activist, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Timothy Wirth – President of the United Nations Foundation
Henry Kissinger – former US Secretary of State
George Matthews – Chairman of the Gorbachev Foundation
Harlan Cleveland – former Assistant US Secretary of State and NATO Ambassador
Barbara Marx Hubbard – President of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution
Betty Williams – Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Marianne Williamson – New Age ‘Spiritual Activist’
Robert Thurman – assistant to the Dalai Lama
Jane Goodall – Primatologist and Evolutionary Biologist
Juan Carlos I – King of Spain
Prince Philippe of Belgium
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
Dona Sophia – Queen of Spain
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – current Prime Minister of Spain
Karan Singh – Former Prime Minister of India, Chairman of the Temple of Understanding
Daisaku Ikeda – founder of the Soka Gakkai cult
Martin Lees – CoR Secretary General, Rector of the UN University of Peace
Ernesto Zedillo – Director of The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
Frithjof Finkbeiner – Coordinator of the Global Marshall Plan
Franz Josef Radermacher – Founder of the Global Marshall Plan
Eduard Shevardnadze – former Soviet foreign minister and President of Georgia
Richard von Weizsacker – former President of Germany
Carl Bildt – former President of Sweden
Kim Campbell – former Prime Minister of Canada and Senior Fellow of the Gorbachev Foundation
Vincente Fox – former President of Mexico
Helmut Kohl – former Chancellor of Germany
Romano Prodi – former Prime Minister of Italy and President of the European Commission
Vaclav Havel – former President of the Czech Republic
Hans Kung – Founder of the Global Ethic Foundation
Ruud Lubbers – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Mary Robinson – United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Jerome Binde – Director of Foresight, UNESCO
Koïchiro Matsuura – Current Director General of UNESCO
Federico Mayor – Former Director General of UNESCO
Tapio Kanninen – Director of Policy and Planning, United Nations
Konrad Osterwalder – Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
Peter Johnston – Director General of European Commission
Jacques Delors – Former President of the European Commission
Domingo Jimenez-Beltran – Executive Director of the European Environment Agency
Thomas Homer-Dixon – Director of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Toronto
Hazel Henderson – Futurist and ‘evoluntionary economist’
Emeka Anyaoku – former Commonwealth Secretary General, current President of the World Wildlife Fund
Wangari Maathai – Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, founder of the Green Belt Movement
and many more….

As discussed previously the CoR directly spawned two affiliated ‘Clubs’ – the Club of Budapest (CoB) and the Club of Madrid (CoM). The purpose of these siblings is to “provide spiritual, cultural and political context to the Club of Rome’s technical research.”

The Club of Budapest is an offshoot of the CoR designed to promote the Global Green Agenda though ‘Art and Culture’ – “The idea of the Club of Budapest stems from discussions between its founder and president Ervin Laszlo, and The Club of Rome founder Aurelia Peccei in the late seventies. Peccei suggested that Laszlo, a fellow founding member of the Club of Rome, should bring together writers, artists and people of high spiritual qualifications to complement abstract theoretical information about current and coming global problems with the insight and creativity inherent in art, literature, and various domains of the human spirit.”

However the Club of Budapest seems to have little to do with the Arts and much more to do with the usual themes. The Mission of its WorldShift Network is to address:
– The Governance of Nations
– Education for Wisdom
– Public Health Policy
– The Ethics of Planetary Freedom
– Reverence for Nature
– Approaching a modern Subsistence Economy

The Club of Budapest has also established the World Wisdom Council. It is jointly chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev and Robert Muller and consists of almost exactly the same people as the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality described below. In 1996 the Club of Budapest released THE MANIFESTO ON THE SPIRIT OF PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS which was signed by 16 global environmental leaders, 12 of which are also CoR members!

The Club of Madrid consists of 70 former Heads of State handpicked by the CoR to consider “appropriate forms of governance” and methods of “democratic transition to a new global order.” The Club was officially founded by Mikhail Gorbachev and Diego Hidalgo. They are both given as “executive members of the Governing Council of the Club of Rome.” The CoM is funded by the Gorbachev Foundation and Hildalgo’s organization FRIDE (the European Council on Foreign Relations).

A quick perusal of their membership list reveals that more than half are also members of CoR National Associations and contain the usual suspects such as Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair, Mary Robinson, Vaclav Havel, Romano Prodi, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and Carl Bildt. They state that their top priority is “facilitating a global post-Kyoto climate treaty.” The Club of Madrid, in a similar fashion to the CoR, is an official consultant body to the UN and is contracted by them to produce reports and technical advice.

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Perhaps the most interesting of all these organizations is the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality. The purpose of this ‘Commission’ appears to be to perpetuate the spiritual aspects of the Global Green Agenda. It is basically just old-fashioned paganism dressed up as a new eco-theology. I challenge the reader to make sense of this page! The commission is composed mostly of CoR members including Gore and Gorbachev.

The United Nations Foundation was created by prominent CoR member Ted Turner. He donated one billion dollars to support the environmental activites of the UN. A significant proportion of this money was designated for “programmes specifically addressing climate change” and funding the IPCC. The Foundation has also recently created the Global Security Institute to “propose far-reaching reforms of the international system.” As would be expected the Foundation’s Board is full of the same old names including: Ted Turner, Timothy Wirth, Kofi Annan, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Emma Rothschild, and Muhammad Yunus.

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Global Leadership for Climate Action is a joint initiative of the United Nations Foundation and the Club of Madrid which “aims to design a framework for a new enforceable international agreement on climate change.” The GLCA has editorial input into reports and assessments produced by the IPCC and provides “technical expertise on the implications and communication of climate change science.” By my count more than two-thirds of the GLCA members are also members of the CoR including: George Soros, Ted Turner, Timothy Wirth, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Mary Robinson, Sir Crispin Tickell, Kim Campbell, Wangari Maathai, Petre Roman and Richard Lagos. Now I have to wonder what qualifies George Soros and Ted Turner to provide technical advice on climate change science!!

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The Gorbachev Foundation was created by Mikhail Gorbachev immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He described the Foundation “as a think-tank whose purpose is to explore the path that global governance should take as mankind progresses into an interdependent global society.” The overall motto of the Gorbachev Foundation is “Toward a New Civilization”. The Foundation is deeply involved in many aspects of the modern green movement. They provide advice and funding to many non-government environmental orgaizations. The Board of the Foundation includes CoR members: Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert Muller, Ted Turner, Ruud Lubbers, Wangari Maathai, Sri Chinmoy, Robert Redford, Vaclav Havel and Javier Peres de Cuellar. Who would have thought Robert Redford was involved in all of this! In a similar fashion to the CoR, the Gorbachev Foundation now has several ‘Gorbachev Foundation National Associations’ each with their own management structure.

The Foundation works very closely with the CoR and the Club of Madrid and regularly holds joint conferences. These conferences must be fairly easy to organise since they have so many members in common. In order to carry out their ‘mission’ the Foundation has created a number of susidiary organizations. Chief among these is Green Cross International.

From the Green Cross Charter:
“Life is sacred. All forms of life have their own intrinsic value and share our planetary home in an interdependent community. All parts of this community are essential to the functioning of the whole. The beauty of the Earth and its life is food for the human spirit, inspiring human consciousness with wonder, joy and creativity. Human beings are not outside or above the community of life. We have not woven the web of life, we are but a strand in it. We depend on the whole for our very existence. For the first time in history, human beings have the capacity to damage, knowingly or unknowingly, the ecological balances on which all life depends. The crisis is urgent.“

The GCI Board contains the same familiar names: Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Basma Bin Talal, Jean Michel Cousteau, Ruud Lubbers, Wangari Maathai, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Robert Redford, Karan Singh, David Suzuki

Another Gorbachev Foundation creation is Global Green USA which promotes sustainability and ‘climate action’. Its motto is “fostering a global shift towards a sustainable future.”

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Another organization that is closely linked to the CoR is the United Nations University of Peace. The Chancellor (Robert Muller), Rector (Konrad Osterwalder) and CEO (Martin Lees) are all prominent CoR members. In fact Martin Lees has just been appointed as the CoR Secretary-General. Dr Muller founded the UN’s University of Peace on a mountain in Costa Rica. Why did he choose this location? Because of this ancient prophecy:

“Dear children, the Great Spirit is in every animal, in every bird, butterfly, flower, insect, leaf and grass you see. The Great Spirit is also in you, the Creator’s children. Please take care of the wonderful nature created by God and some day, from this mountain, you will see the birth of a civilization of peace spread to the entire world.“

The ‘Board of Honor’ of the University includes: Betty Williams, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama Nelson Mandela, F. W. de Klerk and David Trimble. The University is also home to Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong’s infamous Earth Charter Initiative.

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An excellent source of information is the Kosmos Journal, a publication dedicated to the ‘Global Awakening’ and fostering a ‘New Human Civilisation’. Many of the articles are written by CoR members. It actually makes me feel physically ill after spending a few hours wading through their nonsense. The founding partners of this journal include many of the organisations listed above and show how truly interconnected they are:

Founding Partners:
Club of Rome
Club of Budapest
World Wisdom Council
Gorbachev Foundation
World Commission for Global Consciousness and Spirituality
Goi Peace Foundation
Global Youth Network
The Future 500
Institute of Noetic Studies

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These are just a few of the influential ‘environmental’ organizations that were either founded by, or are dominated by, CoR members. There are many more that I have come across but it would take forever to describe them all here. The leaders of the Global Green Agenda are deadly serious about their intention to “transform humanity into an interdependent global sustainable Earth Community, based on reverence and respect for Gaia” and they have been spreading their tentacles into every area of global politics. Some other CoR initiated organizations you may wish to research are:

Awakening Mind
Alliance for a New Humanity
Association for Global New Thought
The Ethical Globalization Initiative
Foundation for Conscious Evolution
Great Transition Initiative
The Earth Council Alliance
The World Future Council
The Alliance of Civilizations
The Global Marshall Plan
The Eden Project