by Sue Beaulieu
On Wings August 1997
CLOAK OF GREEN: The Links Between Key Environmental Groups, Government and Big Business
by Elaine Dewar
by Elaine Dewar
Page 1. Brazil, with the 8th largest economy in the world, applied to the World Bank for a $500 million loan for its power sector to build dams. The dams would be built on the Xingu River which winds through Kayapo lands and which feeds the Amazon Basin. The Kayapo had not been consulted about this project which would flood over 25 million hectares of rainforest.
With an international debt of $120 billion, Brazil argued that it needed new, cheap hydro power. Environmentalists claimed the dams would destroy the entire Amazon rainforest. Enter: Paulinho Paiakan, a Brazilian Kayapo Indian who was used by the environmentalists to solicit sympathy and donations from thousands of naive people who want to save Mother Earth.
Paiakan was the guest speaker at several fundraisers throughout Canada where he made a plea for help to save his people and their rainforest. In 1988 Elaine Dewar set out to write an upbeat article for Saturday Night about how David Suzuki and groups like the World Wildlife Fund were helping the Kayapo Indians of Brazil defend the rainforest. Though billed at fundraisers as the "Guardians of the Rainforest," in reality, the Kayapo were living off the profits of gold mining and the sale of mahogany and making up to $50,000 per month.
Once Dewar discovered this fact, she spent the next seven years researching and gathering information for the Cloak of Green. (She later discovered that the gold mining process actually pollutes the river systems.)
From these beginnings, Ms. Dewar's investigative reporting led from the Amazon rainforest to the global backrooms of Brazil, Canada, Washington and Geneva. The murky winding trails of money, people, places, political activists and NGOs criss-cross again and again, leading to bizarre and unexpected connections among those who seemed unconnected.
Her monumental research is well documented with over 35 pages of end notes as well as a bibliography, list of archival sources and a complete index. Every fact she discovers only leads to more questions. You will experience her dilemma as she ferrets out the truth from many sources. Little by little, the threads of the story are woven into a tapestry of global proportions and alarming implications.
It is best to take plenty of notes and make diagrams when reading this book. Dewar reveals how the global game of politics is played from the grassroots level right on up to the power elites. The line separating business, politics, environmental NGO's [non-governmental organizations] and charities is thin. In fact, she found that NGO's are really anything but, since governments use them to do business indirectly. Though they appear to the world as if they are independent, they actually take money and policy direction from governments.
The move is on to transfer the rain forests, deserts, jungles and private property to a consortium of foundations, international agencies and councils, all of which have a common agenda. The global economic plan is simple. Why not "debt-swap" wilderness lands which include all the natural resources therein?
The public is being persuaded to accept environmental protection based on a market model. Regulations will be replaced by laws permitting the trading of pollution debits and credits. These, in turn, can be globally traded in a system which has been nicknamed "eco-nomics."
Additionally, in April of this year [1997], the U.S. EPA administrator and the Canadian Prime Minister signed an agreement to control trans-boundary air emissions. The new eco-motto is: "Pollution Knows No Boundaries."
Recent generations have been socially engineered into accepting a global governance agenda which is wrapped in a `cloak of green'. This generation believes in global warming and all the other environmental disasters which have been promoted via massive propaganda.
Elaine Dewar asks, "How do you persuade democracies to give up sovereign national powers to govern themselves, "How do you make them hand over power to supranational institutions like the United Nations which they cannot control? You make it seem as if this will serve their best interests. You terrify them with the grave dangers and convince them their national governments cannot protect them."
The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) works closely with groups such as the World Resources Council, WWF, IUCN and the Sierra Club -- all of which are NGOs. These groups all promote their agenda by using environmental alarmist tactics. Further, there are key players that are involved in many organizations and act as debate shapers. They can represent the government in one cause and attack it on another. They stir up controversy, then provide solutions -- their solutions.
UNEP's global computer system, called Infoterra , permits direct computer information exchanges between governments and environmental NGOs. Electronic coverage of the Rio Summit and all the following Earth Summits have been broadcast through this system. WEB, a Canadian network of 1,400 green organizations, was started by Ontario Environmental Network with money received from Environment Canada. Similar U.S. networks are the PeaceNet and EcoNet which were organized by the Institute for Global Communications.
All in all there were (at the time of this book's release) 11 sub- systems connected worldwide web. Computer networking was instrumental in organizing people and materials for the 1992 Rio Summit.
Ted Turner founded the Better World Society and it focused on global issues. Barbara Pyle, environment editor of CNN and head of the TBS documentary unit, made films about Paiakan and helped raise money for him.
Though the BWS is a registered U.S. charity, it had politicians such as Gro Harlem Brundtland (prime minister of Norway and head of U.N. Commission on Environmental Development), Maurice Strong, Jimmy Carter, and many others on its Board. Television and the news media are very important tools. If people hear something often enough, they will believe it.
In Brazil, Roberto Marinho owned Globo TV and he was called "the true president of Brazil" for he held the power to promote (or discredit) any political group or candidate he chose.
World leaders can and do manipulate and control stock markets, commodities trading, computer systems, data bases and gold supplies. Cloak of Green is a comprehensive, fact-filled, information-packed book that illustrates how the powerful and influential green movement is shaping and being used to shape a one world government. This book tells it as it is.
Here are just a few of the questions which are raised in Cloak of Green:
Why would the Canadian government match every dollar of charitable funds raised for Brazil with $3 of taxpayer money?
How was the Body Shop, which makes large profits from selling environmentally sound cosmetic products, involved with this "non-profit" group?
Canada holds a powerful World Bank board position and could vote against the development loan which Brazil requested. However, Brazil stopped paying its debt to the Canadian Wheat Board when it became self-sufficient in wheat. Canada continued to buy coffee and oranges from Brazil. In fact, Brazil became one of Canada's competitors and suppliers. Why did Canada go deeper in debt subsidizing Brazilian agriculture, such as soybeans, for which there were fewer and fewer markets?
Why did Brazil have the audacity to ask CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency) to fund its agricultural projects?
What would happen if Brazil could obtain minerals and other resources without all of the regulatory requirements which North American business was subject to?
What would happen to Canada's lumber and mining industries if the Amazon was open to full development?
Why were foreign NGOs and non-profit charities involved in Brazilian politics?
To discover the answers to these questions and many more, you must read this book.
Cloak of Green details networks of people, businesses and environmental groups. These networks are all connected to those who are globally influential and powerful.
For instance, let's trace the business and political connections to just one Canadian. Paul Desmarais is chairman of the Canadian Power Corporation. John Rae was the executive V.P. of Power Corporation and Paul Desmarais's right hand man. Bob Rae is John's brother and was the ex-Socialist premier of Ontario who appointed Maurice Strong to the chairmanship of Ontario Hydro (which is the largest government- owned utility in North America.) Paul Martin became the federal Finance Minister after rising to power through the ranks of the Power Corporation.
Jean Chretien is the current Prime Minister. His daughter, France, is married to Andre Desmarais, son of Paul Desmarais. Chretien's advisor, counselor and strategist for 30 years has been Mitchell Sharp. Sharp has been Vice¬Chairman of North America for David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission since 1981. Daniel Johnson is the present Liberal and Opposition leader in Quebec - - - and he rose through the ranks of Power Corporation.
Brian Mulroney is the ex- Conservative Prime Minister who is now a lawyer and lobbyist for Power Corporation which together with Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec has founded the Hong- Kong based Asia Power Corporation. The conservative party Mulroney and the liberal party via Chretien and the NDP/Socialists via Rae are all tightly connected to Paul Desmarais and Power Corporation. So are the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister's key aide.
Whenever the subject of power and politics is discussed, the Rockefeller name must be mentioned. The Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) is controlled by the Rockefeller Family Fund. The EGA is an umbrella organization with 138 foundations which provide hundreds of millions of foundation dollars to environmental groups each year. Tax- free foundation money often doesn't show up on balance sheets because it's funneled through the parent environmental organization to a front group that carries out work on a local level.
The Rockefeller Foundation was largely responsible for creating the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) as well as the Natural Defense Fund (which in turn was responsible for pressuring the EPA into making the unnecessary ban on DDT).
The Earthwatch Institute played a leading role in the Earth Summit and was created with tax- free money from the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation also provided a $50 million grant to its Global Environmental Program, and has funded the World Resources Institute as well as other similar programs in order to implement and enforce international environmental treaties. It is obvious the Rockefeller family has played a major role in promoting and funding the local, national and global environmental agenda.
David Rockefeller is also the director of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) -- a shadow governmental group - - and, he is the founder of the Tri¬Lateral Commission, a globalist organization. His key associates are the Club of Rome and the Bilderbergers of Europe. Rockefeller was even a member of the Lucis Trust which is closely related to the Theosophical Society.
A man who counts Mr. Rockefeller one of his friends is Maurice Strong. Mr. Strong is a central figure in this book and in world politics. Maurice Strong is a Canadian multimillionaire and is currently the chairman of Ontario Hydro. Strong is an employee of the United Nations and an employee of trusts and projects for Rockefeller and Rothschild. (Mr. Rothchild sets the global gold standard.)
Strong is also director of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies . He was former deputy secretary general of the U.N., helped create the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and co-chairs the powerful World Economic Forum. At 25, he was VP of Dome Petroleum and by 31, he was president of the Power Corporation of Canada. He founded and was head of CIDA (The Canadian International Development Assistance Program) as well as Petro Canada.
With the support of the Canadian government, he has participated in or directed nearly every major environmental initiative that has come out of the U.N. for the past 20 years. He was secretary general and chief organizer of the first World Conference on the Environment (UNCED) in 1992, better known as the Rio Earth Summit.
This Summit gave birth to the Brundtland Report which in turn gave birth to the global green movement. Mr. Strong considers himself a new age mystic and is a member of the Baha'i World Faith, which proclaims the unity of all religions. His 63,000 acre Baca Grande Ranch is in the San Luis Valley on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains.
This New Age Mecca is referred to by insiders as "The Valley of the Refuge of World Truths" or the "Vatican City of the New World Order." Strong built a great temple to the sun god at his Baca Ranch and has plans to build a 300 foot pyramid in his futuristic complex of buildings. He has helped to finance a second Ark in preparation for the next deluge.
Many powerful and influential people visit Baca Grande including Rockefeller, Kissinger, McNamara, Trudeau, Moyers, the Dalai Lama, Shirley McLaine, John Denver and countless other dignitaries, politicians, businessmen, media moguls, actors, actresses and new age gurus.
Peter Caddy, founder and director of the Findhorn Community in cotland is a close friend of Strong's, as well as William Thompson who founded the Lindisfarne Association in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. His Danish born wife is a self-styled visionary who sees the earth's population drastically shrinking in the next few years due to environmental contamination and degradation. Strong's deepest conviction is that a worldwide spiritual awakening is the only thing that can save the earth and that the only way to save the earth will be for industrial civilization to collapse. As UNCED secretary general, Maurice Strong has forcefully advocated a new economic order based on the re-distribution of the developed world's industries and wealth to the Third World.
Further, during the 1992 Earth Summit, he accused the U.S. of committing environmental aggression against the rest of the world. In short, he used the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environmental crisis.
The network of environmental groups such as the Washington Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Policy Institute (which merged with Friends of the Earth) concentrated on tropical deforestation and they knew the World Bank had enormous influence on such developmental projects. These groups needed a graphic example of environmental problems that would be caused if the World Bank funded development in the rainforest.
These U.S. groups also discovered that they had more influence on the World Bank when the Brazilian groups which were affected by such development were vocal. U.S. and Brazilian political activists meshed in 1985 after the Polonoroeste development project was stopped. The green machine learned that pressure tactics worked even when they weren't directed at anything.
To demonstrate how this ploy works, Dewar eventually learned that there had never been dams planned for the Xingu River. The sites on the Xingu had been dropped from the World Bank's loan plan to Brazil before Paiakan came to raise funds in Toronto to protest them! You see, it is enough when political pressure via the World Bank can be brought to bear against rebellious governments.
Cloak of Green must be read by anyone interested in the environmental movement and world politics as they are played in the 1990's. Knowledge is power, and anyone who reads this book will gain a great deal of it.
Further Reading:
Larry Abram. The Greening. Lilburn, GA: UllumiNet Press, 1991.
Ron Arnold. Ecology Wars: Environmentalism As If People Mattered. Belevue, Washington: Free Enterprise (Merril Press), 1987.
Ronald Bailey. Ecoscam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse. New York: St. Martins Press, 1993.
Michael S. Coffman. Saviors of the Earth? Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 1994.
Martin W. Lewis. Green Delusions: A Environmentalist's Critique of Radical Environmentalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992.
Dixy Lee Ray. Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened to Common Sense? New York: Harper Collins (reprinted with permission by Regnery Gateway), 1993.
George Reisman. The Toxicity of Environmentalism. Laguna Hills, Calif.: The Jefferson School of Philosophy, Economics, and Psychology, 1990.
Jonathan Vankin. Conspiracies, Covenips, and Crimes: Political Manipulation and Control. Lilburn, GA: IllumiNet Press, 1996.
