Prince Philip's `Cat's-Paw'
Al Gore, Jr. Would Usher In
a New Dark Age
by Scott Thompson
In an article in EIR of Jan. 15, "To Defeat Impeachment, You Must Defeat the New Confederacy," Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. described Vice President Al Gore, Jr. as the "cat's-paw" of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Royal Consort, in the effort of the London-steered financier oligarchy to spread four "poisons" worldwide: destruction of the sovereign nation-state, fascist environmentalism, Malthusian population-reduction, and slave-labor policies (see box).
In the interview which follows here, Martin Palmer, the "spiritual adviser on ecology" to the Duke of Edinburgh, relates how Gore met with Prince Philip in 1991 and has been in correspondence with him for a decade, on how to destroy the last vestiges of republicanism, through a combination of pagan religion and eco-fascism. This process began with a conference in Assisi, Italy, in 1986, sponsored by Prince Philip, who was then the international president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (World Wildlife Fund). It has especially targetted Christianity, stripping from it the concept that man is created in the living image of God, imago viva Dei, and can therefore discover validatable scientific principles of natural law, which have as one of their effects an increase in the relative potential population density of the Earth.
The Lambeth Palace process
As EIR documented in its Aug. 21, 1998 issue ("Prince Philip's Assault on Religion" and "High Priest of Evil: Martin Palmer"), there have been tectonic shifts already caused by the Sept. 22-29, 1986 Assisi meeting, at which Palmer, through the World Wildlife Fund, launched a discussion of what these pagan kooks call the "Gaia" hypothesis, in reference to the Earth Mother Goddess hypothesis. Palmer recounts how this came to the attention of then-Senator Al Gore, Jr., who then took up correspondence with the Duke of Edinburgh. A Network on Religion and Conservation was launched, which was managed by Palmer on Prince Philip's behalf, and has subsequently become known as the Alliance of Religion and Conservation (ARC). It joins Christianity into a pagan, syncretic cult that includes elements of the Bahais; Buddhists (including representatives of Tibetan Buddhism, which was a core part of the belief system of Hitler's Allgemeine SS); Hindus; Jains; Jews; Muslims; Sikhs; and, Taoists.
All these religions, under the Duke of Edinburgh's pagan ministrations in ARC, have agreed to give up whatever notion of scientific progress they may have once held, in order to adopt a neo-feudalist, "New Dark Age" conception based upon "ecologically sustainable development," "man's stewardship over nature," "small is beautiful," and, a Hitlerian conception that extols poverty and austerity, rather than seeking to produce physical wealth to better mankind's lot. This is in sharp contrast to the outlook of Genesis 1:26, that man's destiny is to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it"—an outlook amplified by Lyndon LaRouche's scientific understanding of physical economy.
Even before the founding of ARC, Prince Philip brought his New Dark Age religion and conservation show to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where, in May 1990, according to Palmer, the Duke of Edinburgh had his first meeting with Gore. Prince Philip, who has upon more than one occasion stated that he wished to be "reincarnated as a deadly virus" in order to solve the problem of "human overpopulation," injected his "deadly virus" of eco-fascism into the mainstream of U.S. religions, creating a U.S.-based offshoot of ARC.
This process was taken one step further on Feb. 17-19, 1998, when leaders from the various religions gathered, first at Buckingham Palace, where Prince Philip gave a keynote speech, then at Lambeth Palace, where World Bank president Sir James Wolfensohn and the Archbishop of Canterbury inaugurated the "Lambeth Palace process," to use religion and eco-fascism to "change the culture" of the World Bank, as Palmer puts it, from any promotion of large projects such as dams and irrigation systems to feed a hungry world and stop life-destroying floods, toward adoption of "ecologically sustainable development," employing primitive "appropriate technologies."
The World Bank is a key collaborator with Al Gore, in a Jan. 14-15, 1999 conference on "Reinventing Government," which seeks to destroy the sovereign nation-state by downsizing governments and injecting the poison of eco-fascism into policy-planning. Palmer confirmed that ARC's religious leaders have also adopted the policies of Prince Philip's Transparency International, toward fighting so-called "crony capitalism," as being essential to maintain "ecologically sustainable development." After the Reinventing Government conference in January, Gore is going to host another conference, involving dozens of nations, to accelerate the International Monetary Fund/World Bank approach of putting a gun to the head of "uppity" leaders of sovereign nations by claiming that they are steeped in "corruption."
The 'greening' of America's churches
In the introduction to his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, Al Gore gives thanks for assistance in preparing the book to the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. A spokesman for the Cathedral confirmed that Gore was aided by the Very Reverend James P. Morton, dean of the Cathedral Church, who is in semi-retirement, though very active in the field of religion and ecology, through such vehicles as Lindesfarne, a kooky pseudo-medieval village in New York State; and, by Paul Gorman, the founder of the U.S. equivalent of Prince Philip's ARC, which was launched soon after Prince Philip's May 1990 visit to the Washington National Cathedral. Housed at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, it is known as the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE). According to the Cathedral spokesman, Gorman, who is its executive director, maintains a close working relationship with Gore to this day.
Gathered under the umbrella of the NRPE are the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.
In January 1991, Gorman and the NRPE had 32 Nobel laureates and other scientists write an "Open Letter to the Religious Community," warning of dire ecological catastrophes, from global warming to the outbreak of pandemic disease, destruction of "biodiversity," and the ecologically motivated outbreak of thermonuclear war. The signators included several friends of Al Gore, Jr.'s father, Sen. Al Gore, Sr. (see profile in EIR, Dec. 18, 1998, p. 73). These so-called scientists were pulled from the networks of the Pugwash Conference, which had been created by the connivance of Lord Bertrand Russell and Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchov, and Dr. Leo "Strangelove" Szilard's Council for a Livable World. (The Council had contributed heavily to Sen. Al Gore, Sr.'s political campaigns before he became its president from 1970-72.) Bertrand Russell's aim was to use the threat of thermonuclear holocaust to destroy the sovereign nation-state, as LaRouche has detailed the case (e.g., "How Bertrand Russell Became an Evil Man," Fidelio, Fall 1994; "The Wells of Doom," EIR, Dec. 19, 1997).
This "Open Letter" was then sent to religious leaders, 271 of whom then also signed, including "37 heads of national religious bodies such as the General Secretaries of the World Muslim League and the World Council of Churches, and the Vice President of the World Jewish Congress, the Catholicos of All Armenians, Metropolitan Pitrim of the U.S.S.R., the Grand Muftis of Syria and Yugoslavia, the Presiding Bishops of all the Christian churches of China, and the Episcopal, Lutheran, and Mennonite churches in the U.S.A.; also, 51 cardinals, lamas, archbishops, head rabbis, patriarchs, mullahs, and bishops of jurisdictions in major cities signed it; 55 professors of theology, seminary presidents, cathedral deans, and heads of religious orders worldwide signed it; and, 17 indigenous religious leaders from 5 continents signed it." There was a very significant overlap between the religious leaders who signed this letter and the representatives of nine major religions represented in ARC.
Then, on Feb. 5, 1997, the NRPE presented Vice President Gore with a statement by representatives of the four major component religious and ecological bodies, entitled "Care for God's Earth Requires Justice for the Poor," which said that there was a moral issue that the poor were excluded from environmentally sound, sustainable development. The NRPE presented Vice President Gore with 35 projects to undertake, while making a pledge to closely monitor the ecological projects of the Clinton administration and the Congress, so that there would be "environmental justice."
Sounding a bit like Martin Palmer himself, Gorman has said: "Ancient faith traditions are engaging a new world historical challenge here, in a way in which is both strengthening the cause of environmental sustainability and justice and renewing religious life itself." The NRPE uses the following quote from Sen. Al Gore, Jr. on its web site: "Solving our global ecological crisis begins with each one of us understanding that while we are given dominion over the earth, we are required to be good stewards of the earth. That's what my Bible tells me. The work of congregations across the nation to achieve this principle is important and necessary, and will make a crucial difference in determining whether we are successful in confronting the extraordinary environmental crisis we now face." As for Reverend Morton, who, along with Gorman, assisted Gore in writing his book, he has said: "The challenge before the religious community in America is to make every congregation—every church synagogue and mosque—truly 'green'—a center of environmental study and action. That is their religious duty."
INTERVIEW: MARTIN PALMER
The Gore connection
to Prince Philip
This interview with Prince Philip's spiritual adviser on ecology was conducted by Scott Thompson on Jan. 6, 1999. He began by asking about Al Gore's meeting with Prince Philip at the Washington National Cathedral in 1990.
Palmer: Right. But I know there had been a fair amount of correspondence before that, because Mr. Gore was very interested in the work that Prince Philip had initiated with the world religions in Assisi in 1986, where Prince Philip invited the heads of (initially) five major religions—the Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims—to Assisi to create an alliance between religion and conservation to bring in the moral, ethical, and spiritual teachings of religion and to fuse that with the sort of environmental knowledge of the scientific community, and that led to tens of thousands of religiously based environmental projects around the world. And, there are now nine religions involved in that network. And, Mr. Gore was very interested in that work—
Q: That work is now with the World Bank isn't it?
Palmer: ...We're doing it at two levels. There's now a continuing program in which WWF—(what you call the World Wildlife Fund and we call the World Wide Fund for Nature, of which Prince Philip was the international president). They have sustained and developed this program with us. We act as their religious advisers.... It's in that capacity I'm religious adviser to Prince Philip on ecology. We have a whole program that's running worldwide on ecology, but we now have a parallel program which is being done with the World Bank, which brings the same nine religions—the Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and Taoists—together for working on development issues, in which, of course, ecology plays a major part. But, it is a slightly different program. Prince Philip has also been enormously supportive of that program.
Q: You say that Vice President Gore, even before he met Prince Philip, had been in correspondence with him.
Palmer: Right, he'd expressed interest in this alliance between religion and conservation. In his book, he has a section in which he talks about the importance of the spiritual, religious, ethical, and moral dimensions ... that religion has.
Q: He seems to be very concerned about the Platonic Judeo-Christian conception of "be fruitful, multiply, and"—
Palmer: Indeed.
Q: That reason will solve all problems, so don't worry about nature.
Palmer: That's right. I mean it does rather fall into the sort of romantic vision that the Eastern religions are all nature religions, and the Western religions are all mechanical thinking, which, I have to say, at the time that he and Prince Philip were in correspondence, was a little bit what Prince Philip thought as well. But, things have moved on since then. I'm not sure if Mr. Gore has....
I know that the meeting took place. I know that there was correspondence before, because we were asked to advise on some of the religious issues and topics that were raised. I know it was a very good meeting. It was quite a meeting of the minds, because I think they're both men who like to get on and do things, and, they are fairly impatient with abstract thought. And, yet, both of them, Prince Philip in particular, have recognized that without, as it were, the ability to change people's hearts—that only religion can actually affect, on the network that religion has, down to the smallest community, through churches and mosques and synagogues—that the conservation methods are going to remain essentially an intellectual property, rather than a reality. And, I think that struck a chord with Mr. Gore, as I recall.... I know at one level, that an area the size of Belgium in the Amazon rain forest is cut down every year.... I know that, but it means absolutely nothing to me. Partly because I'm not terribly fond of Belgium.... But, if through a religious leader from that community (from one of the indigenous peoples) talking about what it meant to lose his soul tree, the tree that he's been bonded with since birth, and, the pain he felt when it was cut down—that brings home to me the scale of the crisis.
And so, Prince Philip is now, and certainly since 1986, has worked always to balance the scientific with the emotional. He makes it clear that the scientific in a sense offers the answers, but not the means.
Q: You say that Vice President Gore was personally, deeply moved by this kind of approach?
Palmer: This seemed to be the case. He seemed to feel that this made sense to him. I mean, bearing in mind his own family have quite strong religious connections. He certainly understood the power of religious authority.
Q: That was going to be my second question, because he is a rather deep-dyed Southern Baptist....
Palmer: Indeed he is. And, I think, you see Prince Philip has a very strong view that religion is about authority, it's about knowing what is right and wrong, and I think there was certainly a convergence of thought on that score. But, again, Mr. Gore's understanding, as I recall it, of the role of religion was more authoritative, than it was emotional or emotive.... And, therefore, he could see some logic in that—
Q: In other words, he could see that through the authority of religion claiming some kind of respect, the earth—
Palmer: This would be a useful ally. It couldn't do it by itself, because it hasn't done by itself. And, it took the secular conservation movement challenging the religious movement to really get the religions active on this. But, once they did that, it took off monumentally. I mean, so much so that Prince Philip was given an award in 1995 by the United Nations for having inaugurated this work with the religions, on the grounds that through the religious networks, the conservation message had reached untold millions, who otherwise would never have heard it or never thought it was relevant for them.
Q: I understand this approach of Prince Philip has moved Sir James Wolfensohn of the World Bank?
Palmer: Yes, that's quite right, but I think it's a little more complicated than that. I think that James Wolfensohn is, as I'm sure you are aware, seeking to change the culture of the World Bank. He looks at the work that had been done on ecology and religion, because we invited the World Bank to join us as Prince Philip's guests at Windsor Castle in 1995, when the nine religions came together to evaluate the success of their work to date and to plan further work. The World Bank was present. And, this created an interest in the World Bank as to whether the religions might not be similar allies in development work. And, very much with Prince Philip's encouragement—he hosted an initial reception at Buckingham Palace for this initiative to be discussed. Last October, he hosted a luncheon to raise funds for the project: the joint work between religions and the World Bank....
Q: James Wolfensohn is working closely with Vice President Gore on something that is afield from what you're talking about: the whole question of "crony capitalism" and the sort of thing that Transparency International has been addressing.
Palmer: Yes, exactly, very important.
Q: I was curious if there might have been any overlap on the ecological—
Palmer: Well, the religions have made it absolutely clear that they are wholeheartedly in support and willing to do whatever they can to further Jim Wolfensohn's work on corruption and cronyism. And, in the statement that they issued at the meeting we held at Lambeth Palace (the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace), where this whole thing was kicked off by Prince Philip, the Archbishop, and Wolfensohn, the religions were wholeheartedly behind that initiative and certainly are doing what they can....
Q: In other words, under crony capitalism, you might very well say, "Well, I'm going to pay off this official, and therefore I'll be able to cut out even more soul trees in the Amazon forest"—
Palmer: Exactly. Certainly the religions have made the point since 1986, that one of the major problems they encounter in working on environmental issues is that the laws may be in existence, but they are not enforced....
Q: Do you have any idea, other than through this work with James Wolfensohn, whether or not Vice President Gore has remained in contact with Prince Philip?
Palmer: I understand that he's remained in contact, but not on a regular basis. The correspondence does not have to do with religious leaders, and so I have not been consulted.
I know that Prince Philip admired Gore's book [Earth in the Balance], and I know that Mr. Gore also admired Prince Philip's book [Down to Earth].... I think Prince Philip felt that what the Vice President was saying was important. I think he felt encouraged that a man obviously rising within the structure was making this statement. He certainly felt the book was an important contribution. He shared his belief that the spiritual and religious and ethical view was important to the scientific and pragmatic. This was respected from the other side....
Q: Concerning the impeachment of our President: The situation is a little bit more questionable than some of the more rosy news items are saying. And, so there is, as even the Sunday Telegraph acknowledged, the possibility that one of these scandals may bring Gore into the Presidency—
Palmer: Indeed.
Q: And, he would be more of his own man.
Palmer: Indeed. Indeed.
Q: Have you ever heard anything from ... the Alliance of Religion and Conservation concerning that potential? ...
Palmer: In terms of the Alliance of Religion and Conservation, I think we would take very much the approach that where we know that a political leader has, to some degree, made himself a hostage to fortune, by putting in print views which one would hope to see him pursue, that we would pursue those, particularly where that person has also a strong and an avowed religious life....
Q: You would say, on the question of ecology, the Vice President is somewhat of a hostage to the administration, which is less oriented in this direction than he is?
Palmer: I would say that's very much the case, and that if he becomes President, and therefore he would become even more a hostage to that, that what he has left is quite a powerful testimonial which can be used against him—i.e., his book.
