RETURN TO THE 14TH CENTURY
Rohatyn, Bloomberg Peddle
`Post-Nation-State' World
by Jeffrey Steinberg
In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978), historian Barbara Tuchman catalogued the horrors that destroyed all of Europe, with the bankruptcy collapse of the Lombard banking system, the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War, and the arrival of the "Black Plague." Within a few generations, half of the population of Europe was obliterated, and it took almost a century for Europe to recover. The Council of Florence (1438-39), the 15th-Century Golden Renaissance, and the creation of the first modern nation-states in France and England, provided the cure for the 14th-Century plunge into usury and perpetual war, which were the hallmark of the Venetian system of rule by rentier financier oligarchy.
Yet, today, such leading figures as Synarchist banker Felix Rohatyn, George Shultz, and New York City's billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, London's favorite son candidate to be installed as President of the United States in January 2009, are all working overtime—on behalf of a London that is today's "new Venice"—to return Europe and the Americas to the 14th-Century nightmare, where nation-states no longer exist, and where warring city-states dominate a greatly depopulated world, all in hock to private financier cartels.
Think-tank spinmeisters have developed a deceptively seductive lingo, to conceal the underlying objectives of Rohatyn et al. Today, they speak of "public-private partnerships," "sustainable futures," "climate change," "globalization," and the growing power of "local government." But it all comes out the same in the wash.
In Europe, the destruction of all sovereign nation-states and the establishment of what former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a 1999 speech in Chicago, enthusiastically labeled a "post-Westphalian" order, is moving forward at breathtaking speed, through the Treaty of Lisbon, which would establish a dictatorial single European government in Brussels, perhaps as early as January 2009.
The scheme for a single European super-state, under private oligarchical rule, was a cornerstone of every 20th Century European fascist movement, from the original Saint-Yves d'Alveydre scheme for world Synarchy, to Hitler and Mussolini, to Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi's Pan-European Union, and Sir Oswald Mosley's Europe a Nation. In each instance, the corporatist fascist plan involved top-down imperial dictatorship over all of Europe, administered through decentralized power structures, operating on metropolitan or regional levels, crushing the sovereign nation-state out of existence.
Under one such scheme, promoted by Austrian School ideologue Leopold Kohr, and published in 1957 under the revealing title, Breakup of Nations, the "big nations" of Europe would be divided into smaller principalities, on the model of the Swiss cantons. In a later version of the same scheme, promoted at the time of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, Dutch beer baron Freddy Heineken promoted a "Eurotopia," of 75 mini-states. In each case, the devolution of power would fall under a top-down supranational European Council.
It should come as no shock that, in the United States, in the 1930s and 1940s, a similar "Union Now" movement, promoting a full Anglo-American imperial marriage, was promoted by Clarence Streit, who would become the father-in-law and mentor of Lazard Brothers' Felix Rohatyn.
From Nation-States to City-States
On April 6, 2000, then-U.S. Ambassador to France, Felix Rohatyn, convened a conference in Lyon, called the First Transatlantic Summit of Mayors. The conference was opened by Denver Mayor Wellington E. Webb, who told the delegates, "If there is one theme that I would like to impart during this session, it is: the nineteenth century was the century of Empires. The twentieth century was the century of nation-states. The twenty-first century will be a 'century of cities.' Our cities," Mayor Webb continued, "are economic engines that drive our respective nations' economies, and through our collective efforts and partnership we can fully claim the role of international economic and cultural brokers."
The overriding theme of the Lyon conference was the dominant role that globalization would play, in shaping a new world paradigm. Mayor Webb directly addressed the issue at the conclusion of his opening speech: "Our cities will be both the heart and soul of this historic and global transformation, and globalization gives us new opportunities for partnership.... Our regional economies have emerged as the engines that drive our national economies. In the United States, our metro economies accounted in 1998 for 84% of national gross domestic product and 84% of national employment.... In the United States, both political parties are coming to recognize the growing importance of cities and metropolitan regions and the federal government is slowly ceding more authority on issues such as health care, transportation, economic development, and welfare to state and local governments."
Thomas Cochran, then the executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, punctuated the message, noting that "if city and county metro economies were ranked with the economies of nations, 47 of the world's top 100 economies would be U.S. metropolitan areas," adding that "counties and cities are quickly overtaking many states' economic engines."
In his own remarks to the Lyon conference, Felix Rohatyn boasted that in the 1970s, he, as Chairman of the Metropolitan Assistance Corporation, otherwise known as "Big MAC," had gone to French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, to get them to pressure then-U.S. President Gerald Ford, to bail out New York City, which was bankrupt, and under the receivership of the bankers creditor committee that he was heading. Rohatyn neglected to mention that, as Big MAC Chairman, he had presided over the slashing of municipal services, the shutdown of hospitals, schools and firehouses, the wipeout of the City's once thriving industrial base, and the depopulating of many of the city's poorer, formerly blue collar historic neighborhoods.
The Lyon conference was the kickoff of a trans-Atlantic drive to recruit an apparatus of local and state elected officials who would promote globalization, the privatization of public infrastructure, and scientific hoaxes like "global warming," as a battering ram against the power of the nation-state. The United States was a particularly pivotal target of this Synarchist drive.
On the eve of the Lyon conference, in November 1999, the U.S. Conference of Mayors had released a report, "U.S. Metro Economies: Engines of Economic Growth," which is now annually updated. The kickoff report argued for the autonomy of metro economies, and the devolution of power from the Federal and state governments, to the cities—nothing less than a pitch for a new form of feudalism. "The study also finds that metro economies ignore state and local boundaries, and that state and local boundaries are increasingly irrelevant to economic growth. Many metro economies are located in two or more states and encompass many communities. City and county leaders believe the new data demonstrates that public policies and economic planning must focus on the needs of metro regions, rather than artificial political boundaries" (emphasis added).
Ten days after Lyon, the U.S. Conference of Mayors convened its "First Summit on Investment in the New American City," co-sponsored by a new organization, the Council for Investment in the New American City. The Council was sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, Citigroup, Countrywide Home Loans, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, and promoted the very real estate bubble that has now burst, leading to millions of potential home forclosures, and contributing to the fact that every commercial bank in the United States, Europe, and Japan is bankrupt.
Rohatyn addressed the gathering, and launched into his spiel for "infrastructure," an Aesopic term for privatization, looting, and planned shrinkage. As if to prove the point, the Council for Investment in the New American City soon afterwards published an announcement that it would focus its efforts to "remove barriers, and create incentives for private investment in cities. It will create new models for public/private cooperation in the areas of affordable housing, environmental infrastructure, business development, transit-oriented development, and urban amenities." The announcement promised to "implement actual partnerships."
In January 2005, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced the sale of the city's Skyway to an international vultures' consortium of the Australian firm Macquarie Infrastructure Group and Cintra Consesiones de Infrastructuras de Transportes, S.A. of Spain, for $1.8 billion.
On Nov. 12, 2003, once again addressing a national summit of mayors and business leaders in New York City, Rohatyn pushed the need to "look at new institutional arrangements that would allow for greater and longer term investment of pension funds in infrastructure development."
City-States and Private Armies
A year later, Rohatyn joined George Shultz to co-host a conference at Middlebury College in Vermont, on the "privatization of national security." During the early 1970s, when Rohatyn was an outside director of IT&T, and Shultz was a top Nixon Administration official, the two played a pivotal role in the Pinochet coup in Chile, which violently overthrew the Allende government. In the wake of that fascist coup, a number of World War II-era Nazis joined with Pinochet in "Operation Condor," a death-squad program that carried out scores of targetted assassinations in the Americas and Europe over the ensuing decade.
At the Oct. 9, 2004 conference, Rohatyn argued that virtually all national security functions of the Federal government could be outsourced to the corporate sector. Peter Feaver, a speaker at the event, who was, at the time, a consultant to the Bush-Cheney National Security Council, openly used the "F-word" in his speech, boasting that "In fact, what we're seeing is a return to neo-feudalism. If you think how the East India Company played a role in the rise of the British Empire, there are similar parallels to the rise of the American quasi-empire."
Rohatyn, in his own remarks, focussed on the bottom line: "I will address this issue as privatization and what goes with it—not if it's good or bad—because I think it is here to stay and there's no point in arguing that issue. And also because I think it will grow. I don't think for a moment that privatization will stop with security services.... I believe it is inevitable that more and more ranking officers will leave the Pentagon and go with private companies, and then go back to the military as contractors, with businesses that have far greater market values. Because one actor that you haven't included here are the securities markets. And privatization, which is a dogma as well as a process, usually brings with it two other elements. One is deregulation and the other is a need for transparency."
Enter Michael Bloomberg
While Felix Rohatyn's Big MAC tenure as the bankers' gauleiter over New York City set the precedent for the gutting of the city and its transformation into an imperial metropolis, it would take the 2001 election of Michael Bloomberg as Mayor, to give the financial oligarchy a direct vise-grip on power in New York, and a hands-on control over the larger international cities movement.
Bloomberg barely won the 2001 mayoral election, relying on the Independence Party of New York ballot line, run by looney-birds Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, to squeak past Democratic candidate Mark Green by 50,000 votes. Once in office, Bloomberg paid off his debt to Fulani and company, through an $8 million municipal bond, which financed a "community center" headquarters for the radical therapy group and its network of community front groups. In 2005, when he ran for reelection, Bloomberg again drew on the support of Fulani, and in return, poured a reported $270,000 of his own money into the Independence Party coffers. Today, Independence Party of New York chairman Frank MacKay is leading Bloomberg's 50-state effort to launch a 2008 independent Presidential bid—once the Democratic and Republican party nominees have been pilloried by a ravenous media, led by the likes of Bloomberg ally Rupert Murdoch.
Despite the narrow victory, Bloomberg moved instantly to revive the worst looting features of Big MAC, and combine it with some of the most radical "global warming" swindles to come out of the Al Gore "climate change" mafia. And every step along the way, in league with Felix Rohatyn, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Mayor's cronies from the Wall Street corporatist establishment, all part of the David Rockefeller-founded Partnership for New York City, the New York "model" was spread around the U.S.A. and Europe.
To make the point clear that he was leading a global crusade, in February 2002, Bloomberg announced the appointment of Marjorie B. Tiven—his sister—to the post of de facto foreign minister for the City of New York. In her official capacity as Commissioner of the New York City Commission for the United Nations, Consular Corps and Protocol (UNCCP), Tiven is the official liaison to foreign governments, and is the Mayor's director of New York City Global Partners, Inc., an international league of cities, which has held a series of conferences of the world's largest cities. In January 2007, Bloomberg and the New York City Global Partners, Inc., hosted a summit of 26 world cities, on "Governing a Diverse City in a Democratic Society." In May 2007, Bloomberg hosted the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit, which was a follow-up to the October 2005 City of London conference on climate. That event was bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI).
Indeed, climate change and the greening of urban America, Europe, and Asia—i.e., genocidal deindustrialization—are top priorities for Bloomberg and his corporatist allies.
In September 2006, Bloomberg announced the creation of an Office of Longterm Planning and Sustainability, headed by Douglas Foy, formerly of the Conservation Law Foundation, and a booster of the work of radical malthusians Dennis and Donella Meadows, co-authors of Limits to Growth, and a series of follow-on studies from MIT, that argued for radical population-reduction measures. The work of Foy's office was, from the outset, carried out in partnership with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, a program headed by Jeffrey Sachs, and closely tied to the United Nations climate change swindle. Indeed, the Earth Institute board of advisors includes mega-speculator George Soros and economist Kenneth J. Arrow, a major booster of the "global warming" hoax.
A Sept. 21, 2006 Bloomberg press release proudly announced that the "key components of the plan include ... the undertaking of a major greenhouse gas inventory for City government and the City overall.... We intend to make New York City a national leader in meeting the challenge of making ours an environmentally sustainable city.... And the constant threat of global warming means that we have to think about the urban heat island effect that makes our summer days even hotter than the green areas around our city." The announcement of the new project was made while Bloomberg was in California, touring the state with his self-proclaimed "soul mate," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Urban Development, another component of the Bloomberg "green cities" apparatus, played a pivotal role, along with the Rockefeller Foundation, in a month-long conference in July 2007, at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio, Italy conference center. The Global Urban Summit further promoted the idea of a global league of cities, taking independent initiatives outside the framework of sovereign nation-states.
Just a few months before the Bellagio event, Bloomberg's Office of Longterm Planning and Sustainability unveiled its own blueprint, on April 22, 2007. Known as PlaNYC 2030, the report spelled out plans for a "Greener, Greater New York," through a series of green-genocidal programs, all touted as "building new infrastructure." At the heart of PlaNYC 2030 is a real estate boondoggle, that aims to create upscale and over-priced urban neighborhoods along all of the city's waterfront—i.e., a new real estate bubble.
Typical of the propaganda that punctuated "Greener, Greater New York" is the following: "Just 15 years ago, the waterfronts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint were areas left behind. Much of the activity slowly ebbed away after the loss of manufacturing industries along the East River. By 2000, these waterfronts and nearby neighborhoods were a mix of remaining housing, vacant and contaminated waterfront lots, and abandoned industrial buildings that had begun to be reclaimed by a new generation of Brooklynites for housing, art spaces, and craft industries.
"Across New York," the report continued, "stretches of land once teeming with life, action, activity, commerce sat largely abandoned. As factories and ports closed down after World War II, the land stayed cut off from communities, the piers vacant, the old buildings empty. Our economy had evolved. Our land use did not. But recently, that has begun to change."
The report then touted a waterfront renovation in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, which, the authors claimed, is "the biggest transformation of the city landscape since the rezoning of 1961." The goal: to turn the city into a deindustrialized, green tourist mecca. And, for good measure, PlaNYC 2030 calls for high-rise apartment and office buildings to be converted to solar energy. Among the funding schemes devised to pay for this facelift: a "congestion tax" on all vehicles entering Manhattan, from 86th Street to Battery Park, during weekdays.
But ultimately, the idea is to extract the costs of these loony schemes from the pockets of city residents and visitors. As the report admitted, in a rare note of candor, "The answers are neither easy nor painless."
Barnstorming for Green Fascism
As part of his highly publicized drive for the Presidency, Mayor Bloomberg has been barnstorming as the self-appointed ambassador of America's cities. In London last September, Bloomberg, joined by Governor Schwarzenegger, addressed the British Conservative Party's annual convention in Blackpool, where he made the outright treasonous remark to his London sponsors: "You forgive us for 1776, and we forgive you for 1812."
On Feb. 11, 2008, Bloomberg addressed a United Nations conference on climate change, and made it clear that his zealotry matched that of Al Gore. "It has been not quite two months since the close of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali. And it was my privilege to address that convention at the invitation of ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability, a worldwide network of more than 700 cities and counties that, like New York City, are actively engaged in combatting climate change." Bloomberg insisted that the United States must set firm carbon reduction goals and fully implement them, raving: "It's clear that the world cannot wait for 2009. Global warming demands immediate action. As the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman warned in a report summing up the Bali conference: 'On this issue, it's too late for later.' The world's great cities recognize that.... So we are not waiting for others to act first. And it's why the mayors of many of the world's largest cities have joined forces to fight climate change in the C40 organization.... It's why, even though our national government has yet to approve the Kyoto Protocol, more than 700 cities in the United States, representing more than 80 million Americans, have pledged to meet its goals."
It is this green corporativist whom the City of London has anointed as its man, to usher in the post-nation-state era of deindustrialization, vast population reduction, and scientific fraud, bordering on medieval alchemy. This profoundly un-American, anti-human scheme must be defeated, decisively.
Mark Bender, Tony Chaitkin, Richard Freeman, Michele Steinberg, and Karel Vereycken contributed invaluable research for this article.
