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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e34032.htm
Secrets of the Rich
Billionaires are hiding behind a network of "independent" groups, who manipulate politics on their behalf.
By George Monbiot
February 19, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - Conspiracies against the public don't get much uglier than this. As the Guardian revealed last week, two secretive organisations working for US billionaires have spent $118m to ensure that no action is taken to prevent manmade climate change(1). While inflicting untold suffering on the world's people, their funders have used these opaque structures to ensure that their identities are never exposed.
The two organisations the Donors' Trust and the Donors' Capital Fund were set up as political funding channels for people handing over $1m or more. They have financed 102 organisations which either dismiss climate science or downplay the need to take action. The large number of recipients creates the impression that there are many independent voices challenging climate science. These groups, working through the media, mobilising gullible voters and lobbying politicians, helped to derail Obama's cap and trade bill and the climate talks at Copenhagen. Now they're seeking to prevent the US president from trying again(2).
This covers only part of the funding. In total, between 2002 and 2010 the two identity-laundering groups paid $311m to 480 organisations(3), most of which take positions of interest to the ultra-rich and the corporations they run: less tax, less regulation, a smaller public sector. Around a quarter of the money received by the rightwing opinion swarm comes from the two foundations(4). If this funding were not effective, it wouldn't exist: the ultra-rich didn't get that way by throwing their money around randomly. The organisations they support are those which advance their interests.
A small number of the funders have been exposed by researchers trawling through tax records. They include the billionaire Koch brothers (paying into the two groups through their Knowledge and Progress Fund) and the DeVos family (the billionaire owners of Amway)(5). More significantly, we now know a little more about the recipients. Many describe themselves as free market or conservative think tanks.
Among them are the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Hudson Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Mont Pelerin Society and the Discovery Institute(6). All of them pose as learned societies, earnestly trying to determine the best interests of the public. The exposure of this funding reinforces the claim by David Frum, formerly a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, that such groups "increasingly function as public-relations agencies"(7).
One name in particular jumped out at me: American Friends of the IEA. The Institute of Economic Affairs is a British group which, like all the others, calls itself a free market thinktank. Scarcely a day goes by on which its staff are not interviewed in the broadcast media, promoting the dreary old billionaires' agenda: less tax for the rich, less help for the poor, less spending by the state, less regulation for business. In the first 13 days of February, its people were on the BBC ten times(8).
Never have I heard its claim to be an independent thinktank challenged by the BBC. When, in 2007, I called the institute a business lobby group, its then director-general responded, in a letter to the Guardian, that "we are independent of all business interests"(9). Oh yes?
The database, published by the Canadian site desmogblog.com, shows that American Friends of the IEA has received (up to 2010) $215,000 from the two secretive funds(10). When I spoke to the IEA's fundraising manager, she confirmed that the sole purpose of American Friends is to raise money for the organisation in London(11). She agreed that the IEA has never disclosed the Donors' Trust money it has received. She denied that the institute is a sockpuppet organisation: purporting to be independent while working for some very powerful US interests.
Would the BBC allow someone from Bell Pottinger to discuss an issue of concern to its sponsors without revealing the sponsors' identity? No. So what's the difference? What distinguishes an acknowledged public relations company taking money from a corporation or a billionaire from a so-called thinktank, funded by the same source to promote the same agenda?
The IEA is registered with the Charity Commission as an educational charity(12). The same goes for Nigel Lawson's climate misinformation campaign (the Global Warming Policy Foundation(13)) and a host of other dubious "thinktanks". I've said it before and I'll say it again: it is outrageous that the Charity Commission allows organisations which engage in political lobbying and refuse to reveal their major funders to claim charitable status(14).
This is the new political frontier. Corporations and their owners have learnt not to show their hands. They tend to avoid the media, aware that they will damage their brands by being seen to promote the brutal agenda that furthers their interests. So they have learnt from the tobacco companies: stay hidden and pay other people to do it for you(15).
They need a network of independent-looking organisations which can produce plausible arguments in defence of their positions. Once the arguments have been developed, projecting them is easy. Most of the media are owned by billionaires, who are happy to promote the work of people funded by the same class(16). One of the few outlets they don't own the BBC has been disgracefully incurious about the identity of those to whom it gives a platform.
By these means the ultra-rich come to dominate the political conversation, without declaring themselves(17,18). Those they employ are clever and well-trained. They have money their opponents can only dream of. They are skilled at rechannelling the public anger which might otherwise have been directed at their funders: the people who have tanked the economy, who use the living planet as their dustbin, who won't pay their taxes and who demand that the poor must pay for the mistakes of the rich. Anger, thanks to the work of these hired hands, is instead aimed at the victims or opponents of the billionaires: people on benefits, the trade unions, Greenpeace, the American Civil Liberties Union.
The answer, as ever, is transparency. As the so-called thinktanks come to play an ever more important role in politics, we need to know who they are working for. Any group whether the Institute of Economic Affairs or Friends of the Earth which attempts to influence public life should declare all donations greater than £1000. We've had a glimpse of who's paying. Now we need to see the rest of the story.
http://www.monbiot.com
References:
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...ks-network
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...l-networks
3. http://desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-...s-free-tax
4. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013...dley-devos
5. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013...dley-devos
6. See the xls attachment at the bottom of http://desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-...s-free-tax
7. http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservat...m-2011-11/
8. http://www.iea.org.uk/in-the-media/media-coverage
9. http://www.iea.org.uk/in-the-media/media...hty-george
10. http://desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-...s-free-tax
11. Caroline Rollag, 18th February 2013.
12. http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/Show...ryNumber=0
13. For a good summary of the GWPF and its secret funding, please see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...tricted-us
14. Here's what happened when I tried to get the conservative "think tanks" to tell me who funds them: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/09/12/think-of-a-tank
15. For a fascinating account of how the Tea Party movement was orignally proposed by tobacco companies, before it was launched by the Koch brothers, see this paper: http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/ea...5.abstract
16. See these revelations about the collusion between the corporate media and the Adam Smith Institute: http://www.monbiot.com/2012/10/01/plutoc...boot-boys/
17. http://www.monbiot.com/2010/10/25/toxic-brew/
18. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/01/how-th...he-system/
© 2013 George Monbiot
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Mont Pelerin Society Jump to: navigation, search
The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organisation, consisting of " free-market" economists, business leaders and journalists with a declared objective of "reaffirming and preserving private property rights, a moral code for both public and private activity, intellectual freedom, state behaviour limited by the rule of law, and the right of each individual to plan his own life'." MPS's website warns of "danger in the expansion of government, not least in state welfare, in the power of trade unions and business monopoly, and in the continuing threat and reality of inflation." [1]
MPS has close ties to the network of think tanks sponsored in part by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.
The Society is named after the hotel near Montreux, Switzerland, where the first meeting was convened in 1947 by F.A. Hayek, to combat the "state ascendancy and Marxist or Keynesian planning [that was] sweeping the globe". Since then, 32 General and 27 Regional Meetings have been held and its membership has risen from under 50 to over 500.
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Controversial Members (Current and Former)
Influence MPS founder F. A. Hayek stressed that the society was to be a scholarly community arguing ideas against collectivism while not engaging in public relations or propaganda. However, the society has always been a focal point for the international free market think-tank movement: Hayek himself used it as a forum to encourage members such as Antony Fisher to pursue the think-tank route in favour of politics. Fisher went on the establish the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London during 1971, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. during 1973, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981. In turn the Atlas Foundation supports a wide network of think-tanks, including the Fraser Institute and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. All these organisations continue to share close ties with the MPS.
Prominent MPS members who have advanced to policy positions include Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany, President Luigi Einaudi of [[]]Italy, Chairman Arthur Burns of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, and, currently, Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic. Eight MPS members, including F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler, won Nobel prizes in economics. Of 76 economic advisers on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign staff, 22 were MPS members, including Anderson himself. [2] The British economist John Jewkes was a former President of the Society.
History In 1947, "36 scholars, mostly economists, with some historians and philosophers, were invited by Professor Friedrich Hayek to meet at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, and discuss the state, and possible fate, of liberalism". Invitees included Henry Simons (who would later train Milton Friedman, later a president of the society, at the University of Chicago); the American former- Fabian socialist Walter Lippmann; Viennese Aristotelian Society leader Karl Popper; fellow Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises; Sir John Clapham, a senior official of the Bank of England who from 1940-46 was the president of the British Royal Society; Otto von Hapsburg, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne; and Max von Thurn und Taxis, Bavaria-based head of the 400-year-old Venetian Thurn und Taxis family." [3]
"The resulting Mont Pelerin Society aimed to 'facilitate an exchange of ideas between like-minded scholars in the hope of strengthening the principles and practice of a free society and to study the workings, virtues, and defects of market-oriented economic systems.'" [4]
Board Members (2011) President
Senior Vice President
- Deepak Lal, United States, and past President (2008-2010)
Secretary
Treasurer
Vice Presidents
Directors
Richard Wong, China
Past Board of Directors (2007) - Greg Lindsay, President (2006-2008) (Australia)
- Victoria Curzon-Price, Vice President amd past President (2004-2006) (Switzerland)
- Edwin J. Feulner, Treasurer, and past President (1996-1998) (USA)
- Leonard Liggio, Vice President (USA), past President (2002-2004)
- Eduardo Mayora, Vice President (Guatemala)
- Jean-Pierre Centi, Vice President (France)
- Ruth Richardson, Vice President (New Zealand)
- Eamonn Butler, Director (UK)
- Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, Director (Denmark)
- Michael Zoller, Director (Germany)
- Hiromitsu Ishi, Director (Japan)
Contact detail Web: http://www.montpelerin.org
External links
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit...in_Society
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Tue, 2014-01-14 22:27Graham Readfearn ![[Image: picture-7036.jpg]](http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/pictures/picture-7036.jpg)
Exclusive: Mont Pelerin Society Revealed As Home To Leading Pushers Of Climate Science Denial ![[Image: mont%20pelerin%20web%20image.jpg?itok=3ClJkc5m]](http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/mont%20pelerin%20web%20image.jpg?itok=3ClJkc5m)
THERE'S a popular talking point coming from climate change denialists that all people who accept the science and the need to act on it are somehow blinded by faith.
In Australia, climate science contrarian columnists can barely touch their keyboards without typing out the words "global warming faith" or explaining how human-caused global warming is some sort of "new religion".
This "climate religion" narrative often goes hand-in-hand with another favourite denialist talking point where climate scientists are only doing what they do because there's a dollar in it.
Presumably the laws of physics, the melting ice sheets, the increasing risk of bushfires, the hottest decades on record and the acidifying oceans are also waiting for their cash.
Maurice Newman, the man hand-picked by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to be the government's top business advisor, loves both of these debating points.
Newman has described climate scientists as being a "global warming priesthood" and belonging to a new "religion". In a second opinion column in two weeks in The Australian, Newman repeats his cynicism over the IPCC and climate scientists, describing them as a "cartel" that "will deny all contrary evidence". Newman even repeats the myth that in the 1970s scientists were certain the world was heading for global cooling, when in fact, as this study shows, a healthy majority of scientific papers were predicting the opposite.
Yet Newman has a deep belief system of his own, having long been associated with a form of "classic liberalism" a particular world view which advocates small government and low regulation of the activities of businesses.
Not only that, but he is a member of a global society of influential business people, academics and think tank associates known as the Mont Pelerin Society who share the same broad ideology.
The Mont Pelerin Society
The Mont Pelerin Society was established in 1947 by free market economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek.
Maurice Newman, a Mont Pelerin member since 1976, has long been an admirer of the work of Hayek and fellow free market economist Milton Friedman, a past president of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Newman was responsible for bringing Friedman to Australia in the mid-1970s, at a time when Newman was helping to set up the Centre for Independent Studies a Sydney-based free market think tank.
Mont Pelerin's website explains that while all members don't agree on everything, "they see danger in the expansion of government, not least in state welfare, in the power of trade unions and business monopoly, and in the continuing threat and reality of inflation."
The Society, which holds a meeting annually in different parts of the world, also explains how its members see their society "as an effort to interpret in modern terms the fundamental principles of economic society as expressed by those classical economists, political scientists, and philosophers who have inspired many in Europe, America and throughout the Western World."
To become a member, individuals have to be nominated by a current member and then seek endorsement by the membership committee before being endorsed.
DeSmogBlog has obtained a full list of the society's members that includes senior representatives of many of the world's foremost "free market" think tanks actively pushing back on proposed policy solutions to tackle climate change.
The list, from 2010, includes almost 500 people from 52 countries, with the bulk of members coming from the United States and the United Kingdom. The 70-page list includes private contact details. DeSmogBlog has decided to publish only extracts with contact details redacted.
Among the notable members is Charles Koch ( list excerpt here), the US oil billionaire who has been a Mont Pelerin Society member since 1970.
Charles and his brother David have used their charitable foundations to funnel tens of millions of dollars into free market think tanks which fight environmental protection and deny the dangers of human-caused climate change.
In Australia, Mont Pelerin Society members include John Roskam ( list excerpt here), executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs; Greg Lindsay ( list excerpt here) , executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies; and mining magnate Ron Manners, executive director of the pro-mining think tank the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation.
All three organisations have actively pushed climate science scepticism and denial or heavily understated the risks of continuing to burn record amounts of fossil fuels.
Lindsay is a former president of the Mont Pelerin Society. In his 2008 "Presidential Address," published in a Mont Pelerin newsletter, Lindsay claimed that climate change research had become an "industry" which lacked integrity.
His conspiracy theory was that scientists "have a vested interest in supporting the theory, so that the funding drip becomes a torrent."
Lindsay also used the popular denial talking point that people who accepted the science of climate change were blinded by belief.
He said: "As many critics have pointed out, their belief in the theory, in too many instances, borders on the superstitious and mystical. The fact that so many minds are closed to any doubt strongly suggests that we are dealing with a new species of the kind of religious dogma which the Enlightenment developed to counter."
The argument put by Lindsay back in 2008 is identical to that put by Tony Abbott's chief business advisor Maurice Newman in recent columns, the latest only a few weeks ago.
Mont Pelerin in the United States
The US cohort of Mont Pelerin members includes many senior staff associated with "free market" think tanks that have manufactured doubt about the science of human-caused climate change or the need to act quickly.
Alongside Charles Koch, DeSmogBlog's document shows that Mont Pelerin Society members include senior staff, directors and associates from groups his family foundations have helped to fund. These include the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, the Acton Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.
Other members include Wall Street Journal editor and columnist Mary O'Grady and John O'Sullivan, a columnist with the conservative National Review.
The UK and Mont Pelerin
Members of UK free market think tanks including The Adam Smith Institute, CIVITAS and the Institute of Economic Affairs have also gained membership with the Mont Pelerin Society.
Long-standing climate science sceptic Julian Morris is also listed as a member.
Another UK member is Linda Whetstone, the daughter of Antony Fisher who founded the influential UK neo-liberal think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Antony Fisher established the Atlas Economic Research Foundation a vast network of about 400 think tanks around the world that share the ideals of limiting the power of government. Alejandro Chafuen, the current president of Atlas, is also listed as a 2010 Mont Pelerin Society member.
Global network
The Mont Pelerin Society got its name from the location of the very first meeting in Switzerland, and members continue to have ample chance to network in their annual meetings.
In recent years, members have travelled to the Galapagos Islands, Prague (former Czech president Vaclav Klaus is a member), New York, Morocco, Tokyo, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Stockholm.
The opportunity for this powerful and influential group to share ideas is obvious.
In 2010, when members held a meeting in Australia, Perth-based mining magnate and member Ron Manners extended an invitation to those making the long trip down under.
A 2010 Mont Pelerin Society newsletter obtained by DeSmogBlog explained how Manners, whose think tank has hosted climate science denier Christopher Monckton, had organised a "fascinating tour" of mining and energy sites including a day tour of the remote Pilbara region described as the "ground zero" of the mining boom.
It should come as no surprise that the Mont Pelerin Society has more than its fair share of climate science deniers within its ranks.
Research has shown that belief in free market ideology is a predictor of the rejection of climate change science. This link was also revealed in Merchants of Doubt, a book by science historians Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes.
About four out of every five climate denial books ever published, according to one study, have links to conservative and free market think tanks either through the authors or the publishers.
When it comes to efforts to block meaningful policy to tackle climate change, it seems free market groups and societies extolling their version of "freedom" are in fact a "ground zero" for climate science denial.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/01/15/exc...nce-denial
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects
George Monbiot[URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian"]
The Guardian[/URL], Tuesday 28 August 2007 For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.
When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it.
Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.
This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. In the US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab.
So the question is this: given that the crises I have listed are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?
Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that "we are all Keynesians now". Even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines of John Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Margaret Thatcher kept telling us that "there is no alternative", and by implementing her programmes Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of what were once progressive parties appear to prove her right.
The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.
Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very different quarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greater individual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the state as their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted their language and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notions almost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different, but the consequences very similar.
Hayek's disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. An early experiment took place in New York City, which was hit by budgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city follow their prescriptions - huge cuts in public services, smashing of the unions, public subsidies for business. In the UK, stagflation, strikes and budgetary breakdown allowed Thatcher, whose ideas were framed by her neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Her programme worked, but created a new set of crises.
If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and their backers would use bribery or force. In the US, the Democrats were neutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully for funding with the Republicans, they would have to give big business what it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implemented in Chile following Pinochet's coup, with the backing of the US government and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support for the project was easy: if you disagreed, you got shot. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power over developing nations to demand the same policies.
But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multimillionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those ideas which threaten their interests are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and TV channels that the socially destructive notions of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language (for an account of how this happens, see George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!). Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, job seekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all invented or promoted by neoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.
Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.
Monbiot.com
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Mont Pelerin Society members
This category is for past or present members of the Mont Pelerin Society.
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"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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I Resign From the Mont Pelerin Society
I have come to the conclusion that the Mont Pelerin Society is no longer an effective force for freedom, becoming instead another tool in behalf of US hegemony, ringing Russia with US military bases and puppet governments in the name of "supporting democracy." As far as I am aware, the MPS has not addressed the Bush administration's assault on US civil liberties or the disrespect the Bush administration has shown for the US Constitution and international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions. Nor has the society taken exception to US wars of aggression in behalf of undeclared agendas.
I don't see how the society can function in behalf of liberty when its long-time Treasurer is so closely associated with the Republican Party, now thoroughly neoconized. The alacrity with which the Heritage Foundation jumped on the Bush administration's propaganda bandwagon about "the Russian invasion of Georgia" epitomizes the new association of "freedom" with American hegemony.
As Secretary of State Rice put it (according to Matthew Lee, AP News, August 18, 16:17 EST), "'We are not going to allow Russia to draw a new line at those states that are not yet integrated into the trans-Atlantic structures', she said, referring to Georgia and Ukraine, which have not yet joined NATO or the European Union but would like to."
But, of course, the US and its NATO allies are going to draw a line around Russia.
What does the Caucasus have to do with the North Atlantic? Why is NATO, which was created to keep the Soviet Army out of Western Europe, still around almost two decades after the disappearance of the Soviet Union? Why has its membership doubled, and why is it being extended to the Black Sea? Is Mongolia next? The US strategic objective to ring Russia with bases and puppet states in order to exercise hegemony over Russia will lead to war, the destruction of liberty and perhaps life on earth. This gratuitously insane neoconservative foreign policy is one that will lead to nuclear war. It stands in total contradiction to the alleged values of the Mont Pelerin Society.
![[Image: tyranny2.jpg]](http://archive.lewrockwell.com/roberts/tyranny2.jpg) As every great libertarian and the founding members of the MPS acknowledged, war is the greatest enemy of liberty.
[size=12]![[Image: roberts2.jpg]](http://archive.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts2.jpg) The US used force to rip Kosovo out of Serbia and to hand it to Muslim drug runners in exchange for a US military base. The US bombed Serbian civilians and accused the Serbians of war crimes. South Ossetia has been autonomous since the early 1990s from which date Russian and Georgian peacekeepers have been in S. Ossetia. The US puppet president of Georgia attacked S. Ossetian civilians with his American and Israeli trained and equipped army, killing about 2,000 and driving 30,000 into Russia, and the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons upon the Russian peacekeepers. The American puppet, installed by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, committed this war crime in order to ethnically cleanse S. Ossetia of Russians and to end the separatist movement in order to smooth Georgia's entrance into NATO.[/SIZE]
The "Russian invasion" was a response to this US-sponsored war crime. No real fact or truthful account can be found in the Heritage presentation or the US media. I do not want to be associated with an organization that is a front for American hegemony and wars based on propaganda, lies, and deceit. If Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek were still alive, I am certain they would join me in resignation.
August 21, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail] [size=12][size=12]a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, [/SIZE][size=12] The Tyranny of Good Intentions[/SIZE][size=12], co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has just been released by Random House.[/SIZE][/SIZE] Copyright © 2008 Creators Syndicate Paul Craig Roberts Archives
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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The Mont Pèlerin Society: The ultimate neoliberal Trojan horse
October 29, 2012
by Memehunter
![[Image: lippman-time.jpg?w=227&h=300]](http://thedailyknell.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/lippman-time.jpg?w=227&h=300)
Walter Lippmann, the American journalist and CFR co-founder whose ideas led to the birth of the Mont Pèlerin Society Far from being merely a "debate club", the Mont Pèlerin Society is an elite globalist organization that played a leading role in shaping the economic policies of several countries and in creating numerous think-tanks devoted to propagating the theories of the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics. In this article, Memehunter delves into the origins and goals of the MPS, and analyzes its impact on postwar economic policies.
The globalist origins of the Mont Pèlerin Society: Lippmann, Rappard, and Rockefeller money
Although the birth of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) officially took place in 1947, its conception can be traced back to 1938. Capitalizing on American journalist Walter Lippmann's visit to Paris, French right-wing philosopher Louis Rougier decided to organize a "Walter Lippmann Colloquium" (WLC) that would build upon the ideas presented in Lippmann's recent book The Good Society and promote the neoliberal ideology that was threatened by the emergence of fascist and communist regimes in Europe.
Lippmann (1889-1974), who came from an upper-class German-Jewish background, was initially very influenced by the views of the Fabian Society: he was a founder and president of the Harvard Socialist Club as a student. Soon, Lippmann began moving in elite circles. Already in 1917, he was working with "colonel" Edward Mandell House as an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson and participated in drafting the famous "Fourteen Points" speech.
Together with House, Lippmann was one of the founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lippmann, who viewed journalism as "intelligence work", was very interested in the manipulation of public opinion, as evidenced by his book by that same title published in 1922. His political views apparently changed in the 1930s, and he openly began discussing liberalism as a viable alternative to socialism.
Upon hearing the news about Lippmann's visit, Rougier, who already in 1934 had received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate totalitarianism in Central Europe, contacted Swiss academic William Rappard to discuss a list of attendees for the colloquium. Rappard, a hardcore globalist, had known both Lippmann and House for several years (he taught at Harvard in 1911-12), and had been instrumental in convincing Wilson to choose Geneva for the seat of the League of Nations in 1920. Rappard's globalist achievements are celebrated nowadays in the form of the Center William Rappard, the headquarters of the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
Rappard was also the co-founder of the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva. The Institute for International Studies, which hosted several professors and visiting scholars associated with the neoliberal or Austrian ideologies, such as Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Michael Heilperin, and Wilhelm Röpke, was almost entirely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Not surprisingly, Rougier's list of invitees to the WLC included, in addition to the above-mentioned scholars, the name of Tracy B. Kittredge, a longtime trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.
As pointed out in The Road from Mont Pèlerin, the list of attendees to the WLC reads like a who's who of postwar economic and political prominence: we find a future Nobel Prize (Hayek), the first general secretary of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (Robert Marjolin), De Gaulle's financial adviser (Jacques Rueff), the director of the Bank of International Settlements (Roger Auboin) and its manager (Marcel van Zeeland), Ronald Reagan's adviser on the Star Wars project (Stephan T. Possony), and a prominent French philosopher (Raymond Aron), to name but a few.
From the Walter Lippmann Colloquium to the Mont Pèlerin Society
Although there were some dissensions between Austrian economists such as Mises and "softer" neoliberals like Lippmann and German economist Alexander Rüstow, WLC participants agreed on an agenda which would provide the cornerstone of the postwar neoliberal propaganda. One of the fundamental tenets of this agenda was that "only the mechanism by which prices are determined by the free market allows the optimal organization of the means of production and leads to the maximal satisfaction of human needs".
The WLC led to the creation of the "Society for the Renovation of Liberalism", whose activities were interrupted by the onset of World War II. Nevertheless, the seed was planted, and as soon as the war ended, Hayek, Mises, Röpke and their colleagues devoted their energies to creating a society that would further the neoliberal aims enunciated at the WLC. This led in 1947 to the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society in Switzerland, a reunion which was sponsored by the Volker Fund, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and most notably the multinational bank Credit Suisse, which paid 93% of the total conference costs.
The continuity between the WLC and the MPS becomes obvious when one considers than 12 of the 26 participants to the WLC participated in the first meeting of the MPS, and another four eventually joined. Moreover, it was the arch-globalist Rappard, who was at the center of the WLC network, who gave the opening address of the first-ever MPS meeting.
From a modest gathering of 36 attendees in 1947, the MPS grew quickly to include 167 members in 1951, and 500 members by the late 1990s. Nevertheless, the MPS remained an exclusive club whose members are co-opted and must generally first attend as guests.
The impact of the Mont Pèlerin Society on postwar economics and politics
Hayek's goal was to mold the MPS into an intellectual meeting place which would help disseminate the neoliberal agenda. He was keenly aware that ideas were more powerful in the long run than politics, and he knew that the opinions of scholars carried more weight than those of businessmen and bankers.
However, this should not be construed to mean that the MPS was merely a "debate club". On the contrary, MPS members often ended up occupying leading positions in their respective countries, and ideas first enunciated behind closed doors at MPS meetings were eventually disseminated to a wider public by think-tanks and journalists, and became official policies a few decades later.
Chancellor Ludwig Erhard (West Germany), President Luigi Einaudi (Italy), Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Arthur Burns, Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus (Czech Republic) are among the best-known examples of MPS members who later occupied prominent public positions. In addition, no less than eight MPS members, including Hayek, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler, won Nobel prizes in economics.
In essence, the MPS became the prototype for all the neoliberal think-tanks that proliferated in the decades following WWII. The first of the neoliberal think-tank breeders was Antony Fisher, a successful chicken farmer who was elected to the MPS in 1954. The following year, he founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London and was soon joined by Ralph Harris, who eventually became president of the MPS from 1982 to 1984. Over the ensuing decades, the IEA spawned a dozen of think-tanks (including the Atlas network), that mostly function as fronts for the MPS.
Harris candidly admitted in a 1996 interview that "the Mont Pèlerin Society created the IEA, which comes to be called Thatcher's think-tank,' but we were running long before Thatcher. We weren't Thatcherites, but she was an IEA-ite.' " Harris added that MPS founder Hayek was dubbed a "Companion of Honor" of the British Empire by the Queen, one of only 60 to ever receive that title. Following Thatcher's election, Harris himself became Lord Harris of High Cross, while Fisher was knighted.
Edwin Feulner, MPS president (1996-1998) and treasurer (2004-2006), emulated Fisher on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973. The impact of the neoliberal wave was similarly powerful across the pond: Of 76 economic advisers on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign staff, 22 were MPS members. In Chile, "free-market" policies inspired by the Chicago school of economics and supported by Friedman and Hayek were implemented soon after Pinochet took power. In fact, according to Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind, "Hayek admired Pinochet's Chile so much that he decided to hold a meeting of his Mont Pèlerin Society in Viña del Mar, the seaside resort where the coup against Allende was planned."
Mont Pèlerin Society, Black Nobility, Bilderberg, and Pan-Europa: all in it together
The MPS was also, from its inception, associated with elite European aristocrats. Thus, Max von Thurn und Taxis, the head of an ancient and extremely wealthy family, as well as Otto von Habsburg, putative heir to the throne of Austria, were both influential members of the MPS. Von Thurn even served as the general secretary of the MPS from 1976 to 1988. This association between neoliberals and members of the Black nobility lends credence to the suspicion that the MPS ultimately seeks to promote a neo-feudalist society under the guise of the "free market" utopia.
Moreover, MPS members often took part in Bilderberg meetings, a clear indication of high-level connections between neoliberal thinkers and globalist policymakers: Frenchmen Aron, Rueff, and Marjolin attended multiple annual meetings in the 1950s and 60s, whilst economist Heilperin was invited twice in the 1950s.
Finally, several MPS members had close ties to pan-European organizations. Besides Otto von Habsburg, who was president of the Pan-Europa Movement from 1973 until 2004, the best example is probably Marjolin, recipient of a Rockefeller scholarship in 1931, whose name is associated with the 1962 "Marjolin Memorandum", the official starting point of monetary integration in Europe.
The relationship between the Mont Pèlerin Society and Austrian economics
Austrian sympathizers, when confronted with the apparent paradox of Hayek's and especially Mises' prominent role in an elitist organization such as the MPS, often emphasize the distinctions between the Chicago and Austrian schools. They also conclude from the oft-told anecdote that Mises stormed out of the initial MPS meeting shouting "You're all a bunch of socialists" that he quickly became disenchanted with the MPS.
To be sure, there were two antagonistic factions in the MPS, identified by longtime MPS secretary general Albert Hunold as "the laissez-faire liberals… and the neoliberals," and Mises was not alone in complaining about the collectivist tendencies of some of his colleagues. A group of American businessmen led by Jasper Crane of the DuPont company, along with the Volker Fund and the FEE, wanted Mises and his "hardcore" Austrian followers to play a larger role in the MPS.
However, after being urged by Harold Luhnow (director of the Volker Fund) to attend the second MPS meeting in 1949, Mises seems to have gotten over his initial disappointment, as he became an active participant to MPS meetings until 1965 (when he was 84 years old), even giving a keynote in 1958 at Princeton.
In spite of his sometimes tense relationship with the neoliberal wing, there is no doubt that Mises himself was a globalist. Indeed, he wrote in 1927 that "the [classical] liberal therefore demands that the political organization of society be extended until it reaches its culmination in a world state that unites all nations on an equal basis," even going so far as to hope that "a world superstate really deserving of the name may someday be able to develop that would be capable of assuring the nations the peace that they require". Later, Mises worked on currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement, founded by his fellow Austrian exile Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi.
Following Mises, several prominent Austrian economists have been active in MPS circles, including Murray Rothbard, Israel Kirzner, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jesus Huerta de Soto, and Thomas Di Lorenzo. In addition, George Roche III and Larry Arnn, the last two presidents of Hillsdale College, a conservative institution which houses Mises' personal library, were MPS members.
In a blatant display of the close links between the MPS, the globalist elites, and the most anti-statist factions of the Austro-libertarian movement, Otto von Habsburg, an active MPS member and noted pan-Europeanist whom Mises served as economic advisor, was the first-ever winner (in 1999) of the $10,000 Schlarbaum Prize, awarded by the Ludwig von Mises Institute "to a public intellectual or distinguished scholar" for "lifetime defense of liberty".
Conclusion
From its earliest origins to its contemporary incarnation, the MPS has served globalist interests. Despite its appearances as a mere intellectual meeting place, the MPS became the ultimate neoliberal Trojan horse, influencing the public opinion and infiltrating political movements worldwide, with a pronounced impact on economic policies. Although there have been tensions between the "laissez-faire" and "true neoliberal" wings of the MPS, Austro-libertarian economists in the Mises/Rothbard mold have always found a home in the MPS, indicating the close ties between the "free-market" anti-statist ideology and the "one-world" agenda of the transnational plutarchy.
http://thedailyknell.wordpress.com/2012/...jan-horse/
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Another great example of how complicated, convoluted, interwoven, etc. all of these people, clubs and societies are in world history. We really don't stand a fighting chance, do we?
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Marlene Zenker Wrote:Another great example of how complicated, convoluted, interwoven, etc. all of these people, clubs and societies are in world history. We really don't stand a fighting chance, do we? Actually we do. And they know it too. That's why they have to go to such extreme lengths. There is precious few of them and they don't have the support of the people or legitimacy. We on the other hand are billions and we actually make things happen because we work and run things. All we need is to stick together long enough to see them off.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Posts: 17,304
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Readers of the DPF will know of the close relations to Le Circle and the Pan Europa Union to the Mont Pelerin Society. They share many of the same member and work towards the same sleazy undemocratic agenda. Related threaads:
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...-Le-Cercle
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...we-live-in
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...-the-IAAEE
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...Feulner-Jr
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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![[Image: lippman-time.jpg?w=227&h=300]](http://www.conservapedia.com/File:Lippman-Time.jpg)
