Rebutting Rockefeller
by William F. Jasper
The chairman of the Earth Charter Drafting Committee takes issue with this magazine’s exposé, "The New World Religion." The facts show that his objections are not sustainable.
Professor Steven C. Rockefeller has objected to my critique of the Earth Charter, "The New World Religion," in the September 23rd issue of THE NEW AMERICAN. (See his full letter below.) The article, he says, "contains some misunderstandings" about the Earth Charter Initiative which he then purports to correct. My response to a number of his points follows his letter.
Rockefeller Speaks Up for the Earth Charter
THE NEW AMERICAN essay on "The New World Religion" by William F. Jasper (September 23rd issue), contains some misunderstandings about the Earth Charter Initiative which I would like to address.
1. The Earth Charter is the product of a worldwide, cross-cultural, interfaith dialogue on common goals and shared values that has been conducted as a civil society initiative. The Earth Charter is not the product of a United Nations intergovernmental negotiation. To date the United Nations has not endorsed the Earth Charter. It is the case that an effort was made during the 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit to draft an Earth Charter, but no agreement on an Earth Charter was reached.
2. The Earth Charter Initiative encourages the religions of the world and faith communities to embrace an ethic of respect and care for all people and for the greater community of life in a way consistent with their own traditions. It is not the purpose or interest of the Earth Charter Initiative to create a "new world religion," and the Earth Charter is not being presented as a "mystical revelation."
3. Different traditions and organizations celebrate and promote the ethical vision in the Earth Charter in many diverse ways. The Ark of Hope is one example of the way in which a group of individual artists and educators have responded to the Earth Charter. The Earth Charter Commission welcomes a diversity of responses and does not officially identify the Earth Charter with any one response.
4. The Earth Charter teaches respect for nature, including Earth, our planetary home, but there is nothing in the Earth Charter about the worship of Earth. It does affirm "reverence for the mystery of being," which many people interpret as a reference to the Creator or God.
5. The Earth Charter does encourage sustainable patterns of human reproduction. It does not take a position for or against abortion, and it deliberately does not use the term "population control." It is the position of the Earth Charter that the best way to ensure sustainable patterns of reproduction is to promote gender equality and to provide universal access to healthcare, education, and economic opportunity.
6. From the point of view of the ancient Hebrew prophets, such as Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah and the ethical teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the world today is clearly unjust. It is with this concern in mind that the Earth Charter calls for "the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations." Equitable does not mean equal. Equitable means fair and just. The Earth Charter is not designed, as your article asserts, to promote "global socialism in a super-regulated global state." It emphasizes ensuring economic opportunity for all, strengthening democratic institutions, promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms, and increasing participatory decision-making.
In an increasingly interdependent world no community or nation can solve the major problems that it faces alone. Cooperation and partnership are essential. Collaboration requires agreement on common goals and shared values. The Earth Charter is an initiative involving millions of people from around the world who are concerned to address this basic human need. It respects the integrity of different religious traditions, the sovereignty of nation states, and the rights of individuals. There are many ways to achieve worldwide cooperation in addressing our shared environmental, economic, and social problems besides building a "super-regulated global state." The Earth Charter is concerned to articulate the ethical principles that should shape whatever institutions of global governance the human community decides to develop (such as the UN, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and WTO), but it is not the purpose of the Earth Charter to make proposals about the actual machinery of global governance.
I hope that you will share this response to William Jasper’s essay with your readers.
Steven C. Rockefeller
Middlebury, Vermont
Steven Rockefeller was chairman of the Earth Charter International Drafting Committee. He is also a professor emeritus of religion at Middlebury College in Vermont and chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter is the product of a worldwide, cross-cultural, interfaith dialogue on common goals and shared values that has been conducted as a civil society initiative."
Response: The global campaign for the Charter is not a grass-roots, bottom-up effort, but a closely controlled, top-down operation masquerading as "dialogue." The Charter was cobbled together under the leadership of Dr. Rockefeller, former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev (representing Green Cross International), Earth Summit I Secretary-General Maurice Strong (representing the Earth Council), and representatives from the government of the Netherlands.
Who are the "eminent persons" — as Gorbachev calls them — who have drawn up the Charter’s new principles to guide "the conduct of all individuals, organizations, businesses, governments, and transnational institutions," or who have lent their names and fortunes to this effort? Leonardo Boff, the radical Marxist author and proponent of "liberation theology," for one. Some of the more familiar names at Green Cross International include Yoko Ono (widow of John Lennon), Robert Redford, and Ted Turner. Other GCI luminaries are former presidents, prime ministers, ambassadors, etc., with a heavy sprinkling of former UN officials, including: former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Perez; former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias; former UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar; and Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the famed oceanographer. Virtually all of these individuals fall along the far left of the ideological spectrum, with a large proportion being members of the Socialist International. The Earth Council, run by billionaire Maurice Strong, is composed of like-minded individuals. Strong himself is a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and serves on the board of Ted Turner’s UN Foundation and the boards of several other high-powered institutions. Earth Council luminaries include Jimmy Carter, Robert S. McNamara, and Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Dr. Rockefeller and his associates will point to the "Earth Charter Community Summits" that took place in dozens of cities around the world on September 28th as proof that the Charter has global popular support. In this regard, please see our photo essay on these summits on pages 18-21. The so-called community summits demonstrated that despite the hype and funding lavished on this effort, popular support is nil. There was virtually no attendance at the events. Moreover, the organizers and attendees of the summits proved to be ultra-radical political and environmental activists. The organizations represented at these summits, like those at the higher levels run by Rockefeller, Gorbachev, etc., are completely synthetic facades. Without continued funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (run by Steven Rockefeller), the UN Foundation (funded by Ted Turner), the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, various UN spigots, and other foundation and government grants, this supposed voice of "global civil society" would not exist. Surely Professor Rockefeller knows this full well. This is not genuine diversity and dialogue, but merely the amplified echo-chamber chatterings of like-minded internationalists whose opinions differ only as to the optimum speed of the train, not as to its final destination.
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter is not the product of a United Nations intergovernmental negotiation. To date the United Nations has not endorsed the Earth Charter."
Response: Yes, Earth Charter adherents lament that the UN has failed, so far, to endorse the Charter. They had hoped to have that all wrapped up at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But alas, the UN still tends to be a fractious, messy forum, and individual sovereign nations frequently fail to recognize and cooperate in the designs of these illustrious world planners. That is why the UN Secretariat has worked so hard since Earth Summit I to accredit hundreds of radical non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and vest them with prestige and authority, as the voice of "civil society" at all UN conferences. These rent-a-mob activists, with the help of the sympathetic liberal-left media, exert pressure on those governments and institutions resisting the "global common good" as defined by UN treaties and agreements.
If one "follows the money," invariably one finds that these NGO activists, who materialize by the thousands at all UN functions to demand greater "empowerment" of the UN, are in reality agents (albeit frequently unknowing agents) of those who expect to be the wielders of that power: Rockefeller, Gorbachev, Strong, Annan, et al.
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter Initiative encourages the religions of the world and faith communities to embrace an ethic of respect and care for all people.... It is not the purpose or interest of the Earth Charter Initiative to create a ‘new world religion’...."
Response: Dr. Rockefeller knows better than this. He has been at the forefront of the movement to create a New Age, global, syncretic faith. Along with other members of the Rockefeller family, he has been one of the major patrons of the Episcopalian Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, one of the most prestigious fonts of New Age proselytizing. The cathedral has been home for many years for the Lindisfarne Institute and the Institute’s founder, New Age guru William Irwin Thompson. According to Thompson: "We have now a new spirituality, what has been called the New Age movement. The planetization of the esoteric has been going on for some time.... This is now beginning to influence concepts of politics and community in ecology.... This is the Gaia [Mother Earth] politique … planetary culture." What’s more, says Thompson, the time of "the independent sovereign state, with the sovereign individual in his private property [is] over, just as the Christian fundamentalist days are about to be over." Rockefeller’s close friend and fellow Earth Charter promoter Maurice Strong is a longtime officer of Thompson’s Lindisfarne Center and shares his New Age, occult, anti-Christian beliefs.
Rockefeller: "Different traditions and organizations celebrate and promote the ethical vision in the Earth Charter in many diverse ways. The Ark of Hope is one example.... The Earth Charter Commission welcomes a diversity of responses...."
Response: Orthodox monotheistic "faith traditions" (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) cannot "promote the ethical vision" of the Charter’s "evolving universe" and "life’s evolution." The document’s holistic, materialist conception is wholly at odds with their "dogmatic" beliefs. The Ark of Hope referred to is the blasphemous replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant that was the centerpiece of a ceremony presided over by Dr. Rockefeller at Shelburne Farms, Vermont. The ark is decorated with pagan art and contains the Temenos Books, meditations inspired by animist religions and the occultic ruminations of Carl G. Jung. The ark was presented to the UN earlier this year and then made a centerpiece of religious activity at the Earth Summit II in Johannesburg in September.
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter teaches respect for nature, including Earth, our planetary home, but there is nothing in the Earth Charter about the worship of Earth."
Response: True, the Earth Charter does not explicitly say anything about worshiping the Earth, but in this it follows the pattern of most UN documents, notorious for vague verbiage that sounds innocent — until it is officially interpreted by the internationalist experts. But the Earth Charter advocates and their UN allies have, by word and deed, shown that neo-pagan Earth worship is precisely what they are promoting. They are proceeding as rapidly and openly as they dare, hoping not to alarm or alienate any large segment of the world’s religious communities with their subversive agenda before it has become firmly set in place. At the Shelburne Farms Ark of Hope service, Rockefeller and chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, both regulars at Gorbachev’s State of the World spiritual soirees, joined in what could reasonably be described as an Earth worship ceremony. Perhaps Dr. Rockefeller has another description, but we invite the reader to visit our website and judge for himself (click on the links to the "celebrants" images).* See the celebrants reverently gathered in a circle joining hands around the "sacred" ark, and then with arms upraised to the ark and a banner inscribed "Earth."
Maurice Strong opened Earth Summit I with a "Declaration of the Sacred Earth," accompanied by "indigenous" animist Earth worship ceremonies — standard practice at UN convocations. The Charter says protecting Earth is our "sacred trust."
Dr. Rockefeller is a leading advocate of the radical "biocentrism," under which, he says, "the rights of nature are defended first and foremost on the grounds of the intrinsic value of animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and ecosystems" against "human oppression." Biocentrists believe that humans are no more important than other life forms or natural objects. Of course, rocks, trees, and ecosystems speak in words only understood by enlightened souls like Rockefeller and company, who have assigned themselves the noble task of defending these "rights of nature."
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter … does not take a position for or against abortion, and it deliberately does not use the term ‘population control.’"
Response: My article did not state that the Charter takes an explicit position for abortion or uses the term "population control." It pointed out that the document’s call for "universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction" is, in reality "a thinly disguised call for socialized medicine that includes abortion and population control."
That is a fact. "Reproductive health" and "responsible reproduction" are the legal code words used in UN documents and policies to justify the brutal forced abortion, sterilization, and other population control measures promoted by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in China and other countries.
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter is concerned to articulate the ethical principles that should shape whatever institutions of global governance the human community decides to develop … but it is not the purpose of the Earth Charter to make proposals about the actual machinery of global governance."
Response: Dr. Rockefeller is correct in pointing out that "it is not the purpose of the Earth Charter to make proposals about the actual machinery of global governance." (Emphasis added.) But this is not the same as saying that the Earth Charter has nothing to do with "global governance," a concept Dr. Rockefeller obviously supports. In fact, he acknowledges that "the Earth Charter is concerned to articulate the ethical principles" shaping "global governance." Of course, what Dr. Rockefeller calls "the ethical principles" I dare call "the new world religion." And what Dr. Rockefeller calls "governance" I dare call "government."
Rockefeller: "[T]he Earth Charter calls for ‘the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations.’ Equitable does not mean equal. Equitable means fair and just."
Response: What is "fair and just"? Who will decide? In George Orwell’s political satire Animal Farm, the animals formed a socialistic society based on the premise that "all animals are equal," but they soon discovered that socialism in practice means that "some animals are more equal than others." And so it is in real life whenever men use the power of government to redistribute the wealth based on their concept of "fair and just."
Understanding how socialists use the terms, drawing a distinction between "equitable" and "equal" makes no more sense than drawing a distinction between "governance" and "government." Drawing such a distinction confuses rather than clarifies the issue, and that of course is the intent. The reality is that "the equitable distribution of wealth" under global government would be neither equal nor equitable, neither fair nor just. Except, of course, in the minds of those controlling the instruments of power!
Rockefeller: "The Earth Charter is not designed, as your article asserts, to promote ‘global socialism in a super-regulated global state.’"
Response: The Charter calls for "implementation of the Earth Charter principles with an international legally binding instrument on environment and development." These are references to Agenda 21, the Kyoto Protocol, and other UN agreements that are unquestionably prescriptions for global socialism and a super-regulated global state. The Earth Charter Initiative website candidly states that it views the Charter as "soft law," meaning an important preparatory step toward later "hard law" that will mandate compliance by nation states.
Rockefeller: "Cooperation and partnership are essential."
Response: "Cooperation and partnership" really mean coercion and compulsion. Dr. Rockefeller’s Earth Charter "boss," Mr. Gorbachev, spoke quite plainly in his 1993 Green Cross founding speech, calling for "change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government." Last year he declared that UN treaties on climate change, biodiversity, desertification, and others "should be ratified without delay" and that the UN should be given "more power for actions and the enforcement of UN decisions for peace and stability." The real goal is power, force, and coercion.
*www.thenewamerican.com/focus/earth_charter/ essay.htm
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