Global Gorby
by William F. Jasper

Much of the world sat glued before their television screens, eyes and ears transfixed by the drama unfolding in a Los Angeles courtroom. The closing arguments by Johnnie Cochran and Chris Darden in the O.J. Simpson trial held millions in thrall.

Meanwhile, up the coast in San Francisco, an event of another sort (and of arguably much greater consequence) was getting under way with considerably less attention: "The State of the World Forum," a planetary confabulation sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation. Held atop the city's famed Nob Hill at the luxurious Fairmont Hotel, the forum brought together a glittering constellation of global notables representing the epitome of worldly power, prestige, fame, wealth, and influence: presidents, princes, potentates, philanthropists, poets, philosophers, and poohbahs.

Who's Who

The weighty seriousness and ambitious reach of the conference indicated by the title of the event -- "Toward a New Civilization: Launching a Global Initiative" -- were underscored by the list of attendees, a veritable Who's Who of Wall Street, the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, the Bilderbergers, the Politburo, the Commission on Global Governance, the World Future Society, and other Insider bastions of power.

Among the 400-plus eminent personages from 50 countries who flocked to the five-day affair (September 27th-October 1st) were former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz (both co-chairs of the forum), former President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Askar Akaev of Kyrgystan, former President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller of Turkey, Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and South African Vice President Thabo Mbeki.

Additional participants included: Worldwatch President Lester Brown; New Age gurus Fritjof Capra, Jeremy Rifkin, Willis Harman, Deepak Chopra, Robert Muller, and Matthew Fox; Marxist poetess Rigoberta Menchu; Earth Council president and billionaire eco-warrior Maurice Strong; Microsoft wizard Bill Gates; media mogul Rupert Murdoch; futurists Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt; Senator George Mitchell; Archer Daniels Midland CEO Dwayne Andreas; computer tycoon David Packard; Esalen founder Michael Murphy; motivation superstar Tony Robbins; Men's Wearhouse CEO George Zimmer; chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall -- not to mention Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carl Sagan, John Denver, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Weaver, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, Theodore Hesburgh, Timothy Wirth, Max Kampleman, Milton Friedman, Randall Forsberg, Saul Mendlovitz, and Alan Cranston.

Overseeing the entirety of this summit of the anointed was, of course, Mikhail Gorbachev himself. The purpose of the convocation, he proclaimed, was to "launch a multi-year process, culminating in the year 2000, to articulate the fundamental [world] priorities, values, and actions necessary to constructively shape our common future." And who better to kick off an ostentatious extravaganza of that sort than global media titan and former "Humanist of the Year" Ted Turner. Identifying himself as a "great student of history" and a long-time friend of Gorbachev, Turner praised the "ex-Communist" and former dictator for ending the Cold War, which he acclaimed as "the greatest accomplishment in the history of humanity." "Now, with the Cold War behind us," said Ted, "this forum's job is to help chart the way for humanity."

Global Brain Trust

Gorbachev let it be known that he was not one to shirk from that solemn task. Wasting no time, he opened his remarks with this magnanimous proposal: "From the outset I would like to suggest that we consider the establishment of a global Brain Trust to focus on the present and future of our civilization." This is important, he said, "because the main reason why we are lagging behind events, why we are mostly improvising and vacillating in the face of new developments, is that we are lagging behind in the thinking and rethinking of this new world. Of course, this idea of a Brain Trust can only succeed if endorsed and actively pursued by people who are widely respected as world leaders and global citizens." Respected world leaders and global citizens like -- well, like those assembled at that very same august colloquium on Nob Hill: selfless billionaires, statesmen, academic double-domes, Nobel laureates, and spiritual mahatmas in the service of humanity and planetary survival. This is a theme Gorbachev has been playing in concert with similar motifs in which he has called for "non-governmental commissions of 'wise men'" and "Councils of Elders" to solve the world's intractable problems.

No one bothered to ask how he would reconcile the obvious contradictions inherent in his "Brain Trust" proposal and the forum's other throbbing themes of "democratization," "pluralism," and "egalitarianism." During the course of the marathon palaver, Gorbachev and other conference participants regularly attacked present political, economic, and social structures as "elitist," "anti-democratic," and "exclusionary," but were conspicuously vague on how their proposed "Brain Trust" would surmount those problems. Obvious questions went begging: Who would appoint this group? What would be its powers? How would it be funded? What would be the selection criteria? To whom would it be accountable? How would the "diversity" of the group be guaranteed?

The very term "Brain Trust" reeks of elitism, social engineering, and manipulation by a cabal of experts of supposed cerebral superiority. It is an epithet of opprobrium to all lovers of liberty who are aware of the monstrous abuses initiated by the socialist planners of FDR's New Deal "Brain Trust": Raymond Moley, Rexford Guy Tugwell, Lindsey Rogers, James W. Angell, Adolf Berle, Hugh Johnson, Charles Taussig, George Peek, and others. A global "Brain Trust" by the intellectual and spiritual heirs of these statists would mean a prescription for global tyranny.

But drastic measures are needed, says Gorby. The traditional political structures "no longer respond to the needs of an interdependent world. The political culture that we inherited from the past stands in the way of efforts to unite mankind's resources in the face of global challenges."

Mere transformation of political structures, however, is far from adequate. "We are in dire need of redefining the parameters of our society's economic, social, political, and spiritual development," the Soviet seer told his worshipful votaries. "Indeed, we have to reinvent the paradigm of our existence, to build a new civilization." It was a rehearkening to other familiar themes Gorbachev has sung: "developing a global consciousness," "embracing the task of spiritual renewal," launching "the next phase of human development." An awesome undertaking, to be sure. Fortunately for us, he is graciously willing to enlighten and minister to our darkened souls as well as our sick body politic. How does he propose to do this? Comrade Gorbachev proposes to "set up a kind of United Nations Council of Elders."

It was in this "Elder" capacity that Gorbachev offered the next part of his lecture. "Civilization will shift and new values and new ways of life will be needed to find real solutions to the problems of our environment, a way out of the ecological crisis," the sage of Moscow told his San Francisco gathering. Then came the punch line: "Gradually we will have to achieve a change of emphasis in the archetypal dilemma: to have or to be; to change the nature of consumption." "Perhaps it is a little risky in this country to speak about that," he beamed to a titter of audience chuckles. "We have to change the nature of consumption. And I have much to say about that here."

Compassion Con

He certainly did have much to say on the topic, as did many of the other participants during the course of the forum. What was most amazing was that no one gagged or guffawed at the brazen effrontery and hypocrisy of the sainted one's sermonizing on conspicuous consumption while his rapt audience feasted on a sumptuous array of epicurean comestibles fit for royalty: smoked trout salad, filet of beef in shashlik marinade, and a dessert of panna cotta with autumn fruit. This gourmet creation was the work of celebrity chef Joyce Goldstein, and her tantalizing production was but the first of many offerings by famed masters of gourmand haute cuisine such as Wolfgang Puck, Julian Serrano, Joachim Splichal, and David Ribbons.

But the richness of the contradiction was no doubt lost on the pious frauds who paid $5,000 to attend this prestigious soiree. They have grown inured to their own fakery; from palatial palavers in Rio, to Cairo, Paris, Copenhagen, Geneva, etc. -- they have become accustomed to the lavish amenities in which they luxuriate, while feigning selfless pathos for the world's poor and excoriating "hedonistic consumption" by the "middle classes" of Western industrialized societies.

"World Citizen" Ted Turner represents the acme of this compassion con. According to some analysts, the recently announced sale of his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner could net him $2.6 billion, a tidy little sum to add to his already bulging billions. After the forum, he and wife Jane could fly off in their private jet, perhaps to their 40,000-acre bison barony in Montana, or to one of their many other humble domiciles to plan still more crusades to save the planet from the destructive consumption of the world's troublesome riffraff.

Getting to the crux of the matter, Gorbachev pontificated: "We have to, I believe, gear consumption more to people's cultural and spiritual needs. Also, through culture and education and within the framework of laws we shall have to address the problem of controlling the world's population." And control, of course, as always, is the key word and concept here. Control. Power.

Sound like familiar drumbeats for global government? Oh no, says Gorby: "We should not hope that the solution can come from some global center, a kind of world government. What we need is common ground rules accepted by the world community and observed by everyone and for that we need the international mechanisms and the international law that is required." Meaning simply that the "visionary" Russian is glibly proficient in the Aesoptan word games employed by the globalists to put off troublesome "isolationists" who rightfully suspect this subversive flummery.

How else to square Gorbachev's denial with his "Churchill" speech of May 6, 1992 in Fulton, Missouri, wherein he explicitly called for "global government" under the United Nations? Or to square it with the obvious intent of global governmental power implicit in his repeated calls for "international mechanisms," "international law," and "global controls"?

Call for Global Government

The New York Times reported on September 17, 1987 that Mikhail Gorbachev had "called for giving the United Nations expanded authority to regulate military conflicts, economic relations, environmental protection and ... also called for enhancing the power of the afflicted International Court of Justice to decide international disputes." These appeals for further empowering the UN were amplified in the Global Security Programme report published last year by the Global Security Project of his Gorbachev Foundation.

Chairman of the board of advisers of the Gorbachev Foundation is past Senator Alan Cranston, a past national president of the United World Federalists. In 1949 Cranston pushed through the California legislature a resolution memorializing Congress to call a national convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to "expedite and insure the participation of the United States in a federal world government." However, in a 1976 interview he advised fellow one-worlders against mentioning world government since "the more talk about world government the less chance of achieving it, because it frightens people who would accept the concept of world law." Gorbachev, obviously, has heeded the advice of this "elder statesman."

Some of the globalists slip up, however. Recent statements by James Garrison, co-founder and president of the Gorbachev Foundation/USA, for instance, must have caused Mr. Cranston to wince. "Over the next 20 to 30 years, we are going to end up with world government," Garrison said in an interview in the May 31-June 6, 1995 issue of SF Weekly, a liberal-left San Francisco newspaper. "It's inevitable." Garrison continued: "What's happening right now as you break down the Cold War, what is emerging now is ethnic identities. You are going to see more Yugoslavias, more Somalias, more Rwandas, more [Timothy] McVeighs and more nerve-gas attacks. But in and through this turbulence is the recognition that we have to empower the United Nations and that we have to govern and regulate human interaction...." (Emphasis added.)

But Gorbachev's dissembling over world government/world law should not surprise. Like his treacherous use of "democracy," "pluralism," "diversity," "interdependence," "perestroika," "glasnost," and other globalist shibboleths, it is in full comportment with the Communist program of dialectical deception. Consider his conveniently flexible position on "Communism." One speaker after another at the San Francisco forum praised the venerable aparatchik (and former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) for putting an end to Soviet Communism. Gorby himself denounced the evils of "totalitarian ideology."

"Convinced Communist"

But this is the same Gorbachev who, a few short years ago (November 1987) proclaimed: "In October 1917, we parted with the Old World, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, the world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road." (Emphasis added.) "Perestroika," he said then, "is a continuation of the October Revolution."

In 1989, Gorbachev declared: "I am a Communist, a convinced Communist. For some that may be a fantasy. But for me it is my main goal." The following year, even as he was being hailed as the "man who ended Communism," he reiterated this conviction, stating, "I am now, just as I've always been, a convinced Communist."

In his book Perestroika, he plainly admitted: "We are not going to change Soviet power, of course, or abandon its fundamental principles, but we acknowledge the need for changes that will strengthen socialism." In the same revered text he explained that "according to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible," and the "essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice." (Emphasis added.) Thus, when he declares for "democracy," he means "democracy" within the Leninist conception and definition of the term, something quite the opposite of that which most Americans assume he is talking about.

But this dialectical legerdemain does not concern George Shultz, who introduced the royal eminence with an embarrassing gush of superlatives ("brilliant," "bold," "daring," "imaginative," "astonishing energy and intellectual grasp," "an intellect of the highest order") and anecdotes of their long "friendship." Shultz, a member and former director of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Gorbachev go back a long way together. In 1985 the duo signed the Soviet-American Education Exchange Agreement negotiated by the one-world subversives at the Carnegie Corporation. Shultz spoke with fond remembrance to the forum guests of the "historic" 1986 Reykjavik Summit at which he and President Reagan, together with Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze, laid the groundwork for the INF Treaty and other disarmament debacles.

For the opening "Plenary Session" of the forum, Gorbachev shared co-chair honors with Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki, the longtime Marxist theoretician and globe-trotting ambassador of the terrorist African National Congress, and a top member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was an appropriate choice. The ANC chief said he was pleased to attend on behalf of the poor and suffering people of Africa, who might otherwise not be represented in a "new world order" where "the world's agenda is addressed only by the powerful."

Mbeki, a frequent guest at the Council on Foreign Relations and other lairs of American and European ruling elites, understands power. On July 5, 1993 Mbeki attended a dinner hosted by David Rockefeller for corporate CEOs to raise funds for the ANC's election drive. Mbeki praised Rockefeller as a longtime friend who "has backed the ANC financially for more than a decade." As Nelson Mandela's heir apparent, Mbeki has been given a "moderate" image by the ANC-friendly Insider media.

Steps to "World Order"

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, noted that there was "something profoundly symbolic and hopeful" about the fact that the opening session was co-chaired by Gorbachev and Mbeki. Which in itself says a mouthful about the "worldview" of Zbig and his like-minded fellow conferees. Burnishing his bogus anti-Communist credentials, Brzezinski denounced the terrible record of "carnage" wrought by "Hitlerism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism," and decried the monstrous deeds of the "coercive utopians."

"Yet five years after the end of the century's greatest ideological struggle and five years before the onset of the next millennium," wailed the architect and first director of the Trilateral Commission, "the end of the ideological centrality in global politics has not ushered in a new world order .... We do not have a new world order. Instead we are facing growing doubts regarding the meaning of our era and regarding the shape of our future."

"We cannot leap into world government in one quick step," Brzezinski told his audience, apparently ignoring Gorbachev's caution. Such a grand goal "requires a process of gradually expanding the range of democratic cooperation as well as the range of personal and national security, a widening, step by step, stone by stone, [of] existing relatively narrow zones of stability in the world of security and cooperation. In brief, the precondition for eventual globalization -- genuine globalization -- is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units."

This "regionalization" is in keeping with the original Trilateral plan, as outlined in Brzezinski's book, Between Two Ages, which called for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward "the goal of world government." In that same tome, David Rockefeller's Polish protégé proclaimed that "National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept" and praised Marxism "in the form of Communism" as a "major advance in man's ability to conceptualize his relationship to his world" and a "further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man's universal vision."

NATO and the European Union must be expanded to include Russia and the former Warsaw Pact countries, he said, and the scope of those arrangements must be "furthered, deepened, and institutionalized." Furthermore, Brzezinski asserted, similar structures must be crafted for the Middle East, the Far East, and Central Asia.

Joining Brzezinski at the rostrum was astronomer and cosmic sage Carl Sagan, who warned (predictably) that humanity faces "an absolutely new, unprecedented series of threats to the global environment that sustains us all." These "crises" include (of course) "depletion of the protective ozone layer and global warming through the increasing greenhouse effect...."

Yawn. Same tired, old, toxic eco-drivel. But wait! -- there is an exciting new "crisis": asteroids, which are certain to collide with earth in the not-too-distant future. This threat is "necessarily a problem for the whole species" and one in which we will have to join in collective action (presumably through the UN) to solve.

All of these crises show that we must begin to view the planet from the astronauts' perspective, says Sagan: "There are no national boundaries in that perspective. It is only one integrated, whole planet, all parts of which rise and fall together."

The "New Paradigm"

John Naisbitt, futurist, techno-savant, adviser to corporate titans and world leaders, and member of the board of advisers of the Gorbachev Foundation, was more upbeat. The author of the mega-block-busters Megatrends, Megatrends 2000, Megatrends for Women, and Global Paradox prefaced his remarks by stating his commitment to "free markets and free trade." But like the rest of his colloquium colleagues, he emphasized the need for everyone to adopt a "new vocabulary," "new concepts," and a new "world-view" if we are going to understand the "new paradigm" the world has entered.

This "new paradigm," naturally, requires "new leadership" -- leaders who will lead by "moral authority." "My candidate for what a new leader would be like," said Naisbitt, "is Vaclav Havel." Mr. Havel, the celebrated socialist playwright and president of the Czech Republic, of course, also talks of "free markets" -- while installing unreconstructed and unrepentant Communists such as Alexander Dubcek in the top positions of power in his government.

Another of his favorite new leaders, said Naisbitt, is Nelson Mandela. Colin Powell is yet another, and Naisbitt criticized those who ask where Powell stands on the issues or what he would do concerning this matter or that: "The point is not what is Powell going to do; the point is who is he going to be. The new leadership is shifting away from being in charge to moral authority, responsibility, and inspiration." You see, in the "new paradigm," you need only be dazzled by the "moral authority" oozing from the persona created by the elite media image makers. We have apparently entered the age of ontological politics -- the politics of "being."

"The New Architecture of Global Security and Paths to Building a Civic Society (The Global Age)" was the title of a presentation by Kassa Kebede, a member of the board of directors of the Gorbachev Foundation and an active participant in the Foundation's Global Security Project. Kebede is a former ambassador to the United Nations and was Foreign Secretary during the 1980s for the murderous and genocidal Communist regime of Haile Mengistu in Ethiopia.

"The globalization of the challenges confronting us will certainly affect the traditional concept of sovereignty," Kebede told the attendees. Indeed. Echoing the Kennedy Administration's treasonous 1961 Freedom From War proposal to transfer U.S. armaments to the UN, Kebede's disarmament plan calls for "storage of the warheads and of the delivery systems in separate places under international control."

The Ethiopian commissar also commended the proposition put forward in Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance to create "a standing force of 10,000 soldiers under the authority of the Security Council." This in spite of the fact that the UN's present "peacekeeping" operations, as Kebede himself admits, are already vastly "overextended," with "more than 70,000 personnel, and costs of over $3.5 billion."

Kebede parroted the Global Security Programme and Zbigniew Brzezinski in calling for establishing regional "security" (i.e. war-making) organizations similar to NATO "in the Middle East, South Asia and North East Asia."

Joining the Mikhail/Zbigniew Double-speak Chorus, Kebede chirped: "The commonality of goals, and shared values of global ethics, produce justification for world governance. This concept is in no way an alteration of national sovereignty, and does not lead to world government."

Although the state of the world's political, economic, and social ills came in for thorough treatment at the forum, it was in the area of global spiritual enlightenment that the gathering blossomed into full flower. Leading the cosmic charge were a host of the reigning Brahmins of New Age bliss, including Willis Harman, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Richard Baker, Matthew Fox, Shirley MacLaine, Deepak Chopra, Fritjof Capra, and Rupert Sheldrake.

Willis Harman, New Age philosopher, president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author of Global Mind Change and The New Metaphysical Foundation of Modern Science, has had a profound effect on our society in the past couple of decades. In "Our Hopeful Future: Creating a Sustainable Society," one of his new essays distributed at the forum, Harman reported, "Around the world one detects murmurings that industrialized and 'developing' countries alike have a need for a new social order -- that, in fact, the situation calls for a worldwide systemic change." Really? Have you heard such "murmurings" in your neighborhood? Not likely -- unless your neighborhood is home to some of Harman's murmurous disciples.

Evolutionary Process

These murmurers, who comprise "an expanding fraction of the populace," perceive "a shifting underlying picture of reality." They see "the connectedness of everything to everything" and place "emphasis on intuition and the assumption of inner divinity." These adepts of the "new spirituality" share a "commitment to global change." Their "New Order," says Harman, is characterized by "an emphasis not on goals but on process ... the process is an evolutionary one, and the goals are emergent." The message is: Don't question where I am taking you, just start moving. And trust me; I'm doing what's good for you.

"Interconnectedness" is the over-arching theme also preached by biologist Rupert Sheldrake, a Theosophist who posits that a "morphogenic field" -- an invisible matrix or organizing field that connects all life and thought on earth -- holds the keys to our existence and to the "Ageless Wisdom."

Fritjof Capra, physicist and systems theorist, New Age swami, and author of the international best-sellers Uncommon Wisdom, The Turning Point, and The Tao of Physics, provided a similar message. "The Elmwood Institute, which Capra founded in Berkeley, California, sees that none of the major problems of our time can be understood in isolation," write New Age political activists Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson in Spiritual Politics: Changing the World From the Inside Out. "A systems approach is needed, as all our problems are interconnected and interdependent, facets of one single crisis -- essentially a crisis of perception. This crisis is part of a cultural shift from a mechanistic worldview to a holistic and ecological view, from a value system based on domination to partnership, from quantity to quality, from expansion to conservation, from efficiency to sustainability."

A Capra essay, "The Turning of the Tide," was included in the Fall 1993 issue of ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, which was part of the free literature made available to the forum participants. In it Capra writes:

The view of man as dominating nature and woman, and the belief in the superior role of the rational mind, have been supported and encouraged by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which adheres to the image of a male god, personification of supreme reason and source of ultimate power, who rules the world from above by imposing his divine law on it. The laws of nature searched for by the scientists were seen as reflections of this divine law, originating in the mind of God.

This traditional Judaeo-Christian-influenced thinking, says Capra, "has led to attitudes that are profoundly anti-ecological. In truth, the understanding of ecosystems is hindered by the very nature of the rational mind. Rational thinking is linear, whereas ecological awareness arises from an intuition of nonlinear systems." Capra celebrates Eastern mysticism as a superior spiritual path, while applauding the "inevitable decline of patriarchy," the demise of "fixed ideas and rigid patterns of behavior," and the rise of the feminist and ecological movements.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of The Book of Co-Creation, claims in her curricula vitae to be "establishing Evolutionary Circles throughout the world to support small groups in their emergence as universal humans, founders of a global civilization." Hubbard was an organizer of the 1988 Soviet-American Citizens' Summit in Alexandria, Virginia, coordinated with the Soviet Peace Committee, a creature of the Soviet Central Committee's International Department established by Stalin to carry out penetration and subversion of foreign countries. Hubbard is also a former director of the Federal Union, founded by Fabian Socialist Rhodes Scholar Clarence Streit.

As a psychologist with Task Force Delta, an army think tank of futurists, strategists, and psychology and parapsychology researchers, Hubbard is credited with the idea of "bombarding" the Soviets with "psychic love," and formation of the First Earth Battalion (FEB). The credo of the FEB "guerilla gurus" states: "I take personal responsibility for generating evolutionary conspiracies as a part of my work. I will select and create conspiratorial mechanisms ... that will create and perform evolutionary breakthrough actions on behalf of people and planet. One people, one planet."

But according to these cognoscenti, there are too many people on this "one planet." Willis Harman's essay grapples with the "dilemma.": "In the economy-dominated world, as the outspoken anthropologist Margaret Mead once put it bluntly, 'The unadorned truth is that we do not need now, and will not need later, much of the marginal labor -- the very young, the very old, the very uneducated, and the very stupid.'" "This dilemma is perhaps the most basic one we face," said Harman. Society can't afford "from an environmental standpoint, or from the standpoint of tearing apart of the social fabric -- the economic growth that would be necessary to provide jobs for all in the conventional sense, and the inequities which have come to accompany that growth. This dilemma, more than any other aspect of our current situation, indicates how fundamental a system change is now required."

In the closing plenary session of the forum, philosopher/author Sam Keen summarized the consensus of the learned ones. Among the conference participants, said Keen, "there was very strong agreement that religious institutions have to take primary responsibility for the population explosion. We must speak far more clearly about sexuality, about contraception, about abortion, about the values that control the population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the [world's] population by 90 percent and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage."

How do we "cut" the planet's population by 90 percent? Even genocidal mass murderers Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao combined did not come close to attaining such a "lofty" goal. As always, the devil is in the details. Forum participant Barbara Marx Hubbard may already have provided some of the devilish answer. In The Book of Co-Creation she writes: "Out of the full spectrum of human personality, one-fourth is electing to transcend .... One-fourth is destructive [and] they are defective seeds. In the past they were permitted to die a 'natural death.' ... Now as we approach the quantum shift from the creature-human to the co-creative human -- the human who is an inheritor of god-like powers -- the destructive one-fourth must be eliminated from the social body .... Fortunately, you are not responsible for this act. We are. We are in charge of God's selection process for planet Earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death."

Lord help us all if this de facto "Brain Trust" of diabolical misfits, murderers, megalomaniacs, terrorists, and tyrants succeed in establishing their "new world order," their "new global civilization."