The FTAA’s Controlled Opposition
By William F. Jasper
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Source: The New American, December 15, 2003
The
rent-a-mob that descended on Miami provided a familiar service: scaring
away responsible opponents and further justifying the police state
build-up. |
The
motley collection of protesters who came to Miami to demonstrate
against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has become
a familiar sight at these confabs. As usual, the weird menagerie
included a mixture of the prosaic, the perverse, the vicious, the
absurd, and the obscene: union hard hats, self-proclaimed lesbian
"dykes," clench-fisted Communists, tie-dyed dolphin dancers, and
grotesquely tattooed grandmas. There were lots of t-shirts sporting the
visage of Communist revolutionary Che Guevara or cop-killer convict
Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Watermelon Marxist contingent (Red on the inside,
Green on the outside) was there in force: the Sierra Club, Friends of
the Earth, Greenpeace, the Green Party, the Animal Liberation Front,
etc. There were hammer-and-sickle symbols aplenty on flags, banners,
socks, backpacks, hats and skin. There was an abundant sprinkling of
black-garbed anarchists who covered their faces with ski masks or
neckerchiefs. And, of course, there were legions of peaceniks — the
leftist folks who reliably oppose every U.S. military effort but
fervently embrace so-called wars of liberation by Communist-backed,
anti-American forces worldwide.
These are the usual suspects we
have come to expect at this sort of event, ever since the infamous 1999
demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) erupted into
the violent and destructive "Battle of Seattle." They are actors in an
ongoing scripted charade that has been orchestrated by many of the
Establishment elites they ostensibly came to oppose. The leaders of
both the pro-FTAA and anti-FTAA forces have been working hand in hand
to advance the same one-world agenda.
The radical street cadres
would not materialize without the massive funding provided by the major
tax-exempt foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and MacArthur.
These foundations and the transnational corporations that fund the
enviro-Leninists and other extremists invariably share an important
common denominator: their boards of directors are peppered with members
of the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR is one of the most
important Insider brain trusts promoting the FTAA one-world agenda.
Harmony of Purpose
Those
unfamiliar with the realities of power politics may find it hard to
believe that there is any harmony of purpose between the protesters in
the street and the delegates inside the summit. But there most
certainly is; the CFR one-worlders are paying for an important service.
For one thing, the street theater that the radical demonstrators
provide is a wonderful diversion distracting public attention from the
subversive schemes of the CFR’s "free trade" negotiators in the silk
suits. Secondly, the repulsive appearance of many of the FTAA
protesters and their lawless actions make the FTAA proponents appear
conservative and eminently respectable by comparison. The same
repellent image of the demonstrators also serves to taint and
discourage all others who might otherwise oppose the FTAA on completely
legitimate, principled grounds. No patriot wants to be associated with
such revolting rabble.
The rent-a-mob agitators also provide a
compelling pretext for the further erosion of liberties and advancement
of the police state, in the name of order and homeland security. In
view of past violence and destruction caused by demonstrations against
the WTO, FTAA and World Bank — not to mention the possibility of
9/11-type terrorism — local Miami residents and officials had good
reason to be fearful. But Uncle Sam came to the rescue; Congress rolled
$8.5 million for security for the Miami summit into the multi-billion
dollar Iraq funding bill. And the result? Miami became an armed camp,
as armored vehicles, helicopters, SWAT teams and riot police swarmed
over the city. It is a scenario that has become more and more common as
communities are forced to respond to the threat of mayhem from the
civil demolitionists.
Pretext for Power Grab
Finally,
the street agitators offer another very important service: They provide
a pretext for the globalist elites to grab more power supposedly in
response to the demands of "the people." The "Battle of Seattle"
provided an excellent example of this pincers strategem at work. With
the city still smouldering, the CFR claque in the Clinton
administration agreed to listen to the concerns that were motivating
the protesters. Led by the Ford Foundation’s professional radicals Lori
Wallach and Ralph Nader, the Seattle protesters demanded that the WTO
move beyond its exclusive focus on trade issues and adopt international
labor, education, environmental, and health care standards. The CFR
global corporatists have been only too happy to accommodate these
appeals to expand the transgovernmental jurisdiction of the WTO.
As
leftist academic Francis Fukuyama noted in a December 1, 1999 Wall
Street Journal article, the Left should be grateful that the WTO has
been advancing their radical agenda. "By creating the WTO, global
capitalism has solved the left’s collective action problem," Fukuyama
averred. "The WTO is the only international organization that stands
any chance of evolving into an institution of global governance,
setting rules not only for how countries will trade and invest with one
another, but also for how they will deal with issues like labor
standards and the environment." Mr. Fukuyama is not only a left-wing
intellectual, but also a CFR and Trilateral Commission member.
The
Left’s April 20, 2002 march on Washington gives another excellent
example of this strategy in action. Led by members of the Communist
Party USA, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Communist-led U.S.
Peace Council and others of similar ilk, the demonstrators demanded
increased financial aid for education. The Establishment’s response was
immediate, as if it had been prearranged. On April 21 World Bank
President James Wolfensohn (CFR) announced that he had heard the cries
of the people and his institution would be launching a
multi-billion-dollar education fund for poor countries. The next day
the CFR-dominated Bush administration announced it would hike U.S.
bilateral foreign aid by 50 percent and our funding to the World Bank’s
International Development Association by 18 percent over the next three
years.
Radicals in the Streets and the Suites
The
Miami FTAA conference represented a new watershed in open collaboration
between the left-wing activists and the CFR elites at trade summits.
While there were a few dozen arrests of radicals in the streets, they
served mainly to draw attention away from the fact that there were a
great many radicals in the suites, as well. Following the UN’s example
of giving radical NGOs semi-official status at international
conferences, the FTAA welcomed hundreds of leftists into the America’s
Trade and Sustainable Development Forum (ATSDF) that ran concomitantly
with the FTAA in the neighboring Clarion and Marriott hotels. The ATSDF
conclave featured workshops, panels and presentations from the veteran
activists of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, the World Resources
Institute, Freedom House, the Washington Office on Latin America, the
World Bank, Oxfam America, Global Trade Watch and the Migration Policy
Institute.
Meanwhile, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney (CFR),
leader of the nation’s largest union, brought thousands of steel
workers, auto workers, hotel workers and teachers to Miami to keep the
pressure boiling from below.
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