At the U.S. Press Center in the luxurious Rio Sheraton, a young reporter slammed a telephone down with an expletive. “I can’t believe this guy!” he said to nearby colleagues, referring to a religious radio-talk show host with whom he had just finished a live interview. “He wanted to know if there were a lot of socialists down here promoting socialism at the Earth Summit. Like there was some socialist conspiracy.” A round of laughter ensued from journalists within earshot. “I haven’t seen any socialists, have you?” chortled another reporter. “He’s just another religious, right-wing idiot,” chimed a third newsman.
Since I was about due to start a live radio telephone interview myself, there was no time to point out to the smug, chuckling journalists that their remarks were evidence of their own glaring ignorance. The facts are that socialists and socialist thought saturated the entire Earth Summit and Global Forum. Maybe no official canvass recorded the political affiliations and philosophies of the tens of thousands in attendance, but it is a fair surmise that most would have been comfortable with that label -even though political expediency for some might have precluded wearing it publicly. A great many, though, openly identified themselves as Marxists and socialists. And the vast majority of those who had not consciously adopted the Marxist creed found no quarrel with the fundamental socialist premises guiding the conference.
Conniving and Conspiring
But the “socialist conspiracy” goes much deeper than that. The entire history of the Earth Summit, from Stockholm in 1972 to Rio in 1992, is one of socialist conniving and conspiring against basic, God-given economic and political rights. The first “Earth Summit,” the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, was hosted by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a member of the Socialist International. Out of that summit came a socialist-environmentalist manifesto called the Stockholm Declaration, consisting of 26 principles, and the Stockholm Plan of Action, a set of 109 recommendations. Building on that base were the Hammarskjold Report, by former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, and the Brandt Commission Report, by Willy Brandt, former chancellor of West Germany and current president of the Socialist International (SI).
Brandt, it may be recalled, was toppled as chancellor in 1974 when it became known that his top advisor, Gunter Guillaume, was a Soviet KGB agent. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Later investigations showed there was a large “Red Circle” of Soviet agents in the Brandt government. None of this was surprising to those who knew his background. Brandt, an illegitimate child who had grown up under the Marxist tutelage of his mother and grandfather, joined the militant Red Falcons as a teen and traveled throughout Europe during World War II as a propagandist in the Red network. As chairman of the Independent Commission on International Development (or the Brandt Commission), he pressed forward with typical zeal to promote the United Nations environment/development program for world socialism.
In an article published during Eco ’92 in Terra Viva, a daily newspaper of the Rio summit, Brandt called for the “North” to “share the peace dividend” with the “South” in order to build “a new world order free of any claims of dominance.” And, as if the assembled rabid internationalists needed reminding, he noted: “A more broadly defined concept of security corresponds to a more narrowly defined concept of national sovereignty.” In a more candid moment, the leader of world socialist parties would admit that what he really has in mind is defining national sovereignty completely out of existence.
“Common Future”
In 1982, on the 10th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference, a meeting was held in Nairobi, Kenya, which brought forth the United Nations World Commission on the Environment and Development, chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Mrs. Brundtland, it just happens, is a vice-president of the Socialist International. Four years later her commission produced the Brundtland Report, “Our Common Future,” which, like the Ward-Dubos report in 1972, laid out the internationalist socialist game plan for exploiting environmental issues to establish a socialist world government. According to Maurice Strong, secretary-general of UNCED, “a key drafter of the Brundtland Report” was Mr. Nitin Desai, UNCED’s deputy secretary-general. Desai, another socialist, spent most of his career with the Planning Commission of India. Those wishing to get some idea of the “common future” envisioned for the world by the summiteers would do well then to take a look at that economic “marvel” of central bureaucratic planning in India.
Obviously one of the favorite celebrities of the summit, Mrs. Brundtland was perpetually trailed by a legion of doting paparazzi. But in all the ink and television videotape spent on recording her speeches and interviews, we are not aware of any mention of her leadership role in the Socialist International. The matter did come up at least one time. During the press conference following her speech to the opening plenary session of the summit, she was asked by a Latin American reporter if the general direction being taken by the Earth Summit was agreeable with the International. Yes, she replied, the UN proceedings were generally compatible with the plans of the international socialists. (Of course! How could it be anything but compatible, considering the heavy dominance of the Socialist International in the summit’s entire history from Stockholm to Rio?)
The socialists have learned to assuage the conservative opposition by paying lip service to “market economics” and “the lessons learned from the failures of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.” But for those even vaguely familiar with the Orwellian nature of environmental Newspeak, the sham is transparent.
“The concept of sustainable development,” said Mrs. Brundtland in an article she wrote for Terra Viva, “… requires a focus on global interdependence and on the close links between ecology and economy.” (Read: Nationalism has to go, and everything having to do with the environment or the economy has to come under central, global management.) According to the rising socialist star, “In order to reverse present negative trends, we must change the way we organize our societies.” (Read: You must let us socialist master-planners completely restructure the world and plan your lives.)
“Furthermore,” said Brundtland, “the nation state is too small an area for addressing regional and global challenges related to the environment and development.” Again, echoing Willy Brandt and her other internationalist comrades, she declared in her plenary speech: “Narrowly focused national priorities will only hamper progress and stand in the way,” She called for “a revolution,” a new “global partnership,” a “new form of collective engagement,” “new global structures,” and other new word order buzzwords for global dictatorship.
What’s To Hide?
So, why does the role of the Socialist International in the most far-reaching environmental-economic-political event of the century go completely unmentioned in the American media? Why is it that probably 99 percent of Americans, if asked, would say they have never even heard of the organization?
In the group’s own literature, which was available at the Earth Summit, it describes itself as “the worldwide organization of socialist, social democratic and labour parties. It currently comprises 88 political parties and organizations from all continents.” It claims millions of members and tens of millions of voters worldwide. It claims to be the successor to the so-called “First International” of Karl Marx, founded in London in 1864.
The Socialist International boasts an impressive membership roll of past and present prime ministers, presidents, and world notables, many of whom participated in the Earth Summit. Besides Mrs, Brundtland, other SI vice-presidents include Shimon Peres (Israel), Neil Kinnock (Great Britain), Bettino Craxi (Italy), Michael Manley (Jamaica), Leonel Brizola (Brazil), and Carlos Andres Perez (Venezuela). Among the organization’s 13 “Honorary Presidents” are Michael Foot (Great Britain), Anker Jorgensen (Denmark), Leopold Senghor (Senegal), Mario Soares (Portugal), and Gough Whitlam (Australia). France’s Francois Mitterand and Spain’s Philipe Gonzalez are also members.
Are all members of the media ignorant of the environmental-socialist connection? Not hardly. But they’re hoping you remain so.
This report by senior Editor William F. Jasper from the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, originally appeared in The New American magazine for August 10, 1992.
