On the 6th November 2013, the International Rescue Committee honoured George Soros with its "Freedom Award" for what David Miliband described as Soros' "tremendous commitment to the advancement of human rights, social justice and democracy around the world."
In their annoucement of the award, IRC described Open Society, of which George Soros is founder and chairman, as "an especially valuable partner because of its willingness to invest in flexible, strategic or higher-risk activities—including assessments, pilot projects and fledgling efforts—that enable the IRC to test and scale up the most effective and efficient programs."
George Soros is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
What are the objectives of the Council on Foreign Relations?
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) declares publicly that it is "an independent, non-partisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher". The following quotation is attributed to David Rockefeller, Honorary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and their great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government." He continued:
The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.
According to Rockefeller's preferred vision, where are we most likely to find 'an intellectual elite and world bankers' operating? Although the above quote was allegedly made at a Bilderberg Group meeting, it perhaps suggests that under his chairmanship, honourary or not, the CFR is covertly pursuing an altogether different strategy to that of "an independent, non-partisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher".
John F. McManus, in Behind the Obama Agenda (2008), made the observation that "no other organization comes close to boasting the kind of clout that the CFR members have held: eight presidents of the U.S.; seven vice presidents; 17 secretaries of state; 20 secretaries of war/defense; 18 secretaries of the Treasury; 15 directors of the CIA."
The International Rescue Committee
The International Rescue Committee says it is a 'global humanitarian aid, relief and development non-governmental organisation. It provides emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by natural disaster, war or persecution'. They also claim to be 'providing relief to millions of uprooted people inside Syria; in neighbouring Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan; in Afghanistan; on the shores of Greece; and in 26 resettlement offices in the United States'.
The International Rescue Committee is governed by a volunteer, unpaid board of directors. Of the 28 member board, 11 are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations. These are:
Timothy F. Geithner - 75th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury - Former President and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and currently president of Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm.
Thomas Nides - Former Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and now Vice-Chairman of Morgan Stanley.
Mona K. Sutphen - Partner, Macro Advisory Partners LLC - served as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011, spent three years at UBS AG as Managing Director, Former Foreign Service Officer, National Security Council 1991 to 2000. Mona is a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB).
Gillian Sorensen - Senior Advisor, United Nations Foundation - Formerly assistant secretary-general for external relations on appointment by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and served from 1993 to 1996 as special advisor for public policy on appointment by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Mary M. Boies - Partner, Boies & McInnis - Lawyer. Previously a member of the board of directors of MBNA Corporation and MBNA Bank.
Florence A. Davis - President, Starr Foundation - The Foundation was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, a pioneer of globalization.
Susan Dentzer - Senior Policy Advisor, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Tom Schick - Co-Chair of the IRC - Executive vice president for Corporate Affairs and Communications for the American Express Company.
Sarah O’Hagan - Co-Chair of the IRC - Currently Chair, Board of Advisors, School of International Studies, John Hopkins University. Former reporter and communications consultant.
Maureen White - Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Formerly represented the US Government at UNICEF (1997-2001).
Tracy R. Wolstencroft - President & CEO, Heidrick & Struggles - Previously a Partner at Goldman Sachs and spent his eartly career at JP Morgan.
Examples of IRC Senior personnel who also enjoy membership of the Council on Foreign relations include:
Sharon Waxman - (IRC Vice President, Public Policy and Advocacy) - Formerly with the U.S. State Department as Deputy to the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (2009 - 2012).
Kate Phillips-Barrasso - (IRC Director of Policy and Advocacy, Washington) - Previously engaged with United Nations Development Programme’s Millennium Campaign, drawing the attention of policy makers and the public to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
As for its president, during the time David Miliband was UK Environment Secretary he floated the idea of every citizen being issued with a "Carbon Credit Card" to improve personal carbon thrift. Miliband also claimed that individuals have to be empowered to tackle global warming — "the mass mobilising movement of our age". On the morning of 13 December 2007, Miliband stood in for Prime Minister, Gordon Brown at the official signing ceremony in Lisbon of the EU Reform Treaty.
David Miliband is also currently Co-Chair of the Global Ocean Commission, a body which is formulating a 'Sustainable Development Goal for the Global Ocean'. He is an Honorary Governor of the Ditchley Foundation.
The Ditchley Foundation, UK and US
The Ditchley Foundation claims that it "brings together leading practitioners and experts from around the world to help shape policy on the major international issues of the day." In relation to it's past conferences its' website notes that "while participants are often listed, in the spirit of the Chatham House Rule no comment is ever attributed to an individual."
It's composition suggests a likeness to the Council on Foreign Relations. For example, amongst its Hon. Governors, Governors and Directors we discovered serving and former government ministers, ambassadors, the Head of the Home Civil Service, academics, bankers, judges at the International Court of Justice, the Chairman of the BBC Trust, CEOs from the corporate sector, the former Secretary General, NATO, the former Chief Speech writer and Director of Communications to the Secretary General of the United Nations, the former United Kingdom Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the former Chief of MI6.
The American Ditchley Foundation was established in 1964 as an affiliate of the Ditchley Foundation, providing a 'formal link for continued transatlantic dialogue'.
Jami Miscik is Vice Chairman of the American Board of Directors of the Ditchley Foundation. She is also a Board Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
IRC-UK, Executive Director
Carolyn Makinson joined International Rescue Committee UK as Executive Director in September 2010. She was previously the Executive Director of the Women's Refugee Commission. She is a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
IRC-UK Board of Trustees
Sir Jeremy Greenstock (UK Trustee) - Greenstock is a Trustee of the IRC (UK) and has been Chairman of the United Nations Association UK Board of Directors since February 2011. He was UK Ambassador to the United Nations for five years, from 1998 to 2003, attending over 150 meetings of the UN Security Council. Between 2004 - 2010 he was Director of the Ditchley Foundation. Greenstock is also a Council Member of the Royal Institution of International Affairs (Chatham House).
Dylan Pereira - Currently global head of strategy at Barclays Wealth & Investment Management, was formerly Vice President in the Investment Management Division at Goldman Sachs and advisor to Tony Blair. He is a corporate and former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sir John Holmes GCVO, KBE, CMG (Trustee) - In 1995, Sir John joined Prime Minister John Major in Downing Street as his Private Secretary (Overseas Affairs) and diplomatic adviser. He continued this role with Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 1999, becoming Principal Private Secretary. From 2008 he served as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, before taking over the post of Director of the Ditchley Foundation from fellow board member Sir Jeremy Greenstock. Holmes is also an advisory board Member of Wilton Park.
Wilton Park
According to its website, 'Wilton Park is a Forum for Global Change'.
The institution takes its name from the Wilton Park estate in Buckinghamshire, which was used as a Prisoner of War camp during World War II. Between January 1946 and June 1948 more than 4,000 Germans attend re-education classes where they discussed democratic processes with visiting political figures and intellectuals. These include philosopher Bertrand Russell, social reformer Lord William Beveridge, and Lady Astor, the first female UK Member of Parliament. One German participant says of his time at Wilton Park: “I was a Nazi; I came to Wilton Park and it changed my life.”
Wilton Park has an international network ..[and]..encourages and facilitates on-going high level collaboration which shapes the agenda and pushes forward international policy.. They develop strategic, intellectual and financial partnerships with like-minded organisations to focus on bringing people together to resolve global issues. [my emphasis]
Wilton Park is a non-profit making Executive Agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). It became an Executive Agency on 1 September 1991. For over 60 years, it has provided a neutral and discreet environment for “off the record” discussions on the most pressing of global problems.
The core objective of Wilton Park is to:
Contribute to analysing, understanding, and advancing the agenda on international issues, and in so doing contribute to achieving HMG priorities, fulfilling UK public diplomacy strategies, informing the policy-making of HMG and the international community.
Wilton Park partners include: Chatham House, BBC World Service Trust, Centrica PLC, Open Society Foundations (George Soros), Respublica, The Future of the United Nations Development System (The FUNDS project), UK Border Agency and World Vison (UK).
Delivering a well-managed and effective UN: building international consensus was an event held at Wilton Park on June 2012 in collaboration with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. The opening paragraph of the event programme states:
Following publication of the UN Secretary General’s Five-Year Action Agenda, in which Ban Ki Moon identified the need for a stronger UN, this conference seeks to build on international momentum for management change and innovation, identifying concrete ways to strengthen the UN’s effectiveness and efficiency.
Event Speakers included: Vijay Rangarajan, Director, Multilateral Policy, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London; Michael von der Schulenburg, Former Executive Representative of the Secretary General (ERSG), United Nations, Vienna; Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Chair, United Nations Association of the UK; Kim Won-soo, Assistant Secretary General for Change Management, United Nations, New York; Ruth Grove, Acting Director, Human Resources Division, World Food Programme (WFP), Rome; Aruna Thanabalasingam, Deputy Director, Human Resources Division, UNICEF, New York; Sigrid Kaag, Assistant Secretary-General and Assistant Administrator; Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New York and Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General, United Nations for Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Paris.
Amongst the visiting Programe Directors at Wilton Park we discovered Catarina Tully who aside from working for the UN Deputy Secretary General’s office on the UN reform process, Global Compact, UN Development Programme, and with the World Bank in Geneva, has also worked in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, developing domestic policy and strategic capability for both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, including a strategic audit of the UK.
Coincidentally, she was the Strategy Project Director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Policy Planning Staff in the UK where she worked directly with the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband, now President at the International Rescue Committee.
David Rockerfeller's preferred "supranational sovereignty of an international elite and world bankers" appears to be over represented within the governance structure of the International Rescue Committee. With its close links to the UN Agencies and the Internationalists who inhabit the Council on Foreign Relations, the Ditchley Foundations and Wilton Park it is difficult not to suspect that the IRC is in some way aiding the 'march towards World Government'.
Main image: "The Trojans Pulling the Wooden Horse into the City" by Giulio Bonasone
