"Thy Will Be Done", The Conquest of the Amazon:
by Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett
Harper Collins, 1995. 960 pages
reviewed by Carmelo Ruiz
Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican journalist and research associate at the institute for Social Ecology, email ise@ igc.apc.org at Goddard College, Vermont. Connect: ernail: carrneloruiz@hotmailcom
Upon a superficial examination, one would tend to think that the book will appeal to the Bible-thumping, right-wing populists of the John Birch fringe who despise the Rockefellers. This band of the American political spectrum, which has been known to publicize bizarre allegations of a Rockefeller--orchestrated plot to create a socialist world government, will be baffled and perplexed by one of Thy Will be Done's chief conclusions: that they've been had. According to Colby and Dennett, far from being a threat to the Machiavellian power of the Rockefellers, the Christian fundamentalists were extremely useful in furthering the global designs of the heirs of the Standard Oil fortune.
On the other hand, left-leaning liberals will find the book's conclusions even harder to swallow, since the Rockefeller philanthropies (which include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund) are among the main funding sources of liberal political activism in the US, including civil liberties, feminism and the environmental movement. Beneficiaries of Rockefeller charitable giving in recent years have included groups like Essential Information, the ACLU, the Ms. Foundation, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Environmental Action, the Student Environmental Action Coalition, the Center for Responsive Politics, the NAACP who are much more likely to say, "Wait, you're being a little unbalanced. Sure, they've done terrible things in the past, but they're funding some really terrific stuff nowadays." As much as one may try to rationalize the embarrassing predicament of taking money from the ultra-rich to finance social change, the question remains: What are the prospects for an American progressive agenda when it is heavily dependent on funding from a philanthropic system that owes its fortune to commercial activities that destroy ecosystems worldwide, erode biological diversity and create a holocaust for indigenous peoples?
I know, like stoopid question, right?
There are possible parallels to be seen between, Anti-fas / globalism and JBL / globalism. In the JBL case the xenophobia of a section of society was cultivated, and was then encouraged and heavily funded to ‘go south’ as missionaries to ‘convert’ the natives. The end result was the mapping and consequent exploitation of native folk, worth billions to the SIL sponsors, and sending large numbers of folk north to try to escape the carnage of their brand spanking new rationalization schemes.
In that case ‘conservatives’ got punked by their favorite nemesis, and the parallel might be seen in how the pretenses of folk are used as the levers by which they are deceived.
(Wow -fuck, blind squirrels and nuts I guess, somebody should post that line in the RI quotes only thread.)
Yep, Jack guessed it, I was raised in a country school, that’s why I’m so stupid.
1913
Frederick T. Gates wrote in The Country School of Tomorrow, Occasional Papers Number 1:
“In our dream we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.