British Networks and the Brazilian Amazon

by Mark J. Burdman

In recent months, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest brought on by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies (see EIR, May 19, 1989) has been seized upon as a pretext by "environmentalist" circles to demand an "internationaliza- tion" of the region--i.e., an end to Brazilian, and other nations', sovereignty over the Amazon. Among the reports EIR's investiga- tion into the conspiracy against Brazil has produced, is the following.

For all intents and purposes, Britain--with crucial support from the United States, the Netherlands, and Norwegian President Gro Brundtland's Socialist International apparatus--is the command- center for targeting of Brazilian sovereignty. Prince Charles's end-of-February trip to the Amazon, and the British rock star Sting's patronage of Amazonian Indians' tribal causes, are only the more visible aspects of the campaign.

A key center for coordinating such activities is Scotland's Findhorn Foundation, which has been described as the "Vatican City" of the New Age Movement. Certain of Findhorn's trustees, such as Ed Posey of London, are deeply involved in the Amazon issue. Posey is a co-director of a London institution called the Gaia Foundation, which is one arm of an Aquarian organiza- tion called the Business Network, which seeks to implant New Age ideals within City of London milieux. The Gaia Foundation houses an organization call Forest People's Support Group and the Education of the Awakening Earth. It sponsored top Brazilian ecologist Jose Lutzenberger for a tour of Britain in the autumn of 1988, during which time Lutzenberger was in touch with other Findhorn circles in Britain. Lutzenberger is the head of Gaia Foundation in Brazil.

Lutzenberger was on of the recipients of an award given out by the Gaia Foundation and collaborators, the Right Livelihood Award, given to individuals for their "vision and work contributing to making life more whole, healing our planet, and uplifting humanity." Recipients are chosen by an international jury panel, all of whom also serve as directors of the Right Livelihood Foundation. Some of these jurors have included in recent years: Rodrigo Carazo, ex-President of Costa Rica, Founder and President of the U.N. Peace University; Monika Griefahn, Greenpeace; and Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary- General of the United Nations and important international collaborator of the Lucis Trust.

Recipients of the Right Livelihood Award in the 1980-86 period included: Petra Kelly, co-founder of the West German Green Party; Sir George Trevelyan, founder and head of the Wrekin Trust, a leading Aquarian institution; Erik Dammann of Norway, author of THE FUTURE IN OUR HANDS, which advocates reducing consumption to "minimize environmental impact" and to "assist the poor"; Dr. Leopold Kohr of Austria, a guru of the "small is beautiful" movement; and Dr. Robert Jungk, also of Austria, one of the true-blue fanatics of the modern-day environmental/ecological movement.

The creator of the Right Livelihood Award and director of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, is a Swedish-German writer based on the Isle of Man, Jacob von Uexkull, whose writings are also popular among European "New Right" institutions, such as the Kassel, West German-based Thule Seminar.

The "Gaia" ideology of another New Age organization, Living Earth, or Living Mother Earth, has gotten spectacular publicity and accreditation in New Age and liberal circles in past years. But make no mistake: The core of its belief-structure is beyond genocidal. Says Oxford University author Anna Bramwell in her just-released book, ECOLOGY IN THE 20TH CENTURY: "According to this belief, 'Gaia', the Earth, has its own serene ecological balance, its own will to live. It is capable of preserving its own existence. It can shrug off disturbinb intrusions, whether from comets or from man. Like any species, Gaia has its own natural term. It lives and it will die."

That is, if man is a "disturbing intrusion," he can easily be gotten rid of.

From April 7-9, there was an international conference in Winchester, Britain on the theme of Gaia, attended by 300 individuals. It was sponsored by the Wrekin Trust, founded in 1971 by Sir George Trevelyan, who is also a senior figure as the Findhorn Foundation. Wrekin is intensively involved in popularizing some of the same "New Age" mysticism that Hitler, the Hitler- precursor Thule Society of the 1920s, and the Nazi Occult Bureau were involved in, including astrology, studies of the Holy Grail, and reincarnation. From April 27 to May 7, Sir George and a handful of disciples met in Le Plan, Provence, France, to discuss "The New Gnosticism."

BRITAIN'S 'AMAZON NETWORK'

Clearly, therefore, paganism, gnosticism, and occultism are at the root of the "Amazon" campaign. The umbrella organiza- tion for discussions of the Amazon issue is something called the Aid and the Environment Group, which meets regularly in London. Participating organizations include Friends of the Earth, which has a Tropical Rainforests Campaign (26-28 Underwood Street, London); Greenpeace; Survival International (310 Edgeware Road, London), which is seeking to cut ALL aid to Brazil until the Brazilian government recognizes "legitimate Indian rights"; Oxfam (274 Banbury Road, Oxford); and the Brazil Network (9 Poland Street, London), described as "an independent organization founded to further exchange of information by groups committed to furthering Human Rights and environmental protection in Brazil."

Publicity for such planning and activities is channeled through something called Television Trust for the Environment (TVE), based in London and Washington, which specializes in patroniz- ing and/or filming Goebbels-like "Big Lie" documentaries on the environment. TVE was founded in 1984 with sponsorship by the U.N. Environment Program and Britain's Central TV. The title of the January 1989 MOVING PICTURES BULLETIN, the quarterly publication of TVE, was "Amazonia Ablaze."

The work of the TVE is praised by the Lucis Trust's WORLD GOODWILL newsletter. TVE's International Advisory Council is chaired by Mostafa Tolba, executive director or the United Nations Environment Program. On the Council are the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, head of the Groupe de Bellerive; Charles de Haes, director general of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF); Kenton Miller, director general of the International Union for Conserva- tion of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN); Sir Shridath Ramphal, secretary general of the British Commonwealth Secretariat; Gustave Speth, president of the World Resources Institute; and Maurice Strong, one-time United Nations undersecretary general. Its board of trustees include top officials from the World- wide Fund for Nature, the U.N. Environment Program, the IUCN, British Broadcasting Corporation, and the International Institute for Environment and Development.

Among "organizations contributing to TVE projects," one finds the Bellerive Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Environ- ment Liaison Centre, the European Cultural Foundation, the European Community, the German Marshall Fund, Sadruddin Aga Khan's Independent Commission for International Humanitarian Issue, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program, UNESCO, the World Food Program, the Swiss Forgeign Ministry, IBM-UK, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

On of the documentaries features in the MOVING PICTURES BULLETIN is entitled "The Rainbow Warrior Conspiracy," a sympathetic portrayal of the 1985 sinking of the Greenpeace RAINBOW WARRIOR ship in New Zealand Waters.

A U.S. group working closely with the British nexus on the Amazon issue, is the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Defense Fun. A top EDF trustee and patron of environmental issues in the United States, Jennifer Hobby Catto, is the wife of the new American ambassador to the United Kingdom, Henry Catto, who is one of President George Bush's closest friends. Will the American embassy in London now become a logistical support center for the "Amazon network" of Britain?