The Tangled Web Icke Weaves: Who is Behind David Icke’s Freedom Foundation?
by Will Banyan //
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/2013/01/the-tangled-web-icke-weaves-who-is-behind-david-ickes-freedom-foundation/
Mocking David Icke’s judgment has long been the sport of various wags
in the mainstream media. Back in 1991, he memorably came to grief on
BBC1 when Terry Wogan punctured his seemingly confident façade with a
scathing reminder to the savant in the turquoise shellsuit that the
studio audience was actually, “laughing at you. They’re not laughing
with you.”
Since then Icke has managed to attract ridicule from his fellow
conspiracists, most notably when he launched into his reptilian thesis
all guns blazing, convinced that he alone had happened onto the
truth.
The “biggest crock to be foisted on the public in many moons,” declared
an incredulous Jim Keith, after reading Icke’s magnum opus on the
reptilians,
The Biggest Secret (1999).Despite some testiness, Icke insists such criticism has been water off a duck’s back.
Such defenses are definitely an asset as Icke continues to feed
perceptions that his judgment is suspect. Mid-way through 2006, Icke
announced on his website that he was forced to take legal action against
long-time collaborator Royal Adams, who had taken control of all his
writings. This was an ironic turn of events, given that Icke had
dedicated his most recent book,
Infinite Love is the Only Truth, Everything Else is Illusion (2006), to Royal Adams for his “magnificent work” in keeping his books “in circulation.” Icke had also dedicated
The Biggest Secret,
“to Royal, for all his great work in America.” To have misjudged the
trustworthiness of a close collaborator for so long is quite a feat, but
in his efforts to deal with this thorny legal issue Icke seems to have
made another blunder.
The Freedom Foundation
Going to court is costly, even for a man who seems to believe the
world we live in is, in fact, a hologram. In February 2007, Icke’s
fundraising took an interesting turn with an announcement titled: “The
Freedom Foundation: Funding the Truth Instead of the System.” Icke’s
website gave U.S. citizens the opportunity to make a “charitable”
tax-deductible donation to Icke’s Freedom Foundation through the
International Humanities Center (IHC). The donee was offered the chance
to, “support someone working full-time for up to 12 hours a day to
expose those behind the global conspiracy to enslave us all.”
Tax-exempt foundations were first identified as a tool of New World
Order conspirators back in the 1950s by the Congressional Committee to
Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations (Reece Committee). According to that
Committee:
In the international field, foundations, and an interlock among some
of them and certain intermediary organizations, have exercised a strong
effect upon our foreign policy and upon public education in things
international. This has been accomplished by vast propaganda, by
supplying executives and advisors to government, and by controlling much
research in this area through the power of the purse. The net result of
these combined efforts has been to promote ‘internationalism’ in a
particular sense; a form directed toward ‘world government’ and a
derogation of American ‘nationalism.’
Numerous researchers drew on that report and the book,
Foundations: Their Power and Influence (1958),
written by the Committee’s general counsel, Rene Wormser, to conclude
that such foundations were a problem. John A. Stormer’s path-breaking
None Dare Call It Treason (1964),
for example, devoted an entire chapter to explaining how “the money of
American capitalists—Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Guggenheim, etc.—has
largely financed those working for the establishment of a ‘new world
order’” (Stormer, 173).
Icke, though, appears to have given the IHC his seal of approval.
Given his record of opposing the Illuminati, most supporters would be
confident that the IHC meets David Icke’s exacting standards.
Nevertheless, in lieu of any detailed explanation from Icke assuring us
of its suitability, it is surely prudent to ask some questions about the
IHC. What are its objectives? Who runs it? What does it do? Where does
it get its funding?
See No Evil
According to its website, the mission of the IHC is to “work with
other independent non-profit organizations and sponsored projects that
are devoted to a vision of ecological and humanitarian stewardship that
benefits all of creation.” Ultimately, the IHC seeks to “reverse the
current situation of pollution, disease, and disconnection by focusing
efforts on creating a civilization that is centered upon love, peace,
and natural harmony.”
According to its recently issued
Operations Manual, the IHC
was established in 1988 as a “fiscal sponsorship program that deploys
education, services and ecologically responsible technologies to the
benefit of the general public.” The primary function of the IHC is to
provide financial and administrative services to “grassroots projects.”
As a 501[c](3) non-profit public charity, donors can be sure of
retaining their tax-exempt status when they give money to a specific
project via the IHC. In return, the IHC levies a “Minimum Annual Fee” of
either $200, or 5% of the donations received by a member, whichever is
larger.
Looking closer, one discovers a few interesting facts that should
have piqued the interest of an analyst of Icke’s calibre. The IHC’s
Financial Director, Catherine Carroll, was a co-founding director of the
Renaissance Foundation, a “leadership organisation,” according to its
website. One of its sub-programs is the “Renaissance Women” a group
“whose goal is to give women an alternative voice from radical
feminism.” Back in 2000 this was realised as “support for George W.
Bush,” though we were assured this support was not given as a
collective, but as “individuals” (
WorldNetDaily, Aug. 2, 2000).
Board member Katherine O’Flahtery was once a trouble-shooter for
Wal-Mart logistics. The IHC Operations Director, Dave Sanders, before
going green fifteen years ago, spent seventeen years as a contractor for
the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense and
GE-Nuclear. IHC Executive Director Steve Sugarman, a professional
psychologist, was a former Executive Director of the Social and
Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), Co-Founder of the Bolsa Chica
Stewardship Group, and author of
The Blueprint for Planetary Evolution.
Prepared partly as a response to the events of 9/11,
Blueprint is
a “holistic picture” of the “fronts of the ecosocial movement … in the
context of the present world situation.” That present world situation
Sugarman presents as a “catastrophe,” the “sixth extinction crisis” to
have hit the Earth; though, in this case, it is “altogether
human-caused, and happening at a phenomenal pace.” Sugarman’s solution
to this crisis is to embrace the values of “Deep Ecology,” which in
practice means creating a “bioregional” society by breaking up cities
into “ecovillages.” In this “ecosocial” utopia of “planned communities”
the global economy would be supplanted by “regional economies.” Many
international institutions, such as the WTO and IMF, would become
defunct and the multi-national corporations would be broken down into
local entities.
For people who like to throw themselves, or sharp objects, at the
barricades that surround most Group of Eight meetings, this “ecosocial”
agenda would seem familiar and admirable. Reader’s of Icke’s collected
works would also note some similarities: not long ago Icke had entranced
readers with his account of the conspiracy hatched by a “Luciferian
consciousness.” He offered his solution of “World Cooperation” in which
national governments would be eliminated and replaced by a hierarchy of
organisations: neighbourhood councils, community councils, community
forums, regional governments and finally a “world forum” (Icke, 1994,
276-78). Only eighteen years ago, during his salad days as the national
spokesman for the UK Green Party, Icke advocated breaking up the
multi-national corporations into “smaller, less powerful units on at
least a national and ideally a regional basis” (Icke, 1989, 80-81).
Perhaps the least palatable aspect of Sugarman’s vision is his grim
advice on the global population problem. According to Sugarman, a
“decrease in global human population is absolutely necessary.” He noted
that Thomas Malthus’ warnings about the dangers of overpopulation are
“proving to be correct” with “[w]ar, hunger, disease and ecological
devastation … the order of the day.” Exactly how this problem is to be
resolved, Sugarman does not say, but he insists that a “conscious effort
to stabilize the current level of human saturation is necessary,” after
which a “steady decrease can be implemented.” Of course, Sugarman warns
that he is “not suggesting this will be easy” and is unlikely to be
popular, but it
must be dealt with.
To sign up to a foundation directed by a man who advances such an
agenda would seem courageous, especially if one had warned previously
about how the overpopulation crisis owed much to the machinations of the
sinister Club of Rome and the Rockefeller-founded and funded Population
Council (Icke, 1997, 176-9). But it’s easy if you once publicly
embraced that agenda yourself:
Once again humankind has a choice to make. We can be sensible and
limit our numbers voluntarily or we can go on until nature does it for
us with disease and hunger. That will be deeply unpleasant for those
around at the time…and the time isn’t too far off (Icke, 1990, 87).
And if you continue to show in your writings and other utterances
that you haven’t quite let go of the idea that there’s too many people
in the world:
It is plainly true, as the New World Order promoters say, that there
is a limit to the number of human beings who can live on this planet.
You can’t argue with that because when there is a humanbeing for every
square foot of the Earth, there will be clearly too many. (Icke, 1997,
165).
On its website, the IHC makes clear that, “Once your project is
reviewed and deemed in alignment with our charter…” support will be
provided. Well, Icke’s project was deemed “in alignment” and they’re now
helping him out.
In Esteemed Company
Before joining the IHC, Sugarman was Executive Director of Social
& Environmental Entrepreneurs. Like the IHC, SEE is a “public
charity” that provides start-up guidance and other services to its
member groups. SEE describes its mission as being to “empower, encourage
and catalyze individuals to facilitate progressive change in areas of
social justice and ecological restoration.” The SEE Program was created
in September 1994 by the EarthWays Foundation as an affiliate
organisation. The Earthways Foundation was established in 1988 by Andrew
Beath, a successful corporate real-estate developer, who turned his
attention to social justice and environmental philanthropy some twenty
years ago. Beath is currently Executive Director of both EarthWays and
the SEE.
The objective of EarthWays, according to Beath’s letter on its
website, is to “find a deeper understanding of our relationship to the
natural world,” and to “restore an appropriate balance” between our
economic needs and the environment. At EarthWays, “We are crying for a
vision that all living things can share,” claims Beath. “From this
inward crying,” he continues, “comes personal awareness that gives
direction to our desire to take action. Personal transformation is the
first step to global change.” Readers who find these sentiments similar
to Icke’s metaphysical ramblings can presumably find more insights in
Beath’s book,
Consciousness in Action.
In 1998, EarthWays received $50,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation
for its role as an organizing partner of the 1999 World Festival of
Sacred Music—an event billed by its organizers as a way to “transcend
borders of all kinds—linguistic, national, cultural, ideological, racial
and religious.” The Rockefeller Foundation gave EarthWays a further
$42,837 in 2000 to film the festival; and in 2002 it granted EarthWays
$100,000 to help with the costs for the 2002 World Festival of Sacred
Music. Additional funds came from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors,
which donated “$10,000 or more” to EarthWays between 2002 and 2004 (RPA,
2005, 16-17).
As for the SEE, which granted the IHC $338,689 in 2003 and $143,568
in 2004, where its funds ultimately come from is unknown, and few of its
member groups bother to include details of their sponsors. However,
among the plethora of seemingly fringe environmental and social justice
projects it counts as members, the SEE provides support to groups with
strong Establishment connections.
Consider the Truman Security Forum (TSF), an organisation that
describes itself as a “non-partisan, national security institute
dedicated to creating a strong principled alternative to conservative
national security policies.” The Executive Director of the TSF is Rachel
Kleinfeld, a Rhodes scholar and former consultant to the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and member of the Board of
Trustees of the Blue Fund, a body dedicated to securing corporate
support for the Democrats. On the TSF’s seven-member Board of Advisers
we find former Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) President Leslie Gelb,
former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, and former Secretary of
Defense, William Perry.
As for the Rockefeller connection, it appears to have jumped the SEE
and landed in the IHC. In its 990 form for 2005, the innocuous
Philanthropic Collaborative (New York) is identified as donating $40,000
to the IHC. A search on the internet reveals the Philanthropic
Collaborative to be an offshoot of Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisers,
itself a non-profit offshoot of Rockefeller Financial Services (Strom
2002). Established in 2002, Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisers (on its
board: Clayton Rockefeller, Sharon P. Rockefeller and Steven C.
Rockefeller, Jr.) created the Philanthropic Collaborative so its clients
can “make gifts inside and outside the United States, participate in
funding consortia, and operate non-profit initiatives.”
Icke has previously denounced the Rockefeller family as “reptilian
full-bloods” (Icke, 1999, 45) and the “bloodline branch managers in
America … who, quite provably, decide who is going to be President”
(ibid, 190). Icke is also on record describing the Rockefeller
Foundation as a “tax-exempt New World Order front” (Icke, 1997, 133), as
well as claiming that it set CIA policy (ibid, 285), and has funded
research into computers that can control the human mind (ibid, 374).
Icke warned that the Rockefeller Foundation is part of an “endless web
of interconnecting groups” that interlocks with the Illuminati and other
sinister organisations (1999, 263). In fact, the Rockefeller Brothers
Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund and the
Rockefeller-connected Mellon Foundations “poured millions into the
environmental campaigns and pressure groups” to create the modern green
movement (Icke, 1997, 243).
According to Icke, Rhodes Scholars, such as Kleinfeld, are “selected
by the Brotherhood,” in accordance with their “genetic history,” to be
“indoctrinated into the ‘world government’ Agenda.” Icke notes that most
Rhodes Scholars “return to their own countries and enter positions of
overt or covert power” (Icke, 1999, 218). TSF Advisor Madeline Albright
is a “Brotherhood initiate” and the “High Priestess of U.S. politics”
who “knows about the U.S. government mind-controlled slaves and supports
that policy” (Icke, 1999, 340). Her colleague, Leslie Gelb, is easily
condemned given that the CFR controls U.S. foreign policy, and its
goal is “to introduce world government” (Icke, 1997, 85). Secretary of
Defense, William Perry, whom Icke identifies as a Bilderberger (Icke,
1999, 267), belongs to a secretive organisation that is part of “a
highly effective network of manipulation which comprises a very
significant element of the secret government of the world” (Icke, 1997,
138).
A Scaly Handout
Another donor of interest on the IHC’s 990 Form for 2005 is the Tides
Foundation, which donated $55,000. According to its own records, the
Tides Foundation actually gave nearly $90,000 in grants to three IHC
members: $20,000 to the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools;
$64,000 to Voter Action; and $3,700 to WildPlaces.
Founded in 1976 by former activist Drummond Pike, the Tides
Foundation styles itself as a vehicle for “positive social change
through philanthropy,” organising donors in the cause of “strengthening
community-based non-profit organizations and the progressive movement
through innovative grant making.” Critics charge that the Tides
Foundation is in the business of enabling big foundations to anonymously
fund various radical and controversial groups. As Ben Johnson explains
in
57 Varieties of Radical Causes:
Tides allows donors to anonymously contribute money to a variety of
causes—and thereby avoid public accountability for their donations. The
donor simply makes the check out to Tides and instructs the Foundation
where to forward the money. Tides does so, often keeping as much as ten
percent of the total amount for “charitable advisory fees.” This allows
high-profile individuals to fund extremist organizations by “laundering”
their money through Tides, leaving no paper trail (Johnson 2004).
The
San Francisco Bay Guardian made a similar observation in
a 1997 article: “Wealthy patrons give big chunks of money to Tides—and
their names are kept confidential. The Tides donation is completely tax
deductible. But the donor can discreetly designate an organization that
he or she wants to see receive the money—and Tides will pass the
donation along, minus a small administrative fee. Often, the recipient
group doesn’t know where the money really came from. And there’s no way
for the public to find out either (Cohen 2006, 2).
A look at the top funders of the Tides Foundation gives a sense of
this. According to Activist Cash, the top funder was the Pew Charitable
Trust, which provided Tides with $118 million between 1990 and 2002.
Other key Establishment foundations also contributed: the Ford
Foundation provided $36 million between 1989 and 2005; George Soros’
Open Society Institute donated $15.7 million (1997-2003); the
Rockefeller Foundation gave $2.9 million (1993-2002); $2.3 million from
the Carnegie Corporation (1992-2002); the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave
$1.9 million in 1993-2003, plus a further $250,000 in 2005; Rockefeller
Philanthropy Advisers gave $372,300 (1997-2001) and the Rockefeller
Family Fund donated $175,000 (1991-2001). Tides also received some $6
million from Heinz Endowments, the foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry,
the wife of Senator John Kerry, the Skull & Bones man who ran
against George W. Bush in 2004.
Tides has used this money to help fund a variety of organisations,
ranging from violent anarchists such as the Ruckus Society, to the
Council for American Islamic Relations, the Union of Concerned
Scientists, Greenpeace, and now three projects under the wing of the
International Humanities Center.
Any reader of David Icke’s books would know the origins of the Tides
Foundation’s money alone would make it a suspect institution. Most of
these foundations, claims Icke, form part of the “network of so-called
tax-exempt foundations started by the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford
families, which help to fund the New World Order plan” (Icke, 1997, 67).
To make matters more interesting, sitting on the Tides Foundation’s
Board of Directors is Joanie Bronfman.
Bronfman is described in glowing terms on the Tides website and in
its Annual Reports as a “long-time advocate for social justice and donor
activism.” Bronfman has been identified by various sources as an
“heiress to the Seagram whiskey fortune” (Noah 2001) and as a member of
the “Old Money … Bronfman family” (Marcus, 1989, 266). A professional
“wealth counsellor,” Joanie Bronfman has established herself as an
expert helping the rich overcome the malicious social practice of
“wealthism.” She explained this hitherto undiagnosed condition her 1987
PhD thesis,
The Experience of Inherited Wealth: A Social-Psychological Perspective:
“Wealthism includes those actions or attitudes that dehumanize or
objectify wealthy people, simply because they are wealthy. The main
attitudes of wealthism are envy, awe and resentment. . . . Wealthism
differs from the other ‘isms’ in that racism and sexism are perpetrated
by those who have power, whereas wealthism is directed
at those who have power.”
Bronfman has devoted a lot of time to convincing the wealthy that
being rich can be positive experience. The Tides Foundation website
notes that Joanie Bronfman had previously “served on the boards of Tides
Canada and the Threshold Foundation, where she was a founder of
Threshold’s Social Justice Committee.” Tides Canada has made its
contribution to our future by distributing copies of Al Gore’s
doom-laden presentation on global warming,
An Inconvenient Truth, to schools in Canada.
The co-founder of the Threshold Foundation—which describes itself as
“a progressive foundation and a community of individuals united through
wealth, who mobilize money, people and power to create a more just,
joyful and sustainable world”—was Jeffrey Bronfman. According to the
Vancouver Sun (Feb.
10, 2001), Jeffrey is the “second cousin to Edgar Bronfman Jr. and
grandnephew to Seagram’s dynasty founder Samuel Bronfman.”
All of this would seem to be a trivial matter, except that David Icke
has repeatedly attacked the Bronfman family of Canada, the founders of
the same Seagrams liquor company, as respectively: an “underworld
family” (Icke 1997, 290); “a reptilian bloodline and very close to the
Rothschilds” (Icke, 2001, 387); one of the Illuminati’s “key bloodlines”
(Icke, 2001, 410); and as the “Illuminati Bronfman family” (Icke, 2003,
411). More significantly Icke has claimed that it was “the Bronfmans,
through various front organizations and stooges,” who were behind a
global campaign to suppress his books and speaking tours (Icke 2001,
387). But now he has teamed up with an organization that receives money
from a foundation with a Bronfman on its board.
Tangled Web
David Icke is not the first researcher to warn of the insidious
influence of the tax-exempt foundations. The pioneering work on this
issue was done by the Reece Committee in the 1950s and brought to a
larger audience from the 1960s onward by a diverse range of authors
including, Kent and Phoebe Courtney (1962, 19-26); Allan Stang (1968,
115-123); William P. Hoar (1984, 74); Gurudas (1996, 21-22); and Jim
Marrs (2000, 53). Researchers, such as Bob Feldman and
Left Gatekeepers.com, have established links between the leading foundations and environmentalist / progressive movements in the U.S., from
The Nation to Noam Chomsky.
Icke must be the first of the much-maligned members of the
conspiracist camp, if not one of its most radical thinkers, to actually
go from attacking that network to joining it. The question for Icke’s
many admirers is why has this happened? It would be tempting to
attribute this to an oversight on his part, perhaps attributable to the
stress of his recent court case; except that this is not the first time
Icke has worked with the IHC. In 2004, there was the David Icke/Metta
Arts project, the funding of which was controlled by the IHC. It is
alleged by one source that Icke was informed by one of his concerned
fans that the IHC had a Rockefeller connection. In response, Icke
reportedly insisted that the connection was of little consequence and
that he was not longer dealing with the IHC.
If true, this alleged dismissal of the IHC’s Rockefeller connection
by Icke would be heartening to all those individuals Icke has smeared
over the years due to their supposed links to the Illuminati. For
example, Icke’s long-time antagonist, Richard Warman, was once maligned
as a Bronfman “stooge” because he was a member of the Ontario Green
Party of Toronto, “one of the global centres of the Illuminati and one
of its key bloodlines, the Bronfmans.” According to Icke, Warman worked
closely with the Canadian Jewish Congress, which was “founded and funded
by the Bronfman family” (Icke, 2001, 410. 411). Not surprisingly,
Warman took legal action against Icke, the results of which have gone
unreported.
This leaves open other, less palatable explanations for Icke’s
current arrangement with the IHC. Is Icke now in the pay of the very
forces he now claims to oppose? Has he been co-opted? Or do Icke’s
actions prove that he does not believe what he says? Given Icke’s record
of publicly opposing the “Illuminati” in its innumerable guises (and
disguises), such suggestions may seem outrageous. But through the act of
seeking assistance from the IHC, seemingly without regard to its
“reptilian” connections, Icke does much to foster such conspiracy
theories.
©2007 Will Banyan. Will Banyan is a writer specializing in the
political economy of globalization. His article “The Israel Lobby
Controversy” appears in
Paranoia, issue 44, and his article, “Neo-Con Counter-Conspiracy?” appears in
Paranoia, issue 40. His article, “Outflanking the Nation-State” appears on the
Paranoia website,
and research papers “The Invisible Man of the New World Order: Raymond
B. Fosdick” and “The Proud Internationalist: The Globalist Vision of
David Rockefeller” appear at
: www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/third_section.html. He may be reached at
banyan007@rediffmail.com.
References
Cohen, Bonner, “The Price of Doing Business: Environmentalist Groups Toe the Line,”
Foundation Watch (Capital Research Center), July 2006.
Courtney, Kent & Phoebe,
America’s Unelected Rulers, Conservative Society of America, 1962.
Gurudas,
Treason: The New World Order, Cassandra Press, 1996.
Hoar, William P.,
Architects of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History, Western Islands, 1984.
Icke, David,
It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This: Green Politics Explained, Green Print 1990.
Icke,
The Robots’ Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance, Gateway Books, 1994.
Icke, …
and the truth will set your free: The most explosive book of the 20th century, Bridge of Love, 1997.
Icke,
The Biggest Secret: The book that will change the world, Bridge of Love, 1999.
Icke,
Children of the Matrix: How an interdimensional race has controlled the world for thousands of years, Bridge of Love, 2001.
Icke,
Tales from the Time Loop: The most comprehensive expose of the global conspiracy ever written, Bridge of Love, 2003.
Icke,
Infinite Love is the Only Truth Everything Else is Illusion: Exposing the dreamworld we believe to be ‘real’, Bridge of Love, 2005.
Icke’s Freedom Foundation:
www.ihcenter.org/groups/freedomfoundation.html
International Humanities Center,
Project Operations Manual, IHC, PO Box 923, Malibu, CA, 2007.
Jasper, Willam F., “Conspiracy Realities,”
The New American, August 23, 2004.
Johnson, Ben “Tides Foundation and Tides Center” (excerpt from
57 Varieties of Radical Causes), 09/04,
www.discoverthenetworks.org/.
Marcus, George E., “The Making of Pious Persons within Contemporary American Notable Families ” Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.,
Sociological Perspectives, (Summer, 1989).
Marrs, Jim,
Rule By Secrecy, HarperCollins, 2000.
Noah, Timothy, “Pathologies of the Idle Rich – Part 3,”
Slate, March 12, 2001.
Randall, Gretchen & Tom, “The Tides Foundation: Liberal Crossroads of Money and Ideas,”
Foundation Watch (Capital Research Center), December 2003.
Stang, Alan,
The Actor: The True Story of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State 1953 to 1959, Western Islands, 1968.
Strom, Stephanie, “Rockefellers Starting Service for Would Be Philanthropists,”
New York Times, April 29, 2002, p.B3.
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