Global Cities

• Water wars, transferring populations to urban areas, further industrialization of food production discussed at internationalists’ Global Cities Conference in Chicago.

By Mark Anderson —

CHICAGO, Ill.—Financial Times (FT), like The Economist and Bloomberg media, has become a media fixture at the annual secretive Bilderberg gathering, especially through the faithful participation of FT columnist Martin Wolf, a harsh critic of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump and his nationalistic statements.

FT has long tentacles. From June 1-3 it cosponsored the 2016 Chicago Forum on Global Cities, in cooperation with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA), which is among the busiest of the 98 World Affairs Councils that all push for mandated worldwide integration along economic, political, cultural, and, to some extent, racial-ethnic lines.

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These city-based and regional world affairs organizations—“spokes” that feed into the more exclusive Bilderberg “hub”—honeycomb the U.S. under the umbrella of the World Affairs Councils of America.

This AMERICAN FREE PRESS writer attended the CCGA-FT Forum on Global Cities in Chicago.

The forum’s core message is that various economic and cultural standards are being devised for larger cities to adopt, which will certify them as “global.” From there, cities will be tasked with reorienting their worldview and becoming change agents toward a more complete one-world society.

The basic idea appears to be to network these global cities together in order to “re-map” the way people view the world and the manner in which people interact, so as to make fully blown world government seem inevitable. The world’s self-anointed managers and “visionaries” in CCGA, Bilderberg, and elsewhere—through a network that constitutes a private “shadow” government—toil to make these things happen, while acting as if it’s all simply the “wave of the future” with a momentum all its own.

Basically, the schematic being followed appears to be that of Columbia Law Professor Richard Gardner, whose infamous article in the April 1974 edition of the Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs, called “The Hard Road to World Order,” noted that “the house of world order” will have to be built “from the bottom up, rather than the top down.”

To be fair, some of the insights and ideas raised at the Chicago forum could bring about needed infrastructure projects and other improvements. But the forum’s speakers expounded on the widespread view that city life is, and must be, the future—and that two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050 or before. And with the United Nations’ infamous Agenda 21 calling for a depletion of rural life, such a “stack and pack” urbanized society, where corporate farms produce most of the food, would be more or less coerced. Bilderberg-backed free trade deals would see to it that nations can’t have self-sufficient agriculture.

On June 2, former Clinton-era Agriculture Secretary Daniel Robert “Dan” Glickman, who’s now with the CCGA’s Global Food & Agriculture Program, spoke at the Chicago Art Institute on “Transforming Food Systems in an Urbanizing World.” In explaining a new CCGA report, Glickman said “small-scale rural farmers” can play a key production-distribution role so “cities can ensure food security for their growing populations.”

But then a few minutes later Glickman reversed himself, saying, “Importantly, the transformation of food systems will not inherently include small-scale farmers.” Beyond that stark contradiction, he noted that 35%-40% of the world’s food is wasted through spoilage, etc. Yet he is okay with long supply lines, papering over the clear fact that, when it comes to food, the shortest distance between field and dinner plate is generally best for maximum security, nutrition, and the avoidance of waste.

He also touched on the possibility of “water wars” as increasingly populated cities fight the hinterland for water. But the solution of equitable, localized control of water—while avoiding massive, misdirected privatization and profiteering—was not covered.

And while many things could be said about the 16-or-so presentations given at the forum, one thing jumped out: The FT moderators and their illustrious panelists, commenting on the topics at hand, placed considerable emphasis on “Global Threats to the Global City,” which was a June 2 morning topic.

The gist was that “nationalism” and “rising populism” are natural barriers to this new “brand” of city and that the massive migration currently happening (caused largely by Western wars that CCGA-Bilderberg networkers mostly support in their war vs. Islam and nationalism) should be dealt with based on a strategy CCGA forum participant James Cuno of the J. Paul Getty Trust suggested: “Manage, don’t prohibit.”

This notion of “the Inclusive City” was covered in another forum program with that exact title June 2 at the Chicago Cultural Center. There, Bilderberg Steering Committee member Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America, joined FT’s Edward Luce and three other panelists to ponder how the world’s new global cities can “most effectively integrate new inhabitants, such as rural migrants, immigrants, and refugees.”

This program expounded on the idea of disallowing nations from taking any significant actions to limit immigration or reasonably maintain traditional culture, while making sure political correctness reigns. And with Luce at the helm, there were several slurs and put-downs of Trump’s view of “America first.”

Two of the participants, Hamburg urban minister Dr. Dorothee Stapelfeldt and Metropolitan Regional Governor Claudio Orrego of Santiago, Chile, later told AFP they strongly oppose the “Brexit” vote, since Britain exiting the UK could hurt the delicate plan to make London, Hamburg, Santiago, and other cities “global” and “inclusive.”

Only a week later, the global cities concept was plugged into Bilderberg’s conduit partly through Italian Carlo Ratti, an architect who is director of MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory. He also handles city issues for the Swiss-based annual World Economic Forum (WEF)—a more public outlet of the Bilderberg network.

Naturally, WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab attended Bilderberg 2016 in Dresden. And, notably, the CCGA-FT Chicago forum included Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who attended Bilderberg 2014 in Denmark. One French mayor and two Dutch mayors, and another city official from Germany, also attended in Dresden. One of these, Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, is affiliated with the Global Parliament of Mayors, a core entity in the grassroots globalism vanguard.

Mark Anderson covers the annual Bilderberg meetings and is chairman of AFP’s new America First Action Committee, designed to involve AFP readers in focusing intensely on Congress to enact key changes, including monetary reform and a pullback of the warfare state. He and his wife Angie often work together on news projects.