The FTAA's controlled opposition: the rent-a-mob that descended on Miami provided a familiar service: scaring away responsible opponents and further justifying the police state build-up.

The motley collection of protesters who came to Miami to demonstrate against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has become a familiar sight at these confabs. As usual, the weird menagerie included a mixture of the prosaic, the perverse, the vicious, the absurd, and the obscene: union hard hats, self-proclaimed lesbian "dykes," clench-fisted Communists, tie-dyed dolphin dancers, and grotesquely tattooed grandmas. There were lots of t-shirts sporting the visage of Communist revolutionary Che Guevara or cop-killer convict Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Watermelon Marxist contingent (Red on the inside, Green on the outside) was there in force: the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Green Party, the Animal Liberation Front, etc. There were hammer-and-sickle symbols aplenty on flags, banners, socks, backpacks, hats and skin. There was an abundant sprinkling of black-garbed anarchists who covered their faces with ski masks or neckerchiefs. And, of course, there were legions of peaceniks--the leftist folks who reliably oppose every U.S. military effort but fervently embrace so-called wars of liberation by Communist-backed, anti-American forces worldwide.

These are the usual suspects we have come to expect at this sort of event, ever since the infamous 1999 demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) erupted into the violent and destructive "Battle of Seattle." They are actors in an ongoing scripted charade that has been orchestrated by many of the Establishment elites they ostensibly came to oppose. The leaders of both the pro-FTAA and anti-FFAA forces have been working hand in hand to advance the same one-world agenda.

The radical street cadres would not materialize without the massive funding provided by the major tax-exempt foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and MacArthur. These foundations and the transnational corporations that fund the enviro-Leninists and other extremists invariably share an important common denominator: their boards of directors are peppered with members of the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR is one of the most important Insider brain trusts promoting the FTAA one-world agenda.

Harmony of Purpose

Those unfamiliar with the realities of power politics may find it hard to believe that there is any harmony of purpose between the protesters in the street and the delegates inside the summit. But there most certainly is; the CFR one-worlders are paying for an important service. For one thing, the street theater that the radical demonstrators provide is a wonderful diversion distracting public attention from the subversive schemes of the CFR's "free trade" negotiators in the silk suits. Secondly, the repulsive appearance of many of the FTAA protesters and their lawless actions make the FTAA proponents appear conservative and eminently respectable by comparison. The same repellent image of the demonstrators also serves to taint and discourage all others who might otherwise oppose the FTAA on completely legitimate, principled grounds. No patriot wants to be associated with such revolting rabble.

The rent-a-mob agitators also provide a compelling pretext for the further erosion of liberties and advancement of the police state, in the name of order and homeland security. In view of past violence and destruction caused by demonstrations against the WTO, FTAA and World Bank--not to mention the possibility of 9/11-type terrorism--local Miami residents and officials had good reason to be fearful. But Uncle Sam came to the rescue; Congress rolled $8.5 million for security for the Miami summit into the multi-billion dollar Iraq funding bill. And the result? Miami became an armed camp, as armored vehicles, helicopters, SWAT teams and riot police swarmed over the city. It is a scenario that has become more and more common as communities are forced to respond to the threat of mayhem from the civil demolitionists.

Pretext for Power Grab

Finally, the street agitators offer another very important service: They provide a pretext for the globalist elites to grab more power supposedly in response to the demands of "the people." The "Battle of Seattle" provided an excellent example of this pincers strategem at work. With the city still smouldering, the CFR claque in the Clinton administration agreed to listen to the concerns that were motivating the protesters. Led by the Ford Foundation's professional radicals Loft Wallach and Ralph Nader, the Seattle protesters demanded that the WTO move beyond its exclusive focus on trade issues and adopt international labor, education, environmental, and health care standards. The CFR global corporatists have been only too happy to accommodate these appeals to expand the transgovernmental jurisdiction of the WTO.

As leftist academic Francis Fukuyama noted in a December 1, 1999 Wall Street Journal article, the Left should be grateful that the WTO has been advancing their radical agenda. "By creating the WTO, global capitalism has solved the left's collective action problem," Fukuyama averred. "The WTO is the only international organization that stands any chance of evolving into an institution of global governance, setting rules not only for how countries will trade and invest with one another, but also for how they will deal with issues like labor standards and the environment." Mr. Fukuyama is not only a leftwing intellectual, but also a CFR and Trilateral Commission member.

The Left's April 20, 2002 march on Washington gives another excellent example of this strategy in action. Led by members of the Communist Party USA, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Communist-led U.S. Peace Council and others of similar ilk, the demonstrators demanded increased financial aid for education. The Establishment's response was immediate, as if it had been prearranged. On April 21 World Bank President James Wolfensohn (CFR) announced that he had heard the cries of the people and his institution would be launching a multi-billion-dollar education fund for poor countries. The next day the CFR-dominated Bush administration announced it would hike U.S. bilateral foreign aid by 50 percent and our funding to the World Bank's International Development Association by 18 percent over the next three years.

Radicals in the Streets and the Suites

The Miami FTAA conference represented a new watershed in open collaboration between the left-wing activists and the CFR elites at trade summits. While there were a few dozen arrests of radicals in the streets, they served mainly to draw attention away from the fact that there were a great many radicals in the suites, as well. Following the UN's example of giving radical NGOs semi-official status at international conferences, the FTAA welcomed hundreds of leftists into the America's Trade and Sustainable Development Forum (ATSDF) that ran concomitantly with the FTAA in the neighboring Clarion and Marriott hotels. The ATSDF conclave featured workshops, panels and presentations from the veteran activists of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, the World Resources Institute, Freedom House, the Washington Office on Latin America, the World Bank, Oxfam America, Global Trade Watch and the Migration Policy Institute.

Meanwhile, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney (CFR), leader of the nation's largest union, brought thousands of steel workers, auto workers, hotel workers and teachers to Miami to keep the pressure boiling from below.