Trilateral tentacles extend reach. (The Last Word).

The Trilateral Commission is on the move, broadening its influence. The elitist group that seeks world union initially drew its membership from North America, Western Europe, and Japan. But beginning in 2000 the TC dramatically widened its membership. The Japanese portion became the Pacific Asian Group, the North American Group (the U.S. and Canada) added Mexico, and the European Group's numbers grew "in line with the enlargement of the European Union."

Thirty years ago, the TC's European members came from the nine nations most closely allied to America: UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Ireland, and the Netherlands. As of 2003, another dozen have been added: Greece, Portugal, Czech Republic, Spain, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Sweden, Cyprus, Russia, and Estonia. The new Pacific Asian Group has grown from Japanese members alone to include members from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, South Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

With global control as the goal, TC expansion is exactly what its architects had envisioned. The Trilateral approach to world government was proposed by Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski (a protege of capitalist-socialist extraordinaire David Rockefeller) in his 1970 book Between Two Ages. Therein, Brzezinski recommended a "community of the developed nations" as part of a "piecemeal" approach to world government. "[A] council of this sort -- perhaps initially linking only the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, and thus bringing together the political leaders of states sharing certain common aspirations and problems of modernity -- would be more effective in developing common programs than is the United Nations, whose efficacy is unavoidably limited by the Cold War and by north-south divisions," he wrote.

According to Brzezinski: "Movement toward a larger community of the developed nations ... cannot be achieved by fusing existing states into one larger entity.... It makes much more sense to attempt to associate existing states through a variety of indirect ties and already developing limitations on national sovereignty."

Indeed it does, from the global architects' point of view. In building this house of world order, linking the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe constituted not the final objective but an opening phase. "The second phase," Brzezinski explained, "would include the extension of these links to more advanced communist countries. Some of them -- for example, Yugoslavia or Romania -- may move toward closer international cooperation more rapidly than others, and hence the two phases need not necessarily be sharply demarcated."

Keep in mind that Brzezinski was writing in 1970, many years before the apparent collapse of Communism accelerated the already-developing East-West merger, and many years before a supposed free-trade arrangement known as the Common Market became (by design) an emerging suprastate now known as the European Union. He was writing, in fact, three years before David Rockefeller created the Trilateral Commission, selecting Brzezinski to be its first director.

Since that time the Trilateralists have succeeded greatly in forging the links that facilitated the rise of the EU, including its expansion eastward to include former members of the Soviet bloc. If Trilateral success continues, they will also expedite the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), to be modeled after the EU. And they will facilitate other arrangements that will gradually become more intertwined on the road to world government, thereby accomplishing what would not have been possible if attempted overtly and suddenly.

Who are these would-be rulers of the world? As already mentioned, they include David Rockefeller, who also chaired the Council on Foreign Relations from 1970-85, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, another CFR member, who left his Trilateral post to become President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser. Carter also was a founding member of the TC, and he later became a CFR member as well. Many American members of the TC, in fact, are also CFR members.

For the U.S., the TC currently names as "former members in public service" top Bush officials Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Paula Dobriansky, Robert Zoellick, and Richard Haass. Tom Foley, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, is now the TC's North American chairman, topping a list of "Executive Committee" members that also includes Brzezinski and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Other current American TC members include former cabinet officials Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, William Perry, Carla Hills, and Robert McNamara. Other TC members include U.S. Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Yet there are fewer than 100 American TC members.

Despite the TC's influence on public policy, there is still good reason to believe its plans can be derailed. All that is necessary is to shine the light of public exposure on what it is doing. If that were not the case, the TC, the CFR, and other like-minded groups would simply advocate instant world government instead of being forced to achieve the same objective piecemeal.