The regional leadership in the Pacific has a new entity, called the Polynesian Leadership Group (PLG) made up of island states from Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue, American Samoa, Tokelau, French Polynesia and Tuvalu.


Representatives of eight Polynesian countries

A Talamua article suggests that the Polynesian union was a 35 year dream, realized. According to the Samoa Observer Editorial, this new regional sub-group bloc is the culmination of five years of planning. Even though it was implicitly denied by the nascent Chair but categorically implied that, the trajectory of this new sub-group is projected to be used as a geopolitical leverage against the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).
Such manifestations by the new sub-group will be destined for negative divisions says Pacific academic Steven Ratuva in a Radio NZ web article.
Although, the invitation was extended to Fiji to join; it is certainly no secret that the Samoan Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi had been quite a parochial critic of Frank Bainiamarama, and constantly interjecting himself into the domestic affairs of Fiji. Nevertheless this hubris is seen as simply more grandstanding by the Samoan Prime Minister.

Island Business article:

Mon, 19 Sep 2011
AUCKLAND, NZ (SCOOPNZ) --- New Zealand may be invited to join Pacific Island countries in a ginger group promoting Polynesia’s interests.John Andrews in Auckland for Pacific Insights

For years the idea of a Polynesian-oriented grouping has been debated by Polynesian leaders at their annual Pacific Islands Forum summit. Now a few of them have decided to do something about it.

At the behest of Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, one of the prime movers pushing for the formation of the group, five leaders met privately in the City Life Hotel on the eve of the forum summit in Auckland a fortnight ago.

The participants representing Cook Islands, Niue, Tuvalu, Tonga and Samoa, decided to instruct their respective senior officials to recommend wording for a charter and work out likely costs.

The Polynesian leaders agreed to meet again early in November in Samoa’s capital Apia to discuss their new group’s aims and organisational requirements.

There are indications they will select Tuilaepa as their first chairman, with a small secretariat set up initially in Apia.

Other non-forum member countries which may find themselves invited to send representatives to the meeting are American Samoa, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna and Easter Island.

Even Hawaii and New Zealand could get invitations because of their Polynesian affiliations.

Both Tuilaepa and Toke Talagi, Premier of Niue were adamant the proposed Polynesian Group would not present a political counter weight to influence purported to have been exerted in the region by the Melanesian Spearhead Group and their Micronesian Group neighbours.

Tuilaepa said the Micronesian member countries regarded their organisation as being very necessary for cohesion, just as the Melanesians did. Polynesian countries had learned a very useful lesson, albeit belatedly, as a result.

He did not expect any adverse reaction to the group’s formation, saying: “They suggested it themselves when I raised the issue in Fiji and in Tonga.”

Asked if New Zealand would be invited to become a member of the Polynesian Group, he said: “We haven’t made that decision yet. There are some complications.

“The proper thing is to go by the general guideline of the so called Polynesian Triangle which stretches from Hawaii to New Zealand to the east as far as Easter Island.”

To explain his views on sub-regionalism in the Pacific, Tuilaepa pointed to the speech he gave in July this year to mark the forum’s 40th anniversary.
He contended then that rather than being portrayed as a challenge to the region by building alternative coalitions, sub-regionalism should be viewed as “countries with a common history, related cultural traditions and a commitment to dialogue working together on issues of mutual interest”.

As well as preserving language, culture and traditions, sub-regionalism might provide better platforms for effective and efficient delivery programmes that benefitted the entire region.

The exposure of Polynesian people and countries to modern development and communications had heightened risks to the long term survival of their cultures and languages. To remain complacent would be a mistake.

Tuilaepa and Talagi said the Polynesian Group would remain on the periphery of the forum but indicated that, for financial reasons, it made sense for leaders to meet around the time of the annual forum summits.

Denying the new group was being formed to counter MSG influence, Niue Premier Talagi said: “It’s away from and nothing to do with the forum but at the same time we are talking about a similar sort of grouping for the Polynesian countries that are interested in establishing themselves as such.

“I think we have got to determine who the membership is but we consider New Zealand and Hawaii, for example, as being part of the Polynesian Triangle so they could very well be part of the members of this Polynesian Group. But it is not a breakaway from the forum.

“There are indications New Zealand may be interested to be part of it, as part of the Polynesian Triangle.
“There has always been an informal Polynesian group but it has never been formalised.”

Asked if the MSG people had been informed of the Polynesian Group plan, Talagi said: “Why would we? They never told us anything about their group, nor the Micronesians for that matter.”

Another event horizon - the Pacific common currency, is a seemingly brokered policy from Samoa, which had been actively researched and recommended by an Australia Senate Committee, according to a published Feasibility Study by two University of South Pacific (USP) academics.

This timing of such a launch of a sub-grouping is quite interesting and comes in the wake of the recent APEC summit in Hawaii announcing the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) and the garrison of US troops in Darwin.

Dr. K R Bolton

"
When Kevin Rudd became Australian Prime Minister in 2008, he floated ideas for a Pacific regional bloc that are close to what is transpiring with the TPP[...]

In the speech he went beyond the usual call for a closer regional agreement between Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific island nations and advocated its broadening to include the USA and China. That is to say, the Pacific community idea which in many ways is desirable; especially if it could minimize the influence of China and the USA in the region, has been broadened to being exactly what was always intended: a step toward globalization at the behest of US-based plutocracy. What Rudd said a few years ago is instructive in providing background for the present TPP, which focuses on the USA and is broadened to Pacific Rim South American states
[...]
What Kevin Rudd proposed in 2008 was the agenda of the Trilateral Commission, created in 1973 by David Rockefeller. The Trilateral Commission was established as a think tank of globalist political and business leaders incorporating the USA, Europe and Japan.
"

In fact, the extended series of regional policy dictates, namely the new Polynesia sub-regional bloc, the PACER -Plus Trade Agreement and the common Pacific currency respectively, are starting points to a proverbial slippery slope that also contain some sinister strategic implications, when placed in context with the observations of Dr. John Bolton, that was recently published in Foreign Policy Journal.

The excerpt of the Bolton's article:

Regional Globalization: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

by Dr. K R Bolton

November 19, 2011

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an important part of the globalization process that has been decades in the making. The process was formalized on November 12, 2011. While a “Pacific community” similar to the “European Community,” has often been mooted by New Zealand and Australian politicians,[1] TPP creates the foundation for full-fledged regional governance. Presently the states that comprise this TPP are: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States.[2]

The current format of this regional pact was announced by Ambassador Ron Kirk to the US Congress on December 14, 2009. As a free trade regional agreement, this means that each state will be obliged to open itself up to imports and a regional economic rationalization process that will Darwinistically eliminate those national industries that cannot compete. It means that once in, like other free trade agreements, extricating oneself becomes impossible. The much lauded prospects of increased employment and economic opportunities, by which such agreements are sold, such as that entered into by New Zealand with China does not – obviously – eventuate. “Partnership” and “competitiveness”[3] are used simultaneously, yet free trade intrinsically does not include “partnership”; it means driving the “weaker” to the wall on the pretext that the best survive and thereby the general economy is strengthened. It takes no account of national requirements, strategic needs, and ties each state to the rise or fall of the major players in a gamble with entire nations.

When Kevin Rudd became Australian Prime Minister in 2008, he floated ideas for a Pacific regional bloc that are close to what is transpiring with the TPP. What is significant, in identifying the globalist interests that are promoting this agenda, is that Rudd presented the idea to his countrymen via a speech to the Australian branch of the Asia Society, which will be considered below. In the speech he went beyond the usual call for a closer regional agreement between Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific island nations and advocated its broadening to include the USA and China. That is to say, the Pacific community idea which in many ways is desirable; especially if it could minimize the influence of China and the USA in the region, has been broadened to being exactly what was always intended: a step toward globalization at the behest of US-based plutocracy. What Rudd said a few years ago is instructive in providing background for the present TPP, which focuses on the USA and is broadened to Pacific Rim South American states.

Nonsense about each state doing what one can do best has been used for several decades now to sell the idea of economic rationalization. Any state that embarks on such a course of reanimated 19^th Century economics is left with a ravaged economy that has no chance of being self-supporting. Economic rationalization in the name of “efficiency” creates a permanent pool of the unemployable because the champions of free market economics believe, as economic reductionists, that humans are interchangeable economic units that are infinitely malleable and can fit into whatever new environment is contrived. When the theory does not accord with reality, the victims, the new pool of unemployed, are further victimized as “welfare bludgers.” Free Trade, and its method of economic rationalization, is a failed dogma. New Zealand began the process of rationalization decades ago by the start of a long process of opening up to imports, on the assumption that “inefficient” businesses would fall, and leave only the best and most suitable to fit into a regional and ultimately a world economy (the “New International Economic Order” as it was then called).

The result was the destruction of New Zealand manufacturing, which has resulted in a large pool of unemployables, because the politicians cannot or will not understand that not everyone of working age is capable of being an IT worker. New Zealand’s labor intensive economy was wrecked for the sake of a globalist agenda and we today see the consequences.

The great achievement that has been negotiated is therefore to extend failed economic dogma beyond national levels and to the regional, in order that a very small element of business can expand without national impediments.

Globalist interests in the USA have not been pushing this “economic integration” as a humanitarian gesture. It is an important exercise in international power-politics. The other member states will be prostrate before US plutocracy as their resources come under the domination of free trade investment clauses in the TPP agreement. TPP will be sold in the other states as a great opportunity to sell exports to a big market. Nonsense. We have seen how the FTA between China and New Zealand operates. The big dominants and, where necessary, eliminates the little under Free Trade. The US administration is selling TPP with national rather than globalist rhetoric: “Increasing American Exports, Supporting American Jobs.”[4] Under Free Trade, there are winners and losers, and even recourse to war when the losers are no longer sustainable and fight rather than roll over and die, or when one export power conflicts with the interests of another, as in the case of World War II resulting from the success of German trade expansion in Europe and its extension into South American markets.

Free Trade has been imposed upon the world as the economic foundation for a US-dominated order since Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”. The policy was reiterated by Roosevelt in the “Atlantic Charter.” The rhetoric has not changed for decades. When Roosevelt was laying down the terms for the post-war world to Churchill he stated:

Of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade. No artificial barriers. As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.[5]

…Will anyone suggest that Germany’s attempt to dominate trade in central Europe was not a major contributing factor to war?[6]

International trade brings war, not peace, as it is a façade for domination by hegemonic interests. The terms of TPP are intended to benefit the USA, which means US-based globalist plutocrats, the Office of the US Trade Representative stating:

Cross-cutting issues not previously in trade agreements, such as making the regulatory systems of TPP countries more compatible so U.S. companies can operate more seamlessly in TPP markets, and helping innovative, job-creating small-and medium-sized enterprises participate more actively in international trade.[7]

Economic structures are therefore to be rationalized regionally to permit free entry for US encroachments. Reference to the benefits for small-and medium-sized enterprises is nonsense, as rationalization drives such enterprises to the wall. No state will be able to subsidize such enterprises, as it will be regarded as interfering in the free market and as unfair competition. State owned enterprises are also to be subjected to competition from the globalist corporations. As it is, many of the states involved, and in particular New Zealand, have been selling their state assets and enterprises, generally to make interest payments on debts to international finance.

What is left of state assets will be taken over by the major corporations, and national governments, such as they remain, will not be able to interfere because of regional regulations imposed by TPP and enforced by TPP laws and bureaucracies. Note that the above passage from the TPP principles states that regulations of each state will be altered to make national economies compatible with US corporate interests. TPP terms will ensure, “state-owned enterprises compete fairly with private companies and do not distort competition in ways that put U.S. companies and workers at a disadvantage.”[8] This means pitting the state against private business in the free market, although state assets should be regarded as being of a strategic and not strictly an economic character. However, under Free Trade there is no such concept as a “strategic national interest.”

The nine founding states of TPP are intended as the beginning of a wider process, “and will begin bilateral processes with these interested countries to discuss their readiness and ambition to meet the standards and objectives of the TPP.”[9]

The ramifications of TPP will be known only as they take effect as – apart from the final declaration – the documents of the agreement are secret for four years from ratification.[10]

Globalists’ Pacific Agenda

What Kevin Rudd proposed in 2008 was the agenda of the Trilateral Commission, created in 1973 by David Rockefeller. The Trilateral Commission was established as a think tank of globalist political and business leaders incorporating the USA, Europe and Japan. The newly appointed Italian Prime Minster, Mario Monti, is the TC European chairman,[11] who also served with Goldman Sachs.

What is notable in the context of the TPP is that the Trilateral Commission (TC) a few years ago extended its agenda to include Mexico, and the “Japan Group” has now become the “Pacific Asian Group.” Japan has stated its interest in joining the TPP.[12] Although Mexico is not one of the founding member states of TPP, the extension of Trilateralism, which originally focused on North America, Europe and Japan, was extended to Latin America and to Asia as a whole. TC stated of this:

Two strong convictions guide our thinking for the 2006-2009 triennium. First, the Trilateral Commission remains as important as ever in helping our countries fulfill their shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international system and, second, its framework needs to be widened to reflect broader changes in the world. Thus, the Japan Group has become a Pacific Asian Group, and Mexican members have been added to the North American Group. The European Group continues to widen in line with the enlargement of the EU.[13]

Of the TC Pacific Asian Group, members are drawn from the following countries to reflect this aim of a Pacific-wide union.

In 2000, the Japanese group of 85 members expanded to become a Pacific Asian group of 96 members, and includes 57 members from Japan, 15 members from Korea, 8 from Australia and New Zealand, 16 from the original five ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The new Pacific Asian group also includes participants from the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.[14]

The Commission also implies that these regional groupings are the prelude to a “new world order”:

The “growing interdependence” that so impressed the founders of the Trilateral Commission in the early 1970s is deepening into “globalization.” The need for shared thinking and leadership by the Trilateral countries, who (along with the principal international organizations) remain the primary anchors of the wider international system, has not diminished but, if anything, intensified. At the same time, their leadership must change to take into account the dramatic transformation of the international system. As relations with other countries become more mature—and power more diffuse—the leadership tasks of the original Trilateral countries need to be carried out with others to an increasing extent.[15]

This process of “interdependence” growing into “globalization” and a “dramatic transformation of the international system” has been deliberately pushed by the Trilateral Commission, and similar bodies such as the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations, all of which have significant interlocking memberships. It is not part of some organic historical process; it is a contrivance.
The Trilateralist statement above alludes to the broadening of the Trilateralist countries to “others”; again in this instance not just Japan, but the entirety of Asia and the Pacific. Although Trilateralists have dominated the Japanese business and political Establishments, they were hitherto restrained from entering into globalist agreements by the strength of the farming sector that feared American agricultural imports. The globalists have already stated that TPP means little until Japan is incorporated into it:

But if the TPP were to remain as it is presently constituted — without Japan’s inclusion — the agreement would not be the economic boon many hoped it would…. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns said in Tokyo in October that the United States would “welcome Japan’s interest in the TPP, recognizing of course that Japan’s decision to pursue joining will be made based on its own careful considerations of its priorities and interests.” For its part, Tokyo seems ready to join the talks. Japanese entry has been on the table since October 2010, when then Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, both endorsed it.[16]

However, as with other such regionalist groupings, such as the European Union, the catalyst is recognition of an outer threat; in this case, China, which has recently acted in typically belligerent and overbearing manner towards Japan over disputed territorial claims.[17] It was a similar threat supposedly posed by the USSR that drove Europe into a “union” under American auspices and on US terms. Just what type of protection from Chinese intransigence would be accorded TPP under US Big Brother is indicated by the close relationship that has long existed between China and the same globalists who have been promoting the Pacific union concept. China is represented on the boards of bodies such as TC and the Pacific Basin Economic Council, another long-running lobby that aims for “economic integration.” New Zealand’s FTA with China is pivotal to the village idiot vision of New Zealand’s economy, and any involvement with TPP is going to have to recognize China as a regional power in partnership with the USA, as not as a rival power in the region. The specter of China merely serves as a temporary scare tactic for the imposition of TPP.

Rudd’s 2008 Statement

What has transpired this month places the statements made by the then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (presently Foreign Minister) in context, especially in regard to his having delivered the speech before the Asia Society, a long-running Rockefeller think tank that predates the Trilateral Commission. Media reports at the time stated:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called on Asian and Pacific nations to form a regional alliance similar to the European Union. Mr. Rudd says a strong multilateral body is needed to help the region maintain security, foster trade and respond to natural disasters and terrorism. He said Asia needs to react quickly to cope with changes brought about by rapid economic growth in the region.

“The European Union does not represent an identikit model of what we would seek to develop in the Asia-Pacific, but what we can learn from Europe is this – it is necessary to take the first step,” he said. But he concedes getting Asian nations together will be much tougher than the task faced by the architects of the European Union last century.

“Our special challenge is that we face a region with a greater diversity in political systems and economic structures, levels of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures than our counterparts in Europe,” he said. “But that should not stop us from thinking big.” The Government will appoint experienced diplomat Richard Woolcott as an envoy to discuss Mr. Rudd’s idea with other countries.

Mr. Rudd says the institution should span the entire Asian-Pacific region including the United States, Japan, China, India and Indonesia.” The danger in not acting is that we run the risk of succumbing to the perception that future conflict in our region may somehow be inevitable,” he said. Mr. Rudd will use his visit to Japan and Indonesia next week to lobby Asian nations on the proposal.[18]

Asia Society

Rudd’s speech was delivered to the Asia Society’s Australian branch, called Austral Asia Center, in Melbourne. Note that Australia is referred to as “Austral Asia” by the Society; a play on words of the term that is normally used to describe Australia and New Zealand. This reflects how the global plutocrats see the nations of Australia and New Zealand, and politicians such as New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Jim Bolger, have long been referring to New Zealand as “an Asian country.” The “Austral Asian” branch was founded by veteran diplomat Richard Woolcott who was chosen by Rudd to initiate the “Asia Pacific community” with high-level meetings throughout Asia, as noted in the news media reports. Hence, the groundwork was further laid for TPP in 2008.

The head office of the Asia Center in New York states that the Society was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III.[19] Trustees include: Charles P. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller IV. The 50^th anniversary of the Asia Society in 2006 was a tribute to the “whole Rockefeller family” and its vision for Asia. The “keynote addresses” were given by Henry Kissinger, the omnipotent perennial government adviser; David Rockefeller,[20] head of the globalist dynasty; John D Rockefeller IV, Charles Percy Rockefeller; and Arthur Ross, a scholar and diplomat of varied experience, who sat on the Rockefeller University Council. The by-line on the Asia Society’s website is: “Preparing Asians and Americans for a shared future.” The “shared future” is that of unrestrained plutocracy, sold with sweeteners, maintained with debt, and enforced with bombs.

Notes

[1] For example former New Zealand Labour Minister Mike Moore is a long time enthusiast for a “Pacific community” and was rewarded for his conversion from “socialism” to free trade by being made head of the World Trade Organization. He is currently New Zealand Ambassador to the USA. His globalist credentials include membership of the Trilateral Commission.

[2] “Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Office of the US Trade Representative, http://www.ustr.gov/tpp

[3] “Outlines of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” ibid.

[4] “The United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/fact-sheets/2011/november/united-states-trans-pacific-partnership

[5] E Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), p. 35.

[6] E Roosevelt, ibid.

[7] “The United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” op. cit.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] TPP Watch, http://tppwatch.org/2011/10/16/trans-pacific-partnership-papers-remain-secret-for-four-years-after-deal/

[11] Trilateral Commission, http://www.trilateral.org/

[12] K Kim, “Obama: Outlines of TransPacific Partnership Reached,” Global Post, November 14, 2011, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/111114/obama-outlines-transpacific-partnership-trade-de

[13] The Trilateral Commission, “About the Organization,” http://www.trilateral.org/about.htm

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid..

[16] B K Gordon, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Rise of China: What Japan Joining the TPP Means for the Region,” Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, November 7, 2011, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136647/bernard-k-gordon/the-trans-pacific-partnership-and-the-rise-of-china

[17] Ibid.

[18] Rudd speaking to the Asia Society Austral Asia Centre, June 6, 2008; reported in The Australian, June 7, 08, et al. See the report on Rudd at the Asia Society Australasia Centre’s website: http://www.asiasociety.org.au/speeches/speeches_current/r155_PM_Rudd_AD2008.html

[19] Asia Society, “About,” http://www.asiasociety.org/about/mission.html

[20] In the course of his address David Rockefeller referred to Kissinger as his “dear friend” and Asia Society Chairman Richard Holbrooke as his “old friend”.