In a recent essay entitled, “The Strategic Significance of the Internet Commons,” former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff describes cyberspace and the Internet as a “global commons” that must come under “global governance.” This is the latest salvo in an ongoing campaign by a disparate congeries of internationalists, socialists, communists, and jihadists to turn over control of the Internet to some sort of regime under the United Nations.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, the effort to transfer that control to the UN — including Internet taxing, censoring, and surveillance powers — is already far advanced. As The New American reported in March of this year, the Obama administration has already begun the phased transfer of Internet control to a nebulous and uncertain governance structure that has been set up as an innocent-appearing transition platform that, ultimately, is set for transfer to UN control.

The Chertoff article, which appeared on the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) on August 14, was originally published in the Summer 2014 issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly, a journal published by the Air Force Research Institute. In it, Chertoff writes:

Cyberspace, much like the high seas, air, outer space, and Antarctica should be viewed as the newest global commons.... Cyberspace is a strategic resource that is essential to today’s global economy yet poses unprecedented risk and vulnerability. Like the development of global governance for the high seas and outer space, cyberspace needs global governance that preserves its freedom and openness while strengthening its security to protect the shared economic and utility value of all nations.

Chertoff Cheers UN Law of the Sea Treaty

Chertoff seems especially enamored of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), citing it approvingly several times as the model for dealing with the cyberspace global commons. This is revealing, inasmuch as LOST has been a cauldron of controversy for decades, since it would: a) challenge the sovereignty of our inland and coastal waters; b) give the UN pretended legal authority over “all ocean space”; c) give the UN a huge constant revenue stream from seabed mineral rights and sea lane taxes ; d) subject our naval operations to UN interference; and much more. (See here, here, and here.)

So, how is it that former DHS chief Chertoff is now an expert on the Internet, and why is he stumping for “global governance” for cyberspace? The short bio at the end of his article that we quote above states that he is “the co-founder and chairman of the Chertoff Group and a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance.” Following in the footsteps of many other “public servants,” Chertoff has parlayed the contacts and connections from his government career into a lucrative and influential consultancy business. We won’t take space here to go into his business conflicts of interest (as, for instance, his public promotion of full-body airport scans, while failing to disclose that his firm’s client, RapiScan, is the main producer of the technology and is making millions of dollars on the supposed “security” provided by the devices), but what about this Global Commission on Internet Governance. Sounds very official, no? So who commissioned this commission?

Chatham House Leads Internet Grab

According to a press release from Chatham House on January 22 of this year: "Carl Bildt, Sweden's Minister of Foreign Affairs, will chair a new Global Commission on Internet Governance, launched by The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)."

The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA, also known as Chatham House) is the British cabal of globalists who serve as the de facto governing class of the U.K., in much the same manner that its New York-based sister house, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR, also known as Pratt House), operates here in the United States.

Bildt serves on the International Advisory Board of the CFR. Another CFR luminary serving on the new Global Commission on Internet Governance is Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence, author of The Next Convergence. And another is Joseph Nye, professor and former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, former chair of the National Intelligence Council, and current executive director at the CFR, chair of studies at the CFR, and current North American chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Chertoff’s aforementioned bio neglects to mention that he also is a member of the Trilateral Commission, a very rarified group of one-worlders organized by David Rockefeller (former chairman of the board and current honorary chairman of the CFR, as well as founder and current honorary chairman of the Trilateral Commission). The CFR, RIIA, and Trilateral Commission form the top tier of globalist think tanks promoting world government. Notable allied outfits in this effort include the Brookings Institution, Aspen Institute, Peterson Institute, Club of Rome, Club of Madrid, Rand Corporation (of which Bildt is also a trustee), and a host of the big foundations, such as Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates, Soros, Hewlett, et al.

And since we have mentioned the Aspen Institute, it is apropos also to mention that Michael Chertoff co-chaired Aspen’s Homeland Security Group, which produced the 2012 report entitled, “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission.” As to be expected the Chertoff-led Aspen report advocated for evolution in the direction of centralized, nationalized control of police functions. That is always a given: In the CFR-RIIA world view, power — political and economic — must always “evolve” (with plenty of helpful pushes, shoves, and brow beatings by the CFR thought cartel) toward more concentrated and centralized power, first by breaking down checks and balances and transferring authority from the local to the national level, and then from the national to the regional and global levels.

So, it is not surprising that Chertoff is once again toadying for the CFR-RIIA globalist powers-that-be in asserting the need for "global governance" over another vital aspect of our lives. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, a CFR member, is a principal of the Chertoff Group. General Hayden served as a member of the CFR’s Advisory Committee that helped produce the Council Special Report No. 56 entitled, “Internet Governance in an Age of Cyber Insecurity.” The report was a project of the CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) program, an ongoing project that is ever pushing for more centralized, concentrated global government.

WEF and Upcoming UN’s Internet Summit in September

It is also worthy of note that the venue chosen by the RIIA for its press release announcing the launch of the Global Commission on Internet Governance was — the 2014 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland. The WEF is that annual glamorous soiree of globalist billionaires, bankers, butchers, dictators, politicians, and academics where the CFR-RIIA elites of the capitalist world hobnob and network with their communist and socialist counterparts. Thus the explosion of activity and propaganda in favor of “global governance” for the Internet.

The timing of the RIIA announcement at the WEF was not accidental; the organized one-worlders hope to push through much of their agenda to seize the Internet at the rapidly approaching Ninth Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) conference to be held in Istanbul, Turkey, this September 2-5. Turkey, which is supplying the IGF venue, is, of course, something less than a paragon of civil liberties. And heading up the Internet Governance Forum confab is United Nations Under-Secretary General Wu Hongbo, a functionary of the Communist Party of the Peoples Republic of China, where posting an unapproved Internet comment can bring a visit from the cyber police and cause the offending commenter to “disappear.”

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