Welcome to the twenty-first century and all it has to offer. Easy travel, home theater, e-books, electricity, heat and air, computers … all accommodations we are taking for granted and we are happy to use and enjoy.
We can stop thinking … after all, GPS systems will get us there, political analysis and news are brought to us on a silver platter through several media outlets, and there is no need to plan our next trip to watch our favorite football team as TV and video-recording bring it to us and hold it for us until we sink into our favorite easy chair.
The only thing for us to do is to use our creativity to work, produce projects, choose where to live, and take care of our property … or at least this is what we think and desire, but someone else has other plans. Who is someone else? How about the United Nations and our leftist government?
Have you heard of Agenda 21 and sustainable development? I assume you have although you might not realize it.
Definition and History of Agenda 21
Agenda 21 is the blueprint of various United Nations agencies, in consultation with the World Commission on Environment and Development, to achieve sustainable development.
Agenda 21 defines itself as “a new global partnership, committing all the states to engage in a dialogue to achieve an equitable world economy, increasing the interdependence of the community of nations.” It is a “comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.”
Sustainable development describes a variety of public policy objectives that seek to better organize communities to
(1) Protect the environment;
(2) Stimulate economic development; and
(3) Promote social equity.
These three values are thought to be inseparable.
In reality, the true objectives of Agenda 21 are
- To end national sovereignty
- To abolish of private property
- To destroy the family unity
- To restrict mobility and individual opportunity
Defined as unsustainable are the family unit, private property, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and happiness, our Constitution, commercial agriculture, the farm unit, pesticides, pastures, grazing livestock, ski resorts, and paved roads among others.
Agenda 21 ultimately wants a socialistic global government in which people are controlled by a selected few.
Agenda 21 was signed in 1992 by former President George H. W. Bush together with 178 other heads of state, for sustainable development and one world order. It is the agenda for the century we live in, where all you value and hold true will cease to exist.
In the same year, George H.W. Bush declared that the sustainable development planned in Agenda 21 “is a sacred principle enshrined in the United Nations Charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their alliance.” A year later President Bill Clinton signed an executive order, with no Congressional review, establishing the Presidents Council for Sustainable Development. Top executives of the Council include the Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature among others. The Council is responsible for instilling the sustainable development conscience in any federal agency.
In 1997 the counties and mayors created the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities, and in 2001 the National Governors Association endorsed “Smart Growth.”
Most recently, President Obama formed by executive order the White House Rural Council whose members are Tom Vilsack, chair, and several agencies among which are the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Education and Energy. Attorney General Eric Holder will also serve on the new panel. Their job will be to coordinate programs across government and “increase the impact of federal dollars” to “improve the quality of life in rural America.” Please refer to Charly Seale’s article in the last issue.
Private Property and Individual Freedom
The Preamble of Agenda 21 states that: “Land…cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice…. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable….” This declaration, which is in direct opposition of our Constitution, but nonetheless signed, by top officials under the George H.W. Bush administration, has severe consequences about taxation. Taxes become a powerful tool to dictate where development will occur and where not, raising taxes to force landowners to sell the land and lowering taxes on property reserved for development.
Through the Biological and Wildland Project and Smart Growth – USA, maps are designed where people can live, work, and where they cannot. This is a step toward the prohibition of private property by concentrating people in skyscrapers close to mass transit like light rails, and toward the destructions of dams, the closures of roads and parks, the prohibition to harvest timber and to produce oil and other fossil fuels, the reintroduction of wild animals and the central control of water.
Our federal government granted $ 4 million to the American Planning Association (APA) with which money they wrote a book entitled “Growing Smart: Legislative Guidebook.” In the book APA develops model comprehensive planning legislation for our states. We read that our government will have the right to enter upon the land, in full violation of the Fourth Amendment, to inspect it and to fine the landowners who are not in compliance or even evict them through condemnation by eminent domain.
Furthermore, we read that government, rather than the landowner, will control supply and demand of land by drawing on the map where development is allowed and where it is not, inflating the value (and reducing taxes) for developers on land to be developed and devaluating (and raising taxes) on the rest. The only buyers remaining to be interested in buying the devaluated land will be either the government or groups like The Nature Conservancy. This has already happened in Collier Co., Florida and in Richland Co., South Carolina.
These master plans will also reduce freedom of activities because they include a series of international codes. We know already how freedom is reduced in rural land thanks to habitat conservation plans and endangered and invasive species Acts where the landlord is reduced to a tenant. Restrictions are further applied to property in urban and suburban America.
The following examples, although extreme, can further expose the Sustainable Development scheme against individual freedoms in towns: in Cullman, Alabama the Environmental Police (did anyone know there was such a thing as the Environmental Police?) told an 86 year old woman that her tomato plants in her backyard violated a code; the penalty was $150 a day. In Orem, Utah a senior citizen was handcuffed, brought to jail and charged with two misdemeanors for failure to water her lawn. Democrat activist and attorney Allred defended her. In Corbin, Kentucky a man was fined $100 for failing to mow his grass and clean his yard. When he complained to the officer and stopped complying, the fine rose to $2,250. Code enforcement officials say if the man continues to refuse to cooperate, they could eventually force his house into foreclosure.
The New Religion
Agenda 21 embraces the new religion in which plants, animals, and even unanimated objects achieve the same or higher status than men, and it includes its own precautionary principle, in which a person is considered guilty until proven innocent. According to UNESCO, in fact, governments should issue policies to prevent pollution or any environmental threat and enforce them with penalties.
The New Economy
The economy in general has been redefined from free enterprise to “public-private partnership.” The new global economy promotes the free movement of goods across the national borders to redistribute wealth among the nations.
Agenda 21 talks about an “international economy” in which nations are called “states.” These states form a global partnership and increase interdependence among them to fight poverty by avoiding environmental degradation and by helping minorities such as women and youth. The major cause of environmental degradation is wealth and consumption of goods and services by the rich, which in turn cause poverty, social injustice, tremendous stress on the environment, and not enough food, health care, shelter, and education among the poor.
Agriculture and Food Security
Agriculture is such an important national resource that cannot be entrusted to private citizens, but must be transferred to public control that will spare it from speculation and urban encroachment. Public control is exercised through zoning, land-use planning, conservation easement and purchase of development rights, habitat conservation plans, compulsory registration, local permits, taxes, and similar activities.
Agenda 21 cares also about food security. Governments must review national and regional agricultural policies in relation to foreign trade, and price policies. They must implement sustainable agriculture improving harvesting, storage, processing, distribution, and marketing products and implement integrated agricultural projects that include management of rangelands, forests, and wildlife.
Environment, Family Unit, and Global Wealth
Governments must, among the rest, encourage environmental sound technology and renewable sources of energy, reduce the amount of energy and material in goods, encourage environmentally sound technologies and products, recycling and reduce waste, and identify vulnerable population groups, like landless rural workers, ethnic minorities, women, and refugees and immigrants, and their environment. Furthermore government should collect data and implement national policies for environment and development.
Agenda 21 must also address the primary health needs of the world’s population through education, housing, public works and community groups, including schools, religious and civic organizations. Because prevention is better than the cure, countries must cooperate to prevent diseases especially among women, the poor and in rural communities. Birth control and women’s health are at the center of Agenda 21. Eco-guru Al gore stated at the Games of Changes in New York last June that “women must feel comfortable to have smaller families” so they pollute less and that “women must choose how many children to have and how to space them.” This explains why abortion, Planned Parenthood, and the like are so important for the leftist tree-huggers; more than women’s “rights” it is about environmental sustainability!!
Government control in each country has an important role in human health issues, to foresee the introduction, diffusion, and aggravation of communicable diseases by protecting clean water supply, fighting water pollution, enforcing food quality control and environmentally sound irrigation practices … Isn’t this the goal of the Clean Water Act?
Regulations and Laws
Agenda 21 promotes agencies within the several countries to adopt national conservation strategies and closely work on a common database. These agencies should help lawmakers to develop an integrated program of environmental and development laws and to perform reviews of selected national legal systems.
Academic institutions should also cooperate and provide training in environment and development laws, and each country must then develop integrated strategies to maximize enforcement of its laws and regulations relating to sustainable development with international assistance and monitoring.
Agenda 21 wants “to stop treating the environment as a ‘free good’ and to pass those costs to other parts of society, other countries, and future generations.” It also aims to add social and environmental costs into goods so that prices will reflect the relative scarcity and total value of resources and will help prevent environmental degradation. Government should further establish and encourage the creation of a new market in pollution control and environmentally sounder resource management.
All energy sources must of course respect the atmosphere, human health, and the environment as a whole, and recognizes that that the way we currently produce and consume energy is unsustainable. Countries must also cooperate with the U.N. bodies to control and regulate air pollution and use. And since air pollution travels through state and country lines, the U.N. requires that governments must regulate and enforce its regulations on any activity, including accidental destruction of natural resources.
By Consensus
With the current system, regulations undergo a long legislative process of hearings, debates, and a vote on the proposals. Citizens unhappy with the results can have the official defeated in the next election. According to the wishes of the Presidential Council on Sustainable Development, the new decision process will be simpler and based on “consensus.”
Oh but don’t be mislead by the word! Consensus is a process in which voting is not allowed, but is the result of an agreement without expressed disagreement. In other words, a chair of a committee declares that a consensus has been reached when most of the people involved agree on a vision or an idea. Practical example of this process is what happened at many recent meetings of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the Southern Edward Plateau Habitat Conservation Plan (SEP HCP). Although many landowners expressed disagreement, the agencies’ representatives and the members of the committee consented on their common vision of the project, ignored disagreeing opinions, and moved on until the EWA stepped in.
Consensus is also taught to our kids in school. Our kids now learn “connected mathematics”: “Through discussing the problems and their solutions, the students are learning to reason about mathematics. They learn that mathematics is man-made, that is arbitrary, and good solutions are arrived by consensus among those who are considered experts.” 2+2 might be equal to 5 if we reach a consensus. A teachers’ guide says that because the curriculum does not emphasize arithmetic computations done by hand, some students might not do well on the test and connected mathematics might be better for them.
Non- Government Partners
Governments must work with non-governmental partners, such as those non-profit groups that inform and promote environmental sustainability and other social causes, such as Apollo Alliance, the former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones’ organization, Games for Change, and George Soros’ Tides Foundation, which sponsored a series of cartoons to educate children on the evil of the capitalistic society, corporations, and luxury, the main sources of pollution and unsustainable practices. “The Story of Stuff” is one of the major examples. Other groups would be The Nature Conservancy and the American Planning Association.
Labor Unions
Governments should also count on the role of workers and labor unions. “As their representatives, trade unions are vital actors in facilitating the achievement of sustainable development in view of their experience in addressing industrial change” Unions are vital, according to Agenda 21, to enact legislation, collective environment agreements, and encourage freedom and the right of workers to organize trade unions.” Unions are taking a central stage in our politics, orchestrating protests where their power is threatened, like in Wisconsin, and by protesting and blocking the move of Boeing to South Carolina. Unions are already internationalized, as we witness the foreign union support expressed in favor of the unions in Wisconsin.
Business
What about businesses and industries? Agenda 21 firmly believes that it is important to strengthen the role of business and industries … but only if they are green: they must produce no waste and minimal human impact on the planet. Agenda 21 approves of transnational corporations and encourages the cap-and-trade mechanism calling it a “free-market” mechanism in which price of goods and services should increasingly reflect the environmental costs of their carbon footprints.
It is obvious that industries and business associations should cooperate with workers and trade unions to continuously improve the knowledge and skills for implementing sustainable development operations and that government should enact regulatory measures and economic incentives to “assure maximum efficiency” to influence the decision making process toward sustainability of the environment.
Financing
The financing of Agenda 21 would come from the countries’ own public and private sectors and by grants from the Global Environmental Facility, managed by the World Bank. The cost given by the UNCED secretariat to implement Agenda 21 from 1993 to 2000 was $125 billion.[1] Now Agenda 21 costs $100 billion annually, paid by our tax dollars, over 2,000 nongovernmental organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, Audubon Society, America Planning Association, National Teachers Association, etc., and tax exempt family foundations like Pew Charitable Trusts, Turner, Rockefeller, Gates, etc.[2]
Agenda 21 and its supporters say the following:
“While international organizations such as the United Nations play a crucial role in the monitoring and recognition of needed programs, budgets, and schedules, the commitment must be on an individual, local, national, regional, and global scale. The establishment of a new world order depends on the establishment of a new relationship between the developed and underdeveloped nations.”
“The cost of inaction could outweigh the financial costs of implementing Agenda 21. Inaction will narrow the choices of future generations.”[3]
Agenda 21 Today
Many before me thought that Agenda 21 would never be implemented in our Country, but, as mentioned, it is already here. I am sure that you can recognize that Agenda 21 has already been implemented here in the US and that the current administration is trying its best to advance it as fast as it can. Clear and obvious examples are: Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, EPA, Habitat Conservation Plans, Environmental Easements, Endangered Species Act and what’s happening in West Texas with the Lizard and in California with the Delta fish, Invasive Species Act, the closure of national parks to the public, the protection of predators like wolves and mountain lions, the war on coal and oil, the green sources of energy, eminent domain, the housing bubble, the ban of the light bulb, the Lacey Act, and other private property rights issues.
Take the Lacey Act, for example. The act was passed in 1900 to stop trade in illegal wild game. Over the years it has expanded and now includes endangered species, including certain animals we raise. In 2007 it expended further thanks to environmentalists and labor unions to include plant and plant products. IKEA warned that this would transform commerce into a nightmare and the price of furniture would necessarily skyrocket, which is exactly what the Lacey Act expenders want. Anti-logging British Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) wants to kill the market for goods to force developing countries to preserve natural resources.
EIA, labor unions, and a few misguided enterprises who aimed to protect their market lobbied Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) who included the language in the 2008 Farm Bill. The Lacey Act got the made-in-America guitar manufacturer Gibson in trouble with the US Dept. of Justice because, by importing certain wood from India, the company might have violated a technical Indian law governing the export of finished woods.
Education
We are even exposed daily to secondary advertisements in favor of sustainable development: have you have ever noticed that the “Go to Meeting” ad on the Kenyan Water Project promotes environmental sustainability and targets women and minorities? And the advertisement of the little girl dressed in white and promotes green energy while playing on the beach?
Furthermore, Agenda 21 is stealing a generation of children by indoctrinating them so that they accept these ideas and become “global citizens.”
The educational branch of the U.N., UNESCO, has declared 2005-2015 the Decade of Sustainable Development, accomplishing the 40 chapters of Agenda 21. The federal curriculum is deliberately brainwashing our kids in our schools with this nonsense. They are trying to change the children’s loyalty from the family to the government.
Al Gore has already explained to kids that they must educate the adults because there are things they know and understand better than their elders. As already mentioned, George Soros’ has several videos that explain how wasteful we are and how horrible corporations are because they aim solely to profit at the expenses of the environment. One of his videos states that businesses, unlike people, do not have a conscience, and ruin the planet. Another one, “Let there be… stuff,” explains the new religion, where the planet is of foremost importance and humans of the least.
The new word in America’s school is “constructivism”: “Students construct (their own) understanding of reality and realize that objective reality is not knowable.” So why bother with the truth? The Wayzata Central Middle School in Plymouth, MN wrote on its board, “The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts, but of values.”[4]
And we already mentioned “Connected Mathematics.”
Interesting reading for parents is “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America,” by Charlotte Iserbyt. Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration. Students are raised ignorant on purpose, as they were in communist countries and in Nazi Germany. They are indoctrinated. Why? Because more highly educated people consume more resources than poor lower income people and therefore they increase the threat of sustainability. I would personally add with personal experience in socialist Italy that ignorant people are also much easier to manipulate.
When Harvey Rooven, former Vice Chair of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives – an international association of national, regional, and local governments and government organizations committed to sustainable development) was asked about the conflict between the Agenda 21 and the American principles passed down to us by our Founders, he simply replied:
“The Bill of Rights must take a back seat to the collective.”
Reclaiming Freedom: Doing Our Part
The good news in all this is that we can reclaim freedom!
The reclamation begins within the family. Family is the first unit of government. Family values and strong tiding among family members is the single most powerful weapon we have. We must follow our kids in school and be a participant in what they learn and study, and criticize when necessary. We must educate our youth to think and to discuss issues according to logical evidence and not opinions and emotions. We must study with them the principles and values and the history of our Founders on which our Republic is based upon.
It is not by chance that the socialists want to redefine family and parental authority, and want to indoctrinate our children. As already mentioned, our children are ignorant by design, not because of bad teachers and curriculum. Soros’ stories have reached the school system and certain churches: watch out for those.
We must be active in our communities, starting at the courthouse. Americans created and enjoy free market based on natural laws, based on the survival of the fittest, not social equality. Our natural law has sustained many attacks over the centuries; Sustainable Development is just the most recent and it can be defeated as well.
Socialists condemn capitalism, free markets, private property rights, and individual freedom as not fair and undermining the weak. However, freedom is absolutely fair: like our Founders believed, every person is born with equal rights, and anyone can excel in freedom. This is because our Creator gave us those unalienable rights.
America must again find her spiritual, Biblical character because without it we cannot lead nor be free again. Like our troops remind us, freedom is not free, and we all need to sacrifice time and money.
Like Freedom 21, an organization born in opposition of Agenda 21 recommends,
Be informed! The first step to reclaim freedom is to know our past and our present. Challenge what you hear, play the devil’s advocate. Re-learn the principles of free market and our Constitution to defend it when they are challenged. Make other people think. Get involved, participate in your local government, help the organization that shares your concerns such as the EWA or create one that addresses constitutional needs that are overlooked by others. Join and support like-minded groups. Be involved in public policy. Look at the difference that EWA has made so far with the SEP-HCP and the “Three Species”.
Tocqueville was astonished when he saw everyday Americans join groups, discuss things in their own community, and participating in local government. We modern Americans have sadly forgotten that, being too busy with our personal business and enjoyments.
Be involved with your legislators. Help your representative and other constituents to learn what you have learned. And convince them, through a good and constant relationship to vote for freedom.
Get involved in political campaigns. There is no better way to learn about politics, issues, and candidates than discussing and asking questions of candidates and, if you like them, to join them by volunteering in their political campaigns. By helping your candidate you form a grass roots organization of your own by calling possible supporters, distributing literature and organizing meetings.
Be a candidate of your own and run for boards, county positions, or other office.
Get acquainted with social media like FreedomWorks.org to learn about issues and find like-minded individuals and groups.
Get involved with your local party organizations making sure they have people who know and appreciate freedom and the Constitution.
Get inspired and inspire others. Light always brightens the darkness, but never does darkness doom the light. Americans who cherish the Constitution are motivated to act now more than ever. As American citizens we are called to defend the Constitution, with weapons if required, against domestic and foreign enemies; our weapons are knowledge, education, inspiration, and activism.
We Americans are known for our resolve. Our Country has seen worse challenges. We will prevail if we can defeat apathy and resignation.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001306/130632e.pdf
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/index.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM
http://theunsolicitedopinion.com/Library/AboutAgenda21.pdf
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/lamb/100418
http://www.wkyt.com/wymtnews/headlines/59678622.html
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695211283/Defense-grows-in-Orem-lawn-case.html
http://www.freedomadvocates.org/images/pdf/SD-A%20Brief%20Analysis.pdf
http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/sdsf-1.pdf
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/al-gore-agenda-21-and-population-control
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/21/al-gore-branches-out-into-population-control-theory/
http://www.gamesforchange.org/festival/
http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/education/4912-george-soros-distorts-religious-teachings
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/al-gore-empowers-women-to-have-fewer-children-to-curb-pollution/
http://www.munfw.org/archive/45th/csd2.htm
The Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2011, “Stringing Up Gibson Guitar,” by Kimberley A. Strassel