Local Governments Reject UN's Agenda 21

Local Governments Reject UN's Agenda 21

Written by John F. McManus

Thursday, 21 April 2011 07:32

The centuries-long drive to create a totalitarian world government hasn’t been derailed. Because of widespread opposition, however, the route chosen to accomplish the goal has taken numerous twists and turns. The most devilishly effective method being currently employed to carry out the totalitarian scheme doesn’t call for military action or a series of sudden national coups d’etat. Instead, veteran promoters of the drive are using a “piecemeal” approach aimed at destroying personal freedom and transferring national sovereignty to the United Nations. This process brings to mind the oft-repeated poser: “How does one eat an elephant?” Answer: “One bite at a time!” Using the “Piecemeal” Approach Over the past few decades, well-known internationalist Zbigniew Brzezinski has bounced back and forth between government and academic posts. In 1970, he openly proposed world government in his 300-page book entitled Between Two Ages. Its recommendations led to the 1973 formation of the Trilateral Commission (TC), which he then led for many years. World government, he stated in his book, could be brought about in “piecemeal” fashion through “a variety of indirect ties and already developing limitations on national sovereignty.” Four years later, another professor and occasional State Department veteran named Richard N. Gardner boldly suggested the same strategy in his article “The Hard Road to World Order.” Published in the April 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the world-government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations, Gardner lamented that a single leap into world government, which he preferred, wasn’t attainable. So he urged “an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece.” And he pointedly advocated a “piecemeal” transfer of power to such international organizations as the UN’s International Monetary Fund, the UN’s World Bank, the UN-led World Food Conference, the UN-led Population Conference, even a United Nations military arm. The end sought by these two internationalist heavyweights — and many other likeminded globalists — would result in forced redistribution of the world’s wealth, termination of basic freedoms (religion, speech, publishing, property rights, etc.), and complete regimentation of all human activity right down to the local level. It’s no surprise, therefore, to discover that the “piecemeal” process aiming toward this megalomaniacal goal appears in the UN’s Agenda 21. This enormous document emerged from the highly publicized 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Its 1,100 pages supply a detailed program for social engineering on such a massive scale that it would, if fully implemented, accomplish complete regimentation of all life on the planet during the 21st Century. Hence the name Agenda 21. Rio Hosted the Birth of Agenda 21 More than 35,000 government officials, diplomats, environmental activists, and journalists journeyed to the UN’s 1992 extravaganza in Brazil. In country after country, achieving the goal contained in Agenda 21 has now proceeded in “piecemeal” fashion. The deceptively labeled steps leading to the overall goal usually fall under the label “sustainable development.” But they also appear under such appealing terms as “save the earth,” “biodiversity,” “environmental justice,” etc. Implementation of Agenda 21 at the local level also appears as “Smart Growth Initiatives,” “Resilient Cities,” “Regional Visioning Projects,” and a host of titles employing the word “Green.” Attorney David Sitarz, one of the major editors of the massive Agenda 21 document, minced no words in telling the world its overall purpose. His revealing summary appeared in its early pages: Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on earth.... It calls for specific changes in the activities of all people.... Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced — a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level. If a major enthusiast for Agenda 21 admits that this comprehensive document calls for the total regimentation of all life on Planet Earth, shouldn’t people take notice? Sitarz continued: There are specific actions which are intended to be undertaken by multinational corporations and entrepreneurs, by financial institutions, by high-end companies and indigenous people, by workers and labor unions, by farmers and consumers, by students and schools, by governments and legislators, by scientists, by women, by children — in short by every person on earth. “Every person on earth”? Yes indeed. What Sitarz wrote led The New American magazine’s William Jasper to conclude that Agenda 21’s “tyrannical implications are so stunningly transparent that it seems impossible that any nation not overtly communist could endorse it.” Yet, most nations have endorsed it and have been implementing its recommendations — piece by piece — while the far-reaching totalitarian goal remains in the shadows. Piecemeal Implementation of Agenda 21 Through ICLEI Launched in 1990, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is one of many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) operating in association with the United Nations. Self-described as “an association of over 1,200 local government members who are committed to sustainable development,” ICLEI seeks to swallow up a nation’s independence by having local governments adopt the overall Agenda 21 program in piecemeal fashion. Because independent nations are obviously too large to swallow in a single gulp, ICLEI was created to gain control over local governments one bite at a time. ICLEI’s website openly admits that its Local Agenda 21 Model Communities Program will “aid local governments in implementing Chapter 28 of Agenda 21, the global action plan for sustainable development.” Former Clinton administration adviser J. Gary Lawrence later worried that there might be some who discover that the ICLEI effort constitutes “an attack on the power of the nation-state.” At a seminar in England, he told a British audience, The segment of our society who fear “one-world government” and a UN invasion of the United States through which our individual freedoms might be stripped away would actively work to defeat any elected official who joined [in our effort.] So, we’ll call our processes something else, such as comprehensive planning, growth management, smart growth. Veteran “sustainable development” opponent Tom DeWeese, the leader of the Virginia-based American Policy Center, notes that the Sustainable Development plan contained in the Agenda 21 plan is being advanced under an array of deceptively labeled initiatives such as: … cap and trade, global warming, population control, gun control, open borders and illegal immigration, higher taxes, higher gasoline prices, refusal to drill for oil and natural gas, education restructuring, international IDs, health supplement control, food control, farming “reform,” control of private property, etc. While pointing out that ICLEI is already functioning in other countries, DeWeese has published a list of 544 U.S. communities (cities, towns, counties) where ICLEI is hard at work while being financed by local tax revenues. Just as the term “global warming” has lately been replaced by the increasingly mocked “climate change,” ICLEI has adopted a newer name, “ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability.” The hope is that the four-word addition to its title will overcome whatever fear might be generated by discovery of the word “International” in its full name. Yet ICLEI’s website actually bares its internationalist goal: “Connect cities and local governments to the United Nations and other international bodies.” Each would then “help their countries implement multilateral environmental agreements,” such as those produced at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. That means Agenda 21. Americans Awakening to the Threat Early in 2011, the Board of Commissioners in Carroll County Maryland voted unanimously to abolish the county’s “Office of Sustainability” and withdraw from the ICLEI program. Commissioner Richard Rothstein explained that the cost of the program wasn’t the greatest motivation for the commissioners’ decision. They took their action because of their awareness that ICLEI is “an organization with extreme beliefs on global warming that promotes United Nations big-government socio-economic policies.... In reality, Agenda 21-based sustainability programs seek government control of land, labor and capital....” City, county and community leaders across the nation should take heed. The city of Edmond, Oklahoma, has also pulled out of ICLEI. In Maine, the state’s Department of Transportation cancelled plans for the “Gateway Project,” a plan to create unnecessary linkages among 20 communities. Some opponents of the Maine project expressed their belief that the idea stemmed from the overall Agenda 21 planning. While some Americans now realize that Agenda 21 and its numerous stepchildren pose a danger to their communities and their nation, many more must be made aware. Far more than considerations about the cost and control associated with involvement, the more important overall threat posed by Agenda 21 is loss of independence at the community, county, state, and national levels. The designs of the globalists who are working to seize control of the world — piecemeal, step-by-step, bite by bite, or however else the process can be described — must be blocked. Our nation has always benefited from its diverse communities and independent-thinking citizens bound together loosely under the U.S. and state constitutions. Let’s keep it that way! (First published as "Agenda 21 and Its ICLEI Stepchild" in the May, 2011 issue of the Bulletin of The John Birch Society; reposted here with permission.)