Saturday, September 12, 2009

Health Care And You ..."Get your shot or get on the bus! That's what's coming." THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

Click on picture to enlarge.




Americans are outraged with the recent introduction of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. The Internal Revenue Service will enforce fines of $3,800.00 imposed against non- participants of the National Health Care plan. Even more disturbing is that the proposed reform will follow the blueprint of Hitler’s Aktion T-4 Eugenics program that will mean death for millions of citizens because of “cost effectiveness”, or lives deemed unworthy of living. Buried in the legislation is a provision for a class 2 implantable device for participants. The design of the legislation is to make it very difficult for anyone to oppose the plan once passed. Martial Law legislation has been passed in Maine, and Massachusetts has it in the works as well. The legislation would permit forced vaccination, quarantine in civil detention camps, warrantless searches, and seizures, blockades of American cities turning them into giant concentration camps. This is only the beginning. Read more here...


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In case you missed yesterday's post you might want to read it...even if you did read it you might want to go back and read it again ...very scary "A global currency issue was approved... " without your approval! ~ The More You Know... The more you should know!


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And this just in...


Rich Noyes, director of research at the MRC, says The Associated Press did do a fact check on his speech.

Rich Noyes (Media Research Center)"[The AP story suggests] that he uttered 'a variety of over simplifications and omissions,'" says Noyes. "He talked about how he would not add a single dime to the deficit, when the studies are showing it would add about a trillion dollars to the deficit over the second year of the plan. He talked about not permitting any illegal immigrant to be covered, when in fact it was Democrats who voted down any attempt to verify immigration status."

"The list of things that he talked about [was] very misleading," the MRC spokesman concludes, "added to the arrogant veneer of him scolding anybody else for taking liberties with the truth as liars, as he did."

Noyes says Obama's speech was about as "audacious" as one could possibly get. He says while the AP did do its fact check, there has been little coverage from the mainstream media on Obama taking liberty with the facts during his speech. Until that happens, says MRC, it gives the president "a green light to lie and cry wolf about whatever he wants, whenever he wants -- and it will aid in the most radical government takeover ever attempted in America."

See also: It's easier to kill a million people than control a million people. (from Obama's foreign policy advisor.) ...Don't ya think that's a little scary?

Friday, September 11, 2009

“a new global financial order”...this is not just the beginning...more like the end!

Source: Global Research

Before you go on...
Let me say that Ellen Brown certainly does her homework and based on what I have read in the past, her research is above par..."excellent" is the word! When you get to that part that says, "A global currency issue was approved..." Recall my earlier post " New World Order ...Do I hear and echo? at townhall.com and listen to Gordon Brown (what he says should alarm all Americans... very, very, scary!). ~ Norman E. Hooben

"Wall Street's 9/11": Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?



A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep. They put the pillow over the face of Lehman Brothers and they put her to sleep.” The question is, why?

The Lehman bankruptcy is widely considered to be the watershed event that changed the rules of the game for those Wall Street banks considered “too big to fail.” The bankruptcy option was ruled out once and for all. The taxpayers would have to keep throwing money at the banks, no matter how corrupt, ill-managed or undeserving. As Dean Baker noted in April 2009:

“Geithner has supposedly ruled out the bankruptcy option because when he, along with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, tried letting Lehman Brothers go under last fall, it didn’t turn out very well. Of course, it is not necessary to go the route of an uncontrolled bankruptcy that Geithner and Co. pursued with Lehman. . . . [But] the Geithner crew insists that there are no alternatives to his plan; we have to just keep giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks . . . , further enriching the bankers who wrecked the economy.”

Although Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, September 15, 2008, it was actually “bombed” on September 11, when the biggest one-day drop in its stock and highest trading volume occurred before bankruptcy. Lehman CEO Richard Fuld maintained that the 158 year old bank was brought down by unsubstantiated rumors and illegal naked short selling. Although short selling (selling shares you don’t own) is legal, the short seller is required to have shares lined up to borrow and replace to cover the sale. Failure to buy the shares back in the next three trading days is called a “fail to deliver.” Christopher Cox, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008, said in a July 2009 article that naked short selling “can allow manipulators to force prices down far lower than would be possible in legitimate short-selling conditions.” By September 11, 2008, according to the SEC, as many as 32.8 million Lehman shares had been sold and not delivered – a 57-fold increase over the peak of the prior year. For a very large company like Lehman, with plenty of “float” (available shares for trading), this unprecedented number was highly suspicious and warranted serious investigation. But the SEC, which was criticized for failing to follow up even on tips that Bernie Madoff’s business was a ponzi scheme, has yet to announce the results of any investigation.

More Questions

Other questions about the Lehman collapse are raised in David Wessel’s July 2009 book In Fed We Trust. Why was Bear Stearns saved from bankruptcy but Lehman Brothers was not? How could the decision makers not realize the dire consequences of letting Lehman go down?

One possible explanation is that they actually thought the bank would be bought out at the last minute, just as Bear Stearns was. In both cases, the parties worked feverishly over the weekend after the stock’s collapse to try to negotiate a deal. For Bear Stearns, the negotiations succeeded, with the help of the New York Federal Reserve, which provided the loan used by JPMorgan Chase to complete the deal. With Lehman, however, the interested buyer was British, and the help that was needed was from the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling. The weekend after the September 11 stock collapse, intense negotiations were pursued with Barclays Bank, which was prepared to underwrite Lehman’s debts; but it needed a waiver from British regulators of a rule requiring shareholder approval. Negotiations continued until the market was getting ready to open in Japan on Sunday, but UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling would not give the necessary waiver. He said something to the effect that he did not want to infect Britain with America’s cancer. The sentiment was understandable, but the question was, why did he wait until it was too late for the Treasury or the Federal Reserve to move in with other arrangements?

The issue takes on more significance in light of the fact that Chancellor Darling played a similar role in another 9-11 collapse the previous year. On September 11, 2007, frantic customers were lining up outside Northern Rock, the UK’s fifth largest mortgage lender, in the first British bank run in 141 years. The bank’s shares plunged 31% in a single day. Like the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the U.S., the bankruptcy of Northern Rock changed the rules of the game. Britain’s major banks too would now be saved at any cost, in order to avoid the loss of customer confidence, panic and bank runs that could precipitate a 1929-style market crash.

With Northern Rock, as with Lehman Brothers, Alistair Darling could have saved the day but backed down. Northern Rock had a willing buyer, Lloyds TSB; but the buyer needed a loan from the Bank of England, which the Bank’s Governor, Mervyn King, had denied. Darling was advised by his staff to overrule the Governor and grant the loan, but this would have cost political capital for UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had been widely lauded for giving the Bank of England its independence in 1997.

Brown is criticized domestically for precipitating the financial crisis with errors made as Chancellor of the Exchequer before he became Prime Minister. Critics maintain the British Treasury has abdicated its responsibility as the financial overseer of the British economy to the Bank of England, which in many ways controls the government, because its advice is always followed regarding the British budget. The whole scenario suggests that the much-vaunted virtues of an independent central bank are overblown. Some economists, including Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke, blame poor policymaking by an independent Federal Reserve for bringing on the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Shock Therapy?

According to Representative Paul Kanjorski, speaking on C-SPAN in January 2009, the collapse of Lehman Brothers precipitated a $550 billion run on the money market funds on Thursday, September 18. This was the dire news that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presented to Congress behind closed doors, prompting Congressional approval of Paulson’s $700 billion bank bailout despite deep misgivings. It was the sort of “shock therapy” discussed by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, in which a major crisis prompts hasty emergency action involving the relinquishment of rights or funds that would otherwise be difficult to pry loose from the citizenry.

Like the “bombing” of Lehman stock on September 11, the $550 billion money market run was suspicious. The stock market had plunged when Lehman filed for bankruptcy on September 15, but it actually went up on September 16. Why did the money market wait until September 18 to collapse? A report by the Joint Economic Committee pointed to the fact that the $62 billion Reserve Primary Fund had “broken the buck” (fallen below a stable $1 per share) due to its Lehman investments; but that had occurred on September 15, and the fund had suspended redemptions for the following week. What dire reversal happened on September 17? According to the SEC, it was another record day for illegal naked short selling. Failed trades climbed to 49.7 million – 23% of Lehman trades.

The Larger Question Is Why?

All of this suggests that Lehman Brothers did not just fall over the brink but was pushed. Judge James Peck, who presided in the bankruptcy proceedings, said “Lehman Brothers became a victim, in effect the only true icon to fall in a tsunami that has befallen the credit markets.”

If Lehman was indeed sacrificed, who pushed it and to what end? Some critics point to Henry Paulson and his cronies at Goldman Sachs, Lehman’s arch rival. Goldman certainly came out on top after Lehman’s demise, but there are other possibilities as well, involving more global players. The month after Lehman collapsed, Gordon Brown and the EU leaders called for using the financial crisis as an opportunity to radically enhance the regulatory power of global institutions. Brown spoke of “a new global financial order,” echoing the “new world order” referred to by globalist banker David Rockefeller when he said in 1994:

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the new world order.”

Richard Haas, President of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in 2006:

“Globalisation . . . implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.”

Sovereignty is one of these cherished rights that nations will give up only with “the right major crisis.” Gordon Brown put it like this:

“Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago, can no longer be postponed. . . . We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age.”

In April 2009, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling hosted the G20 summit in London, which focused on the financial crisis. A global currency issue was approved, and an international Financial Stability Board was agreed to as global regulator, to be based in the controversial Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. The international bankers who caused the financial crisis are indeed capitalizing on it, consolidating their power in “a new global financial order” that gives them top-down global control. Just some food for thought as September 11 rolls around again.


Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown

Obama’s ultimate insult is that he has no remorse.

OBAMA – A CHARMING LIAR?

By Frances Rice

President Barack Obama is a charming liar. That assertion was made by a liberal talk show host on Air America, a far left-wing radio station.

Where is the caterwauling about racism or a lack of “civility” from Democrats and liberals in the mainstream media or else where. When ardent Obama supporters start calling him a liar, it’s a sure sign that the wool has been pulled off of the Obama wolf.

In a laughable attempt to keep the Obama fig leaf of truthfulness in place, Democrats and their media allies are now castigating Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina for spontaneously and truthfully calling Obama a liar during Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. There was no such hand wringing when Democrats booed President George W. Bush when he addressed Congress. Ignored is the fact that Obama during his speech trashed as liars average Americans, Republican leaders and all who do not agree with Obama’s radical government-run, rationed health care agenda. Lost in the media coverage is the fact that laughter erupted in Congress during Obama’s speech when he readily admitted that details of his healthcare plan still need to be worked out. Sadly, Obama’s duplicitous speech was an insulting campaign ploy to further deceive Americans and divide our nation.

From the moment he stepped onto the national stage to campaign for the presidency, Obama has consistently lied to the American people in order to convince us to trust him with our economic and national security. Since becoming our president, he has betrayed that trust.

During his first eight months in office, Obama has exhibited his admiration for dictators and disdain for our allies. He offended the Queen of England and bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. He praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega, kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek and endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia. He sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras, a country that followed its constitution and stopped its president from illegally turning himself into that country’s dictator. Obama announced that he would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions, while they're building their nuclear weapons.

Obama displayed a blatant lack of concern for what is in the best interest of America when he circled the globe and publicly apologized for America's world leadership. He told the Mexican president that Americans are responsible for the violence in Mexico. He announced a cut in funding for our new missile defense system the day after an ICBM was launched by North Korea. He released information on U.S. intelligence gathering despite contrary urgings of his own CIA director and the four prior CIA directors. He ordered that the word "terrorism" be stricken from our discourse and replaced with the innocuous words "man made disasters." He appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as "dangers to the nation." In a scary bid to increase the political power of the Democratic Party, Obama politicized the census by moving it out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House.

His dogged determination to turn our country into a failed socialist nation was in full evidence when Obama nationalized General Motors and Chrysler. He gave to the unions control over the two giant automobile manufacturers, while freezing out retired investors and allocating billions of taxpayer dollars to this socialist power grab.. As a further slap in our economic face, he expanded the corporate bailouts, including giving billions to AIG without pre-conditions. Then, to add insult to injury, Obama doubled our national debt with his out-of-control spending.

Obama is spending so brazenly because he is counting on Americans being lulled into complacency by the time of the 2010 elections. By design, the bulk of the "stimulus" funds will be spent, just in time, to spur a false recovery. The "recovery" will be hailed as proof of Obama's wisdom by the liberal media. It will not matter that the so-called recovery will not be real, or that it won't last – as long as Obama and liberal Democrats stay in control of our government.

Demonstrating his willingness to operate without regard for our laws, Obama fired two inspector generals (IG’s) who were investigating illegal activities by Obama cronies. Obama fired the IG’s even though, by law, inspector generals are authorized to conduct investigations without interference from government officials. Blatantly, Obama refused to prosecute Black Panthers caught on video intimidating voters at a polling place in Philadelphia during the 2008 election. Further, Obama filled his cabinet with five people who have cheated on their taxes, and two of his other nominees withdrew after they were exposed as tax cheats.

The lack of any check on Obama’s power, due to a veto-proof Democrat-controlled Congress and a lap dog liberal media, has caused Obama to boldly assert his radical agenda and surround himself with a stable of over 30 advisors called “Czars”. These unaccountable Obama-appointees are beholden only to Obama. They are not unanswerable to Congress or the American people, as was intended by our Constitution which requires congressional confirmation hearings and oversight of political appointees. Among those Czars are Communists, Marxists and other characters with troubling backgrounds and questionable credentials who should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. Gone is media outrage over abuse of power or an imperial presidency, as well as any angst about the shredding of our Constitution.

Truly disturbing is White House advisor Mark Lloyd, the “Diversity” Czar at the FCC, who was inspired by Marxist Saul Alinsky. He is pushing a “confrontational movement” designed to give a dominant role to public broadcasting and silence voices in alternative and conservative media outlets.

Most troubling of Obama’s unaccountable appointees is the recently resigned “Green Job” Czar Van Jones, a self-described Communist. Van Jones indicated his belief that America deserved to be attacked on September 11th and signed a petition that claimed the attacks were orchestrated by our own government. He stated in a video that white environmentalists deliberately steer poisons into minority communities. Just as chilling is Jones’ desire to destroy our free enterprise system and replace it with Marxist-inspired socialism. Van Jones made it into the White House because Obama shares Jones’ radical views, as is demonstrated by Obama’s past associations with Marxists and anti-American characters, such as unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and black theologian Rev. Jeremiah Wright who spewed out anti-America rhetoric.

The Marxism embraced by Lloyd, Jones and Obama is anchored on the strong-armed tactics of tyrants. A prime ploy is scapegoating the rich and all “enemies” of the ruling regime. The latest Obama administration’s “enemy” is the insurance industry.

Other Marxist methods include controlling the media, exploiting ethnic hatreds and demonizing the opposition, as has been done to average Americans protesting Obama’s disastrous public option, rationed-health care scheme. Obama and his supporters scoffed at parents and called them racist for not wanting their children indoctrinated by Obama with his K-12 speech. Obama’s talking about the value of education was not the problem. What rankled citizens was the lesson plan from the Department of Education – before it was changed under pressure from the public – that required children to write papers about how to help Obama achieve his radical agenda.

The article “Another Failed Presidency” by Geoffrey P. Hunt explains how and why Obama considers himself to be a Third World Socialist, like his Kenyan biological father, the inspiration for Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father”. Hunt opines that Obama’s determined adherence to failed socialism is why he is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.

Charles Krauthammer in his article
“Obama, the Mortal” recounts how Obama in his first address to Congress gave the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president.. Krauthammer demonstrates how Obama is laboring under the mistaken belief that his election imbued him with the kind of “banana-republic plebiscite” to enlarge state power and increase our national debt with massive spending. Obama’s actions to implement his socialist vision for America inspired a powerful outburst of public outrage at tea parties and town hall meetings, legitimate anger that Obama and his minions derided as mob-like and “racist”. Krauthammer points out that while Obama was castigating protesting Americans, Obama’s administration was “cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest – from drug companies to auto unions to doctors – in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged”.

“The Death Book for Veterans - Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society” by Jim Towey provides a chilling look into how government bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are using cost containment analysis to systematically deny health care to our veterans. ObamaCare will put our entire nation on the slippery slope to the “death panel” end-of-life decisions being made now at the VA.

Author Larry Elder wrote the following on Carl Polizzi’s Patriot Post blog.

"What does it take for some to wake up? When Obama publicly asserts that some corporations, including 'Big Oil' and medical insurance companies, make 'obscene profits' (they don't compared with many other industries) and that his 'compensation czar' will look into executive compensation, what does that tell you?

“When he argues that medical insurance companies need a 'public option' (before public opinion forced him to back away from it) to keep them 'honest,' what does that say?

“When he arrogantly claims that fighting 'global warming' and tackling the 'health care crisis' are not just moral imperatives but also necessary to keep our economy robust (?!), what does that show?

“Voters last year elected a left-wing former 'community organizer' with one of the Senate's most liberal voting records. He seeks to take the country -- over the growing resistance of even those who voted for him -- to an idealized world of government-guaranteed equality of outcomes.

“He wants a government-guaranteed 'level playing field' of wealth redistribution via taxing those deemed to have too much.

“Obama's goals are open, blatant and confidently asserted, backed by a filibuster-proof, supermajority, Democratic-controlled Congress.

“There is no Big Secret, no subterfuge, no bait-and-switch. This is who and what he is."

Larry Elder is correct. During the 2008 election the liberal media helped Obama hide who he really is from the voting public. Then, when Obama took the oath of office as president, he vowed to protect and defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We now find that Obama and his appointed Czars have formed a sinister, shadowy government of domestic enemies against whom we have no defense.

Obama’s ultimate insult is that he has no remorse.

Frances Rice, a retired lawyer and Army Lieutenant Colonel, is chairman of the National Black Republican Association and may be contacted at: www.NBRA.info

911 ...I remember...it was this morning, eight years ago...still it was this morning!

Cross-post from Atlas Shruggs

Friday, September 11, 2009

911 ....

911

The true horror of 911 has been kept hidden from the American people. I am sick of it. Sick of covering up for an enemy whose goal is to conquer this nation and render us all slaves.

Faces

Choosing their death. And eight years later we are apologizing? Vid hat tip Bare Naked Islam

911 hand holding

"The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry," Matthew Vadum, senior editor of the Capital Research Center, wrote in a recent article posted on The American Spectator's Web site. "They think it needs to be taken back from the right."

Obama bows submits

8 years later ....... Barack Hussein

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Constitution and American Sovereignty

Source: Imprimis

The Constitution and American Sovereignty


Jeremy Rabkin - George Mason University


"WOULD WE be far wrong," President Lincoln asked in a special message to Congress in 1861, "if we defined [sovereignty] as a political community without a political superior?" Maybe that’s not exhaustive, but it comes on good authority. And notice that for Lincoln, sovereignty is a political or legal concept. It’s not about power. Lincoln didn’t say that the sovereign is the one with the most troops. He was making a point about rightful authority.

By contrast, sovereignty wasn’t an issue in the ancient world. Cicero notes that the ancient Romans had the same word for "stranger" as for "enemy." In the ancient world, people didn’t interact with foreigners enough to think about their relation to them except insofar as it meant war. Nor was sovereignty an issue in medieval Europe, since the defining character of that period was overlapping authority and a lot of confusion about which authority had primary claims. No one had to think about defining national boundaries. This became an issue only in the modern era, when interaction between different peoples increased.

The first important writer to address sovereignty was Jean Bodin, a French jurist of the late 16th century. In his work, Six Books of the Republic, Bodin set out an understanding of sovereignty whereby the King of France represented an independent political authority rather than owing allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor or to the Pope. In the course of developing this argument, Bodin also advocated religious toleration and insisted that a monarch can neither seize property except by law nor raise taxes except by the consent of a representative body. He was in favor of free trade, and he insisted on the monarch’s general obligation to respect the law of nature and the law of God. His main practical point was that the government must be strong enough to protect the people’s rights, yet restrained enough not to do more than that. Subsequently, I might add, Bodin wrote a book about witchcraft—which he very much opposed. Witches are people who think they can make an end run around the laws of nature and of God using magical spells, and Bodin saw them as a menace.

It was not until the 17th century that the word "sovereignty" became common. This was also when people first came to think of representative assemblies as legislatures. Indeed, the word "legislature" is itself a 17th century term reflecting the modern emphasis on law as an act of governing will rather than impersonal custom. It is therefore related to the modern notion of government by consent. Significantly, it was also in this same era that professional armies came into being. Before the 17th century, for instance, there was no such thing as standard military uniforms. Uniforms indicate that soldiers have a distinct status and serve distinct governments. They reflect a kind of seriousness about defense.

The 17th century is also the period when people began thinking in a systematic way about what we now call international law or the law of nations—a law governing the relation of sovereign nations. The American Declaration of Independence refers to such a law in its first sentence: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them . . . ." The Declaration assumes here that nations have rights, just as individuals do.

The Sovereign Constitution

Returning to Lincoln, his understanding was that in an important sense American sovereignty rested in the Constitution. Article 7 of the Constitution declares that it will go into effect when it is ratified by nine states, for those nine states. And once ratified—once the people of those states have entered into the "more perfect Union’’ described in its Preamble—the Constitution is irrevocable. Unlike a treaty, it represents a commitment that cannot be renegotiated. Thus it describes itself unambiguously as "the supreme Law of the Land"—even making a point of adding, "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

The Constitution provides for treaties, and even specifies that treaties will be "the supreme Law of the Land"; that is, that they will be binding on the states. But from 1787 on, it has been recognized that for a treaty to be valid, it must be consistent with the Constitution—that the Constitution is a higher authority than treaties. And what is it that allows us to judge whether a treaty is consistent with the Constitution? Alexander Hamilton explained this in a pamphlet early on: "A treaty cannot change the frame of the government." And he gave a very logical reason: It is the Constitution that authorizes us to make treaties. If a treaty violates the Constitution, it would be like an agent betraying his principal or authority. And as I said, there has been a consensus on this in the past that few ever questioned.

Let me give you an example of how the issue has arisen. In 1919, the United States participated in a conference to establish the International Labour Organization (ILO). The original plan was that the members of the ILO would vote on labor standards, following which the member nations would automatically adopt those standards. But the American delegation insisted that it couldn’t go along with that, because it would be contrary to the Constitution. Specifically, it would be delegating the treaty-making power to an international body, and thus surrendering America’s sovereignty as derived from the Constitution. Instead, the Americans insisted they would decide upon these standards unilaterally as they were proposed by the ILO. In the 90 years since joining this organization, I think the U.S. has adopted three of them.

Today there is no longer a consensus regarding this principle of non-delegation, and it has become a contentious issue. For instance, two years ago in the D.C. Court of Appeals, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group, sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), claiming that it should update its standards for a chemical that is thought to be depleting the ozone layer. There is a treaty setting this standard, and the EPA was in conformity with the treaty. But the NRDC pointed out that Congress had instructed the EPA to conform with the Montreal Protocol and its subsequent elaborations. In other words, various international conferences had called for stricter emission standards for this chemical, and Congress had told the EPA to accept these new standards as a matter of course. The response to this by the D.C. Court of Appeals was to say, in effect, that it couldn’t believe Congress had meant to do that, since Congress cannot delegate its constitutional power and responsibility to legislate for the American people to an international body. This decision wasn’t appealed, so we don’t yet have a Supreme Court comment on the issue.

The delegation of judicial power is another open question today. There’s no doubt that the U.S. can agree to arbitrations of disputes with foreign countries, as we did as early as the 1790s with the Jay Treaty. But it’s another thing altogether to say that the rights of American citizens in the U.S. can be determined by foreign courts. This would seem to be a delegation of the judicial power, which Article 3 of the Constitution says "shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." This became an issue last year in the case of Medellin v. Texas, which considered an International Court of Justice ruling that Texas could not execute a convicted murderer, because he had not been given the chance to consult the Mexican consulate before his trial, as he had the right to do under an international treaty. The Supreme Court, after much hand-wringing, concluded that it didn’t think the Senate had intended to give the International Court of Justice the power to decide these questions of American law as applied by American courts. I would go further and say that no matter what the Senate intended, this is not a power which can be delegated under the Constitution. But it is no longer clear that a majority on the Supreme Court would agree.

Or consider the Spanish judges who want to arrest American politicians if they venture into Europe, in order to try them for war crimes. This is preposterous. It is akin to piracy. And not only has our government not protested this nonsense, but it has contributed to building up an international atmosphere in which this sort of thing seems plausible—an atmosphere where the old idea of a jury of one’s peers and the idea of Americans having rights under the Constitution give way to the notion of some hazy international standard of conduct that everyone in the world can somehow agree upon and then enforce on strangers.

The Loss of Sovereignty

It is important to think about these issues regarding sovereignty today, because it is possible to lose sovereignty rather quickly. Consider the European Union. The process that led to what we see today in the EU began when six countries in 1957 signed a treaty agreeing that they would cooperate on certain economic matters. They established a court in Luxembourg—the European Court of Justice—which was to interpret disputes about the treaty. To make its interpretations authoritative, the Court decreed in the early 1960s that if the treaty came into conflict with previous acts of national parliaments, the treaty would take precedence. Shortly thereafter it declared that the treaty would also take precedence over subsequent statutes. And in the 1970s it said that even in case of conflicts between the treaty and national constitutions, the treaty would take precedence. Of course, judges can say whatever they want. What is more remarkable is that all the nations in the EU have more or less grudgingly accepted this idea that a treaty is superior to their constitutions, so that today whatever regulations are cranked out by the European Commission—which is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bureaucracy—supersede both parliamentary statutes and national constitutions. And when there was eventually a lot of clamor about protection of basic rights, the court in Luxembourg proclaimed that it would synthesize all the different rights in all the different countries and take care of that as well.

So on the one hand the European Union has constitutional sovereignty, but on the other it doesn’t have a constitution. When its bureaucrats recently attempted to write a constitution and get it adopted, a number of countries voted it down in referendums. Apart from lacking a constitution, the EU doesn’t have an army or a police force or any means of exercising common control of its borders. In effect, it claims political superiority over member states but declines to be responsible for their defense. Indeed, I think inherent in this whole enterprise of transcending nation-states through the use of international institutions is the idea that defense is not so important.

All of this has happened in Europe in a very short period, and is the reason we should be concerned about the loss in our own country of a consensus regarding constitutional sovereignty. Think of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which many of our leading politicians now say we should have ratified. Doing so would have delegated the authority over huge areas of important public policy to international authorities. It would have been a clear delegation of the treaty-making power. Nevertheless, the Obama administration is aiming to negotiate a new treaty along those lines.

Of even more urgent concern is the increasing sense that human rights law transcends the laws of particular countries, even those pertaining to national defense. Of course, the idea that there should be standards that all countries respect when engaged in armed conflict is fair enough. But who is going to set the standards? And who is going to enforce them—especially against terrorists who refuse to act like uniformed professional soldiers? What we once called the "law of war" is now commonly referred to as "international humanitarian law." Many today say that we need to follow this law as it is defined by the International Red Cross. But who makes up this organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and what gives them the authority to supersede national statutes and constitutions? Currently the International Red Cross thinks it is a violation of humanitarian standards for the U.S. to hold prisoners in Guantanamo Bay—not on the basis of any claim that these prisoners are mistreated, but based on the argument that they cannot be held indefinitely and should be put on trial in ordinary criminal courts. Even the Obama administration is not yet willing to conform to this particular standard of so-called international law, believing that holding these prisoners is vital to national defense and that the right to self- defense is morally compelling.

* * *

Where does this trend away from the sovereignty of national constitutions lead? I do not think the danger is a world tyranny. I think that idea is fantastical. Rather what it will lead to, I think, is an undermining of the idea that national governments can protect people, with the result that people will start looking for defense elsewhere. We saw this in an extreme way in Iraq when it collapsed into chaos before the surge, and people looked for protection to various ethnic or sectarian militias. A similar phenomenon can be seen today in Europe with the formation of various separatist movements. We’re even hearing loud claims for Scottish independence. And it’s not surprising, because to the extent that Britain has surrendered its sovereignty, Britain doesn’t count for as much as it used to. So why not have your own Scotland? Why not have your own Wales? Why not have your own Catalonia in Spain? And of course the greatest example of this devolution in Europe is the movement toward Muslim separatism. While this is certainly driven to a large extent by trends in Islam, it also reflects the fact that it doesn’t mean as much to be British or to be French any more. These governments are cheerfully giving away their authority to the EU. So why should immigrants or children of immigrants take them seriously?

At the end of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton writes: "A nation, without a national government, is, in my view, an awful spectacle." His point was that if you do not have a national government, you can’t expect to remain a nation. If we are really open to the idea of allowing more and more of our policy to be made for us at international gatherings, the U.S. government not only has less capacity, it has less moral authority. And if it has less moral authority, it has more difficulty saying to immigrants and the children of immigrants that we’re all Americans. What is left, really, to being an American if we are all simply part of some abstract humanity? People who expect to retain the benefits of sovereignty—benefits like defense and protection of rights—without constitutional discipline, or without retaining responsibility for their own legal system, are really putting all their faith in words or in the idea that as long as we say nice things about humanity, everyone will feel better and we’ll all be safe. You could even say they are hanging a lot on incantations or on some kind of witchcraft. And as I mentioned earlier, the first theorist to write about sovereignty understood witchcraft as a fundamental threat to lawful authority and so finally to liberty and property and all the other rights of individuals.

Home

German Court, Student, and Operation Cast Lead...all together now, lets stick-up for the student!

Over at Atlas Shrugs Pamella Geller has a story that headlines "Student Fined 300 Euros for Displaying Israeli Flag in Germany" and goes on to describe the student's dilemma. I've re-posted Pam's story here with the addition of a video that will give you a better understanding of why the German court was on the wrong side. It's the Muslims they should have condemned...there's no question that these Muslims are extraordinary mean racist people and that they will do anything to advance their cause. Further, these things are going on in Europe and you can bet your sweet bippy they will occur in the good ole USA as Obama is a friend of Hamas. The video explains "Operation Cast Lead" mentioned in the story. ~ Norman E. Hooben
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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

From UNDERstatements to lapTOPs - The UN in action...aah that should be inaction!

Here's a couple of stories from ForeignPolicy.com that remind me of why the United Nations is useless. First the war crimes story is more than an understatement and most likely were committed by the UN or they sat around and did nothing while the crimes were in progress.
Then we have the One Laptop Per Child program which I first heard about several years ago (What took them so long?). The story reminds me of one written some years ago about The Ugly American...they made a movie too. Where the Americans gave some third world farmer a tractor without giving him instructions. When the radiator boiled over and burnt the farmer, the farmer went back to using his elephant to do the plowing...elephants never boil over. So it is with the UN giving laptop computers to people who are just above the basket weaving class and nobody there to teach laptop 101. We need to let the world know that it's no longer the ugly American but the even uglier UN! Remember the UN Peace Plan simply means the UN gets it's piece! (usually by raping young women). ~ Norman E. Hooben
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Understatement of the day: UN finds 'possible' war crimes in DRC

Wed, 09/09/2009

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilan, and his office released two reports on violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, citing "possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" by the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a rebel group formerly led by Laurent Nkunda and backed by the government of Rwanda.

Talk about your diplomatic understatement. The crimes involved dozens of killings and rapes. But for those following the DRC this statement has to seem kind of weak. There have been all sorts of atrocities in Eastern Congo for years, and the only questions really are which militia was guilty in which case. Possible? The U.N. head of mission in the DRC called the attacks war crimes immediately after they happened.

Reuters reporters shrewdly dig into the problematic fact that while Nkunda was later arrested by Rwandan forces, it was his lieutenant, Jean Bosco Ntaganda (shown above), nicknamed "The Terminator" who was commanding the CNDP forces at the time of the November killings. Guess where he is?

Ntaganda, who is being sought by the International Criminal Court on separate war crimes charges, was integrated into Congo's army in January along with other members of the Tutsi-dominated CNDP...

"We know he is there. We are aware of it. He was integrated. He was given a role. And according to our partners, he does not play a role in the operations that MONUC is supporting," said Kevin Kennedy, MONUC's head of communications.

"But it isn't our job to investigate the role of Bosco Ntaganda in the (army)," he told journalists in Kinshasa.

One other question for other Congo watchers out there. Doesn't a lot of focus seem to be just on the CNDP, when the Hutu FDLR militia has been committing terrible massacres for years? In fact, wasn't a key reason--along with grabbing minerals--for Rwandan support of Nkunda that he was protecting Congolese Tutsis from the marauding FDLR, many of whom were genocidaires? Maybe I've just missed it or Nkunda made such a good media character. Is the FDLR getting as much U.N. heat?

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Why did One Laptop Per Child fail?

Wed, 09/09/2009

Over at UN Dispatch, Alanna Shaikh has a thought-provoking eulogy for Nicholas Negroponte's fizzling One-Laptop-Per-Child program:

Americans wanted the OLPC. We fell in love with its tremendous promise and adorable shape. (note: I own an OLPC) We were the first market it conquered. OLPC launched a give one-get one promotion that let individuals pay $400 to donate one laptop and receive one for themselves. It was a huge success, except that OLPC wasn’t set up for that kind of customer order fulfillment. Laptops arrived far later than promised, and several thousand orders were simply lost.

Once the laptop finally started arriving in the developing world, its impact was minimal. We think. No one is doing much research on their impact on education; discussions are largely theoretical. This we do know: OLPC didn’t provide tech support for the machines, or training in how to incorporate them into education. Teachers didn’t understand how to use the laptops in their lessons; some resented them. Kids like the laptops, but they don’t actually seem to help them learn.

It’s time to call a spade a spade. OLPC was a failure. ...

As Shaikh suggests, OLPC is a classic case of a development program more tailored to the tastes and interests of its funders, than the needs of the people it was supposed to help. Back to the drawing board.

America Is Me...c'mon sing along with me!

The Wrenching Transformation of America ...more about sustainable developement than you ever knew before today.




Ed note: this speech was delivered in Kalispell, Montana and Spokane, Washington to County Republican Lincoln Day dinners in late March. The speech caused a firestorm in Spokane, resulting in a battle with the local city council over it’s partnership with ICLEI and radical environmental policy. One elected official said I had exposed too much – as he walked out on my presentation. The battle goes on today

The Wrenching Transformation Of America
A Speech by Tom Deweese

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve come a long way to get here and I have such a short time to be with you. So, let’s just get everything out on the table right now, shall we?

I believe the American people, and their every action, are being ruled, regulated, restricted, licensed, registered, directed, checked, inspected, measured, numbered, counted, rated, stamped, censured, authorized, admonished, refused, prevented, drilled, indoctrinated, monopolized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, disarmed, dishonored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suffocation and desperation.

America is drowning in a sea of rules and regulations, particularly under the guise of “saving the environment.”

We all know something is very wrong and we are trying to fix it.

Many in America attempt to fight against one issue or another as they try to understand what is happening to their country. But most fail to see the whole picture and are being crushed under a well organized “divide and conquer” tactic that keeps them reeling from crisis to crisis.

Tonight, I’m going to try to give you at least a peek at the all-encompassing, gut wrenching national transformation that we face -- and, hopefully, help to lift the veil of confusion.

To put things in perspective, here are some questions every American should ask their elected officials – especially those supporting “climate change” legislation.

If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook?

We’ve been terrorized into accepting that human society was on the brink of extinction because of man-made global warming. We’ve been warned that, unless we take drastic action to reverse it – then islands will disappear, whole cities will be destroyed and polar bears will drown.

So, if it’s not true, will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria? Will you help to restore our Republic with common sense and sound economics?

Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose.

If they are supporting climate change legislation because of a genuine concern for the environment, then they should now be greatly relieved to know that true science is showing more and more evidence that there is no man-made global warming, and in fact, a natural cooling period has begun.

I have just returned from one of the most important Climate Change conferences ever held. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, more than 700 scientists from all over the world came together to testify that man-made Global Warming does not exist.

Harvard scholar and climate scientist Willie Soon said it best in a recent article he titled, “It’s the Sun, stupid.”

Dr. Mark Campbell, professor of chemistry at the U.S. Navel Academy in Annapolis recently wrote, “The sky is not burning, and to claim that it is amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

Said U.S. Government atmospheric scientist Stanley B, Goldenberg, “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.”

In the past year, more than 650 scientists from around the world have expressed their doubts. That’s 12 times the number of UN IPCC global warming alarmists.

Top that with the fact that more than 31,000 American scientists have signed a petition saying there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing disruption of the Earth’s climate.

Of course most of the hysteria has been fueled by Al Gore’s Oscar-winning, Nobel prize-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth,” which almost every American school student has been forced to watch endless times in their classroom.

Well, guess what, the government of Great Britain just ruled that the film cannot be shown in English classrooms unless it carries a disclaimer that says the film is full of mistakes and propaganda.

An overwhelming majority of scientist are now telling us that investigative research shows any warming actually stopped in 1999. And, in fact, they say the brief warming period we experienced in the past decade was completely natural, caused in part by storms on the sun, not CO2 emissions from SUVs.

The Sun storms have ended and now a cooling period has begun.

That’s it. Done. Crisis over. Man is not to blame. Hurray! The nation should be rejoicing.

No need for expensive green cars, mercury-filled light bulbs, special home building materials, expensive alternative energy, no bird-killing windmills, no special energy taxes, no extra government oversight committees, no more global climate change conferences – and no need for a Climate Czar. Carol Browner can go back into mothballs.

We can finally clean out the ten feet of fuel on the bottom of the forests and prevent the massive forest fires. We can reestablish the timber industry and all the jobs that were killed.

We can drill American oil and end our dependency on foreigners who hate us. In fact, that stable source of energy will help restore the Detroit auto industry and all of those jobs. And it will help us to stop funding terrorists. What’s not to like about drilling American oil?

We didn’t need a stimulus package after all – the economy will rebound on its own. We are free. The environment is not in crisis. Rejoice! Rejoice!

That silence you hear is the news media, which refuses to report what any skeptic has to say.

That silence you hear is the lack of effort on Capitol Hill to start to pull back from the climate change hysteria.

That silence you hear is from the White House where President of Change, Barack Obama now has an EPA director, a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) director and a full blown Climate Change Czar, all working to impose huge cut backs in energy use, with more taxes, and more rules and regulations that will bring an already damaged economy to its knees – all in the name of man-made Global Warming – which doesn’t exist.

…And that silence you hear is from global corporations which have bought into Al Gore’s lie and invested heavily in the promised green economy. In fact, their dollars are the only thing green about any of it. Their commercials are promoting the lies and changing our way of life. “Going Green” is the mantra of the day. None of them are about to change any of these policies, simply to accommodate a few inconvenient scientific facts.

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in spite of literally thousands of real scientists joining the ranks of the skeptics, Gore just told Congress that the Global Warming crisis is even worse than predicted. Obama, our newly crowned king said, “The science is settled.”

Why do they continue to promote a lie? Because global warming never was about protecting the environment. It’s nothing more than the excuse to enforce global governance on the planet by creating a new global economy based on the environment rather than on goods and services.

In fact, the most important debate in the history of the United States is about to begin – it’s the battle over a completely new economic system based on Climate Change called Cap and Trade.

It should be called Tax and Trade as it will force up the price of every item created or run by energy from gasoline to toothpaste to natural gas to hotel rooms, as we sit in our cold, dark homes.

Cap and Trade will throw out the old system of a free market based on goods and services and operate on the idea that CO2 is a pollutant. Instead of money, wealth will be determined by how many government-issued emission permits you own to allow you to operate your business.

In short, it’s all about wealth redistribution. Your wealth into a green rat hole.

During the Cold War, communists tried to get us to surrender our liberties and way of life for the wisdom of Karl Marx. Americans didn’t buy it.

But now, they have taken the same clap trap and wrapped it all in a nice green blanket, scaring us with horror stories about the human destruction of the environment – and so we are now throwing our liberties on the bon fire like a good old fashioned book burning -- all in the name of protecting the planet.

It sounds so friendly. So meaningful. So urgent. But, the devastation to our liberty and way of life is the same as if Lenin ordered it.

You know, we have a new language invading our government at all levels. Old words with new meanings fill government policy papers. The typical city council meeting discusses “community development,” “historic preservation,” and “partnerships” between the city and global corporations.

Civic leaders organize community meetings run by “facilitators,” as they outline a “vision” for the town, enforced by “consensus.” No need for debate when you have consensus!

People of great importance testify before congressional committees of the dire need for “social justice.”

Free trade, social justice, consensus, global truth, partnerships, preservation, stakeholders, land use, environmental protection, development, diversity, visioning, open space, heritage, comprehensive planning, critical thinking, and community service are all part of our new language.

What are they really talking about? What mental pictures come to mind when those words are used? George Orwell realized that those who control language and manipulate key phrases can control policy.

The language is being changed and manipulated to quietly implement a very destructive policy. One outlined in a UN soft-law document called Agenda 21, first revealed at the UN’s Earth Summit in 1992. The working name is Sustainable Development.

Rather than good management of resources, Sustainable Development has come to mean denied use and resources locked away from human hands. In short, it has become a code word for an entire economic and social agenda.

I have spent most of the past 12 years studying every facet of this new political agenda which is fast becoming a revolution -- touching every aspect of our businesses, our public education system, our private property, our families and our individual lives.

Interestingly, it is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s not liberal or conservative. It is being implemented on a purely bipartisan basis.

It is now the official policy of the United States, put in force by literally every department of the government.

It is the official policy of every state government, and nearly every city, town and county in the nation.

But, I warn you, accepting the perception that Sustainable Development is simply good environmental stewardship is a serious and dangerous mistake.

So what is Sustainable Development? The Sustainablists insist that society be transformed into feudal-like governance by making nature the central organizing principle for our economy and society.

To achieve this, Sustainablist policy focuses on three components; global land use, global education, and global population control.

Keep in mind that America is the only country in the world based on the ideals of private property. But, private property is incompatible with the collectivist premise of Sustainable Development.

If you doubt that, then consider this quote from the report of the 1976 UN’s Habitat I conference which said: “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 principle instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore, contributes to social injustice.”


It is a social injustice for some to have prosperity if others do not. It is a social injustice to keep our borders closed. It is a social injustice for some to be bosses and others to be merely workers.

Social justice is a major premise of Sustainable Development. Another word for social justice, by the way, is Socialism. Karl Marx was the first to coin the phrase “social justice.”

Some officials try to pretend that Sustainable Development is just a local effort to protect the environment -- just your local leaders putting together a local vision for the community. Have you heard that one?

Then ask your local officials how it is possible that the exact language and tactics for implementation of Sustainable Development are being used in nearly every city around the globe from Lewiston, Maine to Singapore. Local indeed.

Sustainable Development is the process by which America is being reorganized around a central principle of state collectivism using the environment as bait.

The best way to understand what Sustainable Development actually is can be found by discovering what is NOT sustainable.

According to the UN’s Biodiversity Assessment Report, items for our everyday lives that are NOT sustainable include: Ski runs, grazing of livestock, plowing of soil, building fences, industry, single family homes, paved and tarred roads, logging activities, dams and reservoirs, power line construction, and economic systems that fail to set proper value on the environment (capitalism, free markets).

Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s Rio Earth Summit in 1992 said, “…Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.”

Are you starting to see the pattern behind Cap and Trade, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and all of those commercials you’re forced to watch about the righteousness of Going Green?

And one of the most destructive tools they use to force it on us is something called the “precautionary principle.” That means that any activities that might threaten human health or the environment should be stopped -- even if no clear cause and effect relationship has been established – and even if the potential threat is largely theoretical.

That makes it easy for any activist group to issue warnings by news release or questionable report and have those warnings quickly turned into public policy – just in case.

So how is this wrenching transformation being put into place?

There are four very specific routes being used.

In the rural areas it’s called the Wildlands Project.

In the cities it’s called smart growth.

In business it’s called Public/Private Partnerships.

And in government it’s called stakeholder councils and non-elected boards and regional government.

The Wildlands Project was the brainchild of Earth First’s Dave Foreman and it literally calls for the “re-wilding” of 50% of all the land in every state – back to the way it was before Christopher Columbus set foot on this land. It is a diabolical plan to herd humans off the rural lands and into human settlements. Crazy you say! Yes. Impossible? Not so fast.

From the demented mind of Foreman, the plan became the blueprint for the UN’s Biodiversity Treaty. So now the scheme is international in scope.

But how do you remove people from the land? One step at a time. Let’s begin with a biosphere reserve. A national park will do. A huge place where there is no human activity. How about Yellowstone National Park? Then you establish a buffer zone around the reserve. Inside the buffer only limited human activity is allowed. Slowly, you squeeze until you squash that human activity.

Once accomplished, you extend the area of the biosphere to the limits of the former buffer area – and then you create a new buffer zone around the now larger biosphere and start the process over again. In that way, the Biosphere Reserve acts like a cancer cell, ever expanding, until all human activity is stopped.

And there are many tools in place to stop human activity and grow the reserve.

Push back livestock’s access to river banks on ranches. 300 feet ought to do it. When the cattle can’t reach the stream, the rancher can’t water them -- he goes out of business.

Lock away natural resources by creating national parks. It shuts down the mines -- and they go out of business.

Invent a Spotted Owl shortage and pretend it can’t live in a forest where timber is cut. Shut off the forest. Then, when no trees are cut, there’s nothing to feed the mills and then there are no jobs, and -- they go out of business.

Locking away land cuts the tax base. Eventually the town dies. Keep it up and there is nothing to keep the people on the land – so they head to the cities. The wilderness grows – just like Dave Foreman planned.

It comes in many names and many programs. Heritage areas, land management, wolf and bear reintroduction, rails to trails, conservation easements, open space, and many more.

Each of these programs is designed to make it just a little harder to live on the land – a little more expensive – a little more hopeless. Now tell me how they can deny that the process is herding people into human habitat areas?

Today, here in your area, one of the latest Wildlands scheme is called Yukon to Yellowstone or Y2Y -- a 2000 mile no-man’s land corridor from the Arctic to Yellowstone.

The second path is called Smart Growth. After they herd you into the city, they have more plans for you in regimented and dense urban communities. They put a line around the city and tell you no growth can take place outside that line. Urban sprawl, they say disdainfully.

They refuse to build more roads as a ploy to get you out of your car into public transportation, restricting mobility. Those able to build apartment houses may find it impossible to provide parking – we don’t want any stinking cars!

Because there is a restriction on space inside the controlled city limits there is a shortage of houses, so prices go up. That means populations will have to be controlled, because now there is a shortage of land.

Third, inside the human habitat areas, government is controlled by an elite ruling class called stake holder councils.

These are mostly Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, who, like thieves in the night, just show up to stake their claim to enforce their own private agendas.

The function of legitimate government within the system will be simply to enforce the dictates of the councils.

The councils are unelected, but all powerful. They are controlled by a small minority in the community. They will make you ask permission for anything necessary to live in the community. They can dictate the kind of building materials you may use in your home – or whether you can build on your property at all.

Then, if they do grant a permit for building, they might not decide to let you acquire water and electricity for your new home – and they may or may not give you a reason for being turned down.

They can even dictate that you get the proper exercise – as determined by the government. San Francisco has built a new federal building – the greenest ever built. But the elevators will only stop on every third floor so riders are forced to use stairs – for their own health, of course.

These councils fit almost perfectly the definition of a State Soviet: a system of councils that report to an apex council and then implement a predetermined outcome. Soviets are the operating mechanism of a government-controlled economy.

The fourth path is Public/Private Partnerships. Today, many freedom organizations are presenting PPPs as free enterprise and a private answer for keeping taxes down by using business to make a better society.

In truth, many PPPs are nothing more than government-sanctioned monopolies in which a few businesses are granted special favors like tax breaks, the power of eminent domain, non-compete clauses and specific guarantees for return on their investments.

That means they can charge what they want and they can use the power of government to put competition out of business. That is not free enterprise. And it is these global corporations that are pushing the green agenda.

For example, using government to ban its own product, General Electric is forcing the mercury-laden green light bulb on you, costing 5 times the price of incandescent bulbs. Such is the reality of green industry.

PPPs are building the Trans Texas Corridor, using eminent domain to take more than 580,000 acres of private land - sanctioned by the partnership with the Texas government.

And PPPs are taking over highways and local water treatment plants in communities across the nation. It is not free enterprise, but a Mussolini-type fascism that will only lead to tyranny. And it’s all driven by the Agenda 21 blueprint of Sustainable Development.

Truly, Sustainable Development is designed to change our way of life. Local communities are now being targeted by international forces. Here’s how.

In June 2005, I reported on the UN’s efforts to recruit the nation’s mayors to directly impose Sustainable Development policy into our local communities. The mayors were invited to attend the UN’s World Environment Day conference in San Francisco.

The mayors weren’t there to simply discuss policy, they actually committed to an agenda with specific goals. As part of their participation, the mayors were pressed to commit to specific legislation and policy goals by signing a slate of UN accords. Two documents were presented for the mayors’ signature.

The first document was called the Green Cities Declaration, produced by the United Nations Environment Programme. This document was essentially a statement of principles which set the agenda for the mayors’ assigned tasks.

The Declaration is amazingly bold in that it details exactly how the UN intends to implement a very specific agenda in every town and city in the nation. The final line of the Declaration explained the UN’s goal very explicitly: Each year cities shall pick three actions to adopt as policies or laws.”


The second document signed by the mayors was called the “Urban Environment Accords.” The document includes exactly 21 specific actions (as in Agenda 21), for the mayors to take -- controlled by a time table for implementation.

For example, under the topic of energy, action item number 1 called for the mayors to implement a policy to increase the use of “renewable” energy by 10% within seven years. Energy action item numbers 2 and 3 dealt with reducing energy consumption.

These action items are classic examples of the UN trying to go around the U.S. Congress and federal energy policy and force a backdoor implementation of the UN’s Kyoto Accord, which the U.S. has never ratified.

Perhaps the most egregious action item offered in the Urban Environmental Accords dealt with the topic of water. Action item number 19 called for adoption and implementation of a policy to reduce individual water consumption.

The UN document begins by stating: “Cities with potable water consumption greater than 100 liters per capita per day will adopt and implement policies to reduce consumption by 10% by 2015.” There is no scientific basis for the 100 liter figure other than to employ a very clever use of numbers to lower the bar and control the debate over water consumption.

You must be aware that 100 liters is equal to about 26 GALLONS per person, per day. According to the UN, each person should have less than 26 gallons each day to drink, bathe, flush toilets, wash clothes, water lawns, wash dish

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Ed note: This is the second half of my speech "The Wrenching Transformation of America." This half contains detailed information about ICLEI, the international NGO that has taken control of more than 400 American communities for the specific purpose of enforcing sustainable development policies. This information is what caused the firestorm in Spokane, Washington where, after my speech, the Mayor admitted that ICLEI was a major player in that community's policy-making process. es, cook, take care of pets, and more.

Part 2
The Wrenching Transformation of America

A Speech by Tom Deweese

Perhaps the most egregious action item offered in the Urban Environmental Accords dealt with the topic of water. Action item number 19 called for adoption and implementation of a policy to reduce individual water consumption.

The UN document begins by stating: “Cities with potable water consumption greater than 100 liters per capita per day will adopt and implement policies to reduce consumption by 10% by 2015.” There is no scientific basis for the 100 liter figure other than to employ a very clever use of numbers to lower the bar and control the debate over water consumption.

You must be aware that 100 liters is equal to about 26 GALLONS per person, per day. According to the UN, each person should have less than 26 gallons each day to drink, bathe, flush toilets, wash clothes, water lawns, wash dishes, cook, take care of pets, and more.

But, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, Americans actually need about 100 GALLONS per day to perform these basic life functions. The use of the 100 liters number versus 100 gallons is a direct attempt to mislead and actually cut water use by 75%.

Consider also that there is no specific water shortage in most parts of the United States. Water is not an international issue – it is a very local one.

Perhaps the most outrageous promise of action by the mayors is action item number 16, in which they agreed to, “Every year, identify three products, chemicals, or compounds that are used within your city that represents the greatest risk to human health and adopt a law or eliminate their sale and use in the city.”

There you have it. The mayors had to promise to ban something every year. That’s the UN’s version of a free society.

But here are some questions for the mayors. What if there isn’t a “chemical or compound” that poses a risk? What if the community actually needs them? What if jobs are at stake? What about private property or free enterprise?

Not a consideration. The mayor has gotta ban something anyway – he signed an agreement. That’s not to be taken lightly, with environmental protection at stake.

Consider this bit of real life insanity as an example of how serious it can get. In the 1990s, Anchorage, Alaska had some of the most pristine water in the nation. It literally had no pollution.

Yet, because of government-mandated clean water standards, the federal government ordered the city to meet strict federal rules that required the city to remove a certain percentage of pollution for its water. The city simply couldn’t do it because there wasn’t that amount of pollution to be removed. But the government insisted that the law be upheld – no exceptions.

Therefore, in order to meet the federal requirements (and avoid huge fines or jail terms) Anchorage city officials were forced to pollute its pristine water by dumping fish parts into it so they could then clean out the required quota.

So, it is not far fetched to say that, if your mayor has to ban the ink in your fountain pen to meet his quota – ban it he will.

Again, the UN’s meeting with the mayors took place in 2005. Today in 2009, what are the consequences? Plenty.

Many Americans ask how dangerous international policies can suddenly turn up in state and local government, all seemingly uniform to those in communities across the nation and around the globe.

The answer – Meet ICLEI, a non-profit, private foundation, dedicated to helping your mayor implement all of his promises.

Originally known as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), today the group simply calls itself “ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.”

In 1992, ICLEI was one of the groups instrumental in creating Agenda 21. The group’s mission is to push local communities to regulate the environment – and it’s having tremendous success.

According to a report published by the Capital Research Center, ICLEI is now operating in more than 400 cities in 48 states (excluding Hawaii and South Dakota). The group is shooting for 1,000 member cities in the next three years. ICLEI is there to assure the mayors keep their promises and meet their goals.

Climate change, of course, is the ICLEI mantra. ICLEI’s programs are designed to decrease each city’s “carbon footprint,” no matter what it costs the taxpayers. Here’s just some of the programs ICLEI provides cities and towns, in order to spread their own particular political agenda in the name of “community services” and environmental protection:

They include: Software products and associated training to help set the goals of “greenhouse gas” reductions;

Access to a network of experts, newsletters, conferences and workshops – to assure the indoctrination of city employees is complete;

Toolkits, online resources, case studies, fact sheets, policy and practice manuals, and blueprints used by other communities – so you know you are not alone;

Training workshops for staff and elected officials on how to develop and implement the programs --Wanna bet they never seem to mention that thousands of scientists around the world now say man-made global warming is a myth and none of these programs are necessary? Probably doesn’t make it into the workshop;

And, there’s Notification of relevant grant opportunities – this is the important one – money – with severe strings attached;

As the Capital Research Center’s report says, “Local governments gratefully outsource their work to ICLEI, which even offers hiring advice. They recommend that the community hire A full time “sustainability manager,” who, even in small towns, can devote 100% of his time to assure that every nook and corner of the government is on message.

As I said, it’s not about protecting the environment; it’s about reinventing government with a specific political agenda. ICLEI and others are dedicated to controlling your locally elected public officials to quietly implement an all encompassing tyranny over every community in the nation.

The United States is not a global village run by elders who hand down the rules from on-high. We are a nation of governments elected by the citizens.

There is supposed to be discussion, debate and disclosure so that all citizens know where, when and why a law or regulation is being presented – and then we are to vote on it.

However, global forces which do not accept the unique American form of government sneak behind the curtain, avoiding controversy and honest debate.

They target unknowing local officials, wine and dine them, and blind them with power and influence. The only possible result can be the tyranny of a powerless electorate stripped of their rights, property, and self determination.

Mayors across the nation must be clued into the fact that ICLEI and its ilk are not their friends, rather the purveyors of a self-made crisis hysteria using fear rather than truth and logic to impose their agenda of top down control. Sustainable Development.

The entire agenda of Sustainable Development is based on the argument of man-made climate change – global warming.

But, if there is no man-made global warming, as true science is now beginning to prove, then there is no need for the policies that are locking away our natural resources, forcing reduction of our use of energy, and shutting down industries like timber and mining.

We all want a clean environment. That’s why the United States has spent more than a trillion dollars on environmental clean up. The fact is we have the cleanest air and water in the world. We have a national commitment to a clean environment.

But everything we do to sustain our lives has an impact on nature. The fact is, for a positive, happy life, a big “environmental footprint” is an enormous positive. It means better roads and computers, new factories and power plants and hospitals to assure a better life.

Frankly, if you have no carbon footprint you are dead. But to the environmentalist, the size of your “footprint” is a measure of your guilt.

I will say it again and again – the policies of climate change and Sustainable Development are not about a clean environment, conservation or good stewardship. They are about the politics of control.

Under Sustainable Development there is no private property, no individual liberty and no free enterprise. Period.

So, as I said, when you ask your elected officials where they now stand on the issue of climate change, their answers will truly tell you what they are really after.

In the name of conservation, we are experiencing a wrenching transformation of our nation, into what can only lead to a new dark ages of pain and misery. What we are dealing with today is not politics as usual. It’s insanity.

Elected officials can no longer play ignorant about this policy. It is their duty to represent the people and protect them from these piranhas that are devouring our way of life. To save it you must now take action. And understand that the main battle is being fought, not in congress, but on the local level. Right here.

So, if a local politician utters the words “sustainable” or “community visioning” -- or looks at your rural neighborhood home -- scoffing about urban sprawl – he or she is your enemy. Rip their political careers out by their rotted roots. Fire any official who even suggests the creation of non-elected commissions, or boards. Stop efforts to create regional governments and leave your political boundaries alone. Above all, refuse federal or state money or new sustainable programs and get rid of the old ones.

And if ICLEI is now running things in your town – throw them out! Stop payment of dues, disband anything they have built and start looking for some high grade tar and feathers. Nameless, faceless bureaucrats wielding power in the backrooms, untouchable and unseen, is not freedom.

This is not a friendly political debate. This is the battle to determine nothing less than the future of our free society.

But, please know: in spite of all I’ve told you tonight, the situation is not hopeless. There is opportunity today like never before to expose these very dangerous policies and to fight back.

The economic meltdown that we are experiencing has been brought on in no small part by Sustainable policies. $4 per gallon gas this past summer helped to awaken a lot of Americans.

They are mad and many are ready to finally listen to our message of freedom. They want change and we are the only ones offering it. Now is our time.

But you cannot win this battle if you don’t understand that what you face is not a bunch of random issues -- but a complete agenda of control.

We must understand that the so-called environmental agenda is based on lies and deceit – that Sustainable Development is truly a Trojan horse for a policy of tyranny and that it is the exact opposite of limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty.

And if you believe in those ideals then know that Sustainable Development is your enemy, no matter what form it takes. And fight it wherever it raises its ugly head.

Finally, we must organize. Too many of us are satisfied to simply write a letter, make a phone call or participate in a local rally about an issue. Then go home and think we’ve done our part.

The other side simply waits until you leave and then goes ahead with the plan. That’s why we lose.

I am constantly hearing from activists about how hopeless their fight is because elected officials just won’t listen. No matter how hard they work – it’s all for nothing. That’s because we have accepted the premise that we can do nothing to get rid of those officials. Bunk.

Our Founding Fathers gave us a Silver Bullet for victory – but we seldom use it. It is still there – rusting under this massive government machine. The silver bullet is called precinct captain – local organization in the neighborhoods.

Today – now -- before the next election -- is the time to organize your neighborhood. Learn who is most likely to vote for your candidate – those who are willing to work.

Do it today and in the next election, put that organization to work. Literally herd our people into the polls and assure victory. It is a massive job – the other side has already done it. That’s why they win. If we don’t create a local structure, neighborhood by neighborhood, we will never beat them. But it works – if we start now.

Make it your goal to get rid of those elected officials who won’t listen. Make them pay for their actions. Do it just a couple of times and you will see a fast change of attitude by the rest.

Together, if we stand vigilant, if we speak the truth, and don’t allow it to hide in some political double speak – if we stand by our principles – because we are right – we can – and we will – take America back.

Tom DeWeese is the President of the American Policy Center and the Editor of The DeWeese Report. TThe DeWeese Report is now available online, for more information click here.

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