By Peyton Knight, Associate Editor
Now that the U.N. Millennium Summit has come and gone, many are
wondering "what happened?" What consensus was reached at the
gathering? Are the tools for global governance in place? What will become
of our nation’s sovereignty? Did our president express the best interest
of the United States? What can citizens of the U.S. expect now that the
Summit is over?
While the methods for implementation were vague, the goals for
accomplishment were incredibly specific. Everything was promised to
everyone. Indeed, the world forum sounded like a roomful of Al Gore’s,
each one trying to outdo the other with how much they could pander to
their audience of third world countries and socialist dictators. The
underlying theme was simple: The world has problems. Only the U.N. can
solve them. Give us the power. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the
same mantra that liberals and socialists alike spew to the easily swayed
masses who believe that rights, happiness, and prosperity begin with
government programs and end with individual liberty.
The most deceptive aspect of all this, is the that U.N. is packaging
their socialistic product in a box labeled "democracy." Let’s
examine just a few of the details of the "U.N.
Millennium Declaration" which was derived from the Summit.
Dictatorial Powers
The most frightening new direction the United Nations is taking after
their summit is the change in which authority determines the deployment of
peacekeeping missions. Traditionally, this authority has been the U.N.
Security Council, a board consisting of the major heads of state. This
allows the major contributing nations to decide whether or not certain
deployments are worthy of their contributed resources. Most importantly,
it gives the United States (the hands-down most generous contributor to
the U.N. budget) a voice in where the world body will intervene around the
world.
No longer. Now, peacekeeping decisions will be the sole authority of
the U.N. bureaucracy—specifically, the Secretary General. This gives the
United Nations unilateral power to deploy "peacekeeping" troops
around the globe. No more input from the pesky United States. Nonetheless,
the U.S. is still expected to pump exorbitant amounts of money, soldiers
and resources into U.N. operations—only now we have no voice in how
those resources are used. How does the Clinton/Gore administration feel
about this castration? Let President Clinton tell you in his own words, in
his address to the U.N. Security Council at the Millennium Summit.
"We must do more to equip the United Nations to do what we ask
it to do. They need to be able to be peacekeepers who can be rapidly
deployed, properly trained and equipped, able to project credible force.
That, of course, is the thrust of the Secretary General’s report on
peacekeeping reform. The United States strongly supports that
report."
Apparently, the President has no problem signing away our national
security, as well as the lives of American soldiers, to the United
Nations.
The International Criminal Court
The U.N.’s International Criminal Court (ICC) gained some
momentum at the Summit. This court would empower the United Nations to
enforce its own rule of law. As stated in these pages before, the ICC
would reign supreme over every other judicial system in the
world—including that of the United States. The U.N. has vowed to hold
every member of every nation accountable to this court, whether or not
that nation ratifies it.
At the Summit, the Statute for the ICC was signed by an additional 12
countries and ratified by four. The statute now has a total of 110
signatures and 19 ratifications. This is nearly one third of the 60 total
ratifications the ICC must have to enter into force.
Also stressed at the Summit, was the need for the United Nations to
have its own fighting force for supposed peacekeeping missions. This army
would consist of soldiers from varying nations—who would transform their
allegiance to the U.N. This proposal has been labeled many things, most
notably the U.N. refers to it as the "United Nations Rapid Deployment
Police and Security Force" (UNRDF). In reality, this is no more than
a U.N. standing army. With the International Criminal Court at its side,
the UNRDF will be boundless in its operation.
A Turkey in Every Pot
The Millennium Summit also served as a stage for the leaders of the
United Nations to gain support for their plans of eradicating poverty. Of
course, no one likes poverty, however, the U.N.’s solutions to
poverty-stricken areas resemble nothing more than a global "New
Deal" list of entitlement programs. In their words: "Global
challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens
fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social
justice." Translation: We must redistribute the wealth—welfare for
all. Throughout their own report, the U.N. stressed the need for greater
oversight of national governments, and stricter regulation of the private
sector and civil society.
Through their grand, socialist redistribution scheme, the U.N. hopes to
strengthen the dependency of less fortunate nations on the world body.
Much like other totalitarian regimes, the United Nations knows that if
they can control the flow of goods and services to the people—they can
control the people themselves.
For his part, President Clinton also made global promises regarding
education of all things. Unbelievably, Mr. Clinton wishes to force our own
failed public education system on the entire world. In his speech to the
Security Council he declared: "I strongly support the goal of
universal access to primary education by 2015. We are helping to move
toward that goal, in part, with our effort to provide school lunches to 9
million boys and girls in developing nations."
Global Warming
What would a Millennium Summit be without the good old "sky is
falling" rhetoric about global warming? Even in the midst of
overwhelming scientific evidence that shows manmade global warming to be a
myth, in its declaration, the U.N. vows: "…to make every effort to
ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, preferably by 2002, and
to embark on the required reduction in emissions of greenhouse
gasses." President Clinton agreed: "We have to meet the
challenge of climate change. I predict that within a decade—or maybe
even a little less—that will become as big an obstacle to the
development of poor nations as disease is today." Of course, Mr.
Clinton is dead wrong in this respect. The biggest obstacle to poor
nations would be the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, as it would
force developing countries to industrialize within the framework of
massive restrictions on the amount of greenhouse gasses they could emit.
How unfortunate that common sense wasn’t invited to attend the Summit.
The World Changed
In the end, the leaders of the United Nations left the Millennium
Summit with a renewed sense of power and a mandate to implement the
policies called for in the Charter for Global Democracy. Their mandate is
the "U.N. Millennium Declaration"—a task list chock-full of
global governance proposals. The Declaration was passed by general
consensus, meaning no vote was taken and none of the proposals were
debated. This document was simply waived in front of the General Assembly
and heads of state, and passed by virtue of "hearing no
objections." With no objections, the U.N. received authorization from
the highest authority on earth—the world’s heads of state—to move
forward with its agenda for global governance. No recorded vote was taken.
In a sense, the world changed in early September—yet the U.S. Congress
remains in the dark.
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the Freedom 21 Declaration