193 Copenhagen: Gorbachev & Monckton on the World Government agenda

Copenhagen: Gorbachev & Monckton on the World Government agenda

Gorbachev recently said a Copenhagen treaty was necessary to "save the planet". He likened it to the fall of the Berlin Wall, clearly SUPPORTING the fall of that wall. But it had dramatic, unsuspected consequences for the people of Eastern Europe.

In 1992, Gorbachev gave a speech calling for the UN to be restructured as a Global Government (items 10 & 11).

He noted that  after World War II many had concluded that "only a world government could save mankind from doom." However, the U.S.S.R. had rejected this idea, fearing U.S. domination.

This is a reference to the 1946 Baruch Plan, drafted by Bernard Baruch & David Lilinethal, both Jewish. Gorbachev seemed to saying that we DO need such a plan, and implying that if HE had been running the USSR then, he would have approved it.

He said, "the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. missed that chance ... to initiate a world order". But "an awareness of the need for some kind of global government is gaining ground".

He called for a World Army run by the UN: "national armed forces at the disposal of the ... United Nations military command".

And seemed to call for Global taxes to fund the UN: it needed "substantial funding ... some mechanism tying the UN to the world economy".

His endorsement of the fall of the Berlin Wall shows his antagonism to Stalin. With Gorbachev in charge, it was NO ACCIDENT that Communism fell.

His call for "some kind of global government" provides the background to his endorsement of the proposed Copenhagen Treaty.

Gorbachev is Green Left, ie Marxist Green. He's in line with the Trots and Anarcho-Communists.

Communism fell, but Marxism is alive and well - and very much present at Copenhagen.

(1) Black-clad demonstrators "pursue Trotskyist agenda"
(2) Lord Monckton: Copenhagen was to set up Framework & Funding for a World Government
(3) Monckton: Draft treaty would give UN power over financial & environmental affairs of nations
(4) Monckton: Copenhagen draft treaty hidden as "Note by the Secretariat"
(5) There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government
(6) UN Draft Text on Government functions of UN Climate body (OVER national governments)
(7) Draft Copenhagen treaty bans nuclear & large-scale hydro-electric power
(8) UN Ready to Lead environmental World Government
(9) Monckton: Copenhagen aims to set up a Communist (Watermelon) World Government
(10) Gorbachev 1992 speech: Restructuring the UN as a Global Government
(11) Gorbachev 1992 speech on Global Government: The River of Time and the Imperative of Action
(12) Gorbachev likens Copenhagen 2009 to fall of Berlin Wall
(13) Peter Singer on Climate: act Globally cf National Sovereignty

(1) Black-clad demonstrators "pursue Trotskyist agenda"

From: Charles F Moreira <moreira_charles@yahoo.com.sg>  Date: 17.12.2009 01:24 AM

> No, the demonstrators in Australia were not wearing black, or masked. 
> But note the following webpage, which pretty much follows a Trotskyist 
> agenda:
>
> http://flag.blackened.net/blackflag/
>
> Black Flag: ... breaking down of racial, religious, national and sex barriers 
> - and to fight for the life of one world.

The mention of "sex barriers" and "one world" may make that statement appear sound Trotskyist influenced but for example, the Ba'hai faith also believes in the universality of mankind and an eventually one world government but it's founder Bahaullah came long before Trotsky or the state of Israel.

The Anarchists are internationalist as well, as is evident from the Anarcho Syndicalist union, Industrial Workers of the World www.iww.org.

However, take a look at this statement on free trade

{quote}
http://flag.blackened.net/blackflag/

Free Trade benefits all?

Faced with the protests in Seattle, the Economist opined that the benefits of Free Trade included faster economic growth. Is this true?

The Brazilian economy is often pinpointed as an example of the positive effects of neo-liberal change. However, here the evidence does not support the Economists assertions. Over the last decade, Brazil's per capita GBP growth averaged approximately 2.5 per cent a year. By comparison, according to UN data, it averaged 4.7 per cent during the period 1960 to 1980 when it followed a more inward-looking path to development.

It could be argued that reform in Brazil has not progressed enough, that Brazil is still a relatively closed economy. If we look at Mexico, a nation much more integrated into the world economy, we discover that, according to data from the IMF, over the last 15 years its per capita GBP growth per year has averaged approximately 1.0 per cent.

Of course, both countries have seen the rich grow richer and inequality increase, proof that neo-liberalism works, only for those who matter in a capitalist economy - the capitalists.
{endquote}

Don't you agree with it?

There is a lot of injustice and oppression in the world right now and people are fighting back and I would support anyone who stands up and fights back against policies such as neo-liberalism, even though I may disagree with some of their policies.

For example, I would not support their position of support for the Chechnya rebels, since that could well be backed by US or western imperialism for the oil and to advance its geo-strategic interests, much like how they backed the KLA in Kosovo against Serbia in 1999.

{quote}
Chechnya

Moscow activists demonstrate

On 12 December anti-war activists took action against the war in Chechnya on one of the main streets in Moscow "Tverskaya". The idea was to declare "Tverskaya" as an area autonomous from the state and the Russian army. 27 people (mostly anarchists and people from Rainbow Keepers) took part but the action lasted only about 10 minutes until 7 people were arrested. TheTransnational Radical Party, Russian Democratic Union, Movement against Violence (Ekaterinburg), Tatarian Muslim party "Vatan" and Revolution Contact Committi (a new group) have organized several actions but usually with only 3-20 people each time. Anti-war stickers have been put up in the underground with slogans like "The state is the main terrorist", "No war", "Bring the army home", "War-money-war" on the walls. But it isn’t easy: Moscow is full of police and there is a pre-election campaign with the usual attendant propaganda. Most people don't support the protests against the war and the media won’t report anti-war actions.
{endquote}

Comment (Peter M.):

These people are not Anarchists in the style of Bakunin. He was a Pan-Slavist, and wrote about Jewish domination of the Internationalist movement. Today's "Anarchists" never mention the word "Jew". They're really "Anarcho-Communists", ie Left-wing Communists. If they are to the Left of Trotsky, it is because they are even more vehemently anti-Stalin.

Bahai'ism supports World Government: http://government.faithweb.com/list.html.
Its headquarters are in Haifa, Israel: http://www.uga.edu/bahai/News/053101.html.

It is very unsympathetic to Islam, but very sympathetic to Judaism: http://mailstar.net/zioncom.html

Russia was betrayed after the fall of Communism. What good are Human Rights if your currency plummets, your economy implodes, your lifespan falls by 15 years? Putin had to defeat the Chechen rebels, to save Russia.

(2) Lord Monckton: Copenhagen was to set up Framework & Funding for a World Government

"Institutional framework" paves the way for unelected international bureaucracy

Steve Watson

Prisonplanet.com

Friday, Dec 18, 2009

http://www.prisonplanet.com/exclusive-british-peer-copenhagen-summit-has-established-a-world-government.html

Amid all the mainstream media reports of the talks in Copenhagen "limping" to a close and having failed, Lord Christopher Monckton, reporting from the summit, has stated that the only goal of the conference was to implement the framework and the funding for a world government – which he asserts has been achieved.

"That is the one thing that they are definitely going to succeed in doing here and they will announce that as a victory in itself, and they will be right because that is the one and only single aim of this entire global warming conference, to establish the mechanism, the structure, and above all the funding for a world government." the British politician, business consultant, policy adviser exclusively told the Alex Jones show yesterday.

"They are going to take from the western countries the very large financial resources required to do that." Monckton said, adding "They will disguise it by saying they are setting up a $100 billion fund for adaptation to climate change in third world countries, but actually, this money will almost all be gobbled up by the international bureaucracy."

"The first thing they will do, and the one thing I think they were always going to succeed in doing at this conference is to agree to establish what will be delicately called ‘the institutional framework’. Now that is a code word for world government."

Lord Monckton explained that although the word "government" has been dropped from the treaty, all the interlocking bureaucratic features of a world government are still present in the final draft of the treaty, which also legislates for a global tax on financial transactions that will be paid directly to the World Bank.

"These are the new entities that they are going to bring into being in order to create this world government" he said.

"Ban Ki Moon, the head of the UN is clearly expecting that part of the treaty to go through because he is saying that we are going to have to set up a structure of global governance just to handle the enormous amounts of money which we are going to be getting from the countries of the West, once this agreement goes through at Copenhagen." Monckton added

Ban Ki-moon made those comments on Wednesday in an interview with the LA Times in which he also said that a formal treaty would be signed by mid-2010.

"They are expecting to get this through," the British peer stated, "so all the reports you see about how the parties are fatally deadlocked, China has walked out, the African countries have walked out… all of these things are the traditional window dressing to try to disarm those of us who don’t want any of this to succeed because we’d rather like to see our national sovereignty preserved."

Monckton explained that there is still a great deal of hope in fighting the establishment of an unelected world government:

"What has been going on over the last ten days is they have been trying to see whether they can get a binding treaty, and more or less at the outset they realised they would have to abandon that because it would never pass the U.S. Senate."

"If they call it a treaty it requires two thirds of the U.S. Senate to vote for it and there are just too many blue dog Democrats, as well as sensible Republicans, who will not vote for the destruction of the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a world government, for the bankrupting of the United States, the destruction of working people’s jobs right across the industries of the U.S."

"If they declare that they are going to do this and they do not have the constitutional authority to do this, and that will certainly be the case in the United States, then it is possible to fight it." Monckton added.

Following president Obama’s announcement that he would attempt to circumvent the legislative process and bypass Congress to implement a cap and trade system on carbon emissions, Lord Monckton noted "If he tries to do that he will be impeached."

"He had better tread very carefully indeed or he will be out of office and in prison before he knows it. There are constitutional constraints which, thank god, may yet save not only America but the rest of the world from what you rightly describe as a tyranny."

"World government is coming because the leaders of the West have given up. They no longer care about democracy, they know longer care about the truth about the climate." Monckton said. "They are willing to go along with this world government because they see roles for themselves in that world government in exactly the same way as the leaders of the EU did."

"They can get more power as unelected leaders than they can at home." Monckton added.

The British peer also spoke of the physical attacks on skeptics at Copenhagen by UN security, police and other demonstrators, adding that he himself was attacked and knocked out by a Danish police officer acting under UN authority after not allowing him access to a forum at the summit.

Watch the full interview ... {visit the above link}

(3) Monckton: Draft treaty would give UN power over financial & environmental affairs of nations
Beware the UN's Copenhagen plot

    * Janet Albrechtsen
    * From: The Australian
    * October 28, 2009 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/beware-the-uns-copenhagen-plot/story-e6frg6qx-1225791869745

SHAME on us all: on us in the media and on our politicians. Despite thousands of news reports, interviews, analyses, critiques and commentaries from journalists, what has the inquiring, intellectually sceptical media told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty? And despite countless speeches, addresses, interviews, doorstops, moralising sermons from government ministers, pleas from Canberra for an outcome at Copenhagen, opposition criticism of government policy, what have our elected representatives told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty?

With just over 40 days until more than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, activists and journalists from more than 190 countries attend the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, we know nothing. Nothing about a climate change treaty that the Rudd government is keen to sign and one that will bind this country for years to come.

Of course, there is no final treaty as yet. That is what they are hoping to finalise in Copenhagen. But there are 181 pages that make up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change dated September 15, 2009: a rough draft of what could be signed in Copenhagen. And yet, not one member of the media or political class has bothered to inform us about its contents as an important clue to what may happen in Copenhagen. The shame of that state of affairs started to trickle in last week.

Emails started arriving telling me about a speech given by Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, at Bethel University in St Paul, Minnesota, on October 14. Monckton talked about something that no one has talked about in the lead-up to Copenhagen: the text of the draft Copenhagen treaty.

Even after Monckton's speech, most of the media has duly ignored the substance of what he said. You don't need me to find his St Paul address on YouTube. Interviewed on Monday morning by Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB, Monckton warned that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty was to set up a transnational government on a scale the world has never before seen. Listening to the interview, my teenage daughters asked me whether this was true.

So I read the draft treaty. The word government appears on page 18. Monckton says: "This is the first time I've ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a government. But it's the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening."

Monckton became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government only when a friend of his found an obscure UN website and hacked his way through several layers of complications before coming across a document that isn't even called the draft treaty. It's called a "note by the secretariat". The moment he saw it, he went public and said: "Look, this is an outrage ... they have kept the sheer scope of this treaty quiet."

Monckton says the aim of this new government is to have power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

In a sense, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a UN body responsible for implementing the treaty obligations. But the difference is that we usually understand the details of the obligations and the power ceded.

Now read the 181-page draft treaty. It is impossible to fully understand the convoluted UN verbiage. Yet even those incomprehensible clauses point to some nasty surprises that no politician has told us about. For example, Monckton says the drafters want this new world government to have control over once free markets: the financial and trading markets of nation-states. "The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start; that's even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do," he says.

The reason for that power grab is clear enough from the draft treaty. Clause after complicated clause sets out the requirement that developed countries such as Australia pay their "adaptation debt" to developing countries. Clause 33 on page 39 says that by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least $US67 billion ($73bn), or in the range of $US70bn to $US140bn a year.

How developed countries will pay is far from clear. The draft text sets out various alternatives, including Option 7 on page 135, which provides for "a (global) levy of 2 per cent on international financial market (monetary) transactions to Annex I Parties". This means industrialised countries such as Australia, if we sign.

Monckton's warning to Americans that "in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your President will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever" is colourful. But no more colourful than the language used by those who preach about the perils of climate change and the virtues of a hard-hitting Copenhagen treaty.

Put aside Monckton's comments. Ask yourself this: why has our government failed to explain the possible text of a treaty it wants Australia to sign? There has been no address from any Rudd minister to explain the draft treaty. No 3000-word essay from the thoughtful PM. No speech in parliament. No interview. No press release. Nothing.

Presumably the hard-working Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has read the 181-page draft text. Presumably our central control and command PM has been briefed about the draft text. In Germany a few months ago, Kevin Rudd complained about the lack of "detailed programmatic specificity" going into the Copenhagen talks. Yet the draft text provides much detailed specificity about obligations on developed nations to transfer millions of dollars to developing countries under formulas to be set down by an unelected body. So why the silence? Are they hiding the details of this deal from us because most of the polls now suggest that action on climate change is becoming politically unpalatable?

And what explains the media's failure to report and analyse the only source document that offers any idea of what may happen in Copenhagen? Ignorance? Laziness? Stubborn adherence to the orthodox government line that a deal in Copenhagen is critical? An obsession with the politics of climate change rather than policy?

At least we have heard from Monckton. He told Jones there had already been a million hits on the link to his St Paul address. "So the message in America is now out ... Now you know about it and you need to spread the word."

Perhaps now our PM and our Climate Change Minister can spare a few moments to tell us about the details they know about but have so far chosen not to tell us about.

janeta@bigpond.net.au

(4) Monckton: Copenhagen draft treaty hidden as "Note by the Secretariat"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574500580285679074.html

Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement?

U.N. plans for a new 'government' are scary.

By JANET ALBRECHTSEN

OCTOBER 28, 2009, 7:05 P.M. ET

We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven't heard about it, that's because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.

So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational "government" on a scale the world has never before seen.

The "scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention" that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a "government." The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

The reason for the power grab is clear enough: Clause after complicated clause of the draft treaty requires developed countries to pay an "adaptation debt" to developing countries to supposedly support climate change mitigation. Clause 33 on page 39 says that "by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be [at least $67 billion] or [in the range of $70 billion to $140 billion per year]."

And how will developed countries be slugged to provide for this financial flow to the developing world? The draft text sets out various alternatives, including option seven on page 135, which provides for "a [global] levy of 2 per cent on international financial market [monetary] transactions to Annex I Parties." Annex 1 countries are industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.

To be sure, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a U.N. body responsible for implementing treaty obligations. But the difference is that this treaty appears to have been subject to unusual attempts to conceal its convoluted contents. And apart from the difficulty of trying to decipher the U.N. verbiage, there are plenty of draft clauses described as "alternatives" and "options" that should raise the ire of free and democratic countries concerned about preserving their sovereignty.

Lord Monckton himself only became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government when a friend found an obscure U.N. Web site and searched through several layers of hyperlinks before discovering a document that isn't even called the draft "treaty." Instead, it's labelled a "Note by the Secretariat."

Interviewed by broadcaster Alan Jones on Sydney radio Monday, Lord Monckton said "this is the first time I've ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a 'government.' But it's the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening." He added: "The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start—that's even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do."

Critics have admonished Lord Monckton for his colorful language. He has certainly been vigorous. In his exposé of the draft Copenhagen treaty in St. Paul, he warned Americans that "in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever." Yet his critics fail to deal with the substance of what he says.

Ask yourself this question: Given that our political leaders spend hundreds of hours talking about climate change and the need for a global consensus in Copenhagen, why have none of them talked openly about the details of this draft climate-change treaty? After all, the final treaty will bind signatories for years to come. What exactly are they hiding? Thanks to Lord Monckton we now know something of their plans.

Janos Pasztor, director of the Secretary-General's Climate Change Support Team, told reporters in New York Monday that with the U.S. Congress yet to pass a climate-change bill, a global climate-change treaty is now an unlikely outcome in Copenhagen. Let's hope he is right. And thank you, America.

Ms. Albrechtsen is a columnist for the Australian.

(5) There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government

'Global' thinking won't necessarily solve the world's problems, says Janet Daley

By Janet Daley
Published: 7:24PM GMT 19 Dec 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/6845967/Therell-be-nowhere-to-run-from-the-new-world-government.html

... 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements".

... The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate. ...

The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. ,,,

The word "global" has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily "narrow" and self-serving. (Never mind that a "global agreement" will almost certainly be disproportionately influenced by the most powerful nations.) Nor is our era so utterly unlike previous ones, for all its technological sophistication. We have always needed multilateral agreements, whether about trade, organised crime, border controls, or mutual defence. ...

There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. "Globalism" is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the "blood and soil" nationalism that gave rise to fascism.

The nation-state has never quite recovered from the bad name it acquired in the last century as the progenitor of world war. But if it is to be relegated to the dustbin of history then we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year's global challenge.

(6) UN Draft Text on Government functions of UN Climate body (OVER national governments)

{COP = Conference of the Parties; Copenhagen is COP 15}

{p. 1} UN FCCC
Framework Convention on Climate Change
FCCC/AWGLCA/2009/INF.2 15 September 2009

AD HOC WORKING GROUP ON LONG-TERM COOPERATIVE ACTION UNDER THE CONVENTION
Seventh session
Bangkok, 28 September to 9 October 2009, and Barcelona, 2–6 November 2009

Reordering and consolidation of text in the revised negotiating text

Note by the secretariat

Summary

This document contains reordered and/or consolidated sections of the revised negotiating text (FCCC/AWGLCA/2009/INF.1) prepared by facilitators during and after the informal meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) held in Bonn, Germany, on 10–14 August 2009.

{p. 18} 38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three
basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization
of which will include the following:

(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate. ...

{endquote} http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf

(7) Draft Copenhagen treaty bans nuclear & large-scale hydro-electric power

From: CEC Media Release <mediareleases@cecaust.com.au>  Date: 18.12.2009 04:20 PM

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia
Media Release  17th of December 2009

Copenhagen chains Prometheus to murder mankind

http://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=releases&id=2009_12_17_Prometheus.html

The draft Copenhagen treaty’s ban on the use of nuclear and hydro-electric power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to ensure nobody can escape the British oligarchy’s plan to reduce world human population by 3-5 billion people, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood said today.

Page 83 of the 181-page treaty, section 50 states: [Nationally appropriate mitigation actions shall not include technologies that have adverse impacts on the environment, including, inter alia, nuclear power and large-scale hydro-electric power.]  ==

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf

UNITED
NATIONS
Distr.
GENERAL
FCCC/AWGLCA/2009/INF.2 15 September 2009
Original: ENGLISH
AD HOC WORKING GROUP ON LONG-TERM COOPERATIVE ACTION
UNDER THE CONVENTION
Seventh session
Bangkok, 28 September to 9 October 2009, and Barcelona, 2–6 November 2009
Item 3 (a–e) of the provisional agenda
Enabling the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term
cooperative action now, up to and beyond 2012, by addressing, inter alia:
A shared vision for long-term cooperative action
Enhanced national/international action on mitigation of climate change
Enhanced action on adaptation
Enhanced action on technology development and transfer to support action on mitigation and
adaptation
Enhanced action on the provision of financial resources and investment to support action on mitigation
and adaptation and technology cooperation

Page 83
 [Nationally appropriate mitigation actions shall not include technologies that have adverse impacts on the environment, including, inter alia, nuclear power and large-scale hydro-electric power.]

(8) UN Ready to Lead environmental World Government

WRITTEN BY REBECCA TERRELL   

TUESDAY, 01 DECEMBER 2009 07:00

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2435-un-ready-to-lead-environmental-world-government

United Nations delegates to the upcoming Climate Change Convention in Copenhagen are preparing to propose a UN-centered environmental world government with authority to override local, state, and national governments worldwide for the sake of environmental sustainability. Spear-heading the movement is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which will offer components of its Medium-term Strategy 2010-2013: Environment for Development for consideration at the conference, set for December 7-18.

The inspiration for the UNEP strategy is a document entitled The UNEP We Want, written by Mark Halle, the director of trade and investment for the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), an environmental research organization. According to George Russell with Fox News, Halle wrote The UNEP We Want after an un-publicized meeting with 19 other leading environmental policy makers in 2007, including other UN and UNEP officials, and representatives from the World Conservation Union, the World Economic Forum, and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. UNEP official John Scanlon, who also attended the 2007 meeting, is the principal author of the Medium-term Strategy 2010-2013.

Russell reports proposals contained in the two documents closely resemble each other, the only exception being the IISD paper is much more direct and explicit in its language. For example, The UNEP We Want reads, "The environment should compete with religion as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity." While the official strategy does not call for a global environmental religion, it does posit, "We must spare no effort to free all of humanity ... from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities," suggesting that there is "renewed emphasis on the future evolution of international environmental governance, including calls for greater coherence within the United Nations system, for harmonization of aid under a new architecture, for increased focus on the role of the private sector, for national ownership of development programmes and for results-based management."

The two documents recommend a number of other changes in international environmental policy according to Russell. Both demand that environmental issues be considered central to political and economic decision-making worldwide, and in relation to that, each calls for increased funding of the UNEP by governments and the private sector as well as an "evolution" of increasing power over national governments' rule-making authority. Their ultimate goal is to set up the UNEP as the world's final arbiter of environmental issues. But their vision for UNEP authority does not stop with the environment. The two documents suggest merging environmental and economic decision making in regard to public policy and determining "future markets opportunities," as stated in the strategic plan. They also announce the intention to indoctrinate "children and youth" with the UNEP mission "without appearing to make an end-run around the member governments," a warning added by Halle in the IISD paper.

In an interview with Fox News, Halle claimed that the first stages of the UNEP strategy are already underway in the form of the Green Economy Initiative, or Global Green New Deal, which calls for trillions of investment dollars in the global economy to be diverted to developing countries worldwide in the form of "new green jobs" and an end to "carbon-based energy subsidies." The Green Economy Initiative is a major component of the treaty on greenhouse gas suppression up for debate in Copenhagen.

(9) Monckton: Copenhagen aims to set up a Communist (Watermelon) World Government

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2502-lord-monckton-the-copenhagen-treaty-and-the-constitution

Lord Monckton, the Copenhagen Treaty, and the Constitution

WRITTEN BY WILLIAM F. JASPER   

WEDNESDAY, 09 DECEMBER 2009 01:00

In an October 14 speech to the Minnesota Free Market Institute in St. Paul, Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, delivered a devastating fusillade against the alleged science underpinning the hysterical claims of global-warming alarmists. Lord Monckton’s brilliant presentation, combining a stunning array of slides, charts, graphs, scientific studies, and statistical facts with scathing, satirical wit, became an instant Internet sensation.

The greater part of Monckton’s discourse was aimed at dispelling the innumerable fallacies parading as "scientific consensus" concerning the supposedly imminent apocalyptic demise resulting from human-caused climate change. As such, he introduced little that was different from what he and other climate realists have been saying for years. It was several provocative statements in his closing comments that created an uproar, earning him both plaudits on the Right and venom from the Left.

Here is where he lit the phosphorus:

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your President will sign it. ... And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word "government" actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, "climate debt" — because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t, and we’ve been screwing up the climate. We haven’t been screwing up the climate but that’s the line. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement....

So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, and took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it — now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world.

It’s easy to see why the "greenies" and globalists, who have invested so much time, effort, and money since Stockholm ’72 (the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP) and Rio ’92 (the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED, more popularly known as the Earth Summit), would get all frothy at the mouth over having their plans so baldly exposed. But Lord Monckton is on very solid terra firma, as anyone who has read the Copenhagen treaty texts and/or has followed the continuous exposés in these pages over the past three dec-ades of the UN’s environmental agenda for global control, would surely recognize.


Annex I, Article 38 of the Copenhagen treaty (officially known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC) states: "The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism."

Yes, as the excerpt above indicates — along with many others in the text — the conveners of the Copenhagen summit envision a world government. Here’s how they describe it in the same article 38 of the UNFCCC (page 18):

The government will be ruled by the COP [Conference of the Parties] with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

No checks and balances worthy of the name. No legitimate "rule of law," despite the constant appeal to that phrase by those perpetrating this perversion of the principle. Only a blatant assault on national sovereignty and outrageous usurpation of virtually unlimited power to rule, regulate, and tax the entire planet. This is what the UN and its one-world advocates have been pursuing for decades. That is what French President Jacques Chirac was heralding in 2000 when he praised the predecessor to Copenhagen, the Kyoto Protocol, as "the first component of an authentic global governance."

Lord Monckton’s reference to the communist character of the Copenhagen scheme has also caused predictable rage, gnashing of teeth, and catcalls from the usual quarters that object to any exposure of the Marxist-Leninist pedigree and bearing of any favored project, individual, or organization. But, once again, Monckton is spot on. Many of the communists became "Watermelon Marxists": green on the outside, red on the inside. And the lead Watermelon, Mikhail Gorbachev, founder of Green Cross International, kicked off the wholesale transformation with his celebrated 1992 "End of the Cold War" speech in Fulton, Missouri.

"The prospect of catastrophic climatic changes, more frequent droughts, floods, hunger, epidemics, national-ethnic conflicts, and other similar catastrophes compels governments to adopt a world perspective and seek generally applicable solutions," Gorbachev declared. And to make this desired objective happen, he said, would require "some kind of global government."

"I believe," said Gorbachev, who still describes himself as a Leninist, "that the new world order will not be fully realized unless the United Nations and its Security Council create structures … which are authorized to impose sanctions and make use of other measures of compulsion." Compulsion, force — on a global scale — that’s what it’s all about. That is what UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was saying, in a more subtle way, in his October 25, 2009 New York Times op-ed about Copenhagen. "A deal must include an equitable global governance structure," the Secretary-General proclaimed. Like Gorbachev, he invoked apocalyptic rhetoric to justify his proposed world government, asserting, "All agree that climate change is an existential threat to humankind."

Where Monckton Goes Awry

As Lord Monckton’s timely speech continues to circulate, it will undoubtedly do much to awaken many Americans and speed the crumbling of the incredible non-crisis hoax known as climate change. However, in his effort to stir Americans to action against the Copenhagen treaty, Lord Monckton has inadvertently fallen into a trap, one that has claimed many another otherwise well-informed and well-intentioned Jeremiah. He warns, in these grave words:

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution, and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties. And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.

So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your President will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back.

Unfortunately, Lord Monckton, like most Americans, has fallen victim to the intentional campaign of disinformation concerning the "supremacy clause" in the United States Constitution. Like many other texts in our Constitution, this section has been ripped out of context and twisted by those who hope to undo the protections the Founders of our Republic struggled so intensely to give us. One of the most important proponents of this attack on our constitutional system was John Foster Dulles, who would become Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In an April 11, 1952 speech, Dulles declared:

Treaties make international law and also they make domestic law. Under our Constitution, treaties become the supreme law of the land.... Treaty law can override the Constitution. Treaties, for example, … can cut across the rights given the people by their constitutional Bill of Rights.

John Foster Dulles was a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which has been the lead organization promoting the notion that treaties and "international law" trump the Constitution. As far back as 1928, in its Survey of American Relations, the Council complained against our Constitution’s checks and balances and separations of power. These features, which most Americans would consider the most cherished blessings of our form of government, the CFR authors claimed "militate against the development of responsible government." According to the CFR, it would be more "responsible" to model our government after the European parliamentary system and make treaties easier to pass by substituting "a majority of both houses for two-thirds of the Senate in treaty ratification." Why? Because Dulles and his one-world cohorts at the Council wanted to use the treaty power gradually to intertwine and merge the American government into a global government.

They didn’t succeed in changing the two-thirds Senate vote requirement in the Constitution, but they have very nearly succeeded by winning many politicians, jurists, and legal scholars over to the position that not only treaties, but executive agreements, "international norms," and even "testimony" and "statements" by so-called "experts" at international fora can override the Constitution because they constitute "international customary law." ...

Nevertheless, the advocates of world government (or "global governance," as they prefer to call it today) boast a stellar lineup of judges, law-school professors, Senators, Congressmen, journalists, and academics who insist American sovereignty must yield to global "necessity," and our Constitution must give way to "international law." And Copenhagen is but one of many UN treaties and agreements that are battering our constitutional ramparts. It is up to the American people to hold the feet of their Senators and Representatives to the fire and strike down as a "mere nullity" (Jefferson’s words) these boundless grabs for power.

(10) Gorbachev 1992 speech: Restructuring the UN as a Global Government

http://web.archive.org/web/20070726124357/http://www.dwfed.org/pp_Gorbachev.html

Some Americans & Gorbachev

There is a Need for a New World View: Nationalism vs. Democratic World Community
by John O. Sutter

On 21 April 1992, U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III made a major foreign policy speech in Chicago entitled "A Summons to Leadership." He called for building a democratic peace for the whole world--no longer for just the free half--on the twin pillars of political and economic freedom by pursuing a straightforward policy of "collective engagement" under American leadership. ...

From Cold War to Restructuring the UN

Meanwhile, on 6 May [1992], another politician out of favor in his home country but idolized in the United States, spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill had made his memorable [iron curtain] speech 46 years earlier. Part of Mikhail Gorbachev's speech, entitled "The River of Time and the Imperative of Action," was a look backward with an analysis of the Cold War. Like Baker, he noted a shift in favor of a democratic world for the whole of humanity, not just for half of it. However, he cautioned against the danger of territorial and intergovernmental disputes and of exaggerated nationalism released from the constraints of the Cold War. There also remained today's major split between "North" and "South," between the rich and poor countries.

Although Gorbachev felt that "many countries are morbidly jealous of their sovereignty, and many peoples of their national independence and identity," he recognized the necessity of "international interference wherever human rights are being violated."  Furthermore he urged that a special body be set up under the U.N. Security Council "with the right to employ political, diplomatic, economic, and military means to settle and prevent" conflicts arising in many parts of the world.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that Mr. Gorbachev called for restructuring the United Nations. Not only must the labeling of Germany and Japan as "enemy states" be removed from Article 53 of the Charter. He felt that the Security Council should also be reorganized to admit the two countries and others, including India. To make peacekeeping forces more effective, certain national armed forces could be put at the disposal of the Security Council under the U.N. military command. And to provide sounder financing of the U.N., he suggested some mechanism tying its financing to the world economy.

Needed: A New World View

These refreshing views of Mikhail Gorbachev, a private citizen retired from the reins of Soviet power, are a culmination of new thinking on the world situation since he introduced glasnost to the Soviet Union. Already in a speech prepared for the U.N. General Assembly in September 1987, he spoke of his conviction that "A comprehensive system of security is at the same time a system of universal law and order ensuring the primacy of international law in politics." Already he was calling for a major enhancement of the authority and role of the U.N. and its specialized agencies.

Gorbachev's political adviser Georgi Shakhnazarov writing in Pravda in January 1988 noted that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki many had concluded that "only a world government could save mankind from doom." However, the U.S.S.R. had rejected this idea because of the feeling that it would result in the formalization of U.S. domination. He went on to suggest that "making human rights a matter of international regulation would signify a breakthrough to a new level of international cooperation." Noting that the "governability of the world, despite all of its contradictions, is slowly but steadily expanding," he perceived in the numerous international organizations of the U.N. the rudiments of a world government.

Speaking in person to the U.N. General Assembly in December 1988, Gorbachev called for "unity in diversity" (comparable to the U.S. motto  e pluribus unum), declaring that "no genuine progress is possible at the expense of the rights and freedoms of individuals and nations."  His goal was creating a "world community of states based on the rule of law,...ensuring the rights of the individual," and forbidding persecution based on political or religious beliefs.

A Democratic World Federation

At Fulton, in May 1992, Gorbachev observed that the democratization of international relations was a consequence of increasing world integration. Asserting that democracy "must move from the national arena to the international," he felt that the goal should no longer be "just a union of democratic states, but also a democratically organized world community."

"On today's agenda is not just a union of democratic states, but also a democratically organized world community .... An awarness of the need for some kind of global government is gaining ground, one in which all members of the world community would take part."

-- Mikhail Gorbachev

Moreover, declaring invalid "the idea that certain states or groups of states could monopolize the international arena," Gorbachev saw the need for "some kind of global government ...in which all members of the world community would take part."

It's time for Americans trying to set policy to stop talking as if the United States, having won the Spanish-American War, is still approaching the 2Oth Century as Numero Uno among competing nation-states. Instead, as we approach the 21st Century, we need to change our mindset and accept the role of a leading partner in cooperation with other countries in the movement towards the goal not only of World Federalists, but also apparently now of Mikhail Gorbachev -- a democratic federal United Nations.

Toward Democratic World Federation, Summer 1992

(11) Gorbachev 1992 speech on Global Government: The River of Time and the Imperative of Action
The River of Time and the Imperative of Action

Mikhail Gorbachev

6 May 1992

http://cours.ifage.ch/archives/webdev03/mikay/GreenCrossFamily/gorby/river.html

Here we stand, before a sculpture in which the sculptor's imagination and fantasy, with remarkable expressiveness and laconism, convey the drama of the "Cold War", the irrepressible human striving to penetrate the barriers of alienation and confrontation. It is symbolic that this artist was the granddaughter of Winston Churchill and that this sculpture should be in Fulton.

More than 46 years ago Winston Churchill spoke in Fulton and in my country this speech was interpreted as the formal declaration of the "Cold War." This was indeed the first time the words, "Iron Curtain," were pronounced, and the whole Western world was challenged to close ranks against the threat of tyranny in the form of the Soviet Union and Communist expansion. ...

In other words, a situation had emerged in which a decision with universal implications had to be taken. Churchill's greatness is seen in the fact that he was the first among prominent political figures to understand that.

Indeed, the world community which had at that time already established the United Nations, was faced with a unique opportunity to change the course of world development, fundamentally altering the role in it of force and of war. And, of course, this depended to a decisive degree on the Soviet Union and the United States -- here I hardly need to explain why.

So I would like to commence my remarks by noting that the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. missed that chance -- the chance to establish their relationship on a new basis of principle and thereby to initiate a world order different from that which existed before the war. I think it is clear that I am not suggesting that they should have established a sort of condominium over the rest of the world. The opportunity was on a different plane altogether.

If the United States and the Soviet Union had been capable of understanding their responsibility and sensibly correlating their national interests and strivings with the rights and interests of other states and peoples, the planet today would be a much more suitable and favorable place for human life I have more than once criticized the foreign policy of the Stalinist leadership in those years. Not only was it incapable of reevaluating the historical logic of the interwar period, taking into account the experience and results of the war, and following a course which corresponded to the changed reality, it committed a major error in equating the victory of democracy over fascism with the victory of socialism and aiming to spread socialism throughout the world.

But the West, and the United States in particular, also committed an error. Its conclusion about the probability of open Soviet military aggression was unrealistic and dangerous. This could never have happened, not only because Stalin, as in 1939-1941, was afraid of war, did not want war, and never would have engaged in a major war. But primarily because the country was exhausted and destroyed; it had lost tens of millions of people, and the public hated war. Having won a victory, the army and the soldiers were dying to get home.and get back to a normal life.

By including the "nuclear component" in world politcs, and on this basis unleashing a monstrous arms race -- and here the initiator was the United States, the West -- "sufficient defense was exceeded," as the lawyers would say. This was a fateful error.

So I would be so bold as to affirm that the governing circles of the victorious powers lacked an adequate strategic vision of the possibilities for world development as they emerged after the war -- and, consequently, a true understanding of their own countries' national interests. Hiding behind slogans of "striving for peace" and defense of their people's interests on both sides, decisions were taken which split asunder the world which had just succeeded in overcoming fascism because it was united.

And on both sides this was justified ideologically. The conflict was presented as the inevitable opposition between good and evil -- all the evil, of course, being attributed to the opponent. ...

II. ... What are the characteristics of the world situation today? In thinking over the processes which we ourselves have witnessed, we are forced to conclude that humanity is at a major turning-point. ...

First and foremost, it signifies the possibility of creating a global international security system, thus preventing large-scale military conflicts like the world wars of the 20th century and facilitating a radical reduction in levels of armaments and reducing the burden of military expenditures. This signifies that the attention, and the resources, of the world community can be focussed on solving problems in non-military areas: population, environment, food production, energy sources, and the like. This means new opportunities for economic progress, ensuring normal conditions of life for the Earth's growing population and improved living conditions. ...

No, the idea that certain states or groups of states could monopolize the international arena is no longer valid. What is emerging is a more complex global structure of international relations. An awareness of the need for some kind of global government is gaining ground, one in which all members of the world community would take part. Events should not be allowed to develop spontaneously. There must be an adequate response to global changes and challenges. If we are to eliminate force and prevent conflicts from developing into a worldwide conflagration, we must seek means of collective action by the world community.

There are chances for peace. This is confirmed by what has happened to the political views of the leaders of the Great Powers in the past few years. What is needed are principles and mechanisms for converting possibility into reality. The principles are generally known. I spoke of them in New York at the United Nations General Assembly in the end of 1988.

III. What has to be done is to create the necessary mechanisms? In my position it is not very appropriate to name them. It is important that they should be authorized by the world community to deal with problems. Without that there is no point in talking about a new era or a new civilization. I will limit myself to designating the lines of activity and the competence of such mechanisms.

Nuclear and chemical weapons. Rigid controls must be instituted to prevent their proliferation, including enforcement measures in cases of violation. An agreement must be concluded among all presently nuclear states on procedures for cutting back on such weapons and liquidating them. Finally a world convention prohibiting chemical weapons should be signed.

The peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The powers of the IAEA must be strengthened, and it is imperative that all countries working in this area be included in the IAEA system. The procedures of the IAEA should be tightened up and the work performed in a more open and aboveboard manner. Under United Nations auspices a powerful consortium should be created to finance the modernization or liquidation of high-risk nuclear power stations, and also to store spent fuel. A set of world standards for nuclear power plants should be established. Work on nuclear fusion must be expanded and intensified.

The export of conventional weapons. Governmental exports of such weapons should be ended by the year 2000, and, in regions of armed conflict, it should be stopped at once. The illegal trade in such arms must be equated with international terrorism and the drug trade. With respect to these questions the intelligence services of the states which are permanent members of the Security Council should be coordinated. And the Security Council itself must be expanded, which I will mention in a moment.

Regional conflicts. Considering the impartially examined experience obtained in the Middle East, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, Korea, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afganistan, a special body should be set up under the United Nations Security Council with the right to employ political, diplomatic, economic, and military means to settle and prevent such conflicts.

Human rights. The European process has officially recognized the universality of this common human value, i.e., the acceptability of international interference wherever human rights are being violated. This task is not easy even for states which signed the Paris Charter of 1990 and even less so for all states members of the United Nations. However, I believe that the new world order will not be fully realized unless the United Nations and its Security Council create structures (taking into consideration existing United Nations and regional structures) authorized to impose sanctions and to make use of other enforcement measures.

Food, population, economic assistance. It is no accident that these problems should be dealt with in this connection. Upon their solution depends the biological viability of the Earth's population and the minimal social stability needed for a civilized existence.of states and peoples. Major scientific, financial, political, and public organizations -- among them, the authoritative Club of Rome -- have long been occupied with these problems. However, the newly emerging type of international interaction will make possible a breakthrough in our practical approach to them. I would propose that next year a world conference be held on this subject, one similar to the forthcoming conference on the environment.

IV. ... The United Nations, which emerged from the results and the lessons of the Second World War, is still marked by the period of its creation. This is true both with respect to the makeup of its subsidiary bodies and auxiliary institutions and with respect to its functioning. Nothing, for instance, other than the division into victors and vanquished, explains why such countries as Germany and Japan do not figure among the permanent members of the Security Council.

In general, I feel Article 53 on "enemy states" should be immediately deleted from the UN Charter. Also, the criterion of possession of nuclear weapons would be archaic in the new era before us. The great country of India should be represented in the Security Council. The authority and potential of the Council would also be enhanced by incorporation on a permanent basis of Italy, Indonesia, Canada, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and Egypt, even if initially they do not possess the veto.

The Security Council will require better support, more effective and more numerous peace-keeping forces. Under certain circumstances it will be desirable to put certain national armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council, making them subordinate to the United Nations military command.

The proposal, which I accept, has already been made that a global system be established for monitoring emergencies. The United Nations Secretary-General should be authorized to put it into action even before a conflict becomes violent. Closer coordination of UN organs with regional structures would only enhance its capacity to settle disputes in the world.

Of course, the UN's contemporary role, and, first and foremost, an expanded and strengthened Security Council, will require substantial funding. The method adopted for financing at the founding of the United Nations revealed its weaknesses just as soon as, some years later, it became more active and came closer to actually carrying out the tasks assigned by its founders. This method must be supplemented by some mechanism tying the UN to the world economy.

My thoughts may, at first glance, appear somewhat unrealistic. But we will count on the fact that business is becoming more humane, that a powerful process of technical and political internationalization is taking place, and that business is achieving an increasingly organic relationship with contemporary world politics into which the seeds of the "new thinking" have been cast. Today democracy must prove that it can exist not only as the antithesis of totalitarianism. This means that it must move from the national arena to the international.

On today's agenda is not just a union of democratic states, but also a democratically organized world community. Thus, we live today in a watershed era. One epoch has ended, and another is commencing. No one yet knows what it will be like. Having long been orthodox Marxists, we were sure we knew. But life once again has refuted those who claimed to be know-it-alls and messiahs.

It is clear that the 20th century nurtured immense opportunities. And from it we are inheriting frightful, apocalyptic threats. But we have at our disposal a great science, one which will help us avoid crude miscalculations. Moral values have survived in this frightful century, and these will assist and support us in this, the most difficult, transition in the history of humanity -- from one qualitative state to another.

In concluding I would like to return to my starting-point. From this tribune Churchill appealed to the United Nations to rescue peace and progress, but he appealed primarily to Anglo-Saxon unity as the nucleus to which others could adhere. In the achievement of this goal the decisive role, in his view, was to be played by force, above all, by armed force. He even entitled his speech "The Sinews of Peace"

The goal today has not changed: peace and progress for all. But now we have the capacity to approach it without paying the heavy price we have been paying these past 50 years or so, without having to resort to means which put the very goal itself in doubt, which even constitute a threat to civilization. And while continuing to recognize the outstanding role of the United States of America, and today of other rich and highly developed countries, we must not limit our appeal to the elect, but call upon the whole world community.

In a qualitatively new and different world situation the overwhelming majority of the United Nations will, I hope, be capable of organizing themselves and acting in concert on the principles of democracy, equality of rights, balance of interests, common sense, freedom of choice, and willingness to cooperate. Made wise by bitter experience, they will, I think, be capable of dispensing, when necessary, with egoistic considerations in order to arrive at the exalted goal which is man's destiny on earth.

Thank you.

Mikhail Gorbachev
President of Green Cross International

(12) Gorbachev likens Copenhagen 2009 to fall of Berlin Wall
{Gorbachev clearly SUPPORTS the fall of that wall. But it had dramatic, unsuspected consequences for the people of Eastern Europe}

Tear down the wall and save the planet

Green Cross International

http://www.gci.ch/communication/news/news-of-green-cross-international/33-news/553-tear-down-this-wall-and-save-the-planet ==

The following op-ed piece by Green Cross International's Founding President Mikhail Gorbachev appeared The Times on Monday 9 November:

Tear down this wall! And save the planet

The Times, London

November 9, 2009

There are urgent parallels between the fall of Communism and the fight to stop climate change

Mikhail Gorbachev

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6908798.ece

The German people, and the whole world alongside them, are today celebrating a landmark date in history: the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Today another planetary threat has emerged. The climate crisis is the new wall that divides us from our future, and today's leaders are vastly underestimating the urgency, and potentially catastrophic scale, of the emergency.

People used to joke that we will struggle for peace until there is nothing left on the planet; the threat of climate change makes this prophecy more literal than ever. Comparisons with the period immediately before the Berlin Wall came down are striking.

Like 20 years ago, we face a threat to global security and our very future existence that no one nation can deal with alone. And, again, it is the people who are calling for change. Just as the German people declared their will for unity, world citizens are today demanding that action is taken to tackle climate change and redress the deep injustices that surround it. Twenty years ago key world leaders demonstrated resolve, faced up to opposition and immense pressure, and the Wall came down. It remains to be seen whether today's leaders will do the same.

Addressing climate change demands a paradigm shift on a scale akin to that required to end the Cold War. But we need a "circuit-breaker" to escape from the business-as-usual that currently dominates the political agenda. It was the transformation brought about by perestroika and glasnost that provided the quantum leap for freedom for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and opened the way for the democratic revolution that saved history. Climate change is complex and closely entwined with a host of other challenges, but a similar breakthrough in our values and priorities is needed.

There is not just one wall to topple, but many. There is the wall between those states which are already industrialised, and those developing countries which do not want to be held back. There is the wall between those who cause climate change, and those who suffer the consequences. There is the wall between those who heed the scientific evidence, and those who pander to vested interests. And there is the wall between the citizens who are changing their own behaviour and want strong global action, and the leaders who are so far letting them down.

In 1989, incredible changes that were deemed impossible just a few years earlier were implemented. But this was no accident. The changes resonated the hopes of the time and leaders responded. We brought down the wall in the belief that future generations would be able to solve challenges together. Today, looking at the cavernous gulf between rich and poor, the irresponsibility that caused the global financial crisis, and the weak and divided responses to climate change, I feel bitter. The opportunity to build a safer, fairer and more united world has been largely squandered.

To echo the demand made of me by my late friend and sparring partner President Reagan: Mr Obama, Mr Hu, Mr Singh, Mr Brown and, back in Berlin, Ms Merkel and her European counterparts: "Tear down this wall!"

For this is Your Wall, your defining moment. You cannot dodge the call of history. I appeal to heads of state and government to personally come to the climate change conference in Copenhagen this December and dismantle the wall. The people of the world expect you to deliver; do not fail them.

Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union, was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. He is the Founding President of Green Cross International and is heading an international Climate Change Task Force.

(13) Peter Singer on Climate: act Globally cf National Sovereignty

One World

by Peter Singer

2002

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/divphil/singerp1.htm

In One World Peter Singer examines four major issues affecting the world today from a "global ethical viewpoint": the impact of human activity on our atmosphere, international trade regulation (specifically the role of the World Trade Organization), the idea of national sovereignty, and the distribution of aid. Each, he argues, is of great significance in this age of globalization: they require our attention -- and often a change in attitude and approach -- if we are to improve the lot of mankind.

Singer looks at the big picture: one world, as the title has it. He begins with the atmosphere, arguing:

There can be no clearer illustration of the need for human beings to act globally than the issues raised by the impact of human activity on our atmosphere. Global warming and related atmospheric-change issues have been much discussed in recent years, and Singer provides an overview of the apparent manifestations of atmospheric change caused by man-made pollution, as well as international efforts (at the conferences in Rio and Kyoto, for example) to counter these (in particular by reducing emissions of so-called greenhouse gases). ...

Singer does do some finger-pointing, especially at America, noting that "all the major industrial nations but one have committed themselves" to doing something about reducing greenhouse gas emissions (fudging the fact that the something remains a very vague thing too). America's outrageous indifference -- both in terms of public policy as well as private behaviour -- is deeply disturbing, but political realism and America's (and Americans') attitude of not just 'me first' but rather 'just me' make Singer's babbling about fairness and ethics sound almost naïve. (As recent interventions abroad again demonstrate, in America 'American might makes right' is the only ethics that count.)  ...