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Campaign for California Families family defense organization serving
families in California and across America
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Watch web site is a great
source of information "about the unprecedented movement of the U.S. workforce, the U.S. economy and the entire
educational system toward a centrally planned and controlled federal
system."
Abiding Truth Ministries
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Sustainable
Development -
Agenda 21 and Its Threat to Liberty
Report of “Freedom 21 Conference”
July 22-24, 2004, Reno, Nevada
By Orlean Koehle,
State President, Eagle Forum of California
“Private property and freedom are
inseparable.” George Washington
“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot
exist.” John Adams
Our founding fathers were well aware of the importance
of private property rights and their connection to liberty. They considered the right to own property
as one of the unalienable rights bestowed upon us by our Creator, along
with “Life, Liberty,
and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and they considered the sole purpose
of government was to “secure” these God-given rights.
That is why they wrote even more protections over property into the Bill of
Rights, (articles 2, 4, 5).
However, over the past fifty years, federal, state,
and local governments seem to have a different view of their role. It seems to no longer be to
“secure” private property rights, but to actually impede or
take them away. This is going on
through mainly environmental laws, regulations and philosophies of
population control and stopping growth.
Local governments are enticed to implement these new regulations to
impede growth and stop development by becoming a “partner” and
receiving large governmental grants of money if they will go along
County and city officials across our nation are using
the same environmental buzzwords as they begin implementing these radical
environmental changes. Some of these
words are “visioning, smart growth, growth management, comprehensive
growth, or even Agenda 21,” the original name being used in Santa
Cruz, California, ground zero or the pilot city for extreme environmental
change. Residents of the cities
involved soon learn what the real meaning of these terms are when
implemented – unbelievable controls and regulations on property
owners and a stopping or hindrance to growth. These terms fall under a much bigger
category which is the catalyst for all the transformations sweeping our
nation both in cities, on our farms, in rural areas, and the indoctrination
in our schools. That term is “sustainable
development” or “Agenda 21.”
Lori Waters
Nelson, Executive Director of the Eagle Forum Washington D.C. office,
saw some of the environmental changes, high taxes and over regulations by
out-of-control bureaucracy going on in her area of Lowden County, Virginia
and decided to run for the Board of Supervisors to try to make a
difference. She ran and won and has
been able to help lower taxes and reign in some of the wacky environmental
regulations.
Here is an idea of the regulation expansion: no new
roads or expansion of roads, not withstanding a 35% increase in population.
Dozens of zoning issues so property could no longer be used for what it was
intended for. No signs allowed, environmental over-lays and buffer zones,
no granny units, no property sectioned off to give to your children.
Enormously costly regulations and hoops to jump through if you just wanted
to build a horse barn, a spa or a winery.
They were even regulating “dirt” and had
categories of “regular dirt or waste dirt.” When Lori asked how
you tell the difference, the answer was, “It depends on how you feel
about your dirt.” Lori asks
herself every morning, “What can I undo today?” Through her efforts the county is
becoming less regulatory and more business-friendly. She encourages all of us to elect good
people on the local level, and to get involved, to mobilize, to speak out,
to vote, and, if possible, run for office ourselves.
“Freedom
21” Conference: Lori was a speaker at a recent conference, held
in Reno, Nevada.
Presented by a coalition of concerned property-rights advocates and
attended by 350 people from across the nation. Conference sponsors included Henry Lamb
of Eco-Logic and the Paragon Foundation of New Mexico; Tom De Weese of The
American Policy Center; Michael Shaw, Freedom 21 Santa Cruz; Dr. Michael
Coffman of Environmental Perspectives, Inc.; Michael Chapman of American
Heritage Research and Ed Watch of Minnesota.
Other outstanding speakers were: Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, Texas
Congressman Ron Paul, former Congresswoman Helen Chenowitch, and property
owners from across the nation. Each telling their own sad story of their
battle with juggernaut regulations which have caused many of them to
eventually lose their ranches, farms, forests, logging mills, mines, homes
and essentially their livelihoods
and way of life. From their
personal experiences the audience learned the history, the real meaning,
the agenda of sustainable development and its effect on property owners
across the nation.
History and Meaning of Sustainable Development:
The term is found in the founding documents of the
United Nations. However, before
that, it was found in the Constitution of the Soviet
Union. (That is understandable, since many of those who
founded the United Nations were members of the Communist Party.) According to the United Nations,
sustainable development is defined as “Meeting the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.”
Sounds good doesn’t it? However, in their very own writings put out
by the UN, “meeting the needs of the present’ does not really
mean the right to own private property.
In fact private property ownership is condemned and called “unsustainable.” That
fits with the soviet belief and the goals they are striving for listed in
the Communist Manifesto: #1) “abolition of property in land and
application of all rents of land to public purposes.” So in other words, when it comes
to private property ownership and development, sustainable development
means just the opposite of what it states. Private property rights are “unsustainable and there is no development.”
Sustainable Development (Agenda 21) in the United States:
If you go on the UN website and look under the name
“Sustainable Development, you will see its acronym “Agenda
21” also written with it.
Agenda 21 was unveiled in 1992 during the UN Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) commonly known as the Rio Earth Summit,
where more than 178 nations adopted Agenda 21 and pledged to evaluate the
progress made in implementing it every five years. President George Bush Sr. was at the
Earth Summit and was the signatory for the United States. Since Agenda 21
was considered a “soft-law” policy recommendation – not a
treaty – it did not need to be ratified by Congress.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton established, by
executive order, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development
for the purpose of implementing Agenda 21.
As Agenda 21 begins to be familiar to people who have suffered from
its abuse of power and would try to stop it, the names are changed to
disguise what it really is. J. Gary
Lawrence, a planner for the city of Seattle
and advisor to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development,
made the following statement in 1998, “Participating in a UN
advocated planning process would very likely bring out many … who
would actively work to defeat any elected official…undertaking Local
Agenda 21. So we call our process something else, such as
‘comprehensive planning,’ ‘growth management,’ or
‘smart growth.”
Its authors have said that it will affect every area
of life, and that is exactly how it is intended. Its policies can be grouped into three
categories, “The Three
E’s” – Equity, Economy, and Environment. These words are defined by its proponents
in vague terms. Therefore, we will
go with the definitions of the experts at the Freedom 21 conference who
have studied Sustainable Development and have seen the effect it is having
on people’s lives. They define
the three E’s as:
Equity – Using the law to restructure human nature.
The American system of justice must be changed to
conform to that of the rest of the world, and there must be a shift in
attitudes. Individual wants, needs, and desires
are to be conformed to the views and dictates of government planners. In the process of implementing
Sustainable Development “Individual rights will have to take a back
seat to the collective,” a statement made by Harvey Ruvin, Vice Chair
of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and
Clerk of the Circuit and County Court in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Economy – the international redistribution of wealth and the
creation of public-private partnerships.
The preamble of Agenda 21 states that
“development and environmental objectives requires a substantial flow
of new and additional financial resources to developing
countries.” And where will
that come from? From wealthy
countries like the United
States, of course. Agenda 21’s language makes one
think that the wealth of the world was made at the expense of the poor,
making them even poorer. This
philosophy denies the creativity, ingenuity, hard work, and determination
that comes from liberty and living under a free enterprise system and leads
to the conclusion instead that if the conditions of the poor are to be
improved, wealth must be taken from the rich, and their standard of living
must be lowered to that of the rest of the world. The Draft Covenant on Environment and
Development, Article 8 states “…equity will be achieved through
implementation of the international economic order…and through
transfers of resources to developing countries…”
Sustainable development also includes restructuring of
the economy and public-private partnerships. The economy will no longer be a
free-enterprise system, but a planned economy, built on government planning
and public-private
partnerships. Businesses and even
city and county managements are already being enticed by state and federal
government grants to sign on to these partnerships. That is why we see the same changes
happening in cities and counties across the nation with smart growth,
etc. With budget crunches some
cities and counties are finding themselves in enormous debt making
government grants and partnerships sound very enticing. The partnership concept of merging the
public and private sector used to be known as corporate fascism or
socialism eventually leading to tyranny.
According to education expert, Charlotte Iserbyt,
“Partnerships between government and the private sector result in the
breakdown of the representative form of government and a lessening of
accountability to the taxpayer.”
School systems
restructured to fit planned economy:
A governor’s board decides what economy should
be planned for what area of the state, then the school comes up with career
pathways to fit that economy. In Santa
Rosa, California,
as students enter high school, they must choose a “Career
Pathway” leading to careers designated for our area. What are those
possible careers? There are four major paths: agriculture, business
(including computers and Information Technology), building (construction
and engineering), and performing arts.
There are a few other pathways found only at one or two schools:
culinary arts, public services including homeland security, industrial technology
(welding and automotive repair) and health services. There are no pathways for an attorney, a
scientist, a historian, an astronaut, a pilot, or a teacher.
Limited
Learning for Life-Long Labor:
Instead of a broad-based liberal arts program high
school students' education is now limited to the English, math, science,
history, etc. needed for someone going into a selected career path. What if the student graduates and gets a
job in that pathway and discovers he doesn’t like it? Tough!
He will have no other training or knowledge to fall back on. He will just have to stick it out, or go
back to school to start all over again on another pathway. Instead of a
broad academic background consisting of the three R’s – “Reading,
‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic,” we now have the four L’s
– “Limited Learning for Life-Long Labor.”
Environment; nature above man:
It is increasingly clear that sustainable development
uses the environment simply as the means to promote a political
agenda. As Al Gore says, sustainable
development will bring about “a wrenching transformation” of
American society. Sustainable development is more concerned
with restructuring the governmental system of the world’s nations
than it is with anything to do with the environment. As it is being implemented, people are
left unprotected from the juggernaut of regulation which places nature
above man, and man is now referred as nothing more than a “biological
resource.”
Sustainable development defined by property owners who have lost their
land:
Property owners in the United States who have come
face to face with “sustainable development” would define it
simply as: “This is a
stick-up, give me your property!”
Hundreds of thousands of ranchers, farmers, loggers, foresters,
miners, fishermen, builders, developers, and other property owners are
losing the right to use their property because of juggernaut environmental
government regulations; local, state, federal or international or all of
these combined. These regulations
include: the Endangered Species Act, Wetland Regulations, and laws
governing use of air, water, land, and sea.
There are also countless international UN treaties controlling and
regulating the use of private property.
Property owners are finding out - because of an endangered species
being discovered on their land, or that their land being declared a wetland
- they are no longer able to use it, develop it, build on it, or even water
it. They can hang on to it and pay
the property taxes or sell it at rock-bottom prices, because land that
cannot be used has little economic value. Of course, the only people
willing to buy the land are the Nature Conservancy or other environmental
agencies, which in turn sell the land to the federal government. Often
property owners not only lose their property but are put in jail and pay
enormous fines for the violation of some obscure environmental regulation
or law.
America’s Choice, Liberty
or Sustainable Development:
Tom DeWeese, Dr. Michael Coffman, and Michael Shaw,
experts on the environmental movement, joined by Michael Chapman and
Beverly Eakman, experts on the restructuring of education in America have
put together an outstanding three-disc DVD called “Liberty or
Sustainable Development.”
DeWeese tells of the
"wrenching transformation sustainable development is already
having on America;”
Dr. Coffman tells of the UN Convention on Biological
Diversity and its connection to the Wildlands Project, a radical plan to
eliminate human presence on at least 50 percent of American land. The piece-by-piece
implementation of this plan is already taking place. Destroying established
roads in forest areas, breaching dams and the adoption of World Heritage
Sites are some of the activities already being undertaken. Additional
expansion of habitat protection under the Endangered Species Act and
creation of “conservation easements" are denying property owners
use of their land.
Michael Shaw tells of the difference between the
free-enterprise system and liberty and what life would be like with
sustainable development.
Michael Chapman tells of the education goals to
“prepare our children for global citizenship.”
Beverly Eakman exposes the group manipulation tactics
of how facilitators convince people to go along with preconceived outcomes
and to accept them as their own idea.
The DVD can be ordered from the American Policy
Center (540)341-8911
or email www.libertyorsustainabledevelopment.com.
Highlights from other speakers at the Freedom 21 Conference:
Judge Roy Moore
who had his property taken. - the monument that he had erected of the Ten
Commandments in his court house in Alabama.
He was also removed from his position as Chief Justice because of his
courage to stand by his oath to acknowledge his God and to try to keep His
Ten Commandments in public view.
Judge Moore said a great hypocrisy exists in our courts today that
they will no longer allow in the public square the very foundation upon
which our Constitution and Law is based – the Ten Commandments and
they ignore our Judeo-Christian roots and heritage. We will be a nation “gone
under” if we take “under
God” out of our pledge and out of the public square.”
Idaho
Congresswoman Helen Chenowich, who now lives with her husband Wayne Hage
in Nevada. She and Wayne told of their long battle
to keep their land, cattle, and water rights. The U.S. Forest Service was trying to say
that the land and water rights did not belong to Hage and that his cattle
were contaminating water going into the forest. After years of harassment, Hage took the
forest service to court and won, setting an important precedent for other
property owners.
Congressman Ron
Paul, (R-Texas) spoke of his fight for freedom in our nation, to get
the U.S.
out of the United Nations, and his support of the Liberty Amendment. The Liberty Amendment would eliminate the
Income Tax and everything the government is doing that is not
constitutional. He, as well as many
other speakers, said that the whole purpose for government, according to
the Declaration of Independence, is to support and protect the God-given
rights of life, liberty and property of the American citizens not to take
them away.
Reports from the Field:
Several people gave reports of what is going on in
their states, how forests resources are going to waste by denial of
harvesting. Forests in Montana, Arizona, California,
Idaho, Oregon
and Washington
are all over crowded – there should only be 200 trees per acre
instead of 2000 or more per acre.
Not even dead, dying, and diseased trees or any underbrush are
being removed, providing tinder for
fire, which when it does happen is just allowed to burn because that is all
part of nature, the new philosophy of the “nature-worshiping”
environmentalists.
Clarise Rein of
Montana told us that thirty-one mills have closed in Montana,
over fifty are closed in California. All of the western states are the
same. Loggers have to go over-seas
to find work, and we have to import lumber from other countries.
Sylvia Alan (Apache County, Arizona)
became concerned because her brother owned a sawmill, which is now
closed. She stated, “The wall
of regulations is as bad as the Berlin
wall and is destroying our forests.”
She said in Arizona
it is so dry after seven years drought, that there should only be 30 trees
per acre instead of 2000. When a
fire starts the trees just explode.
She told of a recent fire that was started by a fireman who said he
was bored, in which she lost her own home and her town was destroyed. Thirty miles of forest burned in just two
days. Volunteer firemen and their fire trucks were lined up to help fight
the fire and save the town. However,
they were told by the forest service “government-licensed”
firefighters, “We can’t use your help or your equipment,
because you are not government certified.” Apache County
signed up with the American Logging Association and filed a lawsuit against
the U.S. Forest Service . A judge in
Phoenix in
the 9th Circuit Court ruled in their favor. It helped that he had received 150
letters from outraged citizens from Apache County. He quoted from some of the letters in his
brief. Sylvia is now running for the
Board of Supervisors in Apache
County.
Conclusion:
“Sustainable development is restructuring our
lives and targeting our children through an educational regime that seeks
to develop collectivist attitudes, values, and beliefs. Sustainable development documents call
for the elimination of private property and the freedom that private
property supports. It supplants
long-standing state law, and causes irreparable harm to our economy and our
society. If we do nothing, the
continuing loss of liberty will result in increasing social confusion and
discord, rising resource shortages, financial decay, and a dimming future
for us and our posterity.”
What Can We Do?
The leaders at the Freedom 21 conference suggest that
we start at the local level. Pass on
information to you local officials, keep contacting them to see if they
have read it, and if possible run for office yourself as several of the
speakers have done.
Download a copy of the Freedom 21 handout for people
holding public office (see website below) and give a copy to especially
board of supervisors and city council members. The following are the steps they urge our
public officials to follow:
·
Refuse federal money for sustainable
development programs that breach the American system of federalism.
·
If you are already involved, refuse any more
money and transition out of the programs.
·
Avoid partnerships with the federal
government, NGOs, foundations and corporations that advance the
anti-liberty sustainable development agenda.
·
Understand you role in the community as a
public official – to administer government in a manner that protects
individual liberty and ensures equal justice.
·
Know, understand, and apply the Constitution
to which you swore an oath to uphold, particularly Article 1, Section 8,
the Commerce Clause and the 9th, 10th, and 14th
Amendments, which address the limitations on federal power.
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