Once private companies measure the extent to which their operations drain the world’s wealth through adverse economic or social policies, the UN wants to recalculate the GDP of each country to subtract the negative consequences of its growth.
The vector of this new push is easy to recognize. It would have each company admit and quantify how much it has subtracted from world and national wealth by extracting minerals, endangering the environment, laying off workers, closing plants, etc. By measuring this “environmental and social damage,” the UN lays the predicate for fining or taxing or otherwise regulating companies and nations for their damaging policies and programs.
The participants at the Rio+20 were not happy with the outcome despite its evident progress toward global governance. They want mandatory and binding global governance to control all issues related to the global economy, environmental policies, third world development, and the transfer of wealth to poor nations. Anything less is inadequate. But they are patient and keep coming back for more bites at the apple.
The New York Times reported sadly that the Rio+20 conference agreed on “so few specifics, so few targets, so few tangible decisions… that some participants were derisively calling it ‘Rio Minus 20.’”29
Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace, was particularly dissatisfied, calling the Rio+20 Conference “a failure of epic proportions.”30
The radical greens all piled on. Lasse Gustavsson, executive director for conservation at the World Wildlife Fund, said that “sophisticated UN diplomacy has given us nothing more than more poverty, more conflict and more environmental destruction.”31
The Times noted that “the final statement from Rio… is 283 paragraphs of kumbaya that ‘affirm,’ ‘recognize,’ ‘underscore,’ ‘urge’ and ‘acknowledge’ seemingly every green initiative and environmental problem from water crises and creeping deserts to climate change and overfishing. Women’s rights, indigenous peoples, children, mining, tourism, trade unions and the elderly also get shout-outs in the document. The word ‘reaffirm’ is used 60 times.”32
The German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung editorialized:
To be sure, all of the great questions facing humanity make an appearance in the document, but without any attempt at a binding agreement. The Rio+20 conference, which really should have provided a new spark, has instead shined the spotlight on global timidity. Postpone, consider, examine: Even the conference motto—“The Future We Want”—sounds like an insult. If this is the future we want, then good night.
If all countries are satisfied with the lowest common denominator, if they no longer want to discuss what needs to be discussed… then the dikes are open. There is no need any more for a conference of 50,000 attendees. Resolutions that are so wishy-washy can be interpreted by every member state as they wish. No one needs Rio.33
Doubtless, the greens would have been much happier if, instead of the words “affirm,” “recognize,” “underscore,” “urge,” and “acknowledge,” the Rio final document included more robust prose like “require,” “regulate,” “mandatory,” and “dictated.” But, there’s always tomorrow.
But the conference did provide a clear indication of where the environmentalists and globalists are heading. The Washington Post reports that “some of the biggest issues activists wanted to see in the document that didn’t make it in included a call to end subsidies for fossil fuels, language underscoring the reproductive rights of women, and some words on how nations might mutually agree to protect the high seas, areas that fall outside any national jurisdictions.”34
The Post quotes Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo as saying: “[W]e saw anything of value in the early text getting removed one by one. What is left is the clear sense that the future we want is not one our leaders can actually deliver. We now need to turn the anger people around the world are feeling into creative, thoughtful and meaningful action.”35
Rio may not have given the globalists all they wanted, but they received a lot. And we will give them more and more and more unless we realize that their real goal is the forcible transfer of our wealth to them and the surrender of our national sovereignty to a world body.
PART SIX
UN Supremacy over Our Courts
Not content with grabbing global jurisdiction of the oceans and attempting to control the Internet, the globalists at the United Nations are determined to get the United States to knuckle under to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, creating a court superior to our own US Supreme Court.
The International Criminal Court, organized by the United Nations, is battling to gain worldwide acceptance. Already 120 countries have signed on to the court and thirty-two others have signed the treaty recognizing its jurisdiction, but have not yet ratified it.
But until the court can claim jurisdiction over the United States, Russia, and China, it cannot hold sway over the world. None of the big three have signed on.
But President Obama and Secretary Clinton have begun to move in that direction and will likely move further in a second term—should Obama win one—or even in the lame-duck part of this term. (Even if the Senate does not ratify this treaty, under the Vienna Convention—see page 30—we must abide by it until we explicitly renounce it.)
President Bill Clinton did actually sign the treaty in 2000, but he did not submit it to the Senate for ratification because he had problems with some of its provisions. President George W. Bush renounced the treaty and, now, Obama is cozying up to it again.
State Department legal counselor Harold Koh said, “After 12 years, I think we have reset the default on the US relationship with the Court from hostility to positive engagement. In this case, principled engagement worked to protect our interest, to improve the outcome, and to bring us renewed international goodwill.”1
But that “international goodwill” comes with quite a price!
NO WAR WITHOUT UN APPROVAL
The International Criminal Court is a typical UN bait-and-switch routine. Nominally established to bring dictator/war criminals to justice, its real purpose is to hamstring the US military and force it to abide by UN Security Council rule and regulation. The globalists are using the reasonable desire to get an international court to catch war criminals to restrict the use of military force without the approval of the Security Council—that is to say, without Russian and Chinese approval.
The Treaty of Rome creates a new international crime of “aggression,” which means “the use of armed force by one State against another State without the justification of self-defense or authorization by the [UN] Security Council.”2 Under the terms of the court’s operation, US presidents who went to war without council approval are liable to arrest, prosecution, and punishment by the International Criminal Court after they leave office.
Former president George W. Bush was planning a trip to Switzerland, where he was to be the keynote speaker at a Jewish charity gala. But Reuters reported that “pressure [was] building on the Swiss government to arrest him… if he entered the country,” since Switzerland is a signatory to the ICC. On December 2, 2011, Amnesty International called for Bush’s arrest while he was touring East Africa. Bush canceled his trip to Switzerland “due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture.” He went to East Africa without incident.3