Thank you Stephen Marshall for this site and informative interview Michael Ruppert!
Global Con, 9-11 conspiracy, Pearl Harbor knowledge of attack, more...
Boom, Bust and Echo: A Dark Theory Behind Black Tuesday
Anyone who's watched the History Channel in the last year as seen the revelations that the United States had broken the Japanese code and knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor well before it occurred
The American Freedom Press is committed to defending and protecting Americanism, to restoring America as a free, independent constitutional republic, and to re-establishing the primacy and sovereignty of the individual and the supremacy of individual rights, including private property rights...
Communitarians hold that the role of the government in a communitarian society is to determine community needs and to control, by brute force, virtually every aspect of human existence. They have gained control of America's information and mass communications--the newspapers, television, radio, publishing houses, and Internet--and are conducting propaganda and disinformation campaigns in order to manipulate the thoughts and emotions of Americans. Their propaganda is anti-American, anti-Christian, and pro-Communist. It promotes drug use, promiscuity, homosexuality, and violence, destroys independence and self-reliance, and produces feelings of helplessness, worthlessness, and instability.
Civic Practices Network(CPN) is a collaborative and nonpartisan project bringing together a diverse array of organizations and perspectives within the new citizenship movement. We share a commitment to bring practical methods for public problem solving into every community and institutional setting in America.
Vol. 11, No. 21 October 16, 1995
THE NEW AMERICAN
Communitarianism and Convergence. George C. Lodge, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a former chairman of the governing body of the UN's International Labor Organization, has just published Managing Globalization in the Age of Interdependence, which -- according to its own jacket copy -- "should be required reading among corporate executives and managers in every nation."
Lodge writes that "global forces ... are pushing national systems in the direction of an ideological convergence...." According to Lodge, the philosophy of "communitarianism" will provide the "ideological framework" for "global convergence and integration." Communitarianism, notes Lodge, is "characterized by equality of result or hierarchy, and consensus, which may be coerced or arrived at more or less voluntarily." In fact, "consensus ... may be imposed autocratically by fiat" -- a curious concept to those who think that consensus is voluntary by definition.
The statist logic of communitarianism leads unavoidably to the total state: "The role of the state in a communitarian society is to define community needs and to insure that they are implemented. Inevitably, the state takes on important tasks of coordination, priority setting, and planning..."
Needed: Catchword For Bush Ideology
'Communitarianism' Finds Favor
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 1, 2000
..."Communitarianism," or "civil society" thinking (the two have similar meanings) has many interpretations, but at its center is a notion that years of celebrating individual freedom have weakened the bonds of community and that the rights of the individual must be balanced against the interests of society as a whole. Inherent in the philosophy is a return to values and morality, which, the school of thought believes, can best be fostered by community organizations. "We need to connect with one another. We've got to move a little more in the direction of community in the balance between community and the individual," said Robert D. Putnam of Harvard University, a leading communitarian thinker.
Many of Bush's early proposals fit this approach. This week, Bush moved to make it easier for the government to fund religious groups that cater to the poor and disadvantaged. He also gave a boost to AmeriCorps, the national service program that sends volunteers to help community initiatives. Last week, Bush rolled out an education plan that gave localities more authority over their schools. A week earlier, he spoke of the need for character education in schools. Even his tax plan, due next week, has what are touted as community-building elements: a new charitable tax credit, a charitable deduction for those who don't itemize, and a reduction of the marriage penalty.
Bush's inaugural address, said George Washington University professor Amitai Etzioni, a communitarian thinker, "was a communitarian text," full of words like "civility," "responsibility" and "community." That's no accident: Bush's advisers consulted on the speech with Putnam. At the same time, Bush has recruited some of the leading thinkers of the "civil society," or "communitarian," movements to his White House: former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, University of Pennsylvania professor John DiIulio, fatherhood advocate Eberly, speechwriters Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner. Even Lawrence B. Lindsey, long before becoming Bush's economics adviser, was a Federal Reserve governor who explored ways to lure capital to rebuild poor urban communities.
"It all hangs together," said Goldsmith, this week assigned by Bush to help lead AmeriCorps and the new community-building effort. Might the civil society or communitarian label be the element that ties Bush's polices together? "I don't think it's reading too much into it," Goldsmith said. "This is the president, this is what animates him."
Some of Bush's ideas are objectionable to civil liberties advocates and strict constitutionalists on the left and the right, but they have broad support in both parties. Exhibit A was the appearance Tuesday of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) at a Bush event touting his "faith-based" efforts. "The new president has some promising instincts and there are some promising examples," said William Galston, a communitarian thinker at the University of Maryland who served as a Clinton policy adviser. Though Bush is inconsistent, Galston said, "the president, in moving in this direction, is building on one of the defining features of American society. It's potential common ground for a much wider swath of American society."
But Galston and other communitarians say Bush's fealty to communitarian thinking is inconsistent. While he espouses a range of community-building policies, his $1.6 trillion tax cut is, at its core, a libertarian idea: give people back their money to limit government, they point out. At the same time, they add, his choice of Gale A. Norton to head the Interior Department and Spencer Abraham to be energy secretary reflects libertarian thinking: they both favor deregulated environmental and land policy.
Other communitarians wonder whether Bush's community-minded words are mere drapery, and they suspect top Bush strategist Karl Rove, who introduced Bush to the thinking, sees it merely as a tactic to please religious conservatives. Rove declines to discuss the subject. Other communitarians say they fear Bush, who believes in changing individual "hearts" through religious salvation, is more concerned with legislating religion than instilling community values.
Still, said Putnam, "this administration is doing some somewhat surprising things," particularly Bush's shot in the arm for AmeriCorps. Putnam held a series of seminars on communitarianism, attended at times by Goldsmith, DiIulio, and the Rev. Kirbyjohn Caldwell, a Bush friend.
Bush's education plan would give local communities more power to create charter schools and set up their own education systems, as long as they meet performance standards. Bush has also called for a range of new programs: mentoring for the children of prisoners, prerelease rehabilitation programs in prisons, maternity group homes, and access to after-school and literacy programs for poor children. In addition to a new charitable tax credit and expanded deduction, Bush is seeking to induce corporations, through tax incentives and a "compassion capital fund," to pay for more charitable programs. His "faith-based initiative" would allow religious charities to receive government funds without giving up their religious teachings.
Bush is also preparing an initiative to promote fathers' responsibilities to their children. While he hasn't promised significant funding to his new Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, Goldsmith, DiIulio and Eberly believe they have a broad mandate. "There's a specific mission, but there's a broader effort of social-sector renewal writ large," Eberly said. "This is about the incubation of democratic values and habits."
Even more libertarian elements of Bush's program, such as individual retirement accounts and tax credits for health care, have a communitarian element, Goldsmith argued, because they require individuals to be responsible for themselves and their families.
Communitarians say Bush has yet to embrace some of their other favorite ideas: workplace flexibility to allow employees more time with families and communities, limits on urban sprawl, campaign finance reform, and having the wealthy pay more for certain government benefits. Still, Bush is mulling over another favorite of communitarians. Aides say he is weighing a levy like the "e-rate" charge on phone bills to get schools wired to the Internet. They say Bush believes such funds could build not just physical but civic infrastructures for communities, funding programs that bring neighbors together or promote civics education.
There is still no such thing as a card-carrying communitarian, and therefore no consensus on policies. Some, such as DiIulio and outside Bush adviser Marvin Olasky, favor religious solutions for communities, while others, like Etzioni and Galston, prefer secular approaches. But both sides believe Bush is nudging the White House in a more communitarian, civil-society direction.
"It is very likely to make a positive contribution," Galston said of Bush's efforts. Olasky concurs. Bush has moved Republicans away from believing that individuals are "lone atoms" apart from community, Olasky said. "He is a civil society guy."
Did you all watch O'Reilly's interview with Jeraldo Rivera? Yes, the big O asked a really tough question, and Rivera wiggled out of answering it, let's move on, time to move on. So there is no sympathy here. The big O just doesn't get it, does he? He cut off a guest because the guest was not saying what he wanted the guest to say. Ride the waves, but don't be surprised if you crash, big O.
O knows there's global warming and there is no convincing him otherwise. Send him articles, scholarship from the Marshall Institute, never responds. He's riding high, why should he care.
Not that Drudge is any better, mind you. Drudge had a wonderful opportunity to start putting legistlators on the hot seat during his exclusive Fox TV program back when. He interviewed Rep. Waters, and he never asked her anything pertaining to the current events at the time. I believe the billing records found in former First Lady Clinton's office were under question at the time.
The duo are both fakes.
But now, even world net daily is obligated to big O. He is a contributing columnist, after all.
O'Reilly won't Rush to radio
Holds off on challenging Limbaugh after report goes public
And what a laugh. O is ready to duel with Drudge, and O would win. Why isn't the man challenging Ari Fleisher to a duel? That's the President's public relations guy. Never owned up to a discrepancy in a transcript of a recent press conference. Hot stuff left out!
That's the kind of stuff to pick at, duel about.
SPECIAL SEPTEMBER ISSUE NEW AMERICAN
This hard-hitting special issue lays bare the United Nations’ goal of world government. THE NEW AMERICAN presents overwhelming evidence to support getting America out of the UN.
The problem with the universal declaration of rights is that they are defined. Our United States Constitution does not define our rights, the pact guarantees all rights. The Bill of Rights named those rights the framers feared government would be particularly tempted to abridge. The Framers said No, do not infringe, do not tamper, do not diminish!
New evidence casts doubt on global warming
Robert Matthews
UK Telegraph
THANKS MR. HELMS. NOW WE HAVE TO WORK HARDER TO DETERMINE WHAT U.N. IS REALLY UP TO. WHAT NEXT?
Committees in the United Nations are attempting to remove prohibitions on prostitution, make abortion a "demand right" protected by national and international law, de-emphasize the role of mothers by increasing incentives for them to work rather than stay at home to care for their children, expand children's rights and reduce parents' authority and change religious rules and customs that impede its efforts, summarized C-FAM.
Globalization can't be stopped, but it can be shaped
Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
Bill Steigerwald
Michael Maibach, a vice president of government affairs at the computer chip giant Intel Corp., was in town this week for a whirlwind tour of Pittsburgh's universities and high-tech centers. He was brought in by the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh to give two talks about globalization and the Internet. I talked to him by phone on Wednesday.
Maibach's interview with World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh President Schuyler Foerster will be broadcast on KQV (1410 AM) on Sunday at 10:30 a.m.
Bill Steigerwald is the Trib's associate editor. Call him at 412-320-7983
What’s Up with the John Birch Society?
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wolves/jbs.htm
...I heard McMannus on a talk show one day while driving through St. Louis. He was lauding Jesse Helms as a great American conservative. I called in and suggested McMannus was misleading the listening audience because Helms is a traitor. He voted for the "Authorization for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court". McMannus answered, "I didn't say he was perfect, Ma’am." I then asked him to explain, if he could, Jesse Helms sponsoring SJRes 82 in '95 asking the delegates to call for a Con-Con at the planned Conference of States in Philadelphia in October. McMannus said he wasn't sure "why Jesse did that", but he should probably talk to Helms about it.
Here's another interesting item on S J Res 82. Same church, different pew - In an excellent report opposing the C.O.S. - after the battle had been pretty well won by our side - Phyllis Schlafly mentioned SJRes 82 but never mentioned Jesse Helms as a co-sponsor. In the article it simply stated SJRes 82 was sponsored by Colorado U.S. Senator Hank Brown. I would guess that omission was to keep the truth about Helms from as many people as possible.
Wednesday 7 March 2001
Euro-court outlaws criticism of EU
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels
THE European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties...
The Power Elite & George W. by Steve Bonta
THE NEW AMERICAN
Vol. 16, No. 15 July 17, 2000
George W. Bush is following in the footsteps of his father on the road to the White House and, like the elder Bush, is proving himself to be every inch the Establishment’s man.
STILL AN UNBELIEVER NOW THE GLOBALISTS ARE REVEALING...
Trick or Treaty?
By June Thomas
June Thomas
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2001
According to an informative piece in Spain's El País, the International Criminal Court called for in the treaty would investigate individuals accused of heinous human rights violations, war crimes, or genocide. Earlier, there was talk of including international crimes such as terrorism or drug trafficking in the statute, but they didn't make it into the final draft. The court would have no power to investigate alleged war crimes committed before the treaty went into effect. Nevertheless, the United States was one of seven states—along with Israel, China, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen—that opposed the treaty when it was formulated in Rome in 1998. With the United States, Israel, and Iran signing Sunday—just hours before the deadline—the number of signatories rose to 139. But the treaty will not come into effect until 60 countries ratify it; so far 27 have done so. The Age of Melbourne declared, "If the permanent criminal court works properly, it will mean that the culture of impunity that has protected the Pinochets and Milosevics of this world will be ended."
The United States opposed the treaty because it feared that it would expose U.S. military personnel to politically motivated charges, but the Sydney Morning Herald claimed "because of the size, experience and professionalism of the US armed forces, its personnel are least likely to engage in genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity." The Herald also called for fairness: "If it is good enough for other countries to submit to an agreed system of international accountability, it should be good enough for the US. … It is hard to see why the US would want to protect its soldiers from genuine allegations of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity in any circumstances." This argument was echoed in Britain's Independent, which diagnosed another American problem:
[T]he country's political autism—its failure to see that its view of the world is not the only view—is dismaying and ludicrous. [Sen. Jesse] Helms is worried that the establishment of the court … would make US citizens liable for prosecution. Well, yes. Why should Americans think they are different? Mr Helms seems to believe it is acceptable for Americans to make decisions about citizens of other countries, while US citizens should remain untouchable.
TRIBUNE REVIEW
Thursday, January 04, 2001
the global court
In a New Year's Eve directive, and only hours before a new year deadline, the president ordered that the United States sign on to a treaty that creates the International Criminal Court to try war-crimes suspects.
Mr. Clinton embraced the concord while admitting to its fundamental flaw: it could be used to routinely and frivolously prosecute American soldiers. Yet the president defended his order, saying it will give the United States a role in a tribunal that will be formed with or without American support and even if the Senate does not ratify the treaty.
It's a poor excuse for what, in its present form, is nothing better than the ``international kangaroo court'' and ``unprecedented assault on American sovereignty'' that Sen. Jesse Helms rightly called it.
Is this what Clinton meant when he said ``moral leadership'' in establishing principles of international law demanded that the United States join other nations in accepting the treaty?
Socialism in America
Timeline to Global Governance
Sovereignty Internationaloffers a storehouse of information relating the influence the international community exerts over American domestic policy
Freedom.org was conceived more than five years ago to provide similar communications capability to organizations that are not socialists. The Property Rights Congress will be pioneering that new capability. Non-socialist organizations are far behind, and have much catching-up to do.
Kurt Ehrenburg BLASTS BUSH ADMINISTRATION before any appointments confirmed, watch him count the ways Bush doesn't follow the left agenda...
July 2, 1976, at the Indiana State Capitol Building, Indianapolis, in the chambers of the House of Representatives, presentation made by Colonel Arch E Roberts, Director, Committee to Restore the Constitution, Fort Collins, Colorado, before the Indiana Interim Study Committee.
Don't believe there is a plan for one-world government. Look what United Nations is up to.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 2, 2001
A new U.N. "child rights" agenda for the next decade will be drafted by international delegates to the summit in September, called by the General Assembly to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Officials of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), which is organizing the New York summit, have ordered that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) be limited to two representatives each in closed negotiating sessions where the new agenda will be drafted, according to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.
With conservative NGOs, mainly from predominantly Catholic and Muslim nations, outnumbered more than 200-to-1 at U.N. meetings, the Catholic institute accused UNICEF of trying to stack the deck even further to push through pro-abortion and pro-homosexual rights planks that have failed at prior U.N. conferences.
"UNICEF has announced that only two representatives of an NGO may participate at any one time in the governmental meeting," Austin Ruse, the institute's president, told 10,000 recipients of a weekly e-mail report.
...No longer can the U.N.'s steady march toward global governance -- world government -- be discounted as the ranting of right-wing zealots. The question now is what should the new administration and the new Congress do about it?
The first step is to stop the denial, and recognize that the U.N. agenda is, in fact, an integrated, deliberate effort to achieve the world government it has long coveted. The next step is to prevent it...
The problem with documenting the existence of a Master Conspiracy is certainly not one of a lack of evidence. If anything, the challenge is dealing with such vast, cumbersome, and time-consuming research material, and then communicating a concise summary of the thesis clearly and convincingly. There are mountains of evidence, which can be organized in three standard categories: Primary source material, consisting of original documents, diaries, records, correspondence, and physical evidence from the persons directly involved in the events; contemporary source accounts written about the events close to the time they occurred; and secondary source material, which is overwhelmingly the easiest to obtain, consisting of accounts written much later.
Unless a secondary source utilizes verifiable primary or contemporary sources, its content proves little more than the opinion of the author. This is true not only of many so-called "conspiracy" books in recent decades, but also of many mainstream histories and biographies. In this bibliography we have concentrated on primary and contemporary sources, using more available secondary sources only when they contain and cite the original source material. Many of the original sources are available in major national, university, and private libraries, and some are available in recent reprint editions. They can also be searched by antiquarian book dealers.
Order of the Illuminati
French Revolution and Napoleon
Survival and Continuity of the Illuminati
Communist Movement: Illuminist Spawn
Nazism's Illuminst Origins
World War I and the League of Nations
The Bolshevik Coup in Russia
New Deal and Soviet Infiltration of Executive Branch
Bringing on World War II
United Nations and the New World Order
Domestic and Foreign Policy Elite
Maintenance and Expansion of Communist Power Since 1917
Communist Strategy for Conquest
U.S. Foreign Policy After 1945: Promoting Communism Everywhere
Glasnost and Perestroika: The KGB's Massive Deception Since 1989
Here's what some are up to on behalf of all the world's peoples. Commission name should give you a clue to what they really want!
Welcome to the work of the Commission on Global Governance
Don't believe there are activists who want ratification by our Congress of treaties which would eliminate state and national sovereignty. Look what they're up to.
C-SPAN Networks
Schedule for Today (Tue, 10/31/2000)
All Times E.D.T.
Human Rights
01:00 pm (est.)
LIVE National Press Club Speech
Human Rights Issues
National Press Club
Kerry Kennedy Cuomo Human Rights ActivistHuman Rights
Don't believe like I once did, but I didn't have this article in 1992 for the election, that Ross Perot supported a constitutional convention for a balanced budget>
Enter Ross Perot. Already on record with his dim view of the Constitution, he resurfaced early this January to announce a major recruiting drive for his United We Stand America organization. Just send $15.00 to this billionaire and you can become a part of his group. For what purpose? Well, a lot of it remains hazy, but on the January 11th Larry King television show, Perot told the listening audience: "Now, here's one for you, and here's where we can hit a home run .... [W]e're within three states of being able to call a constitutional convention to get a balanced budget."
His arithmetic may be wrong, but his determination is firm. On January 28th, the CBS This Morning audience heard the Texas billionaire clean up his math while offering: "Only two more states as I understand it are needed to force a constitutional convention. I am certain that the members of United We Stand in their sleep can get those other two states." Although Perot is remarkably unspecific about many of his objectives, there is no doubt he is determined to use his clout to force a convention.
Read the following panel discussion from Lehrer Newshour
HereSeptember 8, 2000
Excerpt of Grave Importance Notice the panel moderator does not even dare to ask? Global governance, what do you mean? Why is this necessary? Explain your dramatic statement! Therein is the reason Truth On-Line pursues truth and accountability of our representatives in government and in the media.
Over 152 leaders from around the world met in New York for the United Nation's Millennium Summit. After a background report, Ray Suarez leads a discussion of the policy issues discussed by the leaders and the summit's historical significance.
RAY SUAREZ: Jessica Matthews, what's important for you to look at is you assess the value of this meeting?
JESSICA MATHEWS, Carnegie Endowment: Well, I think it probably doesn't lie in anything that was said or even in the declarations. It was in the fact that it happened, first. Heads of state are not people who like to come together in great big groups and clumps. And I think it's a fairly extraordinary that this many chose to come and to be part of a very large almost anonymous group, except for a few from the very large states. It says that the U.N. means more, is recognized as more important in the rest of the world than it often is here.
The other thing that I think is important is what wasn't said and never alluded to by any of the leaders, which is that the world has been so changed by the information revolution, that the power of nation states and the power of national sovereignty has been fundamentally altered. And the U.N. is an institution that's made of, by and for nation states. And so it faces a tremendous challenge to try to operate in fundamentally new conditions where so much power has shifted elsewhere under old rules, under the old 55-year-old charter.
So, you know, the Achilles' heel of big U.N. talk fest is always the follow-through. And I doubt there will be too much of that that will change things radically, although I hope perhaps there will be some change on peacekeeping. But I think the event itself has some real significance for the world, importance of global governance."
DIRT NOTE
Matthews was formerly with the Council of Foreign Relations. We would have asked, so, the information revolution has had an effect on the world, but how does that in any way impact the sovereignty of any nation-state?
THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE WITH UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, BUT BEWARE ATTORNEY ALAN DERSHOWITZ ARGUED OTHERWISE DURING A DEBATE WITH ALAN KEYES.
INALIENABLE, [UNALIENABLE] OR NATURAL RIGHTS! THINK ON IT FROM DEIST VIEW, TOO.
NATURAL RIGHTS ARE THOSE RIGHTS such as life (from conception), LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS eg. FREEDOM of RELIGION, SPEECH, LEARNING, TRAVEL, SELF-DEFENSE, ETC. Hence laws and statutes which violate NATURAL RIGHTS, though they may have the color of law, are not law but impostors! The U.S. Constitution was written to protect these NATURAL RIGHTS from being tampered with by legislators. * Further, our forefathers also wisely knew that the U.S. Constitution would be utterly worthless to restrain government legislators unless it was clearly understood that the people had the right to compel the government to keep within the Constitutional limits.
The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, to be valid, must be in agreement. It is impossible for a law which violates the Constitution to be valid. This is succinctly stated as follows:
"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void." Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
"When rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them."
Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436 p. 491.
"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton vs. Shelby County 118 US 425 p. 442
"The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it.
"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it." 16 Am Jur 2nd, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256
Worldnetdaily.com What can one say?
For the sake of our children, and our grandchildren, we need to be informed. Sovereignty lost, can never be regained. Remember Jessica Matthews is willing to speak out in the open now, so something is happening.
DECEMBER 27, 2000
Walter E. Williams
International thuggery
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is comprised of 29 industrial nations, mostly in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim and North America. They've recently released a report titled "Towards Global Tax Cooperation" that should worry all of us.
The report concludes that low-tax nations are bad for the world economy and identified 35 nations who are guilty of "harmful tax competition." In OECD's view, harmful tax competition is when a nation has taxes so low that saving and investment is lured away from high-taxed OECD countries. The OECD demands that nations as diverse as Panama, Liberia and Bahrain -- as well as offshore financial centers in the Caribbean and the Pacific -- end their harmful tax practices.
In OECD's view, it's bad when Canadians move to the United States to escape high taxes or when a Frenchman invests his money overseas in order to avoid high taxes. The bottom-line agenda for the OECD is to establish a tax cartel where nations get together and collude on taxes.
Since the United States is a relatively low-tax nation, and benefits immensely from foreign saving and investment, you'd think we'd want no part of OECD's agenda -- but you'd be wrong. The Clinton-Gore administration thinks that Americans are undertaxed and we should be more like Sweden or France, where the government consumes up to 60 percent of the GDP. U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers approves of OECD's agenda, saying there's a "need to address globally the problem of harmful tax competition..."
International thuggeryhttp://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_williams/20001227_xcwwi_internatio.shtml
While President-elect George W. Bush will not have a shortage of advice about what he should do when he assumes the most powerful position in the world, relations with the United Nations is not likely to be high on the priority list. It should be.
Sen. Jesse Helms and Joe Biden crafted a "deal" which would pay the U.N. most of the so-called arrearage, the U.N. claims is owed by the United States, providing that the U.N. reduces the percentage of the U.N. budget the U.S. pays from 25 to 22 percent, for regular operations, and for peacekeeping operations, a reduction from 30 to 25 percent. The U.N. has refused to make these changes, and, now, Sen. Biden is looking for a compromise.
U.S.-U.N. relations must be re-evaluated from a much broader perspective than the amount of money the U.S. provides. The new administration, and the new Congress, should take a long hard look at what the United Nations is becoming. It is no longer a forum where sovereign nations meet to discuss their disputes; it is rapidly becoming a sovereign entity in its own right, with the power to compel once-sovereign nations to comply with policies crafted by the United Nations and its various subsidiary bodies.
Students of the United Nations know full well that originally, the institution was conceived to be a world government, to which all nations would be subservient. The original idea was for the United Nations to be the world's peacekeeper, by requiring all nations to turn over the bulk of their military might to the U.N., and maintaining only police power at the national level. As recently as 1961, the U.S. State Department supported this concept in its Publication 7277, "Freedom from War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World" (subscription required). The Cold War prevented this general and complete disarmament, until the Berlin Wall collapsed. The original objective -- world government -- is, once again, on the front burner at the United Nations...
U.S. Under Pressure Over U.N. Court
By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 15, 2000; 10:07 a.m. EDT
UNITED NATIONS
The United States is trying to untangle problems with the European Union and Sen. Jesse Helms as it starts high-stakes negotiations to protect Americans from prosecution by the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.
U.S. Ambassador David Scheffer said Wednesday he believes the United States can get other countries to agree to a new U.S. proposal that would exempt U.S. soldiers and government officials from prosecution – and at the same time ensure that citizens of "irresponsible nations" are not exempt.
Whether the United States can achieve that remains to be seen: Scheffer, the ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, said his deadline is June 30, when the commission preparing for the court's operation ends a three-week meeting.
The European Union rejected the U.S. proposals circulated in March to deal with the exemption issue, and a coalition of more than 1,000 human rights and grass-roots groups has been lobbying delegations not to accept any U.S. changes that would undermine the court's effectiveness and credibility.
Pressure on the Clinton administration intensified Wednesday when Helms, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced legislation that would bar any U.S. cooperation with the court, as long as the United States has not ratified the treaty creating it.
The United States was one of seven countries voting "no" when 120 countries approved the treaty to establish the International Criminal Court in July 1998 in Rome. Nonetheless, it is helping draft the court's rules of procedure and evidence.
The court was created to deal with the most heinous crimes – genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Under the treaty, the court will step in only when states are unwilling or unable to dispense justice. It can exercise jurisdiction when either the country where the crime took place or the country whose nationals committed the crime have ratified the statute.
The treaty has been signed by 97 countries and ratified by 12, most recently Venezuela and France, a NATO ally and a permanent Security Council member. The grass-roots coalition predicts the treaty will have the 60 ratifications needed to go into force by the end of 2002.
The United States objects that American citizens can be subject to the court's jurisdiction if an alleged crime is committed in a country that ratified the treaty – even if the United States is not a party. Washington says this would leave U.S. troops and citizens vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions.
Helms' legislation would require U.S. personnel to be "immunized" from the court's jurisdiction before the United States participated in any U.N. peacekeeping operations. It also would ban U.S. military assistance to any country that has ratified the treaty, with a waiver for U.S. allies that agree to protect Americans from extradition.
Helms has vowed to block U.S. ratification of the treaty "so long as there is breath in me."
Scheffer said the administration was not consulted about the Helms legislation, which he called "counter-intuitive" because the government is negotiating for the protection of Americans that Congress wants.
"That legislation is scare tactics," said Richard Dicker, associate counsel of Human Rights Watch. "It's not going to stop the court. Its introduction is timed to try to intimidate delegations here from standing on behalf of international justice. It's very unfortunate."
The European Union objected to the initial U.S. proposal on two grounds: It could have given the permanent Security Council members who did not ratify the treaty – including the United States – a veto on prosecutions of their citizens, and it could have allowed potential war criminals to escape prosecution.
Scheffer said the United States has dropped the Security Council reference and is redrafting the proposal to ensure that "irresponsible nations" cannot take advantage of an exemption for U.S. citizens from prosecution.
"What we cannot have by June 30 is a rejection of the U.S. efforts because there will be serious consequences if that is the result," Scheffer said.
What consequences?
"I would say that the U.S. government – to at least a significant degree – would shut down on this treaty," he said.
United Press International - April 04, 2000
WASHINGTON
(UPI)
The United States should drop the rhetoric of international law and speak the language of morality, Robert H. Bork said here Tuesday.
The impulse toward legal globalism seems to be very strong and "may be capable of changing our Constitution," the former jurist told his audience at the American Enterprise Institute. As an example, Bork cited a recent opinion by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer having to do with the length of time a prisoner may be held on death row before execution. Bryer opined that the constitutionality of this matter should be influenced in part by examining the laws of other nations.
Bryer suggested that the United States should take constitutional guidance from decisions by the Privy Council of Jamaica, the Supreme Courts of India and the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe. "I'm not sure why the Constitution of the United States, which has its own history and understood meaning, should be affected in any way by what foreign courts have to say about their constitutions," Bork said.
"International law about the use of armed force should not inhibit America's actions in its own interests," Bork said. "We should not, through globalization, surrender our interests to nations of far different cultures and views of politics, not to mention to nations that are overtly hostile to the United States." He termed it "a bit nauseating" to hear of laws forbidding crimes against humanity "when it's obvious that what is involved is not law but politicized force."
Bork mentioned that both Spanish and French courts "have dismissed out of hand" the prospect that laws such as those used to justify the detention in Britain of former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet would ever be used against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. These "laws" apply only to small, powerless countries on the right, while the most murderous leaders of powerful leftist countries such as China "are courted, flattered and feted."
"Law that is moral or stable cannot be made out of that kind of hypocrisy," Bork said, because such law must be acceptable to immoral regimes.
The pretense that there is an agreed body of law about the use of armed force, and about the punishment of human rights violations, "can only give false substance to recriminations against us from hostile foreign powers and soft-headed Americans," Bork said. Assenting to such a pretense would "sap our resolve, undermine our sovereignty and remove vital decisions from democratic choice in this country."
Bork was serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1987, when President Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court. He is best known for the four-month campaign in the Senate against his confirmation led by Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., then ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. Bork's name was later turned into a verb. William Safire's "Political Dictionary" has the entry "Bork: (to) attack viciously a candidate or appointee, especially by misrepresentation in the media."
The American Spectator -- July/August 2000
Cyber Treaty
The Web's global reach could mean U.N.-style controls.
by Jeremy Rabkin
Many years ago, I attended a conference about judicial efforts to fine-tune federal safety standards. After a lot of discussion, one scholar sighed, "The more I learn about judges, the more I like chemicals."
Now I say, the more I learn about international treaties, the more I like the Internet. In fact, the more I learn about the latest proposed treaty to curb abuses on the Internet, the more I like the abuses.
That is saying something, because I'm not a big fan of the Internet. E-commerce may be convenient for people who can't get to shopping malls, but I don't see that it's much of an advance on mail-order catalogues. People who post opinions online seem mostly to be rejects from talk-radio call-in shows. Even the research potential of the Net is overrated. Instead of immersing themselves in real books, students reach into cyberspace for random facts. What they get is often the intellectual equivalent of junk-food -- a quick fix for someone with no time to digest anything substantial. I wish my own teenage sons would spend less time on the Net and more time watching cable TV, where the old movies have a plot line and a moral theme and the director was not some distracted 23-year-old geek.
Frivolousness is not the worst thing about the Internet. In facilitating communication, it may help terrorists locate targets or improve weapons; it may help sickos find child pornography or vulnerable children; it may allow the spread of libelous accusations, destructive rumors, crackpot alarms. In linking so many networks, moreover, the Internet seems to increase the risk that vandals, schemers, or terrorists could shut down computer systems or steal or damage data on a vast scale. And as the Internet speeds messages around the globe, no one government can control it and it seems to threaten traditional notions of sovereignty.
So doesn't it make sense to try to control these dangers with an international treaty? Many world leaders think so. U.N. committees have called for international action. The European Union has called for action. The G8 group of leading industrial nations organized a special committee to make recommendations on the matter more than two years ago. In late April, the Council of Europe (COE), comprising 41 nations in western and central Europe, released a draft for a "convention on cyber-crime" which it invites the United States and other nations to help perfect and then ratify. In fact, American representatives have already been actively involved in the drafting process.
But this treaty is a bad idea. First, it raises all the usual problems of high-minded projects of international cooperation. If the problem is the inter-connectedness of the Internet, a treaty must enlist every country in the world. It can't achieve very much just by signing up governments that want to cooperate -- any more than the treaty on chemical weapons can suppress chemical weapons when the most likely users of such weapons refuse to sign or don't really intend to comply if they do sign. Cyber-criminals can always shift their operations to new sites in more hospitable territory.
Second, an international treaty approach tends to distract attention from unilateral American defenses and may compromise or complicate them. We can impose criminal sanctions under U.S. law for actions taken by people in other countries who do serious harm through -- or to -- American computer networks. The COE treaty would set up an elaborate system for extraditing cyber criminals. But we may have more leverage on delinquents by acting alone, seizing their financial assets in the U.S. or grabbing U.S.-based co-conspirators, without worrying about treaty obligations.
In the end, though, trying to protect American computers by hunting down hackers throughout the world is like trying to protect ourselves against terrorism by suppressing terrorist cells throughout the world. Instead, we should be emphasizing technical methods for defending computer systems in our own country -- in accord with our own priorities and standards. And we shouldn't be bargaining with foreign nations about our own standards.
That's the third and most serious point. Though the draft of this treaty remains sketchy and might yet be improved, it seems to envision systems of control that go beyond what we now have in the U.S. Europeans tend to favor more control, partly because they distrust the Internet as something that comes from America. And partly because they just favor more control. Also, they don't worry much about the U.S. Bill of Rights.
But the treaty may be an excuse to impose controls our government wants, but have so far been resisted. Washington attorney David Banisar, noting the extensive U.S. government involvement in the drafting of this convention, calls the process "policy laundering."
A number of serious constitutional issues are at stake. We can start, as the Bill of Rights does, with the religious freedom and free speech guarantees of the First Amendment. The treaty calls for international cooperation to suppress Internet distribution of child pornography. That might seem unobjectionable, since the U.S. already has severe prohibitions on child pornography, including criminal sanctions for Internet transmission. But if we are entering into systems of international cooperation for the suppression of Internet messages, will the cooperation stop with child pornography?
We don't need to engage in remote speculation. Europeans don't seem much concerned about pornography but they are much exercised about "hate speech." Most countries in Europe have laws against speech they regard as dangerous or offensive to minorities. Germany has strict laws against Nazi or neo-Nazi activities and in 1995 threatened to shut down AOL connections unless the company took steps to prevent offensive Websites from getting through to computers in Germany. Authorities in France, Britain, and Sweden have wider concerns and have warned against transmission of improper sites.
The U.N.'s Commission on Human Rights sponsored a special conference to deliberate on ways of controlling broadly and vaguely defined categories of online hate speech. Participants stated -- repeatedly -- that the U.S. was an exception, because of its First Amendment concerns. But many delegates noted that human rights conventions obligate governments to suppress hate speech and that these conventions are supposed to take precedence even over national constitutions.
The same conventions might be invoked to protest "hate speech" against homosexuals. Canadian human rights officials have ruled that Dr. Laura Schlessinger's radio program violates human rights standards for condemning homosexual conduct. What Dr. Laura presents as traditional Jewish doctrine, Christians and Muslims often assert in stronger terms. What happens when religious groups take to the Internet to present or discuss their doctrines regarding homosexuality?
In fact, nothing in international law prevents countries from enacting prohibitions on certain kinds of Internet traffic within their own borders. Improving technology may make it easier for national authorities to insist that service providers linking local users with the Web install certain "filters" to keep out prohibited material (as China now does). But there are ways to evade these controls without great technical sophistication -- especially if one has help from others in third countries, who provide disguised links back to the prohibited material.
The question is whether the U.S. government should help other countries enforce the controls they want to impose. Such cooperation might help us track and punish those in other countries trying to send child porn or dangerous disruptive "viruses" into the U.S. But a lot of constitutional issues are raised when the U.S. government tries to stop American citizens, operating domestically, from exercising free speech or religious freedom on the Internet -- just to satisfy foreign standards. If the U.S. government lacks constitutional authority to suppress various kinds of speech at home, does it really have constitutional authority to suppress their export?
The cyber-convention also raises questions about procedural protections. The Fourth Amendment prohibits government snooping without a search warrant. How does it operate on the Internet? Government agents can certainly monitor Websites open to everyone else. I don't see any problem with the current practice of using chat groups to set up sting operations, where government agents catch pedophiles or purveyors of child pornography or other kinds of criminals.
But the treaty seems to envision the monitoring of private e-mail as well. The section on "interception" has been left blank for now, but government agents want powers to monitor private messages. I don't see how this is different from broad powers to eavesdrop on phone conversations or secretly read private letters. There are lots of gray areas in Fourth Amendment case law, but I would not like to see our privacy protections weakened just to satisfy our partners in an international control scheme.
The more government snoops, the more people try to protect themselves with encryption. For seven years, the Clinton administration has tried to limit encryption by demanding that codes and passwords be available to law enforcement. So far, it has retreated in the face of strong protests, but the treaty -- which speaks in vague terms about nations legislating "access" for police investigations -- now seems to say that the U.S. government has an international obligation to enforce such access. This raises a serious Fifth Amendment issue: Does forcing a person to yield his password violate his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination? A number of legal scholars have considered the argument and concluded that it does. It is a serious argument. Where does the treaty leave it?
Current constitutional doctrine holds that if a treaty conflicts with the Constitution, U.S. courts must side with the Constitution. But where constitutional doctrine is fuzzy or unsettled (as a lot of it is, in areas of such new technology), a treaty may encourage courts to make accommodations. The argument that "international cooperation" requires this or that is first cousin to the claim that "national security" requires this or that -- and here, both arguments are enlisted by government officials warning about cyber-criminals conspiring to destroy our computer networks.
Yet in the name of protecting us from cyber crime, the government could well end up limiting the most effective private means of protection -- such as better private encryption systems. These systems are likely to be more effective the less government has to do with them. Remember all that missile data passed on to China from the Los Alamos labs? What private company could be so lax with its secrets or its clients' secrets and still stay in business? And once the government has access to private encryption codes, will it guard such secrets as well as the private owners?
The resulting paradox is familiar from debates about the Second Amendment. In the name of protecting us, gun control advocates want to take away our best means of self-defense. My younger son put it this way: "When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will be encrypted." Could be he spends too much time browsing the NRA Website. But he's got a point.
Jeremy Rabkin is a professor of government at Cornell University
This article also appears in the July/August 2000 issue of The American Spectator
(Posted 7/20/00)
The American Spectator. All rights reserved.
Don't believe there's a plan for global governance? Mr. Master Blaster Chuck Durso at BS at WMBS? Read it straight from the transcript online Newshour for September 8, 2000.
