American Policy Center » 2004 » April
- Mary Alice Davis Land Grab Story to be Featured on National Radio Program
- Who’s Sen. Lugar Working For, Anyhow?
- Opposition Mounts to U.N. Sea Treaty
- CARA Land Grab Vote Delayed!
- National Heritage Areas: The War Over Words Continues
- U.N. Plan for Internet Control Tiptoes Forward
Tune In to WTBQ1110AM Radio and on the web at www.scamsandscandals.com January 31st 2004 at 12:30 eastern time for: The Mary Alice Davis Story©
An inside look at a government land grab
“My nightmare started just a few days after my husband Howard died. He left me a beautiful big home and 180 scenic acres in Falmouth, Maine. This home and land are my only financial security. That’s it! I have nothing else! Now the town and some big shot attorney are doing anything and everything to steal away what’s belongs to me. Like public harassment at town meetings, threats on my life, land use restrictions and imposing outrageously high taxes on my property. They say I shouldn’t be allowed to use my own property because it’s too valuable and must be preserved. I don’t how much longer I fight against these bully tactics. I’m afraid I will lose everything. How could this kind of government collusion be allowed to happen in America? It’s time to tell my story on…… Scams-n-Scandals
Owning the biggest and most valuable land parcel can be dangerous to your well being especially if you live in Falmouth, Maine, you’re recently widowed , vulnerable and your name is Mary Alice Davis. In Falmouth, power and money know how to manipulate local government to get whatever they want. And it’s clear there are powerful “somebodies” who want Mary Alice Davis’s property. What part do big time Maine attorney Ralph Lancaster and Falmouth Town Planner George Thebarge play in the systematic confiscation of the only security Mary Alice has left? Could you have a Ralph Lancaster and George Thebarge running your community and not know it? If so…… You could be next!
Joining Tai will be attorney for Mrs Davis, David Lourie. Also on the show is author, advisor and Professor of Economics and Policy at The University of Maine, Jonathan Reisman.
Scams-n-Scandals is heard every Saturday 12:30pm e.s.t. on radio WTBQ 1110 AM Florida New York
April 15, 2004
By Cheryl K. Chumley, associate editor APC News Wire
American Policy Center
It’s getting to the point it’s hard to discern whether Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) is working more for the benefit of the United States or the United Nations.
That’s because in the past few weeks, Lugar has assumed the lead role in furthering two treaties that seem to place U.N. interests before those of America’s.
The first, of course, was the Law of the Sea Treaty, a U.N. scheme that was left dormant for years until Lugar resurrected the measure in February and pushed it through his Foreign Relations Committee, at the bequest of the White House, environmentalists, the U.S. Navy and the oil industry. The immediate fate of this treaty, which seeks to place 70% of the world’s mass under control of three global authorities, now rests in the hands of the Senate Committee on Select Intelligence, due to hear testimony on it within the coming weeks.
As if that’s not bad enough, now comes another Lugar-backed treaty that yet again strengthens the power of the United Nations over sovereign states.
Called the “Additional Protocol to the Agreement between the United States and the IAEA Regarding Safeguards in the United States,” or Treaty Document No. 107-70, Lugar urged this to ratification during a March 31 address to the Senate.
This is the gist of the security risk our nation now faces.
The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, touts itself as an “independent intergovernmental science and technology organization, in the United Nations family, that serves as the global focal point for nuclear cooperation.” IAEA agents come from United Nations member states and are tasked with helping nations develop nuclear technology for “peaceful purposes,” like electricity, and with verifying via inspections that states are complying with non-proliferation agreements.
This Additional Protocol agreement between IAEA and the United States that we can thank Lugar for pushing to ratification grants the international agency wider authority to inspect nations suspected of engaging in illegal weapons proliferation.
The question, of course, is whether that means these U.N. agents can inspect U.S. nuclear sites.
“Although there are increased rights granted to the IAEA for the conduct of inspections in the United States, the administration has assured the Committee on Foreign Relations that the likelihood of an inspection occurring in the United States is very low,” Lugar told the Senate on March 31.
So what we have is an admission that IAEA agents can legally inspect on U.S. soil followed by a flimsy attempt at convincing us the White House will prevent that from happening.
That’s just great. The future security and privacy of our nuclear technology, materials, stores and sites hinge entirely upon the ability of the sitting administration to uphold a verbal promise made in 2004. What Lugar failed to fully clarify and emphasize to the Senate, though, is that nowhere in the actual treaty are these verbal promises repeated.
The Additional Protocol agreement ratified in the Senate stems from a Model Protocol created by the IAEA in the late 1990s, to be used as the “standard for additional protocols” developed between the agency and any interested nations.
“Such protocols shall contain all of the measures in this Model Protocol,” reads the foreword of the 60-plus page document. The telling aspect of this brief mandate that Lugar conveniently neglected to mention comes next: “In case of conflict between the provisions of the safeguards agreement and those of this protocol, the provisions of this protocol shall apply.”
That means no matter what assurances Lugar received, in the form of administration statements or written guarantees in the Additional Protocol between the IAEA and United States pledging that America’s sovereignty and security interests will not be infringed, nothing ultimately can prevent IAEA foreign inspectors from, say, “conducting activities necessary to provide credible assurance of the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities at the local in question,” as the Model Protocol states. In other words, if the IAEA agents decide they must inspect U.S. nuclear sites, they have treaty authority to do so.
But we probably have nothing to worry about. We do, after all, have the promise of politicians that IAEA would never conduct inspections in our country. With a guarantee like that, what could possibly go wrong?
Sarcasm aside, the real issue to ponder is why the United States, the world’s “preeminent superpower,” as Lugar said, would enter this game of Russian roulette in the first place. This is his justification: While the United States is not required to accept any nuclear weapon safeguard agreements, our acceptance nonetheless sets an example for the world to follow.
So let’s get this straight. We’re the world’s superpower, we have no need to enter nuclear inspection treaties because we’re the world’s superpower, but we choose to sign inspection treaties in the spirit of altruistic sacrifice and expectation that the world will acquiesce and sign, too?
Logic alone should be enough to highlight the naivety of this argument. Just because we as a nation submit to a treaty that gives greater inspection authority to the IAEA doesn’t mean the rest in the world – especially those nations hostile to us – are going to suddenly about-face on clandestine proliferation efforts, ‘fess up and walk some honorable path of non-proliferation forever more.
But if logic doesn’t suffice, there’s always history.
Just look at Iran and the 2003 discovery of its secretive nuclear weapons proliferation attempts. Caught red-handed, Iran then signed an Additional Protocol agreement with IAEA in December, supposedly re-committing itself to abandon its proliferation efforts. But in January, “Iranian Foreign Minister Kharrazi appeared to hedge on Iran’s commitment by suggesting that Tehran had agreed to the suspension, not stopping, of uranium enrichment process,” Lugar admitted to the full Senate on March 31.
Perhaps what’s needed now is an official Addendum to the Additional Protocol, sort of like an extra promise, to ensure Iran toes the line.
“We don’t just promise to halt weapons proliferation activities,” the addendum for Iran could state. “This time, we really, really promise.”
Absurd, yes, but doesn’t this Iran example just prove that hostile nations are going to engage in proliferation efforts, regardless of what statements or agreements they’ve signed to the contrary?
Knowing that then, it seems basing the fate of our own national security and defense systems on verbal promises between U.N. authorities and U.S. politicians, especially when we cannot predict the mindsets of future presidents, administrations or IAEA agents, is truly foolhardy.
It’s also truly dangerous and, as key perpetrator of these internationalist policies, Lugar ought to be held accountable.
April 15, 2004
By Cheryl K. Chumley
It seems the voice of grassroots is resonating at last in Congress, as three of a handful of senators hearing witness testimony on the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty publicly validated the opinions of those who regard this document as harmful to American sovereignty.
LOST, created in 1982 and amended in 1994, was never ratified in the Senate, mostly because true Reaganite conservatives in Congress at the time saw the devastation to our national sovereignty that would result. The treaty was dormant for years until February, when Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) caved to the pressures of supporters that included the White House, environmentalists, the U.S. Navy and oil industry executives, and pushed its passage through his Foreign Relations Committee unanimously.
This treaty is dangerous to America’s interests and sovereignty on several fronts: it gives three U.N. bodies authority over 70 percent of the world’s surface; compromises our ability to search suspect vessels; transfers our technology to hostile nations; forces our nation to pay fees and obtain U.N. permission before mining or drilling; and threatens to give the United Nations control of the sky and space above the seas.
Until just recently, though, those who outlined such fears and threats were the small voices in the wilderness. Given the criticisms of more than one senator at a recent LOST hearing, though, it would seem the tide is turning in favor of clear-sightedness and truth.
Thanks are due Sens. James Inhofe (R-Kan.), Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and John Ensign (Nev.), for peppering Armed Services Committee witnesses with probing questions about the ramifications of this treaty. Here’s an excerpt of what transpired during the question-answer phase of this hearing, paraphrased, regarding the treaty’s language that says nations cannot search suspect vessels if those on board claim their sea travels are related to trade rather than military.
“Let’s just say there’s a dispute with China,” Inhofe began. “China says its vessel is for economic purposes and the U.S. says no, it’s military. An arbitrator says China’s right.”
What happens then?
The answer: a vaguely defined guarantee that the United States would not be subject to the decision of U.N. authorities. Instead – and this, believe it or not, was offered in the tone of a friendly assurance – “we would discuss this with China.”
“Couldn’t we opt out of the treaty?” Inhofe pressed.
“Yes.”
“Then what happens to the contractors there?” Inhofe rebutted. He was referring to the fate of American workers who begin drilling activities with the blessing of the U.N. Seabed Authority but then find themselves caught in the midst of an American opt-out treaty disagreement.
The answer: contractors should be aware of this potential and cover themselves by inserting language in their contracts emphasizing their rights to continue activities, even if the U.S. exerts its opt-out authority.
Common sense alone should expose this so-called allowance as nonsense. Free-market principle is not of forefront concern to the United Nations. Given that, then, how much sway would an American corporate contract really hold with U.N. sea treaty authorities, especially if those same U.N. sea treaty authorities are bitter with our opt-out and what they would surely view as a typical American expression of arrogance and contempt for global authority? If the answer that comes to mind is greater than “none,” it’s not reflective of fact, realism or truth.
But wait, Inhofe wasn’t quite finished.
“What about the air over the sea?”
Now there’s a frightening point. If LOST is aimed at providing peaceful travel and economic and technological advancement to all nations equally, as it claims, then doesn’t logic stand to reason the air above must be monitored for unfriendly motions or hostile acts that run contrary to regulation?
The answer: not only the air but also the space could become subject to U.N. authority under this treaty, agreed witness Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador to the United Nations.
If any doubt persists that this treaty is not damaging to U.S. interests, perhaps Ensign’s statements will prove enlightening.
“Everyone has different opinions on this treaty and that leads to the question of how this will be interpreted later,” he said. “I have grave concerns with what this means down the line. How will we look at this down the line?”
Good point. Former Pres. Ronald Reagan, for instance, knew this treaty would decimate the ability of America to maintain its sovereign right to mine sea beds and search suspect vessels for, say, nuclear weapons trades between hostile nations. Reagan also knew that the portions of the treaty mandating mining technology had to be shared with the U.N. authority – and later, with nations unable to develop this technology on their own – placed America’s security at risk.
But what will be the opinion of the next generation of Congress? Or of the newest chosen president?
We don’t really know – and therein lies the problem, because how much authority to cede to the United Nations and under what circumstances to exercise an American opt-out will become the whim of the newest faces on Capitol Hill and in the White House, and we can only guess whether these faces of power will resemble more a steadfast Reagan than an appeasing Lugar.
“Before subjecting ourselves to another international institution, I think we need to proceed cautiously,” said Sessions.
Caution, for now, means delaying a vote on ratification until Sen. Pat Roberts’ (R-Kan.) Committee on Select Intelligence hears witness testimony on the treaty.
Maybe this buys enough time to remind the likes of Armed Services Committee ranking members Sens. John Warner (R-Va.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), as well as Lugar, his committee of conciliators and whatever other U.N.-supporting cohorts emerge from the senate, that America’s constituents prefer to remain masters of their own fates and will not subject themselves to yet another global chain.
Cheryl K. Chumley is an associate editor with American Policy Center, a grassroots, conservative think tank located in Warrenton, Va. The APC is located on the Internet at www.americanpolicy.org and Chumley may be emailed at cchumley@americanpolicy.org.
A vote on the CARA Pork Barrel Land Grab was put off until Thursday or Friday, April 5 or 6!
YOUR EFFORTS moved several Senators into action to defend private property rights and fiscal responsibility!!! (See below who some of our HEROES are).
YOU HAVE succeeded so far – please keep going for two more days and we will win another round.
CARA, which would provide over one billion dollars per year to government agents to condemn private land for almost any reason, from historical preservation to baseball stadium construction to more wilderness, was derailed – for at least one day.
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s last-minute amendment to add CARA as part of the Federal Budget guidelines was put off and not introduced on Wednesday. However, the Senate debate on the Federal Budget guidelines will continue on Thursday and conclude on Friday. The Landrieu CARA amendment could be introduced at any time on those two days.
The Landrieu CARA amendment would include room for CARA in the Federal Budget guidelines being debated this week. It is not a vote directly on CARA, but a vote on making it part of the budget plan, which would increase CARA’s chances if it is brought up later this year.
“CARA” is the Conservation and Reinvestment Act. However, it should be called the Condemnation and Relocation Act because of the massive, unprecedented land acquisition funding in the bill.
It could also be called the Congressional Abdication of Responsibility Act because in addition to the land acquisition, it creates a trust fund of guaranteed money for pork barrel spending projects, mostly for Louisiana.
And guess who wants to load up the federal budget with this disaster – Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. Senator Landrieu has decided to say “Take a Hike” to land owners, because CARA also includes three hundred million dollars per year for bridges, roads, levee construction, courthouses and more – whether it is justified or necessary or not – guaranteed for Louisiana. That’s a pretty good deal, except for the taxpayers of the other forty-nine states!
Public works projects are necessary and we all need them. But why should Louisiana get a special deal at everyone else’s expense???
CARA establishes a Pork Barrel Land Grab trust fund – guaranteed money for two purposes – land acquisition and pork barrel spending.
Spending for national defense is NOT a trust fund – it is part of the annual regular appropriations process. So CARA proposes to make land acquisition and Louisiana pork a higher priority than national defense!!!
OUR HEROES - here are SOME of the Senators who we know are fighting FOR private property rights and AGAINST more government lands and wilderness designations that will result from CARA:
Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming.
Senator Conrad Burns of Montana.
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma.
Senator Larry Craig of Idaho.
If you live in their states, be sure and THANK them.
ACTION ITEM:
CALL, FAX AND E-MAIL YOUR SENATORS. The call and fax are best.
DO NOT TAKE ANY SENATOR FOR GRANTED.
Do Not Fail To Make Your Calls – Please!!!
Here is a temporary FREE NUMBER to call any Senator:
(800) 648-3516.
EVERY SENATOR MAY BE CALLED AT THE REGULAR CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD (202) 224-3121.
URGE THEM TO VOTE NO on the Landrieu CARA amendment! NO land grabs!
Two more days – Thursday and Friday – and we will win another round!
Reasons to fight CARA:
***It creates a trust fund that makes land acquisition a higher priority than defense spending!
***It includes over a billion dollars per year GUARANTEED to hand over to state and federal government agents to condemn private land!
***Land acquisition and condemnation has always been used as a weapon by the Federal land agencies to regulate and control private landowners.
***CARA could cause hundreds of small communities in existing Federal areas to be wiped off the map.
***CARA sets aside $3 billion per year, $45 billion over 15 years that does not have to compete with medical care, education, defense or any other social need. Most of this money goes for land acquisition.
***It gives money to giant land trusts like the Conservation Fund and Nature Conservancy to buy more land and turn it over to government agents.
Of course, the land trusts make a “profit.”
***CARA will destroy farms, ranches, access to minerals and forests and undermine the economic survivability of resource dependent communities nationwide.
***CARA will provide millions of Federal dollars to State Game and Fish agencies to impose many new Endangered Species Act designations and regulations.
***Access by geologists for exploration, discovery and development of important mineral sites will be limited because CARA will enhance large scale land closures and the purchase of potential mining properties such as the New World Mine in Montana. CARA will cost jobs.
***CARA will undermine the economic ecosystem of rural America. As farms, ranches, mines, forestry operations and other private property are purchased by Federal and state land acquisition, small towns and whole communities will begin to wither and gradually die over time.
***The Federal land agencies have purchased over seven million acres of private land since 1966. Rural America will be damaged beyond repair if CARA becomes law and funds the acquisition of as much as 20 million more acres of rural land in and around small towns and communities over the next 15 years.
***With land acquisition funding well over $1 billion per year, the greens will lobby for more and more before every election. No matter how much they get, it will never be enough.
***CARA buys private land converting it to Federal land which means a lot of it will go into new Federal natural management locations and Wilderness areas where hunters and fishermen have little or no access. CARA should require no net loss of lands available to hunting.
***Federal land acquisition buys private land and removes it from the tax rolls thereby increasing the tax burden of other local taxpayers and reducing important services such as schools, hospitals and libraries.
***CARA sends hundreds of millions of dollars to the states and local governments in a smoke screen for Federal dollar control with strings attached about how the money is spent to meet Federal land use planning goals.
***CARA vastly increases the amount of funds to convert tax paying private land into over regulated Federal land controlled by the Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and BLM. This is a bad idea.
Call both your Senators!
Forward this message to at least five other people.
Call five friends and have them call.
American Land Rights Association – Land Rights Network
PO Box 400 – Battle Ground WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 – Fax: 360-687-2973 – Email: alra@pacifier.com – http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 508 First St SE – Washington DC 20003
Phone: 202-210-2357 – Fax: 202-543-7126 – Email: landrightsnet@aol.com
April 4, 2004
By Cheryl K. Chumley, associate editor APC News Wire
American Policy Center
Based on the offerings of the deputy director for the National Park Service at a March 30 congressional hearing on National Heritage Areas, it would appear private property owners should now rest easy if their lands become targeted for heritage area declaration.
To assume such, though, would be folly.
But first, some background. The NPS and partnering state and local entities have created 24 NHAs encompassing 160,000 square miles of mostly privately owned lands since 1984. Advocates say NHAs are needed to preserve areas of cultural, historical, natural and scenic significance, and that the beauty of the system is that the federal government does not retain authority over the declared lands, but rather the individual property owners.
This claim holds true only if you believe private property rights are government-granted, rather than God-given.
The practice of implementing NHAs has been that it creates a supposed friendly partnership scheme between local, state and federal entities to identify and manage lands, where interested parties — be they environmentalists, non-government organizations, interested individuals or bureaucracies — suggest to Congress properties that should be preserved for some supposed benefit of our nation. Congress then helps fund these creations via NPS appropriations; partnering NHA entities are responsible for matching these federal contributions.
Repeated, reiterated and emphasized by NHA advocates is that the main role of the federal government is as consultant to the other involved entities – that private property owners retain their private property rights. At the same time, though, the NPS also controls the purse strings for federal disbursements.
See the incompatibility? It’s not difficult to comprehend that those with the power to fund also hold the ultimate power to decide the circumstances under which the funding will be granted. In other words, if the federal government wants zoning laws or land use plans tightened in a particular NHA area, it has a powerful means of enacting this agenda, via the threat of withheld funds.
Another facet of NHA history is that declaring an area worthy of preservation depends entirely on individual interpretation of what constitutes “national significance.” This specter of a phrase could ostensibly lead to the argument that every acre of property in the United States is historically or culturally important and must be preserved – a.k.a., publicly managed — for the greater good of our country’s heritage.
For worst-case scenario usage of this ill-defined term, just look to Tennessee. The entire state is a declared NHA.
That bears repeating: The entire state of Tennessee is a National Heritage Area and has been since Nov. 12, 1996. Taxpayers from every state help preserve the “national significance” of this entire state to the tune of $10 million, spread over a 13-year period.
“The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area covers the entire state but is focused on the museums, historic sites, and communities located along eight major mid-19th century transportation corridors associated with the Civil War and Reconstruction in Tennessee,” the state’s Civil War Heritage Area reports on its Internet site.
Virginia saw some heavy Civil War action. Should this state, too, be a declared NHA, in its entirety? Or better yet, to defray accusations of favoritism or discrimination, how about the entire 12-state geographical region of the South, along with the handful of other lesser-known states involved with our nation’s most controversial battle? Surely, we can’t leave the fate of these nationally significant Civil War areas to the selfish whims of private property owners who might one day take it upon themselves to construct homes or buildings, completely ignoring the devastation their self-centered actions could wreak upon the scenery of the historic sites in the process.
And this is just the Civil War. Let’s not forget to honor the Indians, who spanned pretty much the entire nation, and are no doubt deserving of historical footnote via land preservation. Given the entire state of Tennessee and its NHA status, wondering where the boundaries to NHA declarations are set should be disquieting.
Now fast-forward to the March 30 congressional hearing, which was supposed to clarify and address some of these NHA questions. The kick-off to this subcommittee hearing, attended only by Senate National Parks Chair Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), was a recent General Accounting Office report that found the present system of creation and oversight of NHA lands lacking in several key areas.
“GAO recommends that the Park Service develop consistent standards and processes for reviewing areas’ management plans, require regions to review areas’ financial audit reports and develop results-oriented goals and measures for the agency’s activities and require areas to adopt a similar approach,” the report summarized.
Most alarming was this GAO point: “No systematic process is in place to identify qualified candidate sites and designate them as national heritage areas.”
That means NHAs can be declared at whim, using an ill-defined eye-of-the-beholder approach to interpret and decide “national significance.” This is but one of a few points that didn’t escape Sen. Thomas, who peppered some witnesses to explain why the language used to declare NHAs was so loose, why the federal government should continue its endless stream of funding for certain NHAs that had already reached the pre-set sunset dates for NPS appropriations, and whether the NHA label now affixed Tennessee could be repeated in other states.
This is what was offered in the way of appeasement; this is the assurance private property owners have been handed.
“We have a formal recommendation for determining significance,” said A. Durand Jones, deputy director of the NPS, testifying — predictably — in favor of NHAs.
This formal recommendation comes in the form of a draft piece of legislation, just released, that promises to both clarify the means by which NHAs can be declared and to protect the rights of private property owners. This promise is empty, as analysis of the draft reveals.
While the proposed legislation admits “a unified national process as well as certain standards for designation of NHAs needs to be established,” it does not provide any uncontested, inarguable means of proving a land area is worthy of public oversight. Suggested criteria includes determining if an area “has an assemblage of natural, historic, or cultural resources that together tell a nationally important story” or “represents distinctive landscapes and aspects of our American heritage worthy of recognition, conservation, interpretation and continuing use.”
What area of our nation doesn’t?
Here’s another guideline: if the area “reflects traditions, customs, beliefs and folk life that are a valuable part of the national story.”
Again, what area of our nation doesn’t?
Yet another: if an area “provides outstanding opportunities to conserve natural, cultural, historic and/or scenic features” or “provides outstanding recreational and educational opportunities.”
One more time: what area of our nation doesn’t?
With criteria like that, even the least experienced Green could come up with a feasibility study proving the so-called necessity for NHA declaration. Once that study is completed, the road to land control is paved – and it’s a fast-moving, convoluted, bureaucratic race that ensues.
The Interior Dept. secretary fine-tunes and approves this feasibility plan; Congress identifies a local entity to develop a management plan for the heritage area identified in the feasibility study; the local entity — a generic term for radical environmentalist or non-government organization – works with a slew of like-minded property-hungry individuals and groups (to include the NPS) to complete this land management scheme; and then this final plan goes back to the Interior secretary for approval. Once approved, the money really starts to roll, in increments of $1 million annually up to $10 million total for each heritage area, this draft suggests.
As for the private land owner, “nothing in this act shall be construed to abridge the rights of any property owner, whether public or private, including the right to refrain from participating in any plan, project, program or activity conducted within the NHA,” the draft states, one of six so-called landowner protections.
Still, where’s the language guaranteeing private property owners the right to be notified their land is being considered for NHA status? Given a 1992 Interior Dept. investigation of heritage area declarations in Maine that concluded the NPS “may have violated the property rights of over 2,800 private landowners” for failing to inform them their lands were the focus of a NHA study, the powers-that-be might want to rethink this omission from this draft legislation, the very document now being touted as favorable to private property interests.
If private property owners don’t know their lands are being sought for NHA classification and public control, how can they fight it? The NPS and other NHA advocates can say what they will in terms of promises to uphold landowner rights: History speaks louder.
Considering the known deceitful practices of NPS, the status of Tennessee, the loose wording of this draft proposal that purports to limit federal oversight of NHAs even while it gives this level of government the authority to fund and advise the partnering entities, perhaps we should counter this trend of infringements with a return to our true national history — the lesson of the Founders that teaches property rights are not to be traded among special interest and government groups at whim, but are rather in-born human rights, rightly above the grasp of radical Greens and pandering politicians.
April 4, 2004
By Cheryl K. Chumley, associate editor APC News Wire
American Policy Center
The phantom of government-controlled Internet has raised its menacing head again, this time on the global level.
“Even the definition of what we mean by Internet governance is a subject of debate. But the world has a common interest in ensuring the security and dependability of this new medium,” said Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at the opening of a March 25-26 United Nations Global Forum on Internet Governance. “The medium must be made accessible and responsive to the needs of all the world’s people.”
In UN-speak, that means America better ready itself, once again, to relinquish a bit more of its Founding Father free-market freedoms and accompanying hard-earned dollars to support the policies and expenses of a socialist system that demands equality for all at whatever cost.
The idea of government control of the Internet is not new, not even in this country where pending congressional bills reflect very different opinions on if and how this technology should be regulated. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), for instance, wants a permanent moratorium on Internet taxation via H.R. 49 while Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) proposes to tax email and Internet access in S. 2084. The difference between these contrasting regulatory proposals being discussed at the U.S. federal level versus global echelon, of course, is congressional representatives are accountable to their constituents.
The members of the United Nations, primarily anti-American in ideology and deed, are not.
So when United Nations leader Kofi Annan announces publicly a “common interest” in providing Internet access to “all the world’s people,” suspicion should be the prevailing emotion among all those who claim reverence for the right of the individual and for free market dogma. This is not an idle pronouncement, an off-the-cuff expression of a personal dream or childlike desire for all in the world to have equal rights and access to this technology. Rather, Annan’s formal statements come on the tail end of a U.N. meeting on “telecommunications” regulation that was planned in December 2003, the same month the global body solidified its Declaration of Principles and its Plan of Action for actually achieving government control of the Internet.
In other words, this U.N. push for control is not going to die. Already scheduled is a follow-up meeting in Tunis Nov. 16-18, 2005 to give updates on how successfully these principles and action plans have been implemented in the various member states, to include America. In terms of what the U.N. wants to accomplish, here’s the gist of what we face.
“The Internet has evolved into a global facility available to the public and its governance should constitute a core issue of the Information Society agenda,” the Declaration of Principles states. “The international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic … It should ensure an equitable distribution of resources.”
So what does this mean to you, an American citizen with constitutionally guaranteed individual rights, freedoms, privacies and free-market abilities? Well, there’s that niggling “equality for all” philosophy again, the socialist’s dream of achieving absolute uniformity among those of dissimilar abilities and resources that runs completely contrary to our constitutional system of capitalism. This is how the plot for global control will unfold.
In its Plan of Action, the United Nations lists 10 goals, most aimed at linking various Internet users and records to one, single, master global system. Planned connections include “villages, universities, colleges, secondary schools and primary schools, scientific and research centers, public libraries, cultural centers, museums, post offices and archives, health centers and hospitals (and) all local and central government departments.”
Also planned is adapting “all primary and secondary school curricula to meet the challenges of the Information Society,” ensuring world-wide access to television and radio and encouraging “conditions in order to facilitate the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet.”
This is U.N. language; in simpler terms, the principles and actions outline the goals and means for taking charge of the Internet at the international level. By their own statements, U.N. members want access to medical records. They want to know what’s being taught in the schools, from elementary grades through college. They want to keep abreast of all scientific advancements. They want to know what’s being mailed, what’s being exhibited in museums and what’s being discussed in town hall meetings.
They plan to achieve these objectives by 2015.
Once realized, our free-market system will surely crumble. Not only does the United Nations call for sharing technology with disadvantaged — and possibly even hostile – states, but this body will also be in position to impose whatever access and usage fees deemed necessary for the good of all, regulate business, and oversee all content placed on the Internet for public access.
Care to comment? My reserved U.N. email address should be functional within the next few months. Just drop me a line at cchumley.globalcitizen@un.org.
