American Policy Center » 2006 » October
- Opening Statement by Tom DeWeese Before the Cambridge Union Society Cambridge University
- The Global Warming Deceptions Continue
- “Hallowed Ground” and Government’s Relentless Assault on Private Property Rights
October 26, 2006
“This House believes that the United Nations is a dead loss”
It is reasonable that honest, compassionate people seek a means for governments to come together to discuss and air their differences.
It is also reasonable that honest, compassionate people should desire some way to voluntarily pool resources to provide charitable aid to those who are starving or are victims of natural disaster.
Indeed this is the image of the United Nations that has been sold to the world since its inception.
It is not, however, the reality.
The world is in chaos and, quite frankly, it’s the UN’s fault. It gives validity to zealots and petty bigots. It helps to keep tyrannical dictators in power. It gives a voice to international terrorists.
Delay. Negotiate. Recommend. Study. Reconsider. Do nothing. This is the game the UN has played in nearly every international crisis.
It is the reason North Korea remains a threat after 50 years.
It is the reason Zimbabwe’s murderous Robert Mugabe is able to steal his election and then steal the land of white property owners, drive the nation into economic ruin and starvation – without an international protest, boycott, or sanction.
Instead, Mugabe is given a voice in the UN’s Sustainable Development conference in South Africa.
It is the reason why the Chinese government is able to ignore UN rules not to its liking — while growing as an international military and economic threat.
And it is the reason why a terrorist nation like Syria can be given a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council.
The United Nations, internally, is a mess. It now finds itself buried under scandals.
It has Oil-for-Food scandals. Smuggling scandals. And theft scandals.
Peace keeping missions actually bring fear to the local citizens they are supposed to protect. Rob, rape and pillage seem to be the UN’s modus operandi.
How can we be surprised by such revelations?
Who has the power to oversee and control its actions?
The people don’t vote on UN actions. The media has little access behind the scenes. Who audits the accounting books?
Of course, even its supporters will readily agree that such problems exist. They are quick to jump in and call for “reform.”
However, when talking reform, one must be very careful of what the word may mean.
UN reports on reform don’t indicate a simple desire to plug holes in UN spending — or to clear up scandals.
Quite the contrary. According to Kofi Annan, Maurice Strong and many others, reform means global governance.
Since its inception, the UN has advocated the desire to eradicate sovereign nations — while imposing what it calls “world-mindedness.”
A 1949 UNESCO document said, “…nationalism (is) the major obstacle to the development of world-mindedness.”
In the 1990’s, Maurice Strong said, “it is not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation/states, however powerful.”
There in lies the true goal of the United Nations. And that belies its public image of simply a place where nations may come to air their differences and act responsibly.
Instead, the UN is openly working to gain power for itself in order to become independent and supreme over its member nations.
To do that it needs the power to tax. On September 19th plans were approved to begin the creation of a global tax, mostly through airline tickets to help pay for the treatment of aids. They of course euphemistically call it a contribution.
There are several other tax schemes on the UN wish list, including a carbon tax on Co2 emissions, a currency tax on transactions of foreign currency exchanges, and taxes on the Internet, to name a few.
If the UN gains the power to tax and the enforcement power necessary to collect them, then the UN will become an unstoppable force in the world. A monster free of its chains.
And, of course, the UN wants its own military. It already has its own court.
These three things, the ability to collect taxes to provide near unlimited funds from independent sources; the ability to enforce its will with a military force; and a court system to impose its own brand of justice, are all that is required to create a government.
Imagine a world run by the justice of China, with the economics of Cuba and the military might of the United States. Such is the world of the future under United Nations global governance.
Public relations propaganda aside, clearly, the United Nations wants to be much more than a place where nations can come together to air their differences under a voluntary membership association.
The truth is, today, fifty years after the inception of the United Nations, the international community is a dangerous place.
Today the world has more wars, more poverty and more suffering that anytime in human history.
Obviously, the United Nations is irrelevant as a body to deliver world peace.
Just as obviously, the UN is more interested in meddling in the sovereign affairs of nations, seeking to impose its own agenda over development, production and what it calls social equity in a drive to set itself up for global governance.
Using images of dire environmental emergencies or life-threatening diseases or starving children, the UN promotes an agenda which really seeks to redistribute the world’s wealth.
Its only answer is government control – and confiscation of individual wealth and property.
Nowhere is there mentioned in a single UN document that I have read an advocacy for the right to own private property.
In fact, quite the opposite is the case as nearly every UN document, report, working paper, program, treaty, protocol, declaration and resolution – is dedicated to the confiscation, redistribution, regulation and tax of someone’s property.
And it is a fact that the inability to own private property creates poverty.
It is also a fact that confiscation of private property never helps to eradicate poverty.
It is bad economic policy. Yet that is the UN’s only solution to the massive suffering throughout the world. Take it from one source to give to another.
And that, I contend, is the very root of the suffering – not the solution.
The UN was wrong from its very beginning and wrong now because it has always sought to interfere with national sovereignty rather than to provide a unique forum to help keep the peace.
That is why the UN is a dead loss. It should be tossed on the trash heap of history so that we may start over and create an honest enterprise that seeks to help nations, not eradicate them.
The United Nations is not “dysfunctional” as some “reformists” have claimed. It is a criminal enterprise in which no moral nation should ever participate, let alone perpetuate.
October 18, 2006
By Tom DeWeese
They call us the “astro-turf” crowd –those of us who dispute the dire claims of global warming. Let one of us get on the radio or in front of an audience and the accusation is made: “You’re just a lackey of big business.” Nothing we say can have any serious meaning because we are paid by big oil or some other corporation and so must have an ulterior motive.( By the way, I or the American Policy Center have never received a single dime from big oil corporations). Of course, there is always a double standard in the name calling business.
Now comes this report from Senator James Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In a speech before the Senate, Inhofe told of the media’s double standard in reporting on the global warming issue.
Said Inhofe, “On March 19 of this year ‘60 Minutes’ profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. In the segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.”
Inhofe continued, “The ’60 Minutes’ segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz. There was no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.”
Concluded Inhofe, “Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant for the left-wing Heinz Foundation. The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.”
Meanwhile an effort is underway by global warming worshipers to stop, at all costs, the hated global warming skeptics. These are scientists and commentators (including yours truly) who disagree with the sermons of the church of global warming.
CBS correspondent Scott Pelley has justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of “Holocaust deniers.”
California’s attorney general sued the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers, including GM, Ford and Toyota for damages related to greenhouse-gas emissions, even though there is no proof that global warming exists, or that carbon dioxide is a problem (there are now studies available to the contrary). The California suit is really an effort to enforce the Kyoto global warming treaty, even though the U.S. has never ratified it.
It is interesting to note that in preparing for the suit, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed requests in federal court to force auto makers to disclose all documents and communications between the companies and the so-called climate skeptics. California accuses the climate skeptics of playing a major role in spreading disinformation about global warming.
California obviously has become a leading practioner of the policy of “globally acceptable truth” as advocated by Donald Sagar of the Eden Institute (The DeWeese Report, Volume 12, Issues 7 & 8). Sagar disavowels the value of science, caring more to kill honest debate and instead to impose strict limitations on how people think. Those who speak out with a difference of opinion, like global warming skeptics, are to be silenced as dangerous. It is the end of free speech and free thought. California’s attorney general has now brought Sagar’s crazed rantings into the nation’s legal system.
However, the growing body of proof that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on human civilization cannot be denied. For example:
·Global warming preachers claim this summer’s heat wave in the eastern part of the country is evidence of global warming.
In fact, the recent heat wave is nowhere close to breaking record temperatures set in 1930 – fifty years before fears of human caused catastrophic global warming supposedly began. “That summer has never been approached…” said global warming skeptic and the state of Virgina’s climatologist Patrick Michaels.
·Global warming preachers claim that of the 21 hottest years ever measured, 20 have occurred within the last 25 years. And the hottest was this year’s recent heat wave.
In fact, according to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998 and 2005.
October 5, 2006
By Tom DeWeese
Politics is a very cynical, sinister business. As Government has gotten ever bigger and further removed from the electorate, elected officials have become more and more interested in image over actual substance in the issues and programs they promote; their messages created for emotional appeal rather than practical or even legal sense.
Such is the case concerning legislation proposed in the Senate by Senator George Allen and in the House by Representative Frank Wolf, both Republicans who claim limited government as one of their major reasons to serve in public office. Their actions in sponsoring the “Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area” speak otherwise.
This Heritage Area is designed to cover a 175-mile corridor from Thomas Jefferson’s “Monticello” in Charlottesville, Virginia to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Sponsors of the Heritage Area claim the purpose is simply to honor the many historic sites in the corridor and to help local communities promote tourism.
Senator Allen and Representative Wolf vigorously deny the Heritage Area is a danger to property rights, pointing to specific language in the bill that says they will be protected. They claim the designation serves only to preserve valuable historic sights. The designated area includes many of the locations where the Civil War was fought, as well as the homes of six U.S. presidents.
The reality of Heritage Areas, however, is not so friendly. Heritage Areas are federal land use mandates with specific boundaries foisted upon local communities. Those boundaries have consequences for property owners caught inside.
It must be understood the Heritage Area affects all the land in the designated area, not just recognized historic sights. The federal designation, made up from Congressional legislation, creating federal regulation and oversight through the National Park Service, require a form of contract between state and local governmental entities and the Secretary of the Interior to manage the land-use of the region for preservation. That means federal control and zoning, either directly, under the terms of the “management pact” or indirectly.
Such “indirect” control is the real danger. In spite of the specific language in the bill which states property rights will be protected, the true damage to homeowners may well come from outside private groups and preservation agencies which receive public funds through the Park Service to implement the policies of the Heritage Area.
The funds flowing from the Park Service provide a seductive pork barrel system for private advocacy groups to enforce their vision over the development of the Heritage Area. The experience with more than twenty-four Heritage Areas nationwide clearly shows such groups will convert this money into political activism to encourage local community and county governments to pass and enforce strict zoning laws. While the tactic makes it appear that home rule is fully in force, removing blame from the federal designation, the impact is fully the fault of the Heritage Area designation. The result being private property owner’s rights are diminished and much of the local land use brought to a standstill.
Zoning and land use policies are and should be local decision to be made by locally elected officials who are directly accountable to the citizens they represent. However, National Heritage Areas corrupt this inherently local procedure by adding federal dollars, federal oversight, and federal mandates to the mix.
Specifically, when an area is designated a National Heritage Area, the Park Service partners with an environmental special interest group to restore, preserve, and manage anything and everything that is naturally, culturally, historically and recreationally significant to the Heritage Area. That is exactly what legislation for Heritage Areas states. This sweeping mandate ensures that every square inch of a Heritage Area is a prime target for regulation or acquisition – private property included.
But what of the promised tourism that is supposed to help local economies? Many members of Congress admit they support the concept of Heritage Areas for that very reason: jobs created by people visiting their little part of the world to see why it’s so special. Is it true?
As has been stated, those boundaries have consequences – strict control over the use of the land. Certain industries may prove to be too “dirty” to be allowed. Eventually such existing industrial operations will find themselves regulated or taxed to a point forcing them to leave or go out of business. Property that is locked away for preservation is no longer productive and no longer provides the community with tax dollars. Roads will be closed (to protect the integrity of the historic area). That means the land is locked away from private development, diminishing growth for the community. It also means hunting and recreational use of the land will be curtailed.
Eventually, such restrictions will take away the community’s economic base. Communities with sagging economies become run-down and uninviting. Preservation zoning and lack of jobs force ordinary people to move away. Experience has shown promised tourism rarely materializes as promised. And it’s never enough to save a area economically.
These are the reasons why the specific language in the Heritage Area legislation designed to protect private property rights is meaningless to the actual outcome. While the land is not specifically locked away in the name of the federal designation, its very existence creates the pressure on local government to act. The result is the same.
It is interesting to note that proponents of Heritage Areas refuse to even consider a program to officially notify land owners of pending Heritage Area designations. When specifically asked to include such notification in their plans, they shuffle their feet, say there is no way to do it and then drop the subject. Of course the ability is there. The mail man delivers to each of these homeowners every day. No matter how noble a project may sound, alarm bells should go off when proponents want to enforce their visions in secret.
The fact is, vital historic sights in the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area are preserved. Much of it is already controlled by the National Park Service. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, to the Manassas Battle Field, to the Gettysburg Battle Field, and several other birthplaces and significant historic sights are well preserved.
The boundaries of the Gettysburg battlefield were specifically laid out by the men who fought there. Most of the land was private and donated by the owners for the park. While protecting private property and the farms across which the battle raged, they preserved the most significant parts into what today is a comprehensive memorial. Such a system of preservation may not be perfect, but it’s superior to a process that uses the massive power of the federal government to rip out the roots of property owners unlucky enough to live near something that should be special and precious.
In contrast, it is significant to note that today, as coercive preservation policy is imposed in Gettysburg, the community has seen the near destruction of its once vital downtown area where private businesses are being forced out. Many parts of the downtown now seem rundown and void of significant businesses like clothing shops or hardware stores. Most businesses in the downtown area today are restaurants and tee shirt shops designed for the tourist industry.
True, some areas of battlefields have been developed and lost to preservation. Given there way, preservations would set out to turn the entire nation into a museum. Some would simply be happier to live in the past and now seem to hide behind historic preservation to try to achieve it.
Every step of land had something from the past occur on it. But let us remember, those who fought on those fields did so to protect our liberty, including the ownership or private property. One must ask how they would react to huge government restrictions over that land now, simply because they fought there. One can envision them again taking up arms to free it from government clutches.
Senator Allen and Congressman Wolf tell us they simply want to honor history. If that is truly their goal then legislation to honor the areas without establishing a flow of cash through the Park Service would be enough. Then, local communities would be free to do their own tourism efforts based on the honorary designation.
In truth, Allen and Wolf are using our great love of history as an emotional sledgehammer to impose a massive federal pork barrel scheme that enriches the pockets of private advocacy groups while helping to impose draconian controls over the dreams of average Americans caught in the cynicism of their political ambitions.
