Here Come the Black Helicopters!: UN Global Governance and the Loss of Freedom (10 page)

China’s stated rationale for its efforts to regulate the Internet is preposterous. The tyrants of Beijing say that their proposal “raises a series of basic principles of maintaining information and network security which cover the political, military, economic, social, cultural, technical and other aspects.” The government statement continued: “The principles stipulate that countries shall not use such information and telecom technologies to conduct hostile behaviors and acts of aggression or to threaten international peace and security and stress that countries have the rights and obligations to protect their information and cyberspace as well as key information and network infrastructure from threats, interference, and sabotage attacks.”
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This statement comes from the government that, more than any other, tries to interfere with and sabotage the Internet. Beijing employs tens of thousands of specially trained hackers whose job is to pry loose military and technological secrets from American and European governments and companies. Now this Internet pirate-regime is calling for greater “security”!

But the reality, of course, is that the only “hostile behavior” or “act of aggression” that is likely to invade Chinese cyberspace is the truth. Facts, accurate reporting, correct data, and public debate are the only acts of aggression China is trying to regulate. Indeed, China wants the ITU to collect IP addresses of Internet users so it can identify dissidents, whom it will move to suppress.

AMERICA SEEMS TO BE ACQUIESCING

As you are reading these outrageous proposals, you are probably saying to yourself what we said when we first saw them—that the United States and the European Union would never permit these changes and regulations to take effect.

But not so fast. Crovitz reports that while the leaked documents suggest that US negotiators are objecting to the regulatory changes behind closed doors, they are doing so “politely.”
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Very politely. Apparently, the US called the Chinese proposals for Internet control “both unnecessary and beyond the appropriate scope” of UN regulation. Then, to soften the blow, the leaked document notes that “the US looks forward to a further explanation from China with regard to the proposed amendments, and we note that we may have further reaction at that time.”
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American delegates also objected to proposals to give the ITU a role in regulating Internet content, tamely noting that they do “not believe” the ITU can play such a role.

Crovitz writes that the American objections are “weak responses even by Obama administration standards.”
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From Washington, the Obama administration’s response to the Internet governance proposals has been muted and laggard. Ambassador Phil Verveer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international communications and information policy, noted that some of the pending proposals, if adopted, “could limit the Internet as an open and innovative platform by potentially allowing governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows.”
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But, in the next breath, he denied that any of the pending proposals would give the ITU “direct Internet governance authority.”
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Verveer’s circumspection in attacking the regulatory proposals—and his use of wording such as “could limit” and “potentially allow”—indicates less than hard and fast opposition. And the administration’s willingness to keep secret the negotiations themselves suggests that Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Barack Obama’s White House may be slender reeds to rely on in keeping the Internet open and free.

Both Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama owe us an explanation of why they countenanced secrecy in these negotiations during which our free speech is on the line!

Indeed, as of this writing, the only statement from the administration on the possible UN Internet controls came from a May 2, 2012, blog entry by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which read: “Centralized control [of the Internet] would threaten the ability of the world’s citizens to freely connect and express themselves by placing decision-making power in the hands of global leaders who have demonstrated a clear lack of respect for the right of free speech.”
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Again, what is worrying is the muted nature of the administration’s objections. So radical a proposal as to put the Internet under UN control and to give Russia and China the ability to restrict the flow of information to their citizens would seem to call for opponents to be shouting their objections from the rooftops. Instead, there has been no presidential statement or comment from Secretary Clinton, just a blog entry by a minor White House office.

Fortunately, a more robust response to this erosion of Internet freedom came from the House of Representatives, where a bipartisan group of congressmen on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a resolution calling on the Obama administration to oppose efforts to turn the Internet over to UN regulation. The resolution called on the US delegation to the ITU talks to “promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multi-stakeholder model that governs the Internet today.”
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The resolution is sponsored by Representative Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) and has the support of Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), ranking member Henry Waxman (D-CA), Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), and ranking subcommittee member Anna Eshoo (D-CA).

Sounding a clarion call, Congresswoman Bono Mack said that “[t]his year, we’re facing an historic referendum on the future of the Internet. For nearly a decade, the United Nations quietly has been angling to become the epicenter of Internet governance. A vote for my resolution is a vote to keep the Internet free from government control and to prevent Russia, China, India and other nations from succeeding in giving the UN unprecedented power over Web content and infrastructure.”
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Bono Mack warns: “If this power grab is successful, I’m concerned that the next ‘Arab Spring’ will instead become a ‘Russian winter,’ where free speech is chilled, not encouraged, and the Internet becomes a wasteland of unfilled hopes, dreams and opportunities. We can’t let this happen.”
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The resolution’s Democratic cosponsor, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, added that “this resolution reaffirms our belief and sends a strong message that international control over the Internet will uproot the innovation, openness and transparency enjoyed by nearly 2.3 billion users around the world.”
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More and more voices are suddenly speaking out against the UN regulation of the Internet. At a congressional hearing in June 2012, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell asked, “Does anyone here today believe that these countries’ [Russia’s and China’s] proposals would encourage the continued proliferation of an open and freedom-enhancing Internet?”
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House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) said that an “international regulatory intrusion into the Internet would have disastrous results, not only for the US, but for folks around the world.”
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But statements from American politicians are not going to derail this effort at global censorship. Only the full mobilization of the more than two billion Internet users worldwide will suffice. It is time they learned of the threat to their liberty and battled to defeat it!

KEEP THE INTERNET FREE!

How do we stop this power grab and keep the Internet free? Richard Whitt, public policy director and managing counsel for Google, emphasized the importance of a cyber-roots rebellion against UN control. “I think a key aspect of this [battle] is that this cannot be the US against the world,” said Whitt. “If that is the formula, we lose, plain and simple. This has to be something where we engage with everybody around the world. All of the communities of interest who have a stake, whether they know it right now or not, in the future of the Internet, we have to try to find ways to engage them.”
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Nina Easton, writing on fortune.com, says that “business leaders beyond Silicon Valley would be smart to sit up and take notice [of the UN initiative]—and fast. American opponents are being seriously outpaced by UN plans to tax and regulate that are already grinding forward in advance of a December treaty negotiation in Dubai.”
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But what happens if a majority of the 193-member ITU votes for a plan that regulates, censors, and controls the Internet? The United States should walk out of the conference in Dubai and refuse to be bound by its strictures. We should work to persuade our European allies to join us.

If the ITU enacts rules on the Internet and the US and the EU refuse to abide by them or recognize them as binding, Internet administrators and the major online companies and servers will be in a bind. They will face a push-pull that may well lead them to compromise our freedoms in order to appease the ITU.

Another bad outcome would be a compromise—in the tradition of the United Nations. Building on the model of the UN Rio Conferences, the so-called middle ground might recognize ITU jurisdiction over the Internet but restrict its power so it does not regulate content or adopt the other nefarious proposals being put forth by Russia and China.

But a compromise of this sort would be a terrible blow to freedom of speech. Conceding that a global body—where autocrats, corrupt regimes, and tyrants have a voting majority—controls the Internet would be the first step in restricting its freedom.

Since the ITU normally does not vote on proposals, preferring instead to negotiate a consensus, Cerf worries that there may be a series of incremental changes that would, together, doom Internet freedom. He cites a proposal by Arab states changing the definition of “telecommunications” to include “processing” or computer functions. FCC commissioner McDowell warns that such a definitional change would “swallow the Internet’s functions with only a tiny edit of existing rules.”
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Indeed, the way the UN works is that such proposals are always, at least partially, adopted. Once a suggestion is raised and ratified by becoming the subject of high-level UN negotiations, a consensus almost always emerges. In this case, it is easy to see how the United States and Europe, heavily outvoted in the ITU, would focus on watering down the Internet regulations while leaving the basic premise—that the ITU can regulate the Net—fundamentally unchallenged.

To counter this consensus approach, we need a massive sense of public outrage (in this election year) demanding that the United States pull out of these negotiations and the Dubai Conference and refuse to recognize the authority of the ITU or its member states or its UN sponsor to even discuss Internet regulation. This is the time for us to stand up and demand an end to this process before it goes any further.

Would the United States cravenly agree to participate in secret negotiations on proposals by Russia and China to restrict global free speech, free press, or freedom of religion? No way. Yet these talks are just as pernicious and destructive of our liberties.

The Internet must see to its own self-preservation! Its users need to spread word of the UN effort virally and arouse a cyber-roots rebellion against the proposed treaty or even the negotiations concerning it. If we want to preserve our freedom to use the Internet as a free exchange of ideas, we have to act and act soon.

Internet users of the world! Speak up!

PART FIVE

TRANSFER OF WEALTH: THE RIO+20 TREATY

Until June 2012, the United States showered the world with foreign aid. We couldn’t afford it. It went to the pockets of third world tyrants and dictators. Countries who received our largesse snubbed us at every turn. And some of the money went to our outright enemies.

But at least we had control over how much we gave and who received the money.

In June 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton journeyed to Rio to attend the twentieth anniversary of the original Rio Conference on global sustainability. There, she set a bold new precedent: She committed the United States to giving the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)—an incipient global EPA—$2 billion toward an eventual fund of $100 billion, in turn to be given to the nations of the third world, nominally to assist in their adjustment to global climate change.

There’s nothing new about the $2 billion commitment. But what is new is that:

a) It implied an American commitment to an even more massive transfer of wealth running to the full $100 billion; and

b) It left it up to a new “Green Climate Fund” headquartered in Switzerland to decide how to spend the money. We would have no control over who received the funds.

The Green Climate fund was formally created at a UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011. It is to be administered by a twenty-four-nation interim board of trustees. Its short-term goal is to amass $100 billion, including $30 billion in “fast start-up” money that has already been pledged by member nations. Hillary’s $2 billion was part of that fund.

Hillary’s pledge was made at the Rio+20 Conference, where 190 nations gathered on the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 Rio Conference on global sustainability. They committed themselves to the development of a worldwide “green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”
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Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary-general and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director, proudly reported that at the Rio+20 Conference, “world leaders and governments have today agreed that a transition to a Green Economy—backed by strong social provisions—offers a key pathway towards a sustainable 21st century.”
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By lumping a “transition to a green economy” and “strong social provisions” in the same statement, Steiner really announces a new global quid pro quo between the developed and less developed world—a historic linkage between payoffs to third world dictatorships and environmental goals. The conference “agreed that such a transition [to a global green economy] could be an important tool when supported by policies that encourage decent employment, social welfare, and the inclusion and maintenance of the Earth’s ecosystems from forest to freshwaters.”
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Third world autocrats no longer need to beg for foreign aid, but instead can demand payoffs as necessary preconditions for their cooperation in protecting the environment. “If you don’t pay us off,” these nations are in effect saying, “we will chop down rain forests and refuse to cooperate with you in achieving your green goals.”

The novelty of this new form of global extortion, enshrined at the Rio Conference, is that it is the first major step in a global scheme to redistribute resources from the first world nations, whose industry and hard work has created them, to world dictators who can stash the money in Swiss bank accounts.

In more civilized language, the Rio Conference noted that its “decision supports nations wishing to forge ahead with a green economy transition while providing developing economies with the opportunity for access to international support in terms of finance and capacity building.”
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And who will pay the bill for the “decent employment and social welfare” in third world countries? And who will provide developing nations “wishing to forge ahead with a green economy transition . . . the opportunity for access to international support in terms of finance and capacity building?”
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We, the taxpayers of developed nations (a category that does not include China or India), will have that privilege. The Rio+20 Conference admitted the “reality that a transition to an inclusive green economy and the realization of a sustainable century needs to also include the footprints of developed nations as well as developing ones as they aim to eradicate poverty and transit towards a sustainable path.”
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To be sure the money actually flows as directed, “the Summit also gave the go-ahead to a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to bring all nations—rich and poor—into cooperative target setting across a range of challenges from water and land up to food waste around the globe.”
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These Sustainable Development Goals are not about eating your broccoli and remembering the starving millions when your children eat their supper. It is a far larger effort to regulate every aspect of our global economy, consumption patterns, modes of transportation, lifestyles, and economic decisions in the name of achieving the holy grail of “sustainability.”

For the greens and globalists, the Rio+20 Conference is the first big step toward global governance, establishing regulations affecting all aspects of our lives, bending every effort toward their environmental priorities.

It was as a down payment on this transfer of wealth that Secretary of State Clinton proudly chipped in the first $2 billion courtesy of the American taxpayer (without asking Congress first) to “mitigate the effects of climate change” in third world countries.
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The third world dictatorships are seeking a Global Climate Fund of $100 billion they say is to help them rein in climate change. At the Copenhagen Conference on Global Warming in December 2009, the rich and poor nations of the world agreed to raise $100 billion “in climate aid by 2020, starting with $30 billion by 2012 for ‘fast track’ financing.”
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But negotiators from the rich and poor nations have not yet approved the deal. The
New York Times
reports that “from its inception, the fund has been hamstrung by a lack of practical details of where the money should come from, and by competing visions for how it should achieve its aims.”
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But there are still high hopes for the $100 billion fund. David G. Victor, an energy expert at the University of California, San Diego, says that “for people focused on the lack of progress in the diplomatic talks, the $100 billion was the great hope for bringing countries together and making a deal. For people keen on fixing the world’s economic ills, the $100 billion was supposed to help jumpstart a green economy. For people who want to re-allocate the world’s wealth, the $100 billion was a new way to move money from North to South.”
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In October 2011, the negotiating committee of twenty-five delegates from rich countries and fifteen from poor ones completed its draft treaty to set up the $100 billion fund, but the US and Saudi Arabia blocked its approval. In explaining the reason for the American position, the Times noted that “the administration of President Barack Obama has come under pressure from prominent Republicans and others to limit financing for UN climate protection initiatives.”
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Likely the approval of this slush fund for climate aid is one of those areas in which President Obama is waiting for the increased flexibility he expects in his second term, when he will not have to listen to the conservative voices back in Washington.

Negotiations between the rich and poor nations were briefly imperiled in June 2012 when representatives from the developing nations stalked out of the talks “because wealthy countries were refusing to include the transfer of money and technology” in the deal.
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The British newspaper the
Guardian
explained the problem: “amid a global economic slowdown and austerity in Europe rich nations are reluctant to put cash on the table.”
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In a statement of unfathomable arrogance, Brazilian negotiators said this was no excuse. “We cannot be held hostage to the retraction resulting from financial crises in rich countries. We are here to think about the long term and not about crises that may be overcome in one or two years,” said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, undersecretary at the Brazilian foreign ministry.
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Figueiredo equates being “held hostage” with not getting his hands on our money!

THE THIRD WORLD CAN’T WAIT TO STEAL THE MONEY

But what good is aid if you can’t steal it?

The third world recipients of the generosity of developed nations are insisting that they be “immune from legal challenges and lawsuits not to mention outside inspections, much like the United Nations itself cannot be affected by decisions rendered by a sovereign nation’s government or judicial system.”
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Why are these third world countries so hung up on immunity from investigation, prosecution, and financial controls?

Fox News reports that they want protection from charges of:

• possible conflicts of interest in their duties,
  
• breaches of confidentiality in their work,
  
• violations of the due process rights of those affected by their actions,
  
• making decisions or actions that are beyond the legal mandate of the organization or its subsidiaries.
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Already the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has come under fire in a study by consultants for the European Commission that criticized it for a “lack of transparency,” “inconsistency of decisions,” “conflicts of interest,” and extensive support for “unsustainable technology for emissions reduction.”
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Fox News, one of the few media organs to report on the request of immunity, noted that “the move to grant such immunity to an organization engaged in the redistribution of tens of billions of dollars between some of the wealthiest and the poorest nations in the world unavoidably raises questions and concerns.”
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Who can forget the outright plundering by UN officials—including then secretary-general Kofi Annan’s own son—of Oil-for-Food funds in the 1990s. As documented by an investigation by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the theft of funds ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars that were intended for Iraq’s poor.

Since no UN official was prosecuted for stealing Oil-for-Food money, many of these same folks are in on the operations of the UNFCCC and are hungering after the vast sums a Global Climate Fund would bring in.

But the $100 billion is never enough!

The third world wants “$1.9 trillion per year . . . for incremental investments in green technologies,” according to UN sources. About $800 billion of this sum will be earmarked for third world countries. Fox News reports, “If the UNFCCC has its way, the new Green Climate Fund would not be answerable to the laws of any nation on earth, while it annually redistributed funds equal to roughly half of President Obama’s proposed budget for 2012.”
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Instead of helping poor countries adjust to climate change, most of the money would likely flow instead into the Swiss bank accounts of third world dictators and UN officials. Otherwise, why would they care so passionately about getting immunity?

TOWARD A GLOBAL EPA

Also central to the globalist agenda was the expansion and empowerment of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The Rio+20 Conference expanded UNEP membership from the current fifty-eight nations to include all the world’s governments. Its financial resources were augmented. And it was given the mandate “to use international and national laws to advance sustainability, human and environmental rights and the implementation of environmental treaties.”
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For now, the UNEP has only the power to issue advisory opinions and to suggest regulations to sovereign nations. But more is coming. A report to the UN in advance of the Rio+20 summit declared that “scaled-up and accelerated international cooperation” is required, with new coordination at “the international, sub-regional, and regional levels.” Stronger regulation is needed, and “to avoid the proliferation of national regulations and standards, the use of relevant international standards is essential”—an area where the UN can be very helpful, the report indicates.
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For those not fluent in UN-speak, “scaled-up and accelerated international cooperation” means empowering the UNEP to bind nations to its will. New coordination at “the international, sub-regional, and regional levels” means making nations listen to its regulations and obey them. The statement that stronger regulation is needed, that “to avoid the proliferation of national regulations and standards, the use of relevant international standards is essential,” means that the United Nations Environment Programme should have the right to override national regulations and impose its views by fiat on the nations of the world.
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These are the real aspirations of the globalist/socialists for the UNEP. Their ultimate game plan is spelled out in
Only One Earth
, written by Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss, with a forward by the inimitable Maurice Strong.

That volume, published on the eve of the Rio+20 Conference, calls for an International Court for the Environment (ICE). Noting that “there is currently no mechanism for compliance and enforcement in sustainable development, as exists in other areas, such as war crimes or trade,” Dodds and Strauss call for the court to “become the principal court dealing with international environmental law.”
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It would, they explain, “help to clarify existing treaties and other international environmental obligations for states and for all other parties including trans-national corporations. It would do this through dispute resolution, advisory opinions, and the adjudication of contentious issues presently unclear or unresolved.”
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