FROM WAR NO MORE TO POPULATION CONTROL

GLOBAL TAXES AND BIO COPS

With some 50,000 employees, former U.S. representative to the U.N., Charles Lichenstein, told CBS' "60 Minutes" that he estimated the U.N. wastes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And the media continue to harp about $1.4 billion the U.S. is said to be withholding until the organization reforms its financial affairs. It has also been noted that U.S. taxpayers have poured in $96 billion to bankroll the U.N. body over the past 50 years, including a $12.8 billion employee retirement fund.

FROM WAR NO MORE TO POPULATION CONTROL

Nowhere in the U.S. federal budget, writes former U.N. representative Lichenstein in Policy Review, can one find a total for projected U.S. contributions to the United Nations each year. It runs about $4 billion, with $1.2 billion for "peacekeeping" coming out of Defense Department appropriations.

U.N. troops -- around 67,000 strong -- are stationed in at least 16 countries with U.S. troops under U.N. command in Haiti, Somalia, Macedonia and Bosnia. In May 1994, in fact, President Clinton signed a secret agreement -- Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25) -- formally authorizing his transfer of authority as Commander - in - Chief to the United Nations. Never made public, this directive's purpose was to integrate U.S. and U.N. military forces.

In none of the areas involved, most geopolitical experts agree, has there been any threat to international order that might lead to a worldwide war, a situation the U.N. was originally set up to help avoid. More to the point, in the case of Somalia 18 American U.N. soldiers were killed in an ambush by warlord Mohammed Aidid and and some of their bodies stripped and dragged through the streets to shouts of jubilation.

Even more meddlesome has been the U.N.'s involvement in the domestic affairs of member states through its on-going multi-million dollar conferences and convocations promoting mandatory population control -- actually abortion as a supposed universal "women's right." In Mexico city in 1984 it began as a U.N. Population Fund proposal and culminated 11 years later in Communist China at the Fourth U.N. World Conference on Women (See: "At the Beijing UN Women's Conference" Mindszenty Report, Dec. 1995.)

GLOBAL TAXES AND BIO COPS

Undaunted by its failure, as yet, to dictate human reproduction quotas with threats of withholding "development" funds, the U.N. World Summit for Social Development convened in March 1995 proposing "international taxation" that could cost the U.S. billions of dollars annually.

While the time was not right for adoption, the "global tax" idea was outlined in a report written for the UNDP (U.N. Development program) in 1994 by a co-founder of the radical Natural Resource Defense Council stating, in part, "a search should begin for new sources of international funding that do not rely entirely on the fluctuating political will of the rich nations. Global taxation may become necessary in any case to achieve the goals of global human security." Proposed revenue to the U.N. over five years was $1.5 trillion from "rich nations" to be spent by U.N. planners on projects for "poor nations" around the globe.

If that astounding proposition sounds unfamiliar, it should be noted that it was never mentioned in the media although it was officially discussed at the U.N.'s 1995 World Summit. Another more famous U.N. gathering in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 -- the "Earth Summit" -- warned of impending environmental catastrophe unless assorted U.N. experts take complete charge of earth's resources with new laws and controls on "global warming," saving rain forests and protecting endangered bugs and fauna. (See: "U.N. Carnival in Rio" Mindszenty Report, June 1992)

While the New York Times (4/7/97) says "the sense of urgency from the Earth Summit is gone, "many of the proposals endorsed in Rio have taken on a life of their own. One particular example has been the U.N.'s ongoing role in successfully blocking a mining operation outside of Yellowstone Park under the U.N. World Heritage Area treaty.

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explains: "The United Nations has designated hundreds of 'biospheres' around the world, some in the United States. These are environmentally important areas...they have not been extensively developed or farmed." Like the area outside the boundaries of Yellowstone Park, the U.N.'s objective is "to help residents manage an entire ecosystem so that all its inhabitants -- plants, animals, and people -- survive into the future."

So you see, don't you, there's no truth in the complaints of those "nuts" and "loonies" that the U.N. is intruding in the affairs of U.S. property owners. If your summer cabin is located in a U.N. biosphere -- or your farm or maybe even the state of Montana -- the U.N. will just tell you how to manage it.

Hardly a loony, consulting Professor Henry I. Miller of Stanford University's Institute for International Studies, points out how the U.N.'s environmentalists "eager to apply their 'expertise' to new challenges" are actually harming the environment.

"Say hello to the bio-cops, "Professor Miller begins in the Oct. 24, 1995 Wall Street Journal. "Backed by bloated and inefficient bureaucracies, and undeterred by their own meager scientific expertise, U.N. officials are now jostling to become international environmental super-regulators."

"The U.N.'s Trojan Horse," he says, "is the Biodiversity Treaty, formally known as the Convention on Biological Diversity, a product of the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992."

Dr. Miller describes biotechnology: "the science of using precise, state-of-the-art techniques for improving genetic varieties of, say, fruits and vegetables to make them more pest-resistant or to boost their nutritional value. Biotechnology can give us microorganisms that act as vaccines, or that treat sewage and even clean up toxic waste."

With the U.N. Biodiversity Treaty, he notes, "a burdensome international bureaucracy enforcing ill-conceived regulation will stall, and even block, may of these benefits...no one anywhere would be allowed to grow and test a biotechnology-derived crop or garden plant -- even on a plot as small as one-twentieth of an acre -- without prior approval from the bio-cops...paperwork and red tape would dog the process from beginning to end...."

As a result, Dr. Miller concludes, the U.N. "will stifle the development of environmentally friendly innovations that can help clean up toxic waste, purify water and replace agricultural chemicals. Think of the chemical pesticides already made obsolete by pest-and-disease-resistant varieties of wheat, rice, soybeans and other staple crops -- all derived from biotechnology."

Ironically, one of the U.N.'s chief arguments in favor of world population control is the supposed lack of food to feed the starving masses. In the name of regulating agricultural biotechnology, the U.N. eco-cops are following the lead of Mao Tsetung and Uncle Joe Stalin who both micro-managed huge famines of their own for ulterior motives.

A U.N. ROLE OR A RELIGION?

In today's complex world of cyberspace and instant communications is there a role the U.N. can play other than global busybody? The Wall Street Journal suggests helping fight disease, resettling refugees and setting international air standards, as well as a "continuing role as the world's pre-eminent talkfest" where nations of the world can vent their views publicly.

Unfortunately to many of the U.N.'s champions who come un-glued at any criticism of the organization, it is already akin to a religion with the entire world as its congregation. "We must say, do, and be everything possible to realize the goal of the environmental Sabbath," begins a special prayer commemorating the U.N.'s Earth Day, adding: "We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and the squashes."

Courtesy of the U.N.'s Religious Partnerships for the Environment, such prayers were included in an "environmental-awareness" kit distributed to 53,000 evangelical, mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations -- at a cost of $4.5 million -- to honor Mother Earth or Gaia.

The U.N. Rio "Earth Summit" was "a high point in the trend toward the fusion of environmentalism and religion," notes Father Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, and has spawned a revival of pagan Earth worship, or Gaia, which holds that the earth is divine. Somewhere out there, on Earth Day, a complete choral Mass entitled "Missa Gaia" was no doubt performed -- and former priest Matthew Fox, perhaps, lectured on his theory of Earth as a Christ figure.

But, don't wait for media types to label such U.N.-inspired environmental wackiness as nuts or loony. It is already a matter of faith to most of them that the teachings in Genesis is the root cause of environmental degradation -- and only the U.N. can bring about salvation.

The Mindszenty Report is published monthly by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and subscribers are invited to have it printed in their local newspapers. Eleanor Schlafly, Publisher -- John D. Boland, Editor