This is a pillar of Agenda 21.

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From The Denver Post

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Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”

“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”

“This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,” Maes said.

He added: “These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to.”Maes said in a later interview that he was referring to Denver’s membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, an international association that promotes sustainable development and has attracted the membership of more than 1,200 communities, 600 of which are in the United States.

Denver became a member of the group in 1992, more than a decade before Hickenlooper became mayor. Eric Brown, the mayor’s spokesman, said the city’s contact with ICLEI “is limited.”

George Merritt, a spokesman for the Hickenlooper gubernatorial campaign, said the group’s goal is “to bring cities from all over the world together to share best practices and help create the kinds of communities people want to live and do business in. John Hickenlooper believes collaboration leads to smart decisions.”

Hickenlooper has often touted bicycling as an environmentally friendly and healthy way for people to commute to work and has said he hopes more people will do so.

Last week, Hickenlooper upset some auto dealers on the eve of a fundraiser when he lauded the city’s B-Cycle bike- sharing program at an event and asked: “How do we wean ourselves off automobiles?”Maes, at the rally July 26, took aim at Denver’s bike-sharing program, which he said was promoted by a group that puts the environment above citizens’ rights.

The B-Cycle program places a network of about 400 red bikes for rent at stations around the city. It is funded by private donors and grants.

Maes said ICLEI is affiliated with the United Nations and is “signing up mayors across the country, and these mayors are signing on to this U.N. agreement to have their cities abide by this dream philosophy.”

The program includes encouraging employers to install showers so more people will ride bikes to work and also creating parking spaces for fuel-efficient vehicles, he said.

Polls show that Maes, a Tea Party favorite, has pulled ahead of former Congressman Scott McInnis, the early frontrunner in the Aug. 10 primary for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Maes acknowledged that some might find his theories “kooky,” but he said there are valid reasons to be worried.

“At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty,” Maes said.

He said he’s worried for Denver because “Mayor Hickenlooper is one of the greatest fans of this program.”

“Some would argue this document that mayors have signed is contradictory to our own Constitution,” Maes said.

Staff writer Jennifer Brown contributed to this story.

Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com

From Natural News

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(NaturalNews) After months of stalling, the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally revealed the names of key pandemic advisors who influenced its decision to declare a phase six pandemic last year — a decision that resulted in a financial windfall for vaccine manufacturers. As you’ll see here, that list includes at least five expert advisors received money from vaccine companies.

Here’s who received money from Big Pharma and then influenced the WHO decision to declare a pandemic:

Arnold Monto is a professor from the United States who has received money from virtually all the major vaccine manufacturers: GSK, Novartis, Roche, Baxter and Sanofi Pasteur. He has specifically been given grant money by Sanofi Pasteur to study influenza vaccines.

Nancy Cox works for the US Centers for Disease Control, which already maintains a pro-vaccine stance while utterly ignoring the importance of vitamin D in halting infectious disease. Nancy took funds from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) to conduct work on vaccines.

John Wood works at Britain’s National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC). They’ve taken money from Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis and several other companies focused on influenza vaccine research.

Maria Zambon is a professor at the UK Health Protection Agency Centre for Infection. She has received money from Sanofi, Novartis, CSL, Baxter and GSK.

Neil Ferguson is also a professor, and he has accepted money from Roche and GSK Biologicals.

There may be more to this story, too: The financial ties explained here are merely the ones that these people chose to publicly disclose to WHO. There may yet be other ties that currently remain a secret and will have to be dug up by some determined reporter…

What’s the problem with financial ties, anyway?

Why does it matter that WHO advisors took money from vaccine companies? It’s simple: The decision to declare H1N1 swine flu to be a phase 6 pandemic was made by the WHO under advisement from these very people who received money from vaccine companies. And that decision, we now know, resulted in a windfall of profits for the vaccine companies.

Those profits, in turn, were burdened by the taxpayers whose expenditures were largely worthless because a huge portion of those vaccines are now expiring and have to be destroyed. The money was wasted, in other words.

It all has the makings of a grand global con: The WHO enlists advisors with financial ties to the vaccine industry to decide whether a pandemic is under way and then conveniently follows their advice in making a decision that many health experts around the world have been questioning from the start. It all has the appearance of medical corruption, and it looks like WHO decisions are based more on politics than medical science.

It was politically convenient, in other words, to declare a stage six pandemic. And if these WHO advisors have already received money from vaccine manufacturers, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that they would soon be financially rewarded with yet more payoffs. (You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours…)

The appearance of corruption

The unfortunate upshot of all this is that even if these WHO advisors are completely innocent, their financial ties still create the appearance of corruption. And that means the WHO is losing credibility that may compromise its integrity when a real pandemic comes along. If the world can’t trust the World Health Organization, in other words, then who should countries look to for real answers on pandemics and infectious disease?

Sadly, even the CDC in the US has now clearly positioned itself as an “anti-nutrition, pro-vaccine” organization, too. Ignoring the huge importance of vitamin D and the support of the human immune system, many CDC experts have also either been on the payrolls of vaccine manufacturers or are looking to join Big Pharma when offered a job. The former head of the CDC, Dr. Julie Gerberding, was recently offered a position as the president of Merck’s vaccine division (http://www.naturalnews.com/027789_D…).

The frustrating fact is that modern medicine has been subverted by Big Pharma. The vaccine industry practically runs the CDC and WHO — or at the very least, it heavily influences decisions by these two organizations. As a result, the so-called “scientific” decisions made by these organizations have very little to do with actual science but everything to do with protecting (and expanding) the profits of vaccine manufacturers.

And when public health policy is decided based on corporate profits, the people will always suffer.

Did you notice that the list of WHO advisors did not include even a single naturopathic physician? Not a single holistic nutritionist? There was nobody on the board that brought a pro-nutrition point of view to the discussions. And you know why nutritionists and naturopaths weren’t invited to join the WHO advisory board? Because the WHO has already pre-decided it doesn’t want to hear those points of view. It has stubbornly decided to entertain only vaccines as the solution to virtually all infectious disease.

And if you only invite vaccine pushers to the table, guess what kind of advice you’re going to get? “Push more vaccines!”

Asking a bunch of vaccine experts whether you should declare a pandemic is sort of like asking your insurance agent whether you need more insurance. Well of course you do!

No wonder the WHO has lost so much credibility. It refuses to look at real solutions that might work for poor nations (such as low-cost vitamin D supplements) while strongly favoring the high-profit operations of the vaccine industry. That’s why the WHO simply can’t be trusted anymore. It has now become a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry that will always make decisions that favor the financial interests of Big Pharma.

See the WHO list of advisors here:
http://www.who.int/ihr/emerg_comm_m…

From The Mises Institute

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[An MP3 audio file of this article, read by the author, is available for download.]

A clandestine international treaty is currently being negotiated among parties including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, and Morocco. It can justly be called the greatest threat of our time to the advancement of human civilization. Considering the magnitude of the other abuses of power pervading the world today, this might seem an exaggeration, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) contravenes every principle of civilized society, both in its content and in the nature of the proceedings leading to its creation.

It threatens to undo the accomplishments of the great Internet revolution and to thrust humankind back to a time when individuals had no public voice and no countervailing power against politically privileged mercantilist institutions. ACTA tramples on essential rights that have achieved even mainstream recognition: innocence until one is proven guilty, due process, personal privacy, and fair use of published content. Moreover, because of its designation as a trade agreement, ACTA could be imposed on the people of the United States by the president, without even a vote of Congress.

Some excellent background information on ACTA can be found in posts by Stephan Kinsella (here and here) and Justin Ptak (here), as well as in a detailed communiqué from the American University Washington College of Law. The first official draft text of ACTA was released only as late as April 20, 2010, even though the treaty has been negotiated since 2006. A subsequent draft text was leaked on July 1, 2010. An earlier discussion draft was made available on WikiLeaks on May 22, 2008. Indeed, the extreme secrecy in which the ACTA negotiations have been shrouded should itself lead to the strongest doubts regarding the merits and desirability of its framers’ intentions.

Freedom of Information Act requests regarding ACTA have been denied in the United States on the grounds of “national security” — while major special interests supporting intellectual property have been allowed privileged access to the negotiations. These interests include the usual suspects — the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Sony Pictures, and Time Warner — who were invited by none other than the United States Trade Representative to give their “input” on the treaty.

Members of the public at large, whom national governments are ostensibly supposed to represent, were not allowed to know about the ACTA negotiations for years. Meanwhile, front seats at the negotiating table were offered to the parasitic organizations which have thwarted actual creators’ freedoms and ruined the lives of thousands with frivolous multimillion-dollar lawsuits.

Here, I will only summarize the most salient abuses arising from this treaty, but I encourage readers to learn as much as they can about this truly totalitarian agreement. My other objective here is to demonstrate the enormous danger that ACTA poses: it threatens to thrust human civilization back into the pre-electronic Dark Ages.

ACTA’s provisions would amplify the already-onerous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. Prior to DMCA, copyright infringement was a civil offense; if the holder of “intellectual property rights” to a work found himself inconvenienced by its unauthorized distribution, he could sue the “infringer” in court. The DMCA criminalized copyright infringement and has rendered thousands of innocent creators’ work subject to notorious and frivolous takedown notices, but it retained important protections for individual consumers and Internet service providers (ISPs). For instance, the DMCA’s “safe harbor” provisions absolved ISPs from liability for any copyright infringement on the part of their customers. ACTA would eliminate this protection and require ISPs to become an enforcement arm of the treaty, under threat that the ISPs themselves would be fined or shut down if they did not comply.

Under the current copyright regime, a holder of “intellectual property rights” is at least formally required to gather evidence of any infringement and submit a grievance. With ACTA, this requirement would be eliminated, and the holder of “intellectual property rights” would not even need to complain in order for governments to persecute the alleged infringer.

The sheer absurdity of this approach does not take long to recognize. Indeed, many copyright holders today — from superstar musicians to part-time online content creators — deliberately look the other way when others reproduce their work without prior permission; they hope to benefit from the resulting exposure. Under ACTA, governments would be able to crack down on the fans of these creators, against those creators’ own wishes! Even if one accepts the validity of intellectual-property rights (which I do not), who would be the rights holder here — individual creators, or governments and the large, politically privileged trade associations that are pushing this treaty?

Under ACTA, the very suspicion or allegation of having downloaded or even accessed copyrighted material online would render one’s computer open to search without a warrant. Fines and other penalties would apply to refusing permission for a search, while anyone consenting to a search would almost certainly be found guilty of some “infringement” or another. Under ACTA, even viewing a website containing material that infringes a copyright — without the viewer being aware of said infringement’s existence — would be considered aiding and abetting the infringement.

Moreover, ACTA would render individuals liable to searches and penalties even for the suspicion of possessing materials that might have been obtained via distribution channels that are similar to distribution channels for obtaining unauthorized copies. So, if you ever downloaded a free mp3 file from an artist who shares all of his work for free online, you would not be safe. And this is not too far off from what the proponents of ACTA desire. Remember that, with the force of US law on its side, the RIAA does not allow even nonmember artists to offer their own works for free on certain channels — such as Internet radio. This organization — the epitome of mercantilism and protectionism for politically connected large studios — would enjoy nothing more than the death of free, legitimate sharing of content online.

Just as important to remember is that people who never infringe on anyone’s copyright are just as likely to suffer from ACTA, particularly if they have anything intelligent and controversial to say online. If there is anything that the history of DMCA notice abuses teaches us, it is that sophisticated expressions of ideas are never safe from malicious and contrived allegations of copyright infringement.

Thousands of creators on YouTube, whose works contained no copyrighted materials, have for years been served DMCA takedown notices by fanatics who intensely disagreed with their ideas. YouTube’s mindless automatic response system to DMCA notices resulted in these creators’ accounts being suspended and sometimes deleted altogether, even when their accusers clearly violated the law by bringing forth frivolous charges. Under ACTA, the same frivolous accusations can result in much more than the deletion of a video account; governments will assume the role of enforcers, and — judging by precedents such as the war on drugs and “airport security” — you can be certain that they will not be nearly as scrupulous or respectful of individual rights as YouTube.

While the current judicial system’s treatment of intellectual property has certainly been flawed, when compared to ACTA, it is a shining example of respect for individual rights. Over the years, a number of fair-use exemptions to copyright law have been carved out by the courts to protect individuals seeking to use portions of copyrighted material for research, teaching, satire, and debate — among other worthwhile purposes. ACTA would greatly roll back the scope of fair use and would largely take the questions out of national judicial systems and into the scope of an international enforcement body specifically created by the treaty.

Under the current system, there at least exists the hope that other policy objectives pursued by the same governmental bodies — such as economic growth and semifree trade — might trump draconian crackdowns on dubiously classified infringements. But an organization devoted primarily to persecuting copyright infringers will have no such countervailing considerations. The theory of regulatory capture suggests that this body will quickly be co-opted to serve the agendas of the RIAA, MPAA, and other parasites of copyright.

Explicit comments from ACTA negotiators deny that governments would use the treaty to launch massive search efforts by border guards of individual travelers’ laptops and mp3 players. However, the draft treaty and discussion drafts nevertheless do contain provisions authorizing exactly this sort of search. It is immaterial whether or not the intent is to target massive commercial cross-border “pirating” operations: where the authority to engage in a certain act against ordinary individuals exists, it will be invoked somewhere, sometime, by somebody.

To be sure, the searches would be scattered and irregularly applied; they would not affect all people all the time. But the very right to conduct such a search would provide a formal justification for inconveniencing and punishing individuals who may displease the authorities for other reasons but who, in the absence of ACTA, would provide no probable cause for their devices to be scrutinized. To quote Ayn Rand’s villain Dr. Floyd Ferris from Atlas Shrugged,

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt.[1]

Not every person would have a laptop or mp3 player searched at the border under ACTA, but the possibility of such a search would be a sword hanging over every traveler, descending at the enforcers’ whim. Would you take the risk of traveling with an electronic device under such a regime, or would you consign yourself to the safer drudgery of travel without one, as occurred before the electronic age?

ACTA’s scope extends into the sphere of patents as well. ACTA would greatly restrict generic drug competition against expensive brand-name labels — creating still more pharmaceutical monopolies and becoming yet another law that contributes to the ever-skyrocketing cost of healthcare. For instance, if a generic drug shipment were traveling from Country A (whose laws allowed it) to Country B (whose laws allowed it), but happened to pass through Country C, where the patent laws prohibited the drug, the officials of Country C would be empowered to confiscate the shipment. Moreover, producers of inputs used in patent-infringing generic drugs could be persecuted under ACTA, even if the use of their product in the drugs occurred without their knowledge. As with any law affecting the availability of medicines, Frédéric Bastiat’s emphasis on the unseen effects is paramount here. How many lives will be lost because of the confiscation of affordable, safe, generic medicines due to ACTA?

Readers who have followed me to this point may be thinking, “Sure, ACTA is misguided and abusive in many ways, but is it not an exaggeration to call it the greatest threat to civilization?” I will now take up the challenge of demonstrating this more ambitious part of my argument.

The Internet and other personal technologies have been the saving grace of the past 20 years. In every other respect, Western societies in 2010 look much more dysfunctional and tyrannical than they did in 1990. Consider that, 20 years ago, totalitarianism was collapsing in the Soviet Bloc and beginning to be consciously rejected in China; today, in the West itself, our previously creeping totalitarianism now advances at a gallop. Twenty years ago, one could arrive at the airport a half-hour before one’s flight, pass through perfunctory and barely noticeable security, and enjoy a relatively comfortable flight. Today, the airports are populated by virtual strip-search machines, while the bailed-out, subsidized airlines inflict a litany of petty abuses on travelers.

Even the water-boarding torture under the Bush administration seems mild compared to the prerogative that the Obama administration has assumed to unilaterally order the assassination of any person — American citizens included — on the mere suspicion of terrorist activity. The First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments to the US Constitution have all suffered grievous abuses that would have been unthinkable in 1990. In the meantime, vast segments of the population continue to think that this is all being done for our own good. However, without the Internet, the majority of these abuses would simply have been hushed up, as they probably have been during most of human history.

The actions of national governments have not been the only signs of deterioration over the past 20 years. In 1990, large Western corporations still maintained a semblance of competency and focus on satisfying consumer desires; today, most of them are lining up for bailouts. They have refused to innovate and refuse to adjust obsolete institutional structures to take advantage of new technological possibilities. Predictably, they began to fail.

In virtually all areas of life — transportation, finances, entertainment, and education — individuals began to look to more forward-thinking and reliable providers, and this has been greatly assisted by the Internet. Unable to compete on the technologically bolstered free market, the old institutions clamored increasingly for political protection.

Indeed, ACTA is itself an instance of this tendency. The obsolete Hollywood entertainment industry — with its gigantic, capital-devouring record labels, movie studios, and culture of serving mind-numbing trash of the lowest common denominator to as many people as possible — finds itself unable to compete with a new paradigm where individual creators and individual consumers are truly in charge.

Under the new culture, barriers to entry are much lower, technologies for disseminating art and entertainment are much more accessible, and there exist numerous niche markets for sophisticated consumers who reject the vacuous, conformist mass culture disseminated by the established entertainment firms.

The rise of online video sites and the Creative Commons license has further cast the RIAA/MPAA types into irrelevancy. But just like the banks and automobile companies of the American establishment, these organizations will not adapt to new technological realities; nor will they bow out with dignity. They prefer to remain as vampire institutions, perpetuating themselves by draining the lifeblood of the economy, and unwaveringly holding on to every vestige of the waste and inefficiency that fueled the current economic predicament. Politicians, knowing where their campaign contributions are coming from, are all too happy to oblige and to cement old institutional arrangements into law. ACTA is the TARP of the entertainment establishment.

The free culture of the Internet — free both in the sense of liberty and in the sense of monetary cost — has the potential to loosen and ultimately remove the death grip of the old institutions on Western societies. In “The Effects of the Economic Crisis on Young People” I argue that the up-and-coming generation should create an alternative economy using the Internet and personal technology so as to immunize itself from the depredations of bailed-out firms and inflationary monetary authorities. But if this culture of creative activity on the Internet is quashed by ACTA, the vampire institutions could persist indefinitely.

This would not be the first time in history when stagnation and decline characterize entire eras. Ancient Egypt, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, the European Dark Ages, Bourbon France, and the Soviet Union are just a few examples; obsolete and parasitic institutions, with enough force, can ruin the lives of multiple generations before finally collapsing under their own oppressive weight.

To be sure, ACTA would not kill the Internet altogether — not directly, at least. But if even routine uses of the Internet — not to mention trying to develop new online technologies for creation and distribution of content — render one vulnerable to criminal persecution, how many ordinary, risk-averse people would choose to participate? Not even the semblance of breaking the law would be required for one to be harmed by ACTA.

Indeed, the model for what would happen on a much larger scale under ACTA can already be foreseen by observing recent US federal government crackdowns on innocent, legitimate blogs. On July 16, 2010, federal authorities shut down Blogetery.com, a site that hosted 73,000 blogs, under the allegation that some of these blogs reproduced copyrighted material. Any reasonable person will recognize, of course, that most of the blog owners probably committed no violation whatsoever, but millions of hours of human effort were nonetheless wiped out by this new kind of random, arbitrary censorship. Would you invest your time and energy into developing a high-quality blog if you feared that it could be destroyed at any moment, and not because of any action you took?

I somehow doubt that the federal authorities are experiencing any pangs of guilt or regret on account of this. It is, after all, much easier to control a population that only has access to three evening news channels, which are carbon copies of one another. Under ACTA, the books burned by the Spanish Inquisition would pale in comparison to the human knowledge and creative effort that will be forever eradicated under the rationale of enforcing dubious intellectual property rights.

I predict that ACTA will result in a war on the Internet, akin to the war on drugs. Internet use would not disappear, but many perfectly legitimate activities will be relegated to a black market of sorts, complete with all the attendant evils of genuine, physical crime, fraud, and an artificially created Hobbesian state of nature. Product quality, too, will decline, as people will direct their efforts more toward avoiding persecution than toward innovating.

The sophisticated online creator will become an outlaw, and what could have been unambiguously beneficial or at least harmless activities may become tainted by association with more sinister doings — much as the war on drugs has cast criminal aspersions on the procurement of cough medicine. For “respectable people,” the Internet will come to be seen not as the civilization-saving nexus of progress that it is, but rather as another outlet for gangsterism or, at best, a messy battleground that people concerned with a modicum of stability in their lives would do well to avoid. The resulting chilling effect on progress would be the greatest long-term tragedy conceivable for our time.

A determined effort should be launched by all parties who are rightly appalled at the abuses ACTA would bring about. Fortunately, many allies from diverse backgrounds and intellectual perspectives can be found for this particular battle. Unfortunately, ACTA advocates will do everything they can to bypass channels of government and civil society where extensive and thorough debate would be possible.

The inability of national legislatures to vote on the treaty is particularly disturbing, as it allows for expeditious, behind-the-scenes implementation without the possibility for political fallout for ACTA’s supporters on account of their votes. There remains no option but for members of the public to oppose ACTA directly using whatever methods of peaceful communication and persuasion are available to them.

It is important to remember that convincing others to oppose this treaty does not require full-fledged intellectual conversion to anti-intellectual-property libertarianism. While I personally reject the concept of intellectual property, it is also possible to support the general idea but to detest the kind of draconian regime that ACTA would implement. It is my hope that the intellectual-property justification for censorship and terrorization of innocent people will disappear over time, but stopping this treaty is a much more urgent and time-sensitive goal. If ACTA is stalled or thwarted, then maybe civilization will have a fighting chance.

A medium-term goal would be for consumers, through their peaceful and perfectly legitimate choices, to cast the entertainment establishment out of existence. As long as the vampire institutions continue to exist, they will continue to lobby for violent protectionism at the cost of basic individual freedoms. It is time to stop purchasing the completely superfluous products of these institutions and to cease having anything to do with their output altogether. The culture will become much improved as a result, and autonomous, thoughtful creators will only be benefited.

We should deliberately escalate the consumption and use of Creative Commons work — and the rewarding of its producers through donations and recommendations. Many genuine and consumer-respecting creators continue to produce under the copyright model and innocently support it, while refraining from turning it into a weapon against peaceful consumers; their work should also still be encouraged. However, the types that deliberately and knowingly aid the likes of the RIAA and MPAA should cease to receive the patronage of freedom-loving individuals who do not wish to be hanged by their own purse strings.

Stopping ACTA is absolutely indispensable for the short term, and relegating intellectual property to the dustbin of history is a praiseworthy long-term aim. In the intermediate timeframe, though, it is important to recognize that, even if defeated now, ACTA may be resurrected in other venues and forms. It is time to launch a cultural rebellion against the organizations that would foist ACTA’s tyranny upon us.

From CNS News

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Sen. Jim DeMint (R- S.C.) said that if President Barack Obama gets his way and the Senate ratifies the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the precedent would be set to place parental rights under the jurisdiction of the international community.

“We believe we need to take clear action here in Congress to protect the rights of parents to raise their children,” DeMint said at a Wednesday panel discussion. “This treaty would, in fact, establish a precedent that those rights have been given over to the international community.”

DeMint is lead sponsor of  S. Res. 519, a resolution to protect parental rights, which is co-sponsored by 30 senators total. Only four more senators need to sign on to inform President Obama that he does not have enough votes in the Senate to ratify the treaty, DeMint said.

DeMint has also introduced a joint resolution, proposing a constitutional amendment to protect parental rights.

Under Article 2, Section 2 of the U. S. Constitution, treaties must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate for them to take effect.

The U.N. adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Nov. 20, 1989. By Sept. 2, 1990, 20 nations signed on to enforce the treaty. Currently, with the exception of the United States and Somalia, 193 nations have signed on to enforce it.

Nations that ratify U.N. treaties are bound to adhere to them by international law.

The convention established an 18-member panel to oversee children’s rights in nations that are part of the treaty. If approved by the Senate, the United States would fall under the jurisdiction of this panel.

DeMint said the threat to parental rights is “not some theoretical threat.”

He also said that ratification of the treaty would be “a terrible precedent” not just for parental rights, “but in other areas that we’ve looked at.”

“It submits our federal laws, our national laws to this treaty,” DeMint told CNSNews.com. “And the fact is that we don’t know exactly how it’s going to run, but we know how bureaucracy works. Once a precedent is established and we have yielded control, we know that it will continue to grow. So the precedent is almost worse than the immediate details.”

DeMint also said that the treaty is superfluous because there are laws already that safeguard abused children in the United States.

“We have laws in place,” DeMint said. “And when we have a parent that abuses a child, in our country, we have laws to protect our children. So we don’t need an international law that was developed for a third world country.”

Asked by a reporter how to hold child abusers accountable, given high levels of child abuse in the U.S., according to statistics, DeMint said that the social services system may not be perfect, but that it is at least under U.S. control.

“The fact that there’s not perfection in our system does not mean that we go to the United Nations for help,” he added.

While DeMint is in the forefront of opposition to the convention, liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is leading the charge for its adoption.

During the Senate confirmation hearing of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, held in January of 2009, Boxer told Rice the treaty would protect “the most vulnerable people of society.”

“Children deserve basic human rights,” Boxer said at the time, “and the convention protects children’s rights by setting some standards here so that the most vulnerable people of society will be protected.”

Boxer also labeled the fact that only the United States  and Somalia are non-participants to the treaty as a “shame.”

Boxer has urged the Obama administration to review the treaty for the purpose of adopting it. The United States is already a part of two optional provisions in the treaty, namely relating to child prostitution and child soldiers. Boxer, however, is pushing for full participation in the treaty.

DeMint said there is a “pervasive attitude” in Washington at present that the federal government has “complete control over everything.” The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, he said, is government intrusion to the last degree.

“If the government, or even the international community, tell you how to raise your children here in America, is there anything that’s off limits?” DeMint asked.

This is all part of Agenda 21.

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From CNS News

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From Yahoo News

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BONN, Germany – Carbon taxes, add-ons to international air fares and a levy on cross-border money movements are among ways being considered by a panel of the world’s leading economists to raise a staggering $100 billion a year to fight climate change.

British economist Nicholas Stern told international climate negotiators Thursday that government regulation and public money also will be needed to create incentives for private investment in industries that emit fewer greenhouse gases.

In short, a new industrial revolution is needed to move the world away from fossil fuels to low carbon growth, he said.

“It will be extremely exciting, dynamic and productive,” said Stern, one of 18 experts in public finance on an advisory panel appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

A climate summit held in Copenhagen in December was determined to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries adapt to climate change and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide trapping the sun’s heat. But the 120 world leaders who met in the Danish capital offered no ideas on how to raise that sum — $1 trillion every decade — prompting Ban to appoint his high-level advisory group.

The Copenhagen summit also resolved to mobilize a three-year emergency fund of $30 billion starting this year. It was unclear how much has been raised and disbursed so far.

The advisory panel, which began working in March, will present its final report to Ban in October, a month before the next decisive climate conference convenes in Cancun, Mexico.

It will analyze a range of options, Stern said, and governments must decide which to chose, how much to raise from each source, and how to distribute the money.

Potential revenue sources include auctioning the right to pollute, taxes on carbon production, an international travel tax, and a tax on international financial transactions, as well as government grants and loans. Each could produce tens of billions of dollars a year, Stern said.

“No one single source will deliver $100 billion by itself. There is no silver bullet, no hole in one,” he said.

Private capital also will be crucial, and governments must adopt policies reducing the risk to investors, he said.

The panel’s recommendations will weigh the practicality, reliability, and political acceptability of each method, he said.

The advisory panel is chaired by the prime ministers of Norway and Ethiopia and the president of Guyana. Its members include French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and public planners from China, India, Singapore and several international banks.

The governments of 194 countries are negotiating an agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called on industrial nations to reduce carbon emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Unlike Kyoto, the next deal would set emission goals for developing countries, especially rapidly growing economies like China and India, in exchange for help with financing and technology.

The negotiating session in Bonn ends Friday, and delegates will meet once more in China before the Cancun ministerial conference.

The globalist agenda is out in the open for all to see nowadays. If you choose to ignore the facts, you are a part of the problem.

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From The Financial Times

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A newly published IMF strategy document calls for the implementation of a global currency, called the “bancor”, to stabilise the international monetary system, while acknowledging that only a monumental shift toward acceptance of globalism will make it possible in the short term.

The IMF blueprint, authored by Reza Moghadam, director of the IMF’s strategy, policy and review department, has stayed under the radar for three months.

However, an article , entitled IMF blueprint for a global currency – yes really, today highlights the document and the clear strategy of the global financial body.

“…in the eyes of the IMF at least, the best way to ensure the stability of the international monetary system (post crisis) is actually by launching a global currency.” Izabella Kaminska notes.

“And that, the IMF says, is largely because sovereigns — as they stand — cannot be trusted to redistribute surplus reserves, or battle their deficits, themselves.”

A chart within the document, innocuously titled Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability (PDF link), presents a stepping stone system toward a fully fledged global currency:

Beginning with a vague recommendation for “voluntary policy adjustments” to be adopted by member states, the chart moves through more and more draconian economic policies toward a long term endgame of a global currency.

The chart also plots “potential resistance” to each stepping stone from sovereign states, with a spike in the short term, followed by a lull, and then a general rise as the move toward a global currency progresses over time.

The IMF’s road to a global currency hinges on a wider use of and eventual implementation of an international monetary system based on special drawing rights (SDR), the IMF’s synthetic paper currency.

Once an SDR-based system is in place, the IMF envisages just one final step to the launch of a new global currency.

The document even gives the global currency a name, the “bancor” after John Maynard Keynes’ proposed, but never implemented, World Currency Unit of clearing.

The following section of the IMF document highlights this:

48. From SDR to bancor. A limitation of the SDR as discussed previously is that it is not a currency. Both the SDR and SDR-denominated instruments need to be converted eventually to a national currency for most payments or interventions in foreign exchange markets, which adds to cumbersome use in transactions.

And though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries. A more ambitious reform option would be to build on the previous ideas and develop, over time, a global currency. Called, for example, bancor in honor of Keynes, such a currency could be used as a medium of exchange—an “outside money” in contrast to the SDR which remains an “inside money”.

The document concludes that without a catalyst to create a sudden clamour for globalism, the implementation of a global currency will take time:

It is understood that some of the ideas discussed are unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future absent a dramatic shift in appetite for international cooperation.

The IMF first touted the possibility of a new global currency in March of last year. The issue was then debated at the G20 Summit in London just days later.

A clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders led to analysts describing the dawn of a “revolution in the global financial order.”

“We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity,” The clause stated.

“In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global ‘quantitative easing’. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph wrote at the time.

“The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity.” he added.

The same conclusion was drawn by the Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola, who described how the IMF is on course to be transformed into “a veritable United Nations for the global economy.”

The move has also been endorsed separately by the World Bank and the UN.

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has repeated the call for a global currency via SDR multiple times.

The introduction of a new global currency and taxation system, with an overarching regulatory body, is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer unaccountable hands.

The IMF’s push toward this kind of system is part of the ongoing movement to empower a group of unelected central bankers with the authority to usurp state sovereignty by overseeing benchmarks for national financial governance and setting regulations for financial institutions all over the globe

From MORPHcity

Thirty states will be encroached upon by Obama’s Executive Order establishing the National Ocean Council for control over America’s oceans, coastlines and the Great Lakes. Under this new council, states’ coastal jurisdictions will be subject to the United Nations’ Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) in this UN Agenda 21 program. America’a oceans and coastlines will be broken into 9 regions that include the North East, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Gulf Coast, West Coast, the Great Lakes, Alaska, the Pacific Islands (including Hawaii) and the Caribbean.

Because of the decades of difficulty that the collectivists have had trying to ratify the Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST), Obama is sneaking it in through the back door, by way of this Executive Order establishing the Council. Because LOST is a treaty, Obama’s Executive Order is not Constitutional as treaty ratification requires 2/3 approval from the Senate. Michael Shaw said that the Agenda 21 Convention on Biodiversity treaty of 1992 failed to pass Congress so it was executed through soft law and administratively on local levels, and Obama’s Executive Order is a similar soft law tactic to enact the LOST treaty.

In fact, our Constitutional form of government is being completely destroyed because buried in the CLEAR Act (HR 3534) there is a provision for a new council to oversee the outer continental shelf- it appears that this Regional Outer Shelf Council will be part of the National Ocean Council. This means that if Congress makes the CLEAR Act into law, then the implementation of the UN Law Of Sea Treaty, as part of the National Ocean Council’s agenda, will be “ratified” in a convoluted and stealth manner, in full opposition to the Constitution and its intent.

The excuse for this extreme action is because of the emergency in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama and Congress have always had the legal and military power to force BP Oil to take all necessary action to stop the gusher and clean the oil spew. While there is evidence that the problems in the Gulf have been a result of collusion and planned incompetence, it begs the question, why in world should America’s oceans and resources be controlled by Obama appointees?

NATIONAL OCEAN COUNCIL MEMBERS:

John Holdren, Obama’s science and technology advisor, is the co-chairman of this new council. He is also a depopulation enthusiast and advocates sterilization by way of using infertility drugs in water and food as well as forced abortions which he describes in his book “Ecoscience”.

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Department of Interior, and its subagency, MMS (Minerals Management Service) has authority over offshore drilling and responsibility for enforcing spill prevention measures. The Department of Interior’s BLM (Bureau of Land Management) is the entity that controls federally managed land extending across 30% of America in 11 western states. Last week, Congressman Louie Gohmert said that Ken Salazar personally prevented drilling on land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, thereby also preventing energy independence. In addition, the federal lands have been grossly mismanaged and present fire dangers. The federal government is $3.7 billion in arrears for maintenance of the federally managed lands.

US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, by way of the US Forestry Service and US Fish & Wildlife Service, has been complicit in the decline of our country’s food independence. For example, US Fish & Wildlife (along with the Department of Commerce) shut the water off in California using Endangered Species Act; it was later proven that partially treated sewage was the primary culprit in killing the salmon and delta smelt that was previously blamed on farmers. This is phony environmentalism. The US Forestry Service has also misused the Endangered Species Act to limit farmers and ranchers. Remember that the USDA co-owns the Terminator Gene patent with Monsanto that makes seeds sterile.

Lisa Jackson is the EPA administrator who has threatened to impose 18,000 pages of new regulations to curb global warming which is based on lies, claiming that carbon dioxide is a danger to human health.

Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: it is unclear how these two federal appointees will enhance environmental ‘sustainability’ over oceans and coasts. Traditionally, national security threats (like the War on Terror) have been used by the federal government to take control of resources. For example, many years ago when the interstate highway systems were first being built, the Feds got in on the action by claiming that they were building a defense highway system, and they encroached into an area that belonged to the states. Interestingly, there were no overhead structures on highways originally because of the Feds’ claim that large missiles would be transported on these “defense” highway systems.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, a leading globalist, is likely to plunge our country into international entanglements and subjugation, based on her past performance; an example is her support of the UN Small Arms Treaty, which is contrary to the Constitution.

Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are logical choices for this destructive council as some of the planned funding for this program will come from permits and leases (oil drilling leases, for example). These agencies will limit America’s energy independence.

Click here to see the full list of the 24 member council.

THE SMOKING GUN:

Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is the overarching blueprint for depopulationa and total control, and the National Ocean Council is clearly an Agenda 21 program:

The National Ocean Council is headed by John Holdren, an avowed eugenicist which is selective breeding through brutal means like forced abortion.

The National Ocean Counci’s own report (Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning, pg. incorporates a section of the 1992 Rio Declaration which is an original UN Agenda 21 document!

In fact, the report says that it will be guided by the Rio Declaration in cases “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (pg. This means that regulations will be imposed even if the science is not understood or if the science is based on global warming manipulated data.

The 3 primary tools of Agenda 21′s phony environmentalism are global warming, water shortages and the Endangered Species Act; the National Ocean Council intends to exploit all of these tools to their full extent.

The National Ocean Council’s main objective is to sink American sovereignty through the United Nations Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) with the intended result of domination by the UN over our coasts and the Great Lakes. LOST originated in the 1970s as a wealth redistribution plan to benefit Third World countries. LOST sets rules for commercial activity beneath the high seas and establishes new international bureaucracies and a tribunal to interpret and apply rules to sea activity. And LOST can proceed with those rules, even against US objections! LOST threatens to complicate deep sea mining. LOST sets a precedent that US rights are dependent upon the approval of international entities. LOST also extends to ocean flowing rivers.

REGIONALISM:

Michael Shaw pointed out that non-elected councils are increasingly expanding their jurisdiction through air quality boards, water quality boards, sewer systems, transportation districts, metropolitan planning, etc. to gain control over resources. Often, large corporations and financial interests form Public- Private Partnerships with the government within these councils.

Breaking areas into regions and placing authority with non-elected councils is a Communist trick used to hijack resources, thereby usurping local and state power by re-zoning the areas that do have Constitutional authority. Appointed bureaucrats are untouchable because their jobs are not dependent upon serving the voting population. And they are usually inaccessible to the public and do not have to face those who are affected by their “insider” decisions. When state and local governments become corrupt, the public is able to confront them eye to eye, but distant bureaucrats can avoid accountability. Regionalism is used as a psychological tactic to intimidate state legislatures into creating the system for a new political and economic order.

Obama’s Executive Order that has created the 9 new regions amounts to re-zoning, and his appointed bureaucrats are answerable only to him. In David Horton’s testimony in 1978 on regionalism, he said that the State of Indiana made this declaration, “Neither the states nor Congress have ever granted authority to any branch or agency of the federal government to exercise regional control over the states.” Horton further stated that Congress holds all legislative power that is granted in the Constitution, as opposed to Executive Orders that are not legislative. Therefore, Obama’s Executive Order for re-zoning and appointing a governing body to usurp state and local power is Constitutionally invalid.

The public must become aware of state sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment to demand that state and local governments assert these Constitutional laws and principles.

COASTAL AND MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING REPORT:

This is a general overview of the new National Ocean Council’s goals based on its 32-page report that uses indirect language and acronyms in order to confuse the public and local lawmakers. Depopulation advocates, globalists and collectivists, like John Holdren, faced opposition a few decades ago when they clearly expressed their objectives, so now documents are written in complicated and clouded language to fool those they wish to control.

This report states that the Council’s jurisdiction will extend from the continental shelf to the coast AND additional inland areas will be involved. The National Ocean Council identifies “partners” as members of each regional planning body that will include federal, state, local and tribal authorities, with a top-down hierarchy of control.

The intentions of the Council are stated on page 8 of the report that include implementing LOST and other international treaties.  The report also states that the Counci’s plans shall be implemented by Executive Orders, in addition to federal and state laws.  This section mentions ‘global climate change’ which is a new term used as a substitute for ‘man made global warming’ after manipulated data and lies were exposed in numerous global warming scandals.  ‘Climate change’ is blamed for sea level rise and acidification of oceans; evidence exists that these are more global warming deceptions.

The stated goals of the Council include regulating investments, collaborating with unidentified international agencies, controlling public access to oceans and “protecting” ecosystems. This means that commerce and trade will be controlled by the Council, the UN will gain power over American oceans and the Great Lakes through UN subagencies, public access will be limited and the Endangered Species Act will be unleashed, with heavy regulations. Incidentally, the Endangered Species Act is based on 5 international treaties. It has never had a successful result: of the 60 species that have been de-listed, not a single species was saved as a result of any restrictions stemming from the Endangered Species Act!

The targeted areas for Endangered Species Act regulations are the the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, South Florida and the San Francisco Bay (the Bay Delta is where the irrigation water for farmers was was cut off using the Endangered Species Act, causing food shortages, an increase in food imports and massive economic devastation).

While this report does not clearly outline how the National Ocean Council’s schemes will be financed, regulatory permits for all activity on the water and mining (oil) leases will play a part, along with tax increases. The report does indicate that grants and assistance programs will be available so that state, local and tribal authorities will support the Council’s “efforts”. In other words, the Council will try to buy off the state and local governments to “collectively use” them for a base of support and influence. (pg. 28) Strings are always attached to federal money. The federal government and the Council are reliant on state and local governments for implementation through state and local legal authority, which means that state and local authorities hold the power to implement or refuse the Council’s directives, especially under the Tenth Amendment.

However, the report does state that disputes will be settled by consensus, if consensus fails, then the decisions will ultimately be made by the President. He is Commander in Chief of the Navy and has the power of the military behind him. Further, the report indicates that legislative changes and more Executive Orders may be necessary to achieve control.

An important point is made on page 5, which states, “Strong partnerships among Federal, State, tribal and local authorities, and regional governance structures would be essential to a truly forward-looking, comprehensive CMSP effort.” This means that the states, local governments and tribes have power. Our collectivist government needs the consent of the state, local and tribal authorities, to implement this scheme, otherwise, the feds wouldn’t bother to include these Constitutional authorities. If the state, local and tribal authorities are aware of, and willing to act on their Constitutional authority, then they can limit this federal power grab through the Tenth Amendment.

The report further states that signing onto the Council’s plan would be an “express commitment by the partners to act in accordance with the plan…” (pg. 20) Therefore, it is imperative that all of the states be aware of the Council’s intended usurpation and carefully protect their Constitutional jurisdictions and sovereignty. There are 30 states that will be affected by this new council. (pg. 12)

The Council’s strategy plan will go into effect immediately, fully developing Agenda 21 objectives and undue UN influence within 5 years. Interestingly, one article said that if state, local and tribal authorities choose not to participate in in writing the plans, the plans would be written without them. Therefore, it bears repeating that state and local governments must protect their Constitutional authority when dealing with the Council. The Constitutional authority that states and local governments have can only be taken if the power is given away.

SAVING OUR COUNTRY:

If your freedom is important to you, the most effective action that you can take is to e-mail this article and Michael Shaw’s “Understanding Agenda 21 Sustainable Development” booklet to all of your State Legislators, County Commissioners/ Superintendents and City Council members.

Tell all of your friends, co-workers and neighbors about Agenda 21 Sustainable Development and how it is destroying our country. The National Ocean Council is detrimental on so many levels and the time to act is now. If state and local officials refuse to stand up against this federal incursion, they must be thrown out of office in favor of representatives who support the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment.

As we’ve said all along, the war in Iraq will not be ending anytime soon. Ending the war in Iraq is not in the interest of the real owners of this country.

For those who still don’t get it, here are different video segments going back to 2002 where Obama clearly states he opposed the war in Iraq. Pay attention as he first says he will bring the troops home in 2008. He then changed from that and gave the impression that the war would end in 2009. His next lie was to say ending the war in Iraq would be the first thing he would do if elected President. From there he said 16 months, then promised August of 2010 and now it appears to be by the end of 2011, etc. etc. etc. etc.

If you really think the war in Iraq is going to end in 2011, I would suggest you seek help to treat your delusions. Perhaps you think I’m nuts? Well, answer this one question: Why would an individual so openly opposed to the invasion (since 2002) of Iraq now be delaying it’s end now that he can actually end it? If you personally labeled something evil and destructive for the past 8 years and you now had the power to end that evil and destruction, would you do it?

Open your minds, people. There is a much bigger game going on. If you don’t know what the CFR, Bilderberg, Club of Rome, Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, the IMF, NAFTA, Agenda 21, etc. all have in common, start educating yourself. See here, here and here for starters.

Once you understand the bigger game being played you’ll see everything from a completely different perspective and everything the government does will begin to make sense rather than seem baffling.

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From IPS News Wire

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WASHINGTON, Aug 3, 2010 (IPS) – Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.

Obama declared in a speech to disabled U.S. veterans in Atlanta that “America’s combat mission in Iraq” would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of “supporting and training Iraqi security forces”.

That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on Feb. 27, 2009, when he said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, “I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months.” Obama said nothing in his speech Monday about withdrawing “combat brigades” or “combat troops” from Iraq until the end of 2011.

Even the concept of “ending the U.S. combat mission” may be highly misleading, much like the concept of “withdrawing U.S. combat brigades” was in 2009.

Under the administration’s definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of U.S. forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to “advise and assist” Iraqi forces.

An official who spoke with IPS on condition that his statements would be attributed to a “senior administration official” acknowledged that the 50,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline will have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn.

The official also acknowledged that the troops will engage in some combat but suggested that the combat would be “mostly” for defensive purposes.

That language implied that there might be circumstances in which U.S. forces would carry out offensive operations as well.

IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat U.S. troops might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will still be able to request offensive military actions by U.S. troops if it feels it necessary.

Obama’s jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgement highlights the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media.

Obama’s apparent pledge of withdrawal of combat troops by the Sep. 1 deadline in his Feb. 27, 2009 speech generated headlines across the commercial news media. That allowed the administration to satisfy its anti-war Democratic Party base on a pivotal national security policy issue.

At the same time, however, it allowed Obama to back away from his campaign promise on Iraq withdrawal, and to signal to those political and bureaucratic forces backing a long- term military presence in Iraq that he had no intention of pulling out all combat troops at least until the end of 2011.

He could do so because the news media were inclined to let the apparent Obama withdrawal pledge stand as the dominant narrative line, even though the evidence indicated it was a falsehood.

Only a few days after the Obama speech, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press Mar. 1, 2009, Gates said the “transition force” remaining after Aug. 31, 2010 would have “a very different kind of mission”, and that the units remaining in Iraq “will be characterised differently”.

“They will be called advisory and assistance brigades,” said Gates. “They won’t be called combat brigades.”

But “advisory and assistance brigades” were configured with the same combat capabilities as the “combat brigade teams” which had been the basic U.S. military unit of combat organisation for six years, as IPS reported in March 20009.

Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama’s combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House.

That plan had been developed in late 2008 by Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM chief, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

They came up with the idea of “remissioning” – sticking a non-combat label on the combat brigade teams — as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his campaign pledge while actually abandoning it.

The “remissioning” scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in Chicago on Dec. 15, 2008, according a report in the New York Times three days later.

It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the “remissioning” ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more years.

Despite the fact that the disparity between Obama’s public declaration and the reality of the policy was an obvious and major political story, however, the news media – including the New York Times, which had carried multiple stories about the military’s “remissioning” scheme – failed to report on it.

The “senior administration official” told IPS that Obama is still “committed to withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011″. That is the withdrawal deadline in the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement of November 2008.

But the same military and Pentagon officials who prevailed on Obama to back down on his withdrawal pledge also have pressed in the past for continued U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2011, regardless of the U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government.

In November 2008, after Obama’s election, Gen. Odierno was asked by Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks “what the U.S. military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015″. Odierno said he “would like to see a …force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000″, which would still be carrying out combat operations.

Last February, Odierno requested that a combat brigade be stationed in Kirkuk to avoid an outbreak of war involving Kurdish and Iraqi forces vying for the region’s oil resources – and that it be openly labeled as such – according to Ricks.

In light of the fact that Obama had already agreed to Odierno’s “remissioning” dodge, the only reason for such a request would be to lay the groundwork for keeping a brigade there beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline.

Obama brushed off the proposal, according to Ricks, but it was unclear whether the reason was that Iraqi political negotiations over a new government were still ongoing.

In July, Odierno suggested that a U.N. peacekeeping force might be needed in Kirkuk after 2011, along with a hint that a continued U.S. presence there might be requested by the Iraqi government.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.