Branko Malić
21st Century Wire
Nowadays, the word “agenda” is more than just a buzzword or catch phrase. People like to talk about “agendas” to such an extent that they end up believing that everybody has one up his sleeve, ready to throw it on the table at the last moment, proving that his intentions were dubious from the beginning.
On the other hand, as regards the so-called “elites”, in the public eye they are also already slandered as being in possession of various “agendas” and, despite their wealth and power, all they do is being subjected to prescriptions of those “master-plans”.
The first assumption of the majority – “majority” being people who from various reasons accept the verity of the moving image of reality presented by mass media – is merely an expression of intrinsic human crookedness: the individual surmises that everything other people do is conditioned solely by their narrow self-interest and is usually accomplished at the expense of others.
The second assumption – an expression of intrinsic human intuition of truth – is a proper subject of this analysis.
There would be nothing wrong with it were it not for one implication. Namely, masses of today generally believe that Age of Transition, or Globalization, is an expression of as many agendas as they can chose to imagine. We’ll have to rectify this assumption a tad.
The elites that initiated an attempt at fundamental world-wide transformation and are, with dubious success, trying to steer it, have in fact only one, entirely public, fundamental agenda. It was codified as one of the six documents[1] produced by UN Commission for Environment and Development in the aftermath of UN Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro from 03. to 14th of June, 1992. and later published as the “operative blueprint” for implementation of sustainable development in 21st Century.
Short and easy to remember: as the “Plan” or, to use a common buzzword, Agenda 21.
The hypothesis presented in this analysis is that Agenda 21 is nothing less than Constitution of Globalization.
Bearing in mind that any Constitution – not to mention a global one – is a document to be as much as possible read and interpreted in it’s own right, we’ll keep description of historical circumstances of Agenda 21 inception to bare outlines. Although it is by no means a document written in historical vacuum – and was followed with whole piles of similar ones, the latest being the so called Agenda 2030 – even with minimal knowledge of historical circumstances and other related documents, this voluminous text (351 pg.) clearly summarizes and uncovers the labors of a policy progressively forming our lives for more than two decades, without most of us even knowing it; the policy whose historical roots are too deep to explore here, but whose ambitions are megalomaniacal and dangerous to such a degree that no amount of political correctness can adequately hide them.
Agenda 21 is a very straightforward document. To understand it properly, one only needs to take it literally and suspend his own cynicism. Namely, then and only then the cynicism of it’s authors erupts in our understanding like a volcano, and things suddenly get their true and ominous perspective.
Earth Summit and historical suppositions of Agenda 21
Accusing stare … “We must act now!” mantra … childish straightforwardness, emotional blackmail, Nineties style … Severn Suzuki at Rio Summit.
Rio Earth Summit – and it’s conclusion in the form of Agenda 21 – was a fruit of labors of certain number of politicians, scientists, corporation’s, foundation’s and non-government organization’s representatives and media barons. However, some of them were prone to switch among these roles. So, for instance, the man who presided over the Summit and gave an opening speech, Canadian Maurice Strong, represents the veritable Proteus – an epitome of “life-long learning” and series of successful “public-private partnerships”.
From his late teens (18), an employee of UN, protégé of Rockefeller family, and, in the course of rich and colorful career, CEO of few key corporations in the area of exploitation and transport of energy and raw materials (Petro Canada, Power Corporation, CalTex Africa, Hydro Canada, the Colorado Land and Cattle Company, Ajax Petroleum, Canadian Industrial Oil and Gas, itd.),[2] Strong was, in his own words, “socialist in ideology, capitalist in methodology”.
Thus he divided his time between being active agent of the world (mostly energy) market and presiding over the various secretariats of UN. He proved allegiance to his contradictory moral principles at least twice. First time, when he tried to pump out and exploit the huge water reserves of his 200000 acres ranch Baca Grande in Colorado, which would, weren’t he prevented by local environmentalists, render the whole region into wasteland.[3]
The second instance was when, in the course of implementing the UN Food for Oil Programme, he personally endorsed the check for little less than million dollars. Although he wasn’t persecuted, it is a common belief that the real reason why he moved to Bejing was to get as far as possible from the Western judicial institutions.[4]
Listen to James Corbett’s interview with Elaine Dewar about how Maurice Strong was instrumental in hijacking of environmentalism
The other defender of environment and one among the more colorful faces around Earth Summit in particular, and sustainability doctrine in general, was Michael Gorbachev, from 1985. to 1991. General Secretary of Communist party of USSR, and subsequently the champion of Nature, in a quite religious sense, and “better and more equitable world”.[5]
Much like Strong, Gorbachev embodies peculiar assembly of contradictions. Namely, every East European who remembers the late eighties of previous century, should also recall just who provided him with opportunity to enjoy two days of a semi-radioactive shower: Soviets kept the Chernobyl disaster a secret for 48 hours while radioactive cloud merrily wandered westward.[6]
Even today there is no telling how many people in Kiev were affected by exposure to radiation when Central Committee decreed not to inform the public about disaster.[7]
Gorbachev never displayed any convincing signs of remorse for the fact that policy to keep a lid on a disaster for two days had to bear either his signature or his approval. Moreover, he became, together with Strong’s wife Hanne, Steven Rockefeller and Al Gore, one of the leading proponents of global religious revival codified in so called Earth Charter and promoting the animist cult of Gaea.[8]
So those are two among initiators and participants of Earth Summit. Inner contradictions of their respective biographies, as we shall see, accurately display systemic contradictions innate to Agenda 21 text.
Bruntland Commission
Rio Summit was an aftermath of two key historical events. The first was UN Stockholm Conference on Human Environment of 1972., when for the first time the focus of this institution was directed to environment and it’s supposedly necessary causal connection to economical development.[9]
Like twenty years later in Rio, Maurice Strong was it’s General Secretary. The other event was forming of World Commission on Environment and Development in 1982., better known as Bruntland Commission, after it’s General Secretary, Norwegian physician and politician Gro Harlem Bruntland.[10]
The purpose of the Commission was to assess empirical indicators and propose the conceptual framework for the problems defined by Stockholm Conference. The document summarizing Commission’s conclusions, published in 1987. in the form of a book titled Our Common Future (further: OCF), defines the key global problem and the path to it’s solution. So, when put in this context, Agenda 21 appears to be a blueprint for implementation phase of broader policy – an operative plan, the first operative – and this means: dynamic, hence adaptable – Constitution in history, designed to solve the global problem by putting the mankind on the path laid down by Bruntland Commission.
And what exactly is the problem causing such fuss and requiring such expenditure of ink and paper?
Well, it is this: the development or growth is an expression of human needs (OCF. I 4.). However, it is intrinsically infinite because it is circumscribed only by satisfying the needs which can multiply infinitely. The question must be asked: can it continue like that? Is it sustainable? The answer is: no. In the future, development must become sustainable, i.e. the principle of sustainable development must be implemented globally. It’s definition, applicable also to Agenda 21 and in fact the only clear definition of a term we can find in it, is the following:
„Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs“ (OCF. I 1.)
This seemingly benign definition should always be in the back of our minds when we approach Agenda 21, because this document is nothing more than laying out the operational blueprint for implementing sustainable development worldwide; a process which is supposed to encompass all aspects of human life and all beings existing on planet Earth.
Sustainable development is in fact a revolutionary idea of total, closed, dynamic system in which – in the minds of it’s architects – our lives and lives of our children should be acted out; the system of perpetual, centrally controlled, change intended get the people on the fast track quite similar to those fitness tracks on which you keep running but, of course, don’t get to move forward for one bit.
But, we anticipate. Let’s take another look at Our Common Future.
In contrast to Agenda 21, this document is very blunt about just what exactly makes the development unsustainable. It is, unequivocally, unsustainable growth of world population (OCF III 4.). While reading through OCF and, to somewhat lesser extent, Agenda 21, it quickly becomes obvious how, in the eyes of sustainability advocates, other vectors of “unsustainability” pale in comparison to this phenomenon – human need for bearing children. As OCF was written in more light-hearted manner than Agenda 21 – after all it was not written to be presented to a wide range of world politicians – the tone of it’s authors is far more direct, rendering their cynicism all the more obvious. For the sake of illustrating the difference between OCF and Agenda 21, two quotes will suffice:
„In fact, increased access to family planning services is itself a form of social development that allows couples, and women in particular, the right to self-determination.“ (OCF. IV 4. 51.)
Here’s how Agenda 21 renders the same idea:
„Governments should take active steps to implement, as a matter of urgency, in accordance with country-specific conditions and legal systems, measures to ensure that women and men have the same right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children, to have access to the information, education and means, as appropriate, to enable them to exercise this right in keeping with their freedom, dignity and personally held values taking into account ethical and cultural considerations.“ (A21. S 1. “Demographic dynamics and sustainability”, 5.50)
In plain English, courtesy of yours truly:
„Obligation to sustainable development provides us with the right to self-determination through easier access to abortion clinics. This way we – and especially if we are women – simultaneously satisfy our need for screwing around indiscriminately and our duty of planning the sustainable family, with added value of providing jobs for those who must scrap the unsustainable foetus.”
As we can see, when it comes to choice of words, Agenda 21 is far more cautious document.[11] No wonder, if we bear in mind that, aside from the fact that it had to be presented to some rather hostile public, for example: representatives of Vatican on whose explicit behest the passage in question was made so painstakingly convoluted, it is in fact an operational blueprint for already established principles and guidelines which, while designed to encompass each and every culture and society on the globe, at the same time contradict every principle and every moral guideline of every culture and every society.
The framework of Agenda 21
In the course of an interview he gave to Joan Veon, Maurice Strong said the following about inception of Agenda 21:
„ … and then there was the negotiations of what we call Agenda 21, the Agenda for the 21st Century which was painstakingly negotiated, every word of it, negotiated by governments. And, of course, that didn’t make it a great piece of literature but it did give it a certain degree of political authority.“[12]
As for the literary form, there’s no reason to doubt Strong’s sincerity. Agenda 21 is a belletrist equivalent of washing-machine manual stretched to 351 pages. As is the case with most of the UN documents it is also a tiresome read – an abstract network of almost never clearly defined neologisms, meant to encompass and clarify what “global community should do in order to accomplish the sustainable development”.
However, doubt about Strong’s sincerity sets in regarding the “painstaking negotiations”. Agenda 21 is an astonishingly uniform document, if we bear in mind that it is, purportedly, the result of the negotiations held by representatives of 172 nations who agreed upon it.[13]
Compact vision of global sustainable development is presented as necessary and all-encompassing system, with no dissenting passages indicative of individual interests of particular nations.
For example, it is extremely hard to believe that George Bush senior had no qualms about transfer of nascent Euro-Atlantic bloc’s capital towards the Developing world countries in order to accomplish “more equitable world order”. However, it need not necessarily be so, as such terms as “equity” are so poorly defined throughout the Agenda 21, that it is possible that their vague meaning in fact points to something rather closer to the hearts of big global players than to impoverished Africans obliged to develop “a sustainable economy”.[14]
In this context it is also interesting to point out what Maurice Strong has to say in his foreword to a book Beyond Interdependence by Jim McNeill, his collaborator from the days of Stockholm Conference and Trilateral Commission member.
While speaking about Earth Summit he points out that:
„The Earth Summit will be asked to adopt an Agenda for the 21st Century, setting out an internationally agreed work program, including targets for national and international performance on several critical issues. This “Agenda 21” cannot escape the question of reform of policies that now rig the world marketplace against both the economy and the environment“.[15]
The italicized passage indicates to an interesting detail: this book was published a whole year before the Earth Summit, where Agenda 21 was “painstakingly negotiated”. It is obvious that draft document was essentially prepared beforehand, but we don’t exactly get to discover who drafted it and whence such confidence that it will be accepted by “world leaders”.
Anyway, it’s highly unlikely that anyone of them have read either the draft or the final version of the document. Agenda 21 is a complex narrative and one could call it axiomatic system if only any of it’s axioms and postulates, except the sustainable development, were really defined. And such system can hardly come to pass spontaneously, as a result of painstaking negotiations and clashes of opinions. Rather, it is a rationalization and operative drafting of already existent plan.
The whole thing? Ambitious …
The scope of this plan is nothing short of astonishing, even if we only glance at what 40 chapters of Agenda 21 are meant to encompass. Sustainable development must pervade every interaction of three systems which, taken together, represent total global system of sustainable development. Those are society, economy and environment whose dynamic and perpetual change constitutes the network of all local and global interactions. In order to accomplish the sustainable development they must be in harmony, i.e. neither of the three must be allowed to weigh on others and bring down their mutual harmonious interaction.
So, for instance, if national industry marks accelerated growth and at the same time devastates the environment, the development is not sustainable, no matter how steep it’s upward pointing curve is, and it must be contained, slowed down or even terminated, until it’s harmony with well being of environment is accomplished. On the other hand, if the growth is founded upon people’s living habits or – in the language of Agenda 21 – consumption patterns, i.e. upon social system, then those patterns have to change until the sustainable quality of life is reached.
Hence, sustainable development is not a static system of steadily developing economy, multiplying of goods and services, and society adhering to firm set of values and relation to nature. On the contrary, it is a dynamic system of perpetual change, constantly enacting adjustments to harmonize three equally evaluated systems, and any form of value or principle regulating the human life is merely a provisional form of management, i.e. of keeping the change in the sustainable framework.
Agenda 21 provides the operational plan for implementing this activity in all spheres, not only of life, but of existence in general. From the distribution and redistribution of wealth of nations to managing the world markets (A21 1-9); from implementation of sustainable forestry to sustainable prevention of land erosion on global level (A21 12.1 – 12.63); from managing of urges and appetites of all people to managing the production of goods and services (A21 1 – 40); from education of children to sustainable relations between sexes (A21 24.1 – 25.17); from planning of sustainable habitats to establishment of gigantic natural preserves for creating the sustainable wilderness; from sustainable public and commercial transportation of workforce and goods to implementation of sustainable bicycle lanes for sustainable cities (A21 7.1 – 7.80).
Whatever may come to your mind is already foreseen, at least in outlines, and, if you find idea of sustainable development appealing, you can rest assured that you will find an appropriate framework for your ideas and world-view inside the three great areas covered by the document: Social and Economic Dimensions, Conservation and Management of Resources for Development and Strengthening the Role of Major Groups.
Every chapter throughout these broad areas is divided into paragraphs: Basis for action – where problems are being defined from the standpoint of sustainable development, Objectives – where problem is further differentiated into finite number of concrete objectives, Activities – where activities needed to accomplish the objectives are outlined, and Means of implementation – where means of financing for each programme area are outlined and budgets are projected.
In conclusion to almost every chapter the need for integrated data collection about each and every activity, circumstance and objective is being stressed. Taken on face value this seems fairly logical if it weren’t for the megalomaniac scope of the plan.
Namely, data collection means nothing short of making the list of literally everything: from entire world land mass and construction plans to educational curricula of each and every institution of learning in the world.
The other peculiar thing repeatedly encountered throughout the document is stressing the role of women in the system of sustainable development. Even in our age, when synthetic equalization of sexes became sanctioned standard of public expression, one finds it peculiar how authors of Agenda 21 found it necessary to stress the key role of women even in activities like fighting land erosion or deforestation.
We’ll get back to this strange, but in fact key feature of the document.
Those are two among numerous peculiarities of Agenda 21 that at first glance don’t meet the eye merely because the reader omitted to pay attention to the form of the document. Namely, the text relates to everything that is.
Agenda 21 is not an Utopian manifesto – as some researchers wrongly assume.
It is an operational blueprint for all-, i.e. totally-encompassing system which is to be implemented globally and finally, therefore there’s no question of sustainable development being an ideal to be striven upon. On the contrary, it is the principle of managing the global system deprived of any notion of utopianism or idealism. For example, take a look at this passage from ch. 3. “Combating Poverty”:
„The long-term objective of enabling all people to achieve sustainable livelihoods should provide an integrating factor that allows policies to address issues of development, sustainable resource management and poverty eradication simultaneously.“ (A21, 3.4)
Long-term objective is not an ideal.[16] All people are not ‘ideal humanity’, they are precisely what the text says: all people. Such details are easily missed by casual reader of Agenda 21, although they are in fact painfully obvious, like those big letters on world map that are so hard to see as if they were hidden in plain sight.
Geographical analogy is appropriate because no one in the right mind would surmise that he has before him an operational plan encompassing all there is on the planet. Furthermore, when in Agenda 21 some guideline is proposed, the usual word is ‘should’. This points to a fact that Agenda 21 is an agreement, i.e., as it’s advocates call it, soft law. This is supposed to mean that sovereign states are not legally obliged to directly incorporate it into their legislations.
So, it’s a manifesto after all, isn’t it?
Well, no. Take this passage for example:
“Sustainable development must be achieved at every level of society. Peoples’ organizations, women’s groups and non-governmental organizations are important sources of innovation and action at the local level and have a strong interest and proven ability to promote sustainable livelihoods. Governments, in cooperation with appropriate international and non-governmental organizations, should support a community-driven approach to sustainability …“ (A21, 3.7)
Therefore, sustainable development must be achieved at every level, although Government only should promote it. The seeming contradiction stems from the way the implementation of Agenda 21 was conceived. Namely, it should begin on the Government level, where sovereign states must integrate it’s principles – not laws – in developmental, social and ecological policies. That way the language of politics and policy making is inseminated with, above all, terminology of sustainable development. Afterwards, the Government must support non-governmental sector and local initiatives by establishing agencies and funding schemes for sustainable development projects.
In the end everyone has to be included: private sector – through public-private partnerships – and citizens, or civil society, but only in accordance with principles of sustainable development which, at that point, are integrated into legislative. This is how Agenda 21 Preamble sums it up:
„Agenda 21 addresses the pressing problems of today and also aims at preparing the world for the challenges of the next century. It reflects a global consensus and political commitment at the highest level on development and environment cooperation. Its successful implementation is first and foremost the responsibility of Governments. National strategies, plans, policies and processes are crucial in achieving this. International cooperation should support and supplement such national efforts. In this context, the United Nations system has a key role to play. Other international, regional and subregional organizations are also called upon to contribute to this effort. The broadest public participation and the active involvement of the non-governmental organizations and other groups should also be encouraged.“ (A21, 1.3)
This passage provides us with simple display of Agenda 21 implementation scheme. Governments are on top while civil society and citizens are at the bottom. But everybody has to be actively included, i.e. civil society has to adhere to principles proscribed by supra-national institutions and programmes, implemented by the Government, and act accordingly.
That way the civil society is for all intents and purposes transformed into a playground for NGOs. However, those non-governmental organizations are in fact implementing Government’s programmes. So, in the end, one could argue, the civil society, strengthened by the global Constitution, becomes neither civil nor society.
It’s substance – relative independence from Government – is destroyed while keeping it’s appearance, i.e. ‘non-governmental’ prefix. “Dynamic program” (A21, 1.6) of Agenda 21 must include everybody, it has to be, as the last sentence of Preamble says:
„(…) the beginning of a new global partnership for sustainable development.“
We will proceed to analyze what exactly is this partnership. The analysis will focus on Agenda 21’s treatment of society, i.e. on those articles of global Constitution regulating attitudes, activities and integration of human beings at private and public level. Reason for this, aside from brevity, is the fact that social system – as all of our public and private life is being defined by authors of Agenda 21 – is the focus of it’s most chilling passages.
Sustainable development
One thing by which the politics founded on Agenda 21 propositions can, and usually: do, seduce the gullible is it’s green aspect. After all, it was produced by summit declaratively concerned with problems of environment, and many among the participants were representatives of global business community, especially those in the field of energy and raw resources exploitation and transport.
Therefore, ecological enthusiast rightly expects that economy of sustainable development is going to combine care for nature and innovative ways of production and transport.
Declaratively Agenda 21 proscribes just that. However, if we take a look at how this subject fares throughout the course of the document itself, the ordering of priorities shows to be somewhat confusing. As the common notion is that among the human activities the industry and transport are two main potential environmental threats, one could expect that the first area of Agenda 21 will proceed to tackle these serious problems.
However, no such thing occurs.
The first three chapters are not concerned with production at all, but with the structure of world market and means of regulating it in order to bring about the harmony between Developed and Developing countries, and “eradicate poverty”.
Sustainable economy does not take some notion of “green energy” or “green industry” as a starting point, but makes it’s first and foremost task to reconfigure world market – “Promoting sustainable development through trade“ (A21, 2.5). Thus, throughout the first two chapters we read about “Opening and restructuring the markets (A21, 2.5 – 2.8), “(…) especially in developing countries” (A21, 2.7); the need to „Facilitate, in a timely way, the integration of all countries into the world economy and the international trading system“ (A21, 2.10 c). We frequently encounter the titles as “Making trade and environment mutually supportive” (A21, 2.19b), “Enabling the poor to achieve sustainable livelihoods” (A21, 3), “Empowering communities” (A21, 3.6a), etc, etc.
What happened to oil smeared albatross? Why no mention of Chernobyl? How about few words about those “ecological filters” thingies? What to do with smog? Where can we find answers to these questions?
Well, somewhere much further down the priorities list. And that is entirely natural, because Agenda 21 is not a document concerned with protection of nature. It is an action plan for inclusion of nature as a resource and, believe it or not, quasi-subject into the process of transition or, if you prefer, Globalization.
This inclusion is made possible primarily through the structure of multinational trade – i.e. through global political economy – and certain changes in the attitudes and behavioral patterns of man and women. Hence, the introductory chapters of Agenda 21, quite consequently, put forward the primacy of reforming the processes of economical and political decision making in accordance to propositions of Globalization: liberalization, “reduction in the support and protection of agriculture” in developed countries (A21, 2.7), international economic integration, etc., and all this “To promote and support policies, domestic and international, that make economic growth and environmental protection mutually supportive” (A21, 2.9 d).
In order to finally reach some paragraph dealing with production and environment we have to skip to chapter 4. And therein lays the new surprise. The chapter is titled “Changing consumption patterns” and is divided into two programme areas: “a) Focusing on unsustainable of patterns of production and consumption” and “b) Developing national policies and strategies to encourage changes in unsustainable consumption patterns.” (A21, 4.1) Therefore the problem is not primarily destruction of nature or harms posed by technology and industry. The problem is above all in human beings: their attitudes, habits and patterns of economic and social behavior and action.
Agenda 21, we repeat, has the least to do with nature. It’s purpose is standardization of systems. Standardization means two things: first, systems have to be strictly and finally defined and, second, their interaction must be strictly and finally controlled.
As was already pointed out, all systems can be reduced to three: economy, environment and society. Thence the so called “three E-s” of sustainable development, the three activities that must remain in perpetual and dynamic harmony: economy, ecology and equity.
Last year’s update … GUI for humanity 2.0
Advocates of sustainable development tell us that we should imagine them as three balls we are juggling with. They must always be kept in motion and if we drop either one of them all is lost, because sustainable development is a system of change – closed and total, but all the same in perpetual inner motion and change.
It is important to note the following: all three system bear equal value. This means that man, while acting sustainably in his economic and social life is performing his duty towards the rights of environment. Most people don’t realize that nowadays the concept of “rights” became primarily “systemic” and only secondarily legal concept, while it’s moral substance is completely eradicated.
Society, economy and nature are systems of resources and in order to include them in the framework of sustainable development, all three systems of “rights” must be mutually harmonized. So when UNICEF or UNESCO decide to launch a campaign for human rights of some designated group, it has nothing to do with humanity or justice, but solely with equalization of unequal subsystems.
As implementation of Agenda 21 requires everybody and everything to be included, it is necessary to codify the system of rules by which their actions will be regulated. Those are the human rights everybody makes such fuss about.
But they are not the only rights.
Environment too has it’s rights, and in order for it to exercise them, human society must entitle people with the fundamental right on quality of life. When quality is reached, the society is harmonized with environment.
However, as it usually happens in legal labyrinths, one thing remains overlooked. Namely: what’s with the duties? If quality of life is a right, then what is the corresponding duty? The implicit answer of Agenda 21 is as astonishing as it is chilling.
Quality is duty. If quality life is impossible, then perhaps the right to live doesn’t apply any more. What is meant by this we can deduce from the very opening passages of our common Constitution:
„Poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated. While poverty results in certain kinds of environmental stress, the major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries, which is a matter of grave concern, aggravating poverty and imbalances.“ (A21, 4.3)
„Action is needed to meet the following broad objectives: a. To promote patterns of consumption and production that reduce environmental stress and will meet the basic needs of humanity.“(A21, 4.7)
Sustainable development must balance the “basic needs of humanity”, i.e. establish harmony between the rich and the poor and, consequently, between society, economy and environment. To accomplish this, both rich and poor must change their social and economical behavior, i.e. put themselves under the control of someone who knows what is and what is not sustainable. It has to be that way because total system must be at the same time centralized and all-encompassing.
Maurice Strong himself, in one interview, clearly said that UN is only an imperfect post for decision making and in no way a center to rule the world from. In any case, the sustainable development must be a global system and not a programme enacted by some global comity.[17]
However, he omits to mention the fact that parameters of global system are already laid down and that their seemingly spontaneous implementation is in fact enactment of already existing blueprint. How else to implement the Globalization but through decisions codified in a single system of rules? If it is a process of regulated deregulation of markets, change of behavioral patterns of all men and women and their consumption patterns, it is not necessary to have a one central comity. On the contrary, it is absolutely imperative to have one central document telling whole bunch of comities what to think and what to do.
Agenda 21 is a dynamic Constitution, therefore a plan in constant change and perpetual implementation, but it’s foundational principle of sustainable development remains the same. The allegiance, however, which it demands of us is absolute.
Global Constitution proscribes absolute inclusion:
„Critical to the effective implementation of the objectives, policies and mechanisms agreed to by Governments in all programme areas of Agenda 21 will be the commitment and genuine involvement of all social groups.“ (A 21, 23)
Partnership for sustainable development demands “commitment” to a common purpose and “involvement” in sustainable development. Again, we must repeat: it means everybody. In what way do the authors of Agenda 21 expect to accomplish such total consensus? In the following passages, we’ll try to answer this question.
Group management and population control
Agenda 21 relates to human beings in terms of groups. Nothing unusual for political plan – at the basic level society consists of individuals, but only as members of social groups do they become agents of social action. If one desires to offer them reasonable programme for social reform, it is only natural to address them as groups. However, while traditional political programmes propose the direction for given society, Agenda 21 is conceived to provide direction for still inexistent global society. And, in order to make this society a possibility, and not merely a feasibility, it must take a paradoxical view of social groups. Namely, when in Agenda 21 it is said ‘all’ then it is meant literally ‘all’ – all social groups must get involved in decision making in accordance with already made decisions as codified in global Constitution:
„One of the fundamental prerequisites for the achievement of sustainable development is broad public participation in decision-making.“ (A21, 23.2)
Bear in mind, however, that there’s no chance that decisions could contradict the principle of sustainable development. Accordingly, throughout Agenda 21 we find the passages stressing the necessity of informing the public about all aspects of any given problem and policies devised to solve it. This author has to note, however, that expression “informing” implies ambiguity. Man can get information. But just as well he can get informed by information in the sense that he is molded by it. Agenda 21 supports exclusively the other instance, therefore one where “being informed” doesn’t equal man getting the information but rather information in-forming the man. Here’s how it is summed up in the document:
„Any policies, definitions or rules affecting access to and participation by non-governmental organizations in the work of United Nations institutions or agencies associated with the implementation of Agenda 21 must apply equally to all major groups.“(A21, 23.3.)
Generous, isn’t it? The Dry Balls Society of Kamchatka is equal stakeholder of sustainable development as World Wild Life Fund, one of the NGOs that participated in writing Agenda 21 in the first place. Well, only at first glance, because there is a small reservation implied. Social groups are given equal access to information as NGOs, but are simultaneously endowed with same obligations and duties.
Sustainability 2.0: listen to discussion about sustainable development and European (i)mmigrant crisis, by Sunday Wire host Patrick Henningsen, Branko Malić and Mike Robinson from UK Column
So, for instance, trade unions, farmers, pedagogues, artists and other agents of social action become in fact the agents of sustainable development and subjects of matching, strictly legalized, proscriptions. We end up with the society of non-governmental organizations and non-governmental individuals, where individuals must give account and report for everything they do, the same way as NGOs do while implementing their projects. Of course, non-governmental projects are those policies not enacted by Government, but nevertheless enacting or supporting the Government policies proper – this is painfully obvious feature of all NGO activities nowadays.
In the system of sustainable development this principle must be transferred to everybody. The basis for this is laid down by the first principle of Rio Declaration, devised at the same time as Agenda 21:[18]
„Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.“
Here we encounter the standard trap of sustainable development rhetoric. Namely, people have a right to such and such … and … that’s it. No definition, no explanation. Everything looks just fine and dandy. However, when only one question is asked the whole things falls apart and starts emitting the rotting smell, namely if someone would ask:
“Who says so?”
Nowadays it became a normal thing to take a whole lot of human rights at face value: from the right to drinking water, to right to having the bicycle lanes in cities. But almost nobody ever asks the question, how come somebody has the right to tell me what exactly is my right? Productive and, as it was called for thousands of years, good life is something until recently considered to be inborn to man, and it’s codified expression in law was only secondary expression of something which is in itself clear. In the end, society is a horizon of social action and, however bad it might be, it is founded on unspoken and only partly codified principles of human nature.
Of course, “human nature” is a rather unpopular expression among contemporary thinkers. And, while reading Agenda 21, we can observe the consequences of implementing the systemic rejection of human nature as self-subsistent principle in realpolitik. Namely, the right to healthy and productive life is not inborn but given to us by UN Commission on Environment and Development. It orders us our right. And by doing this, it defines it, although it never provides us with clear definition.
The key part of this proscription masked as a plea is “… in harmony with nature”. We already stated that Agenda 21 is not primarily concerned with environmental protection. Harmony with nature means equalizing and standardizing the systems of society and economy with environment. Inattentive reader can miss the fact that equalizing presupposes that rights of one system cannot surpass the rights of other system, and vice versa. In this way, if man harms the environment the repercussions will not ensue because he potentially harmed other men. No. Repercussions will ensue because he violated the rights of the environment.
Human rights are subsumed by the term “quality of life”, and not “good life”, therefore they have no moral connotations, but are merely guidelines to measure what is permitted and what is not. And this is what Agenda 21 calls equity. For some reason it always seems to bring out problems of demographics:
„The growth of world population and production combined with unsustainable consumption patterns places increasingly severe stress on the life-supporting capacities of our planet.“ (A21, 5.3)
Therefore, it is not about us making environment unable to sustain human life, but us making ourselves unable to sustain the environment. Additionally, the term “life supporting system” displays peculiar perspective through which Agenda 21 observes the world of nature. It is a systemic, technological perspective, observing nature not as a being as such, but as a system equitable with every other system. That way, everything is perceived as a resource, i.e. everything is expendable in the same way, with no moral connotations. And this is the moment when greenness of Agenda 21 starts to resemble more the greenness of gangrene than real love and concern for nature: somebody figured out that Earth has a carrying capacity for definite number of human beings. If that capacity is overreached – and from Seventies’ of the last century onwards, the neo-Malthusian crazies like the ones that conceived this document, think it is[19] – then both human and environment rights require the numbers to be reduced.
Throughout the Agenda 21 we perpetually encounter statements that environmental degradation is closely related to poverty. However, it is only a ruse. The truth is that environmental degradation is a consequence of disharmony of quality of life and well being of environment. Therefore, quality has to be harmonized at the global level, i.e. poverty must be eradicated. On the other hand, patterns of consumption of developed countries are also unsustainable. So the wealth must be eradicated too, in order for world system to reach it’s equilibrium. In plain English: no one will be spared from his right to healthy and productive life in harmony with nature, the right on fulfilling his basic needs proscribed by comities similar to one which conceived Agenda 21.
It has to be that way because if there’s no such thing as human nature, then there must be a consensus about what man must and must not do. Consensus cannot be a global referendum. It must be the job of tiny group of technocrats in possession of monopoly on truth, i.e. the individuals who know how much people can live on Earth, to what extent the sovereign state can develop, how much privacy is sustainable in order for men and women to lead quality lives.
And at least some of those technocrats have names accessible in the public domain. To mention but a few – arguably the outer circle – they are Gro Harlem Bruntland, late Maurice Strong, Bill Gates, David Suzuki, Al Gore, Ray Kurzweill, Mihael Gorbatzschev and other frequent visitors of UN and Davos summits. If someone calls the critics of Agenda 21 “conspiracy theorists” then he entirely failed to notice this fact, namely, that conspiracy is merely another name for entirely transparent agreement of ruling elites and masses, which is in fact necessary course of action in order for such all-encompassing plan to work.
One of the most important principles of global Constitution – at least if we are to judge by it’s repeated occurrence throughout the document – showing in no ambiguous terms just what “all-encompassing” means for it’s authors, is the relation of women to sustainable development.
Girls of sustainability[20]
Sing along sustainable development … Eighties style
We have already pointed out how throughout almost every chapter of Agenda 21 the necessity of special treatment of women and their equal inclusion in all activities is repeatedly stressed. Today it is fairly common to endure endless litanies about exclusion, exploitation and historical injustices perpetrated on women by agents of patriarchy, from God the Father to phallus-o-centric laws of physics. In 1992. however, this world-view was just picking up steam and it was still, to a certain extent, fairly fringe. Feminism generally irritated the hell out of majority of both sexes, but it was still unable to provoke legal proscriptions and persecutions we now witness.
However, no matter how desensitized to madness we have become, even today compulsive stressing of the role of women in sustainable development, littering the Agenda 21 text, raises the eyebrow. First of all, we must as always keep in mind that Agenda 21 relates to whole world. So when we read, for instance, that women are entitled to right of literacy and key role in sustainable combat against land erosion, or in changing of the unsustainable patterns of consumption, then it is not about Developing world women. If the reader omits to notice this, he won’t realize that persistent stress on women’s role in plethora of activities is not intended to lay grounds for protection of women facing genital mutilation, pre-arranged marriages and such. Although there is some mention of instances of real violence and exploitation of women, it is only a marginal part of what Agenda 21 has in store for it’s female stakeholders.
Their primary role is to contribute to sustainable development and to be equalized with their male counterparts in their respective duties. Accordingly, the document is littered by passages stressing the role of women in decision making (A21, 3.7a), regulation of number of women participating in health care reform (A21, 6.8); the special dimension of relationship between women and environment is pointed out (A21, 24.1), as well as the need to inform the women and put them in decision making positions at all levels, etc., etc.
Here we must note one important peculiarity of Agenda 21. Namely, whenever it’s authors, for one reason or another, seem to procure special rights to some designated group, than members of that group really have no cause for celebration. Every guideline concerns only implementation of sustainable development, therefore any given right is pointed out only in relation to a corresponding duty concerning this objective. Keep that in mind if you are woman. Chapter 24, titled “Global action for women towards sustainable and equitable development” displays perfectly the attitude of the authors of global Constitution towards role of social groups in general. Two quotations will suffice:
„Governments should take active steps to implement the following:
(…)
1.d) Programmes to promote the reduction of the heavy workload of women and girl children at home and outside through the establishment of more and affordable nurseries and kindergartens by Governments, local authorities, employers and other relevant organizations and the sharing of household tasks by men and women on an equal basis (…)“ (A21, 24.3 d)
„Countries should develop gender-sensitive databases, information systems and participatory action oriented research and policy analyses with the collaboration of academic institutions and local women researchers on the following:
(…)
1.e) The integration of the value of unpaid work, including work that is currently designated “domestic”, in resource accounting mechanisms in order better to represent the true value of the contribution of women to the economy“(A21, 24.8 e)
The italicized passages brim with cynicism. Someone naive – or plain stupid – could be led to believe that the first passage refers to alleviating the housewife’s burdens. Well, no it doesn’t. If we contemplate the expressions “at home and outside” and “sharing of household tasks by men and women on an equal basis“ the question arises: who exactly decides how much work should be done at home and outside, and who exactly will proscribe the household tasks? Agenda 21 was not conceived to make life easy for women but first and foremost to lay out the blueprint for controlling the social groups. In order to accomplish that, privacy and being unpredictable – two faces of nemesis of every system – must be eliminated.
The sheer perfidiousness of this document stems from the fact that every guideline denying some fundamental freedom is accompanied by granting a special right. So sustainable women must become housewives whose domestic work is subjected to institutionalized accounting which means the institutions will legally and legitimately penetrate their households. The objective is, plain and simple, to eliminate the intimacy of home because it can never be included into juggle of three resources of sustainable development.
Through it all, regardless of all pro-feminist rhetoric, authors of Agenda 21 have no qualms about using so-called “patriarchal patterns” when proscribing the role of women in sustainable society. Namely, the special role of women in changing unsustainable consumption patterns is repeated ad nauseam.
And the reasons are obvious. Although Agenda 21 points out the need for “Programmes to eliminate persistent negative images, stereotypes and prejudices against women through changes in socialization patterns, the media, advertising and formal and non-formal education” (A21 24.3 i), it is obvious who is supposed to do the sustainable shopping. Introduction of “environmentally sound” patterns of consumption is unequivocally women’s job.
Of course, as is always the case with Agenda 21, there’s a little contradiction. Namely, women also have to be entitled to opportunity to creatively realize themselves in the “world of work”, i.e. to get maximally out of the intimacy of their homes. By this, at least at the first sight, they fulfill their right to emancipation, self-realization and such. However, the real reason is something completely different. The real right to emancipate, the most frequent passage of Agenda 21, is in fact the right to abortion. We’ll repeat the passage quoted at the beginning of this analysis:
„Governments should take active steps to implement, as a matter of urgency, in accordance with country-specific conditions and legal systems, measures to ensure that women and men have the same right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children, to have access to the information, education and means, as appropriate, to enable them to exercise this right in keeping with their freedom, dignity and personally held values taking into account ethical and cultural considerations.“ (A21. S 1.)
Demographics is the alpha and omega of Agenda 21. Every principle and every guideline, every human right and freedom, every iota of this Grim Tidings can be boiled down to this: there’s too many people in the world. If you wonder who says so, don’t bother trying to find out who really wrote Agenda 21. Just type “Davos summit” in your web browser and read the list of participants.[21]
Rest assured, they all say just that. Agenda 21 was only the first operational plan, a blueprint for control and culling of population, devised by the same people controlling the global flows of capital, mass media, politics and scientific community. Agenda 21 is a fundamental document of the technocratic elite. There’s no conspiracy theory, because it is neither theory nor conspiracy. On the contrary it is an agreement. Who agreed upon it?
You did, dear reader.
Agreement theory
Ever signed one of these?
We opened this analysis by pointing out a certain differentiation. We affirmed that people believe in as many agendas as they care to imagine. Moreover, we noted that elites are being observed as untouchable “big players” manipulating the destiny of the masses from behind the scenes. Masses are, as every mass-man likes to point out, blind and stupid, but somehow everybody supposes that they are also blessedly innocent. Let’s rectify that assumption a bit.
Namely, Agenda 21 is a proof that rather than global conspiracy, there’s a global agreement – a partnership for sustainable development. This agreement is conceived by elites and ratified by repr