For world leaders with marquee names, Ted Turner, George Bush, Jesse Jackson, David Rockefeller, George Schultz, and dozens more those rights include universal "health and reproductive rights," (abortion and contraception) a restored ozone layer, and free access to "global commons." Alert citizens detect the telltale socialist whiff of population control, dubious scientific claims which mandate more government control of society and confiscation of private property.

For the less informed masses, a media hyped hysteria greeted the October birth of the six billionth human; showcased was the plight of eco-systems degraded by "human pollutants." Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed a "global crisis of spirit" is responsible for our wanton abuse of the earth. To avert ecological suicide and regional wars over dwindling resources, "visionary leaders" and old enemies in new garb contend that nations must forfeit their sovereignty in favor of earth allegiance and the Holy Grail of sustainable development. Global politics and the New Age merge in the Earth Charter, a sacred covenant with the planet, drafted by new wise men.

Such sweeping global preparations--which imperil religious freedom and national sovereignty--loosely bound together under various United Nations auspices, surpass the plots apocalyptic novels. Yet Christians, particularly Catholics, dare not dismiss the new cosmology movement since they are the primary target of the spiritual realignment required for planetary citizenship to become a reality. Dr. John Kirk of Montclair State University in New Jersey is the originator of the Environmental Sabbath, a program adopted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Dr. Kirk bluntly states the motive behind appealing to religions to promote earth ethics, "The Pope alone has 900 million people and the Dalai Lama another 700 million. That is more than Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and all the conservation groups combined."

The New Age began seeping into theology a generation ago; what is dangerously new is that the highest echelon of public policy professionals who in turn implement the goals of powerful world leaders and financiers has openly adopted it. Armed with billions of dollars in foundation funding, international interlocking boards and institutions plus two decades of groundwork in various conventions and treaties, (Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Convention on Biological Diversity, Kyoto Protocols, Framework on Climate Change, Agenda 21, International Criminal Court) globalists are now positioned to make their scheme a reality. It is not possible to overstate the gravity of the threat which the people and initiatives examined below pose for Christians and free nations.

In the week preceding the six billionth birth, world glitterati, Nobel laureates, religious celebrities, United Nations ideologues, ivy league professors, psychics and international entrepreneurs gathered at the State of the World Forum to decry the western worldview responsible for the earth's impending doom. Western worldview is a code phrase for Christian order. A new order is proposed by luminaries who no longer shrink from using the once conspiratorial phrase, New World Order. The Forum was the fifth annual gathering at San Francisco's posh Fairmont Hotel [(the United Nations Charter was drafted there in 1945)] where participants paid $5,000 for six days anti-Christian, anti-Western indoctrination at the hands of the world's "brain trust."

Past and present speakers at the Forum include: George Bush (Bush's use of the term NWO during the Gulf war emboldened others) Margaret Thatcher, James A. Baker, III, Nobel Peace Laureate, Oscar Arias, defrocked Dominican New Ager, Matthew Fox, psychic Jean Houston, Desmond Tutu, futurist John Naisbitt, Carl Sagan, Chairman of Congregation of Religious Orders, USA, Sr . Joan Chittister, Jesse Jackson, Deepak Chopra, alternative medicine star, Andrew Weil, Queen Noor of Jordan, Earth Council president, Maurice Strong, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, primatologist, Jane Goodall, Lee Butler, former commander of Strategic Air Command, Yashuhiro Nakasone and Shirley McClain .

These members of the "brain trust" were joined by US senators and business leaders (David Rockefeller, Steve Kirsch, CEO of Infoseek), Nobel laureates, spiritual gurus, indigenous peoples' representatives and world class scientists. World peace, a UN army, nuclear disarmament, and ecology rounded out the six day agenda, but the centerpiece was a the call for a "new world spirit" which recognizes the "unity of the human family" and the necessity of a world federation to keep peace in the family.

A roster of the world's heaviest weights cannot be quickly dismissed as posturing professors and aging mystics- their hands control the levers of finance, education, entertainment, business, and science. The Forum, which seeks to set "priorities, values and actions necessary to guide the human community into the coming century" and fosters a "new code of human responsibility," ( the Ten Commandments no longer apply) is a project of the Gorbachev Foundation.

The Gorbachev Foundation, a think tank billed as an "educational foundation dedicated to addressing the challenges of and articulating new priorities for the post-Cold War world" has made its American home at San Francisco's Presidio, a former Navy base, transformed into a campus for sustainability education. Three million dollars in seed money from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Pew and Mellon Funds, launched Gorbachev's return from retirement. The Gorbachev Foundation's companion environmental organization is Green Cross International, instituted in 1993, at a "time of global crisis…in which the very elements that sustain life are threatened…[Green Cross was founded ] to create a shift in our thinking, to transform our environment, to sustain our world." Promoting a "bill of rights for the earth" the chairman of Chernobyl finds no incongruity in reciting his litany of environmental transformation.

Attendees mingled happily among the rich and powerful. Most admitted they had not paid the hefty $5,000 registration fee. Forum president, Jim Garrison, conceded that only one fourth of the 800+registrants had paid, "We want openness, what we are about is transparent and we invite participation by a diverse group of people. We bring people here on fellowships," said the co-founder of the defunct Christic Institute. No orthodox Jewish, Christian or Muslim representatives were in attendance. Garrison resisted the idea that the $5,000 fee was a means of screening out conservatives since no such group had received a "fellowship." Equally as curious was the media blackout-with the rich and famous five bodies deep, where were the cameras? More than one observer suggested it was an attempt to "be transparent in the dark."

EcoSpirituality

A "shift in our thinking" from sovereign peoples to earth's serfs was clearly the goal of many of the roundtable discussions and plenary addresses during the October 1999 State of the World Forum (SWF). Sample titles: At the Edge of the Millennium: A Global Crisis of Spirit and the Search for Meaning (Jim Wallis of Sojourners leading the discussion); The Earth Charter: A New Covenant with Nature and Humanity (Steven Rockefeller leading the discussion); The Implications of the New Physics on Science and Spirituality; Toward a Culture of Peace (Marian Wright Edelman); The Challenge of Global Security; Essential Spirituality: Toward an Integral Practice (Bawa Jain Interfaith Center of New York); Role of Religion and Spiritual Leadership in the 21st Century; a redefinition of religious categories, ( Nahid Angha International Association of Sufiism & Bawa Jain); Global Education and the State of the World; and Worldviews by Which We Live, led by Daniel Sheehan, who identifies himself as "former US Jesuit Headquarters general counsel for Social Ministry," but who is more notoriously known for his co-founding of the radical left Christic Institute (Christic brought suit against General Singlaub and others for alleged drug running in Central America. The institute is bankrupt after a judge dismissed the frivolous suit and fined Christic in excess of $1,000,000).

The predominant attitude shift observable among the speakers however, was the deficiency-even harm-of scripture and Christian teaching about the purpose and destiny of man. Genesis degrades the earth, for it gives man an "arrogant dominion" over the animal kingdom. Discovering a "new story of creation" offered by eastern religions and indigenous spiritual traditions would heal those traditions (monotheism) which were "anthropocentric." Linear time and eschatology send mankind off in expectation of a transcendent heaven, creating a loss of appreciation for the earthly realm. The "Circle of Life" in contrast, is an earth renewing spirituality, an evolving life force connecting all beings and sensitive to a harmonic universe. The preponderance of snake jewelry, abstract spiral earrings, and intricate sun and moon motif embroidered on clothing reflected the neo-pagan belief system of those adorned for evangelism. The "sacred circle" and lunar cycles are predominant themes in nature religions.

A sophisticated gloss is added to New Age cyclic spirituality by planetary citizens association such as World Goodwill, the public arm of Lucis Trust, a Theosophical organization founded by occultists Alice and Foster Bailey in 1933. World Goodwill is a non -governmental organization (NGO) accredited with the United Nations while its parent, Lucis Trust*, enjoys the prestigious "consultative status" afforded those non-governmental organizations on the roster of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Increasingly, powerful deep pocket NGOs, which are neither elected nor accountable, are received as the voice of "civil society." Those NGOs, which the United Nations selectively elevates to "consultative status," are called upon by ECOSOC as advisors representative of civil society. Both World Goodwill and Lucis Trust are engaged in Earth Charter advocacy. World Goodwill's spirituality is patently pagan. The following declaration is taken from their promotional material:

"During both the full and new moon periods there is a similar emphasis on the work of energy distribution in meditation… we consciously align with the rhythmic pattern of energy flow each month, we become a part of a planetary meditative process carried forward at all levels of consciousness and with great creative potential for anchoring the seeds of the coming civilization and the germ of the new culture."

If World Goodwill so unblushingly advocates neo-pagan meditative practices, its overt promotion of an occult "plan" for the governing of the universe is nothing short of chilling:

"There is an inner spiritual government of the planet, known under such different names as the spiritual Hierarchy, the society of Illumined Minds, or Christ and his Church, according to various religious traditions. Humanity is never left without spiritual guidance or direction under the Plan…The widespread expectation that we approach the 'Age of Maitreya', as it is known in the East, when the World Teacher and present head of the spiritual Hierarchy, the Christ, will reappear among humanity to sound the keynote of the new age… There are millions of mentally alert men and women in all parts of the world who are en rapport with the Plan and work to give it expression. They are people in whom the consciousness of humanity as one interdependent unit is alive and active… These beliefs give a new dimension to spiritual reality… They provide opportunity for cooperation with the spiritual evolution of humanity… there is no group so likely to ensure that humanity achieves this most difficult goal as the men and women of goodwill... requiring only courage… to initiate action to prepare for the new world order."

(Here we have an amalgamation of paganism, Buddhism and Christianity-a spiritual soup that no Christian can accept. The New Age "lord Maitreya" is a Luciferian figure of light.)

The key to understanding World Goodwill and similar groups' passionate work on behalf of the Earth Charter is their zeal for one world spirituality and a one world government; both causes are advanced by the Earth Charter. Oneness of consciousness is the goal--a global, integral thought process for mother earth. A plenary session of the State of the World Forum entitled "The Implications of the New Physics on Science and Spirituality" gave rise to discussions of the physics of consciousness, a belief that human mental energy, properly focused, possesses the power to propel evolution to the final stage-providing man can be herded into GroupThink. Hence the massive push toward one government and one spirituality wherein the great mass of mankind will think in sync on behalf of the planet. Proponents believe a harmonious global spirituality is the key to evolutionary perfection. In their construct, any belief system which thwarts this harmony is a threat to man's ultimate perfection. Christianity "interrupted" man's relationship, expressed through pagan and nature religions, with the earth which is his source and sustenance. Neo-Paganism, thus, is dressed up as a rediscovery of man's original spirituality, unmarred by "religion."

Pagan practices are no longer the province of the experimental fringe and the rebellious academic according to the New York Times, which published a report of suburban witchcraft for its Halloween Sunday issue. "Witches Cast as the Neo-Pagans Next Door" reported that "encouraged by Federal court rulings recognizing witchcraft as a legal religion,…Wicca, -as contemporary witchcraft is called-has been growing… It is a major element in the expanding "neo-pagan" movement whose members regard nature as charged with divinity." In a double whammy for the globalist cause, the article immediately above the Wiccan report, bemoaned the "world's expanding population," which causes a rise in carbon dioxide, increasing greenhouse gases, damaging the biosphere.]

British pantheist biologist, Rupert Sheldrake drummed the same beat at the State of the World Forum. He excoriated Christian traditions which "emphasizes the male god above our mother earth." Sheldrake advocates a new appreciation for our "animist ancestors," which the Wiccans are only too happy to do. Others at the SWF called on participants to follow the command of Jeremy Rifkin to "resacralize ourselves within the planet." The creation spirituality of former Dominican priest, Matthew Fox, a 1996 Forum participant, calls for a "new religious paradigm," which jettisons Original Sin as anthropocentrism. Sin, in Fox's cosmos, is "injuring creation and doing harm to its balance."

At the dawn of the twenty-first century techno-pagan spirituality makes a bid for the new "Worldview by Which We Live," the title of yet another Forum session. Hybridized Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism are superimposed on New Age fantasies: oneness with trees, channeling with ascended masters and searching for psychic control of events. The New Age blockbuster, James Redfield's Celestine Prophecy clearly struck a chord with legions anxious for spiritual transformation. The New Age yearning for a cosmic harmony-in which consciousness ascends to a new power and wisdom-requires the collective mental focus of a critical mass of human minds. Greatly simplified, when sufficient psychic energy is focused and traveling on the same bandwidth mankind will ascend to a new plane of existence. Some see this as the final evolutionary stage in human history.

It is for this reason that globalists with planetary hegemony on their minds and the political power to press forward with their plan and naïve New Agers who are leaning into the Age of Aquarius have fallen into each other's arms. It is a political-spiritual match made south of heaven. A World Goodwill newsletter from 1995 (Vol.2) illustrates:

"Now there are many who speak or write about the need for the UN to be more spiritually awake and aware. At a UN briefing of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) last year, Samuel R. Insanally, past president of the General Assembly, made the statement: "Old policies and strategies, which we have promoted in the past at the United Nations, have led us nowhere. Although I am not a `religious' person ... I do believe that the construction of a new world order requires a sense of moral obligation on the art of all nations, both developed and developing, which will give flesh to the concept of interdependence. We need in effect a spiritual catalyst to bring about change. The ethic of national self-interest [sovereignty] must yield to the ethic of co-operation within the larger family of nations…(emphasis added)."

Not content to effect a spiritual change without corresponding planetary power, the newsletter underscores the need for a world government:

"…. it is increasingly accepted that the future of the Organization depends upon the development of universal values in the minds and hearts of the peoples of the world. This is a point powerfully made by the Commission on Global Governance. The Commissioner's report devotes an entire chapter to the task of fostering commitment to "core values concerned with the quality of life and relationships", which are to be expressed through "a global civic ethic of specific rights and responsibilities (emphasis added)."

The catch is that "rights" when examined are not personal liberties, but rights to what the world holds in common-low population growth, clean air, clean water and "equitable distribution of land" and the "responsibilities" include the obligation to reproduce in harmony with the earth's needs.

The same newsletter notes, "The major UN conferences held since the seventies have helped enormously in educating people around the world about planetary concerns." It outlines an occultic spiritual networking system for United Nations affiliates and any person "of goodwill" wishing to help in the restructuring of global society.

"The work of Triangles is simple, yet of deep spiritual significance. What is 'Triangle'? Triangles is an activity whereby a network of light and goodwill covering the entire planet is created and maintained. .. What does the network consist of? The network is built of strands of lighted mental substance along which flows the energy of goodwill. How is it built? The network is built and maintained by the daily action of each Triangles invoking spiritual energies and using the creative power of the mind. How is the work done? Individuals link in thought and purpose with the other two members of their triangle, or triangles, seeing the vital energies of light and goodwill circulating from point to point. They then direct the flow of energy into the network, clearly [sic] the radiant worldwide network of triangles, of which their own is a part. They then repeat the words of the Great Invocation with concentration and intention."

In the confederation of United Nations bureaucrats, New Age gurus and hard eyed opportunists, a militant preference for spirituality over "dogmatic religions" characterizes the theme of lowest common denominator faith in the goodness of nature and the "oneness of all that is." The Christian "story," and natural law have no place in the free form spirituality mandated by planetary citizens. Unity with all ethnic groups as well as the birds and bees is tolerance which fosters unity in diversity. Separation is the sin of intolerance. Christianity leads to "species-ism" which exalts mankind over "otherkind." Animal rights were common cause-- all "sentient" beings had "equal rights." (No warrant was granted, however, for unborn humans.) Once global education redirects values toward an earth love and a blending of all faiths, religious strife, which "bears the blame for most of history's wars," will cease. According to a SWF roundtable, "Without a change in direction, today's students will be unable to…become worthy world citizens of character and values, able to create an atmosphere of co-existence and peace."

The correct "change in directions" follows inculcation of one of several accepted worldviews, all at odds with the foundational Christian cosmology. Unity with nature produces unity with global neighbor, a borderless, egalitarian world of shared (but only renewable-never extracted!) resources. A world government which effects this spiritual imperative for a pantheistic worldview will find itself in control of a docile, manageable-- and reduced--population.

The Earth Charter Web: Threat to Religious Freedom and National Sovereignty

Because a major thrust of the SWF was promotion of the Earth Charter, the document bears some scrutiny. The Charter ("bill of rights for the planet") is a project of the Earth Council. The Earth Council in turn is an outgrowth of the United Nations 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The work of the Earth Summit was Agenda 21 and the establishment of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). According to its preamble, Agenda 21 "reflects a global consensus and political commitment at the highest level on development and environment cooperation." It addresses human habitats, "Demographic Dynamics & Sustainability " and a host of other issues which impinge on national interests and the freedom of nations to direct their internal affairs. One begins to discern a set of ever tightening concentric circles of global control. National sovereignty and freedom of religious and cultural practice are the victims inside the circles.

The Earth Charter is emblematic of the various treaties and persuasive tools which are converging on free peoples and traditional faiths from the global cadre seeking world control for the sake of "peace." The history of the Charter reveals both the power elites behind initiative and the plan to baptize its provisions as "soft law" preparatory to codifying it as international hard law.

Developing Ideas is the bi-monthly publication of the International Institute for Sustainable Development(IISD), an agency of United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). This explanation of the Earth Charter was outlined in the July 1997 issue of Developing Ideas:

"For centuries, law has developed to codify rules for the protection of people's interests. Now a push is on to protect planetary interests with a new set of environmental rights and responsibilities to be articulated in an international Earth Charter. Many see the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948 as a crowning achievement in the process of establishing legal safeguards for individual rights and freedoms, which can be claimed irrespective of race, religion, gender or economic status - though some consider the Declaration limited by a Northern and Western perspective which overlooks communal rights and responsibilities. But today, as ecological crises worsen, it is plain that no such corresponding privileges have been afforded to plants, animals or ecosystems."

Launched in 1994, the Earth Charter project of the Earth Council (Maurice Strong) and Green Cross International ( Mikhail Gorbachev) hopes to rectify the situation by enshrining a new global SD [sustainable development] ethic in international law. The Earth Charter builds on a foundation of over 40 recent international laws, principles and other documents. These include the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, the 1987 Brundtland Report Our Common Future, Agenda 21 from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and, more recently, the environmental law work emerging from the World Conservation Union (IUCN)…. The long-range objective for the Earth Charter is ratification by all the member states of the United Nations. The Council hopes to build a global constituency of popular support for the Charter before asking governments to sign on the dotted line…With the new Earth Charter written, revised and ratified before 2000, the global community could enter the new millennium equipped with international laws grounded in an ethics that extends beyond people to the planet as a whole. [an emerging charter to enshrine Earth-related ethics into international law].

The key threats of note in the above description deification of the planet as having rights beyond human rights, the attack on Northern and or Western perspective which is of course the perspective of Christendom, the elevations of plants and animals to beings with human entitlements, and the importance given to non-binding "principles and other documents." ]

The basic principles of the Charter are:

The Earth community stands at a defining moment…dominant patterns of production and consumption are altering the climate, degrading the environment, and causing massive extinction of species… A dramatic rise in population has increased the pressures on ecological systems and has overburdened social systems… Fundamental changes in our attitudes, values, and ways of living are necessary… social, economic, environmental, and spiritual problems are interconnected …. We, therefore, affirm the following principles for sustainable development…

Signatories are asked to pledge allegiance to the following selected tenets:

Protect and restore the integrity of Earth's ecological systems, with special concern for biological diversity and the natural processes that sustain and renew life; Establish representative and viable nature and biosphere reserves, including wild lands, sufficient to maintain Earth's biological diversity and life-support systems; Promote the recovery of endangered species and populations through in situ conservation involving habitat protection and restoration (sufficient according to whom-the UN or the USA?); Prevent harm to the environment as the best method of ecological protection and, when knowledge is limited, take the path of caution; Give special attention in decision making to the cumulative, long-term, and global consequences of individual and local actions; Stop activities that threaten irreversible or serious harm even when scientific information is incomplete or inconclusive (this empowers any theory advanced by any ideologue since incomplete and inconclusive eradicates any necessity for hard data [e.g. global warming]); Establish environmental protection standards and monitoring systems with the power to detect significant human environmental impacts, and require environmental impact assessments and reporting; Treat all living beings with compassion, and protect them from cruelty and wanton destruction (whose definition of "wanton"?); Adopt patterns of consumption, production, and reproduction ( includes human) that respect and safeguard Earth's regenerative capacities, human rights, and community well-being (according to whose definition of capacities and well-being?). Provide universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction (forcing nations to sanction abortion and contraception); Ensure that economic activities support and promote human development in an equitable and sustainable manner; Promote the equitable distribution of wealth (What's equitable?); Establish fair and just access to land, natural resources, training, knowledge, and credit, empowering every person to attain a secure and sustainable livelihood (whose definition of fair & just?); Honor and defend the right of all persons, without discrimination, to an environment supportive of their dignity (encompasses the homosexual rights agenda), bodily health, and spiritual well-being; Establish racial, religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic equality

(Catholic nations must agree to equality of occult practices? Socioeconomic equality is Marxism).

The list need not be comprehensive to demonstrate the danger: An open-ended, undefined set of provisions permits the greatest possible abuse of free people. The beginnings of a "soft law" tactic are also discernible, as the Charter has nothing solid to propose, merely concepts whose meanings may be imputed later-all of which resists debate.

In order to effect change in cultural values and political systems a preceding change in belief systems is required. In brief, wars and revolutions are destructive; they demolish capital investments and infrastructure. It is far more economical to persuade the masses to put the chains of serfdom around their own ankles. Precipitating an environmental crisis (for example, the terror of global warming, unsubstantiated by science) and framing the liberty slaying solution as a moral and "spiritual imperative" is fiendishly clever packaging indeed.

Christians cannot accept a reductionist global spirituality. Nations cannot permit the UN and the World Bank to dictate its cultural norms in exchange for debt reduction or loans needed to construct critical infrastructure. Catholic countries are especially vulnerable to international demands for "universal health and reproductive rights" and "gender equality" which is a euphemism for the homosexual agenda. During a UN conference at the Hague in February of 1999, a World Bank representative boasted that Catholic Nicaragua would accept sex education in their schools and population control measures since, "half their national budget comes from the World Bank.."

Free peoples cannot submit to a system where their lands are confiscated for global commons, their forests "preserved" for any species except man and their national parks administered as "world heritage sites" as many US and European parks are now designated. Free men cannot acquiesce to "monitoring" of our industrial activity. Parents must not relinquish their sacred parental rights in favor of a global education which programs students as world citizen automatons, with "health and reproductive rights" enforced at all grade levels.

Americans once were taught that their forefathers died for "inalienable rights" and acknowledged that it was in order "to secure these rights that governments are instituted."

Today prominent Americans would deride the sacrifices of their forebears. Some view an overarching global body as the preeminent means of achieving a peaceful world. Time Magazine recorded this comment by Strobe Talbot, US Deputy Secretary of State, "In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all." Yet, it is the national government which mediates and protects its citizens from outside force. En route to global conformity, parental rights, bereft of national protection, are a casualty. Once families and national cultures are denuded, a "planetary consciousness" becomes the primary reference for all peoples.

Talbot's vision is akin to the World Federalists. A SWF roundtable discussion, "The United Nations in Ten years; The United Nations in One Hundred Years," admitted that the UN as it stood was a foundation for the world federation which would require a voluntary army to "deter human rights abuses." Moderated by Tad Daly, director of Global Security Programs for the State of the World Forum, the discussion featured senator Alan Cranston and Tom Spencer, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Security and Defense Policy Committee of the European Parliament. The two were joined by various academics and diplomats who advocated abolishing the veto power of the UN Security Council -a dated mechanism favoring the winners World War II-adopting instead a "Parliament of Humankind." World peace was possible if a "planetary patriotism" for the "Federal Republic of Earth" supplanted nationalism. The UN must also restructure the General Assembly, instituting a weighted voting process in place of the one country one vote system now employed. This proposal would provide an equitable sharing of power among the more populous nations such as China and India.

Proponents of world government welcomed the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the framework for "enforceable world law" which would have juridical power over individuals as well as nations. Despite Oxford and Harvard degrees, none had an answer for a journalist who inquired who would police the peace keepers and the planetary judges.

The roundtable was studded with members of the World Federalist Association, an organization with "consultative" status at the United Nations. The discussion praised the Charter as precipitating a new educational push for the World Federalists.

The Charter has been submitted in most nations-special national councils have been formed for its promotion-so that as many national representatives as possible are familiar with and have contributed to the Charter. In June of 1999 a major effort on behalf of the Charter was made in Japan. The lure is the promise of implementing sustainable development via the ratification of the Charter.

Is there any real danger that such the Charter would be ratified by nations when it is presented at the United Nations Special Assembly, the "Millennium Assembly" with its mirror "People's Assembly" in September of 2000? At the moment, no. An examination of the history of the Charter, however, points to how it will be used to the advantage of globalists regardless of its formal ratification.

The push to develop a set of principles for "ecological security" began at the United Nations Stockholm Conference in 1972. The concept of sustainable development went through several re-workings. By 1987, The Brundtland Commission proposed a document "to consolidate and extend relevant legal principles to guide State behavior in the transition to sustainable development." A pernicious provision which grew from the "ecological security" concept was the Global Biodiversity Assessment, which calls for designs based on the Wildlands Project in the US. This "project" is little more than a means of confining humans in "human activity corridors" with five mile buffer zones past which human intruders will be prohibited-- penalties attached.

While "greens" claim this preserves millions of acres of "bio-regions" it coincidentally corrals humans making "monitoring" a simpler task. More mainstream, the Earth Charter is for public review, while few have heard of the Wildlands Project.

According to the shadowy Canadian energy billionaire, Maurice Strong, a despised anti-hero to militia and conspiracy groups and who is the co-drafter of the original Charter along with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Charter was an "expected outcome of the Earth Summit (which Strong chaired)… It was to have formed the ethical foundation upon which Agenda 21 (the platform adopted at Rio) and the other Rio documents were to have been based. The call for such a document caught the imagination of individuals and organizations around the world, as well as some governments… ."

The man the New Yorker called the "Custodian of the Planet" is listed in an astounding list of organizations. Born to poverty in Canada, 70 year old Strong became president of Powers Corporation at 31. Today he is an advisor to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan, senior advisor to World Bank president James Wolfensohn, Chairman of the World Resources Institute, sits on Toyoto's board of directors, founder of World Economic Forum, Founder of Planetary Citizens, is Co-Chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum, is the founder of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, has served on boards of or is a member of the following: Worldwatch Institute, World Future Society, Club of Rome, Business Council for Sustainable Development, Fellow, along with GAIA theory biologist James Lovelock, of the New Age Lindisfarne Association (publishers of G-A-I-A- A Way of Knowing), World Resources Institute and is the man responsible for reviving the International Union for the Conservation of Nature(ICUN), the behemoth which oversees 700+ governmental agencies worldwide.

Speaking to the Swedish Royal Academy in 1994 Strong declared sustainable development will require, "the development of an enforceable international legal regime." (Recall the World Federalists roundtable at SWF.) Further, Strong spearheaded the Commission of Global Governance endorsed by the United Nations and funded by United Nations Development Programme with additional grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Trust. The Commission of Global Governance recommends specific programs for:global taxation, a standing United Nations army, a global "petitions council" and a world economic council. There is no room to nourish a hope that Strong and Company do not mean what they say. The globalists want world hegemony and the United Nations is the vehicle which they drive. The manufactured environmental crisis is the stick to beat nations and gullible citizens into submission. It is not possible to determine how many are canny strategists who trumpet New Age mantras to give it "sustainable development" credence, or how many are in fact possessed with dreams of the Age of Aquarius.

Strong, perhaps, has both a political and "spiritual" motivation. Along with his wife Hanne, he owns a 20,000 acre ranch, Baca Grande in Colorado, a notorious New Age center, complete with a ziggurat and a Vedic temple for the worshipping pleasure of Shirley McClain and her ilk. The cynic assumes "equitable distribution of land and resources does not apply to the more "equal" planetary citizens tapped for the "global brain trust."

Behind Strong are others, most who also serve in some capacity in their national governments, while maintaining directorships of the hundreds of conservancy organizations worldwide. Perhaps most intriguing is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburg, the Director of the World Wildlife Fund(WWF) The charming prince has hopes for "reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus" which would exterminate the bulk of the world's pesky humans. WWF founded yet another eco-spirituality association, the Network on Conservation and Religion which was inaugurated an interfaith nature worship spectacle in Assisi, Italy in 1986 amid considerable outcry.

The Catholic Connection

It is no longer shocking to hear of yet another Catholic school, which has replaced May Crowing with Earth Day. The Renew 2000 parish Jubilee study programs are tainted with eco-theology notwithstanding the recent revision removing the prayer to the "Great Spirits of the Four Directions" where participants are instructed to stand in a circle praying with arms extended, then to the "Great Spirit of All That is Below." Every Protestant denomination has experienced similar invasions of the "greens." Aiding the process in the United States is the massive project known as National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) which distributes materials, including sample sermons to the nations churches.

Others in the US Catholic community have been eager to participate in the Earth Charter project.

Global Education Associates (GEA) in New York, a United Nations NGO, has 160 religious congregations in Canada, Ireland and the United States in their Religious Partnership Program. Sr. Eileen Gannon of GEA and her associates conducted 27 seminars at Michaela Farms in Oldenburg Indiana beginning October 15th culminating on Halloween, 1999.. The seminars on "global citizenship" and the Earth Charter were given to religious communities, seminarians, parishes and at the University of Dayton and Xavier University, according to Sr. Claire Whalen of Michaela Farm. "We work with UNICEFF and peace and justice groups world wide on sustainable development. We are an organic farm and we believe passionately in the rights of the earth. Michaela Farm is a Franciscan community.

Predictably, dissident Catholics have been among the ardent Charter and State of the World Forum promoters. Those who would see the Chair of Peter diminished in authority do not hesitate to be visible in the global cosmic spirituality movement. Enneagram guru Fr. Richard Rohr has attended a State of the World Forum, as has as former priest, Hans Kung, who along with his disciple Leonard Swidler got into the act with their Initial Declaration Towards a Global Ethic and their support of the leftist World Parliament of Religions which counts Wiccans as a religion. Swidler is a professor of Catholic Thought at Temple University. Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) starring Frances Kissling whom the United Nations most enjoys putting on display as the Catholic of their choice, is bankrolled by [Pope bashing]Ted Turner, who also contributes multi-millions to United Nations Population Fund, the same Ted Turner who appears at the SWF promoting the population controlling Earth Charter. And so the circle turns…

"The Charter," says Msgr. James Reinert of the Holy See's Permanent Observer Mission in New York, "is pagan. It will not be adopted" Nonetheless, experts are undeterred. They know that once the Charter is formally presented to the United Nations, the world's premier consensual deliberative policy setting body, it will be cited in other documents and treaties as a document that represents the world's consensus on an imperative; a global program of sustainability.

After all, it is dialogic, "broadly consultative" according to Stephen Rockefeller of Middlebury College, who conducted the SWF roundtable discussion on the Charter. Rockefeller told Catholic World Report that "Catholics will be comfortable with the Charter. We used some of the language from papal documents-from that encyclical on life." Rockefeller promised to forward information on the "many Catholics" who had collaborated on some portion" of the Charter, and proudly announced that Fr. Hesburgh had approved. Hesburgh spoke at the first State of the World Forum in 1995.

Eventually the Charter is referenced in semi-official documents, it becomes known to policy wonks seeking to build a case for similar initiatives, until finally, it is received as "soft Law." Gorbachev, in an interview on behalf of his Green Cross International, admitted that the Charter was a "soft law" initiative intended to "advance ethical and moral imperatives for achieving sustainability locally, nationally and globally." Sustainability in the parlance of planetary citizens is define not by how many humans can be sustained, but by how many humans the earth ought to be made to bear for the health of the earth as defined by selected scientists.

President Clinton, too, has added to the implementation process of global provisions which circumscribe national sovereignty and personal liberty. Via executive orders, Clinton has promoted the application of the Biodiversity treaty to America's coral reefs, implemented portions of the Framework Convention of Climate Change and various provisions of Agenda 21.

Another Clinton attempt side-step of the United States senate in favor of the will of the United Nations is executive order 13107. According to Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, "Clinton advanced three of his favorite goals when he issued Executive Order (EO) 13107 on December 10[1998]. He increased executive branch authority, he moved America closer into the "web" of treaties, which he promised in his address to the United Nations on September 22, 1997,…"

The "web of treaties" includes those ratified and those not ratified by the United States, such as the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child and others of the eighty-one "human rights" treaties floating through world chambers. The adoption of public policies of import, which effect the daily lives and freedoms of citizens, by an executive order as a deliberate by-pass of the people and their representatives erodes sovereignty from within. Such policies originate not within the nation but in the United Nations, at the Hague and in Geneva-hence they represent world ideologues not free peoples.

When the Earth Charter or various non-ratified treaties are quoted repeatedly it is logged as the "world's consensus." Additional pressure is put on nations to conform or forfeit international funding. Once a majority of nations have succumbed -even in the absence of legally binding power-such treaties are eventually adopted as hard law by virtue of prior compliance-the analogy within the Catholic Church on the issue of altar girls or communion in the hand illustrates the point all too well.

"We will kill it," promises Msgr. Reinert. "We will not allow the Charter to be quoted or referenced in any proceeding." The representatives of the Holy See may be joined by several Catholic countries-Argentina has been valiant in several battles---and may find some support from Islamic nations. But scant assistance in this effort will come from the USCC or from many Catholic institutions. Tom Quigley, Director of the USCC Peace and Justice Office reports, "The USCC does not take a stand on the Earth Charter." A negative stand would be welcome.

Curiously, Quigley was listed as one of the discussants at the State of the World for the "Fourth Paradigm of Scientific Logical Positivism and Its Incompatibility with the Ultimate Effectuation of the Objectives of the United Nations' Special Conferences." Quigley was not in attendance; the roundtable was moderated by Dan Sheehan, and former priest, Bill Davis, and Harvard specialist, Michael Blake. Sheehan made Quigley's excuse, but Quigley remarks, "The language at the SWF is just too futuristic, the rhetoric is not one we are comfortable with. He asked me to participate but I declined, suggesting other names."

At the State of the World Forum St. Francis was frequently invoked by "mystics" with a feel for the earth. Their counterpart at St. Thomas University in Miami Florida, Dr. Elisabeth Ferrero, conducts "Sustainability and spirituality" seminars in Assisi every summer. No longer the director, but a consultant for the project, Ferrero explained that the Assisi Sustainability and Spirituality seminars are a joint project of the university and Center for Respect of Life and the Environment (CRLE). The preeminent speaker for the project in Italy is Passionist priest, Thomas Berry, the source of no small discomfort for his order. Fond of civilian dress and a votary of Ex-Dominican Matthew Fox, Berry finds the ten commandments lacking for the new age. He proposes an eleventh commandment which would charge as murder any chopping down of a tree, because it has life and a soul.

We could use a St. Boniface for the 21st Century. Catholic teaching and Catholic family and educational practices are opposed to the agenda of "Planetary citizenship" which would amalgamate religions and deny mankind as the crown of creation made in the image of God. Religious freedom for Christians will be gradually denied as the world worships "Gaia" that is, worships the earth as a being in itself. Catholic life and teachings will come under increasing attack as the world is re-educated to see the earth as divine and our beliefs as a danger to world harmony and a threat to sustainability.

Just four years before Gorbachev landed at San Francisco's Presidio at the helm of the Gorbachev Foundation he stood before the Soviet Presidium and affirmed, "I am a convinced communist… ."

[After Clinton was elected in 1992, Gorbachev told an American paper, "He will be a great president if he can make America the creator of the New World Order based on consensus."]*

Today the prime San Francisco real estate is home to United Religions Initiative, FEMA. The Thoreau Center for Sustainability, the Gorbachev Foundation and now….LucasFilm and Lucas Learning, Ltd. Suddenly, in the company of these tenants, the Jedi Knight's spirituality sounds ominous, "We draw our strength from a mysterious power called the Force…a form of energy that connects all living things."

[Ten years ago Catholics scarcely recognized the emerging pattern of a coercive movement toward a global collectivist political structure disguised as "human rights" and engineered by various United Nations initiatives and united religious dialogues. Many associated such alarms with "radical right wing extremists." Since the United Nations' International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at Cairo in 1994, when the Vatican fought valiantly to preserve family values, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and orthodox Jewish groups have snapped into action.

They have compiled databases, published educational articles marshaled the grassroots believers and actively sought to influence the results of conferences.

Beyond religious awareness, national sovereignty organizations have also raised banners, attracting hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens in a few years. Heretofore the difficulty for most free people was accepting the idea that their governments would accede to a loss of sovereignty. The fall of the Berlin Wall drastically reset global power lines: The United States became the unopposed Goliath in military and economic might. Transnational corporations added to the loss of national loyalty. Oversimplified for the sake of brevity, the logical solution in the estimation of the new "world citizens" is a world federation, a world court, a world curricula and a world economy. For social evolutionists, it is the next stage of man's socio-political history. Their mistaken premise is that by limiting man's religious and political freedoms, detaching man from family and nation, and imposing a redistribution of the world's resources to the "global commons" they can contain economic imbalances and political strife. This socialistic plan for achieving peace shouts from bumperstickers, "If you want peace, work for justice." The idea has been fostered in popular culture for a generation-the Beattles song "Imagine," for example, and in educational circles since John Dewey. Now, political conditions have ripened. The failures of recent history are shunted aside, the mulish plodding and sterility of collectivist redistributionism are draped in spiritual finery, a wicked deception. Abundance springs from spiritual ardor, creative freedom and political liberties.