© Michael S. Coffman and Kristie J. Snyder, 

Discerning the Times Digest and NewsBytes

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan issued his Millennium Report to prepare "the largest single gathering of Heads of State and/or Government ever held in the world" for global governance, a euphemism for world government.

After five years of planning, the UN Millennium Summit will be held September 6-9 at the UN headquarters in New York, the day after the commencement of the UN Millennium Assembly. The UN claims that it will provide "a historic opportunity to agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of, and challenges facing the United Nations in the new century." The UN proposes to do nothing less than "chart a course for the world's peoples in the first decades of the new millennium."

Originally proposed by the UN Commission on Global Governance in its 1995 report entitled, Our Global Neighborhood, the plan was accepted in the 1997 Track II–Reform a the United Nations report by Annan. The secretary general called for the General Assembly in 2000 to be "convened as a special ‘Millennium Assembly’ with a summit segment at which heads of Government could come together to articulate their vision of prospects and challenges for the new millennium and agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of the United Nations."

Both Our Global Neighborhood and the Track 2–Reform at the United Nations call for a total, top-to-bottom restructuring of the UN to enable it to administer global governance. Many of these restructuring changes have already been implemented, but Annan claimed in 1997 the UN must be provided "with greater authority through Charter revisions" to make it truly effective. In his Track 2 report he called for creating a "Special Commission, at the ministerial level" to make recommendations for a new Charter at the 2000 UN Millennium Summit. That plan never materialized, and instead a series of regional conferences were held in 1999 to obtain input from governments and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

We the Peoples

Secretary General Kofi Annan released the Millennium Report on the United Nations in the 21st Century on April 3, 2000. Called We the Peoples, the report begins by claiming that "The benefits of globalization are obvious:  faster growth, higher living standards, new opportunities.  Yet a backlash has begun, because these benefits are so unequally distributed, and because the global market is not yet underpinned by rules based on shared social objectives." Annan claims this unconstrained globalization is beginning to "generate a backlash," as evidenced in "last November’s World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle."

What Annan did not say, however, is that the NGO Seattle riots and the ones that occurred at Davos Switzerland in late January, at Bangkok in mid February and at Washington DC in mid-April are no accident. Annan knows it. A week after the Seattle riots Annan was in Montreal at the World Civil Society Conference telling many of the very same NGOs that rioted in Seattle that "I see a United Nations keenly aware that if the global agenda is to be properly addressed, a partnership with civil society is not an option, it is a must.... I see a United Nations which recognizes that the NGO revolution...is the best thing that has happened to the [UN] in a long time."

As is usual for the UN, Annan's report is very vague in its language, overly optimistic in its goals, short on substance, and drastically distorts its true intent—to restructure the UN into a world government. 

That is not what Annan claims, however. Global governance, he insists, is not a "world government of centralized bureaucratic behemoths trampling on the rights of people and states." "Nothing," he claims, "is less desirable." Instead, he avows that it is a loose group of international "decision-making structures" which articulates and advances the "cause of common humanity." On the other hand, "Global civilization," claims Annan, must be driven by a "robust international legal order" within the "principles and practices of multilateralism." (Bold added) 

What Annan doesn’t say is that the definition for government in the Webster's New World Dictionary is "the exercise of authority over a state...," "the right, function, or power of governing," or "a system of political administration by which...nation[s]...[are] governed." Governance, according to Webster, is "the act, manner, function, or power of government." With Annan's doublespeak, dung magically becomes a rose. 

One of the first tasks of the UN once it has the power to govern is to "to adopt the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, and so lifting more than 1 billion people out of it, by 2015" by "ensuring that people in all developing countries can benefit from globalization." This will be done, according to the report, by "rich countries... opening their markets to poor countries’ products," providing them with " deeper and faster debt relief," and giving " more and better focused development assistance." 

Not all third world nations receiving development assistance have been successful, however. Corrupt governments almost guarantee failure. Annan affirms that "economic success depends in considerable measure on the quality of governance a country enjoys. Good governance comprises the rule of law, effective State institutions, transparency and accountability in the management of public affairs, respect for human rights, and the participation of all citizens in the decisions that affect their lives." A casual reader would believe that this is what the UN is creating. But, it is not. The emerging global governance exhibits none of these foundational principles to good government. Nowhere, in any UN or NGO document is there any mention of a structure of governance that would permit real checks and balances to absolute power. There will be absolutely no direct accountability to the people governed.

Instead, the "emerging global legal order," is based upon signing and ratifying "international treaties and conventions." Hence, one of the purposes of the Millennium Summit will be to allow world leaders to sign a variety of treaties while they are attending. Annan is especially pushing the ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to "bring to justice," he claims, "those responsible for crimes against humanity." Yet, numerous studies have revealed that the ICC has absolutely no checks and balances. Its judges can bring charges against any citizen or elected official for anything they deem as a crime against humanity. The accused is guilty until proven innocent, and the court's jurisdiction is superior to national courts. It is the perfect tool to coerce elected officials and citizens alike to toe the UN line. 

In addition to poverty, Annan notes that most recent wars have been internal with high civilian casualties. Driven by "politics, greed and ethnic or religious hatreds," these wars are fueled, he claims, "by a hyperactive and in large part illicit global arms market." "In the wake of these conflicts," he contends, "a new understanding of the concept of security is evolving." Not security from "external attack", but rather security "of communities and individuals from internal violence."

The solution to all of this, of course, is UN control. Annan insists that "international humanitarian and human rights laws" must be reasserted. To enforce them, he contends, "the Security Council has a moral duty to act on behalf of the international community." In other words, the UN should intervene militarily like NATO did in Kosovo. But Annan laments that the UN cannot do this job the way it is presently structured. He implies that the UN needs its own army for peace making/keeping purposes. Even so, small arms "endanger peacekeepers and humanitarian workers" and benefit terrorists and "perpetrators of organized crime." Of course, Annan's one-dimensional solution is gun control and the time-honored practice of all tyrants, the establishment of a global police state.

The greatest justification for global governance, according to Annan, is the need to protect the environment. "Earth's atmosphere is warming at an increasing rate," he warns. The hottest 14 years since systematic measurements began in the 1860s have all occurred in the past two decades." Yet, the data used in the report to support his claim is a compilation from a highly suspect database whose temperature records are corrupted by a variety of sources. The best temperature data to date is from satellites which can measure the earth's temperature to 0.01 ^oC. This data shows no warming at all since 1979. Over 17,000 verified scientists in the U.S. have signed a petition saying that there is insufficient evidence of global warming for a treaty to be passed.

Nonetheless, Annan calls for the immediate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which he claims will reduce the global carbon dioxide (CO₂) to "5 per cent below 1990 levels." However, because only the industrialized nations are bound by the treaty, leaving developing nations free to increase their emissions, the Kyoto Protocol is not designed to accomplish any CO₂ reduction. While the U.S. must reduce its projected energy requirements by over 30 percent by 2012, nations like Mexico, Brazil, China and others can increase their energy use at will. The Kyoto Protocol is nothing more than the greatest income redistribution plan ever conceived in the mind of a socialist. In the process, it will destroy the U.S. as an economic powerhouse.

Annan would also create what is called "green accounting" to integrate the environment into "mainstream economic policy" to make sure all human activity and development is "sustainable." Green taxes would be imposed on those that the UN considers "polluters" based on a completely arbitrary formula that somehow is supposed to measure the degree of impact a human activity or development theoretically imposes on the environment. In other cases, nations would be required to impose appropriate regulations to maintain certain standards set by the UN. To ensure that everyone is forced to follow a new earth ethic, the Earth Charter has recently been completed that establishes just such an ethic. This ethic will be put into law in 2002 with the introduction of a new treaty called the Covenant on the Environment and Development.

While we do face environmental problems, nearly all of them are caused by corrupt, repressive governments that have no concern for the plight of either their people or the environment. Incredibly, the one thing that can help solve the world's water and food shortage problem is increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—the very thing global governance will reduce. Much research has shown that a doubling of CO₂ can increase crop and forest production by up to 50 percent, and can dramatically increase the drought tolerance of crops so that they can grow with less irrigation. Yet, Annan and global governance seek to reduce the very thing that could save the world! It is diabolical.

Annan seeks through global governance to destroy the very things that have been proven to protect the environment: national economic wealth, property rights and human ingenuity. The UN’s solution to the world’s problems is to bring every human being under the control of the UN. The root causes of poverty, war, and environmental destruction are greed, power, hatred and corruption. These are issues of the soul and spirit. Although they can be curtailed at the point of a gun, no amount of governance can ever change it. Only God can do that by changing the heart. 

Global governance will not come upon us suddenly during the dual meetings of the Millennium Assembly and Summit this September. Global governance has been encroaching for decades. Rather, the Millennium Summit will likely mark the public debut of UN global governance across trans-national boundaries. The Millennium Assembly is a special name for the fifty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly that commences on September 5, 2000. The Millennium Summit, on the other hand, is a meeting of all the heads of state in the world and starts on September 6. Its purpose is to determine the role of the UN in the twenty-first century.

The implementation of global governance has been gradually underway for decades as the sovereignty of individual nations around the world has been systematically eroded. Within nations all of the pieces of global governance have been carefully put into place, ensuring the final transfer of power to a centralized, global government in the not too distant future.

The UN agenda is already firmly entrenched in the American landscape in such things such as gun control, sustainable development and federal land grabs that will eventually claim well over 100 million acres of private property with the balance controlled through regulation. Federal programs such as the American Heritage Rivers Program, Clean Water Action Plan, Ecosystem Management, Sustainable America, Global Warming and many, many more, effectively circumvent Constitutional law by transferring power from elected representatives to non-elected bureaucracies and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs). All of these are done in the name of satisfying the requirements of numerous treaties and international agreements—even when they have not been approved by Congress.

At the same time the global educators have implemented the occult-based Goals 2000 to dumb-down and prepare our children to be unquestioning global citizens. UN taxing authority merely awaits a new UN Charter. Finally, with the International Criminal Court in place and a permanent, standing army in the works, the UN is poised at the threshold of having the enforcement muscle it needs to back its policies and retain centralized control.

Before the Millennium Summit takes place, however, the inaugural meeting of a new UN Millennium Forum of "Civil Society" will be held May 22-26 in New York. Civil Society is nothing more than globally-oriented special interest non-governmental organizations seeking to violently force their collective agenda onto the world through protests and riots. So far there have been three protests and riots by NGOs. The first in Seattle late last year was against the WTO. The second was in Davos, Switzerland, early this year against the World Economic Forum, and the third was in Bangkok, Thailand, in mid-February at the UN Conference on Trade and Development. They were the result of highly orchestrated efforts to bring enormous pressure on the world leaders at the Summit to adopt NGO demands. The next protest is scheduled for Washington D.C. against the World Bank-International Monetary Fund meetings starting on April 16.

The NGO demands take the form of Charter 99, A Charter for Global Democracy, which is nothing more than a restatement of recommendations made in 1995 by the UN Commission on Global Governance. Both provide a blueprint for global governance. The Commission on Global Governance had recommended a new UN Charter be presented to heads of state at the Millennium Summit on September 6. That recommendation was derailed, however. So, instead of the UN proposing a new UN Charter at the Millennium Assembly, NGOs will do it. In a stroke of Hegelian duplicity, NGOs are now protesting against the evils globalism to create global governance. By using rioting they hope to force the world’s leaders at next September’s Millennium Summit to create a new UN Charter which will institute global governance. The UN will claim the people of the world demanded it.

Six sub-themes will be addressed at the Millennium Forum that parallel Charter 99: 1) Peace, Security and Disarmament, 2) The Eradication of Poverty, Including Debt Cancellation and Social Development; 3) Human Rights; 4) Sustainable Development and The Environment; 5) The Challenges of Globalization, Achieving Equity Justice and Diversity; and, 6) Strengthening and Democratizing the United Nations and Other International Organizations. More accurate titles might be: 1) Global Gun Control and Disarmament, 2) Redistribution of Wealth, 3) Control of Human Rights, 4) The Great Global Land Grab, 5) Creating an NGO Parliament within the UN and, 6) Socialization of the Planet.

Nearly every agenda item in the Millennium Forum represents a consolidation of power in the hands of non-elected bureaucrats and NGOs. The impudence with which these demands are made shows that the obliteration of national sovereignty and personal freedom is the core goal of "Civil Society" which seeks to establish enormous power for itself within the coming global government.