What is Agenda 21? It’s a program at the United Nations to work on economic development, sustainable development, environmental protection, resource conservation and economic policies. As with almost all UN programs, Agenda 21 pronouncements are wholly voluntary.
Several international programs create studies and make recommendations to nations — but unless they come from the World Bank or International Monetary Fund along with loans to help nations develop, such recommendations remain mostly academic: Nations follow them only to the extent that a nation’s policy-making groups (like Congress in the U.S.) are persuaded that the recommended policies benefit the nation.
For reasons unclear to me the wacky wing of the crazy right seized upon Agenda 21 as the symbol of most things evil in the world, especially since we don’t have the Soviet Union to blame stuff on any more.
Grist featured a graphic-novel-style explanation of Agenda 21, so you can follow the issues as they arise at the 2012 Republican Convention: Agenda 21: Everything you need to know about the secret U.N. plot, in one comic. Here is the entire post:
Agenda 21: It’s the biggest threat to your freedom, and unless you regularly attend yahoo-filled local planning and zoning meetings, you’ve probably never even heard of it. Until recently, this vast United Nations conspiracy to force us all to live “sustainably” was known only to stalwart defenders of Liberty and Freedom like the John Birch Society. But the underground resistance is about to go mainstream. GOP intellectual it boy Ted Cruz leads the counterstrike, and the Republican Party is even considering a public flambéing of Agenda 21in its official 2012 platform.
Looking to help break the siege of bike paths and high-quality education on our freedoms? Here’s what you’ll need to know.
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Tip of the old scrub brush to Grist, and Charles Nesci and especially Greg Hanscom, the cartoonist. Hanscom is a “senior editor at Grist. He tweets about cities, bikes, transportation, policy, and sustainability at @ghanscom.”
More (not a lot from sane sources on this topic):
- Agenda 21 Is Now the Official Conspiracy Theory of the GOP (motherboard.vice.com)
- The California GOP Has Officially Endorsed The UN AGENDA 21 Proposition 31 (themadjewess.com)
- Soil and Water Conservation merit badge, Boy Scouts of America; official site with resources from BSA
- Chesapeake Bay Program
- Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA (formerly the Soil Conservation Service)
- Soil conservation in Israel, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
- Sheila Kennedy on silly opposition to Girl Scouts
- At MFB: “Crank history assault on Alabama Public Television”
- Update, October 10, 2012: Note the new website from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20)
- Charlie Pierce gangs up on the Anti-Agenda 21 guys, using his cruel weapon of information, at his blog at Esquire
More, a sampling from sources without hinges (a small selection):
- Agenda 21 For Dummies (usapartisan.com)
- A Closer Look at Agenda 21 (usapartisan.com)
- Agenda 21 Propaganda Invades Hotels, Lectures Travelers (dprogram.net)
- Government Funded Bullet Trains Will Connect American Agenda 21 Megacities (zionistoutrage.com)
- Agenda 21 Propaganda Invades Hotels Lectures Travelers (conservativeread.com)
- United Nations Agenda 21 (jeenyuscorner.com)
- Texas GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz on protecting golf courses from UN intervention (with Glenn Beck)
- Update October 10, 2012: New crackpot video on Agenda 21, extolled at NewAmerican
- Corporate Propaganda Antidote loses its hinges
- The sad slide of Dick Morris into complete, demented irrelevancy
- Freedom Outpost paints itself like a fire hydrant and invites the neighborhood dogs in
- Update: Rio Norte Line runs off the rails, even after the warnings.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] Agenda 21: In graphic novel form, so it must be the truth […]
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What is with the conservatives descent into conspiracy theory nuttery over the last 20 years….
Everything is a conspiracy to them. Next they’ll be camping out at Roswell…
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[…] Agenda 21: In graphic novel form, so it must be the truth For reasons unclear to me the wacky wing of the crazy right seized upon Agenda 21 as the symbol of most things evil in the world, especially since we don’t have the Soviet Union to blame stuff on any more. Grist featured a graphic-novel-style explanation of Agenda 21, so you can follow the issues as they arise at the 2012 Republican Convention: Agenda 21: Everything you need to know about the secret U.N. plot, in one comic. […]
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[…] Agenda 21: In graphic novel form, so it must be the truth For reasons unclear to me the wacky wing of the crazy right seized upon Agenda 21 as the symbol of most things evil in the world, especially since we don’t have the Soviet Union to blame stuff on any more. […]
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[…] a quick explanation of Agenda 21 here (courtesy of Grist, […]
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Similarly, anyone who says Agenda 21 is a bad idea, also =FAIL. Anyone who says Agenda 21 isn’t voluntary =FAIL. Anyone who says Agenda 21 isn’t basic soil and water conservation =FAIL.
Catch my drift?
You did read the cartoon, right?
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LOL to you all – The full implementation of Agenda 21, the Programme for Further Implementation of Agenda 21 and the Commitments to the Rio principles, were strongly reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 26 August to 4 September 2002.
So anyone who says Agenda 21 isn’t real = FAIL Also, comic says Agenda 21 isn’t thought about in the UN = FAIL. Get your facts right if you are going to criticize anyone.
Sources:
U.N. Website
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
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Note the new website on sustainable development launched by the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
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Working still to either understand why the hysteria about Agenda 21, or bring back from the brink anyone with a tinge of sanity left, we continue the discussion at Agenda 21:
In response to my post of the day before (below), I got this response
To which I replied:
Another response I got, again without whiff of an indication that any of the dire things claimed can be found anywhere in any Agenda 21 document.
And, in a second response:
Working hard not to be snarky, I explained, and asked for clarification:
One rather gets the feeling that these people are worked up over nothing, that they haven’t actually read the documents, nor have they studied the UN and its charter, and how it works (or often, doesn’t work). They seem wholly oblivious to the UN Charter’s having denied the UN an armed force of any kind, even a basic police force. They appear wholly unaware that, apart from a few UN Security Council pronouncements, everything else at the UN is voluntary. No coercion. They appear wholly oblivious to the UN Charter’s clear statement that the agency may never take over land inside another nation, that the UN pledges not to violate the sovereignty of any non-aggressor nation, and that the stuff called for in Agenda 21 is basic, common sense, good land management.
Why do the anti-Agenda 21 folk wish to destroy farmland? Don’t they realize that’s what they advocate?
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To quote:
Many communities in the United States are participating right now. The International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives, or ICLEI. I found out my hometown spends money on this, does yours?
Yeah last time I checked its voluntary.
When did conservatives become completely disengaged from the world?
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At Sanromeo’s site we find this concern:
You should hope your hometown participates. It’s milk-toast conservation stuff. Here’s the response I left at Saneromeo’s site; it’s “in moderation,” leaving us to wonder whether any rational discussion can ever see the light of day with these guys:
Do we need to keep an Agenda 21 Paranoia Wall of Shame?
Update: Quickly approved at Agenda 21. A site of near-sanity in a sea of paranoid delusions. Who’d have guessed?
Now, how to reel that site’s authors back from the brink of insanity?
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A real patriot, David, wouldn’t fall for stupid dimwitted conspiracy theories.
Which means that you are hardly in a position to be deciding who is and who is not a patriot.
Typical right wing pseudosfascist to hide behind false patriotism.
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To quote:. . .and whose many of its members do not share its values of liberty and individual freedoms
Oh you mean like the United States when Shrub and the GOP decided it was a jolly good idea to authorize torture?
Sorry, as Ed said the UN and it’s “plans” are voluntary. And you should bother to remember that the United States has veto authority as a member of the Security Council.
Yes yes I know you Republicans hate international diplomacy and working with other countries which I find hilarious considering that the President who you all claim to hold with such reverence, Reagan, though it international diplomacy and working with other countries was a jolly good idea.
It’s time that you stop listening to stupid foolish conspiracy theories. They’re rotting your brain.
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We’re talking the UN. So your explanation would apply to Osama bin Laden, perhaps, with regard to the UN, or Kim Jong-un.
But the UN is an agency dedicated to international cooperation, not to international domination. It is an essentially toothless agency. The UN has no army, and it has no way by which it might raise one, which always means that compliance with Security Council resolutions is problematic: Even the toughest pronouncements of the UN are toothless. If Syria’s President Assad wants to ignore them, he does.
Agenda 21 is dedicated to finding ways of preserving land and clean water, especially for farming to feed people, and especially for feeding a dramatically expanding and prosperous population.
Your description doesn’t apply to the UN, and more important, you still haven’t suggested any reason a patriot would prefer starvation and pollution. The UN is dedicated to peace between nations. The Charter is modeled in no small way on the Constitution of the U.S. and international law of peace as established by the U.S. following World War II. Those opposed to the UN would include Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong (mostly), and perhaps Joseph Stalin.
Was that a mystery to you? These are simple facts of history.
Have you read any of the documents of what Agenda 21 is? It sounds to me as if you are wholly unfamiliar with it, and not much familiar with the UN. The UN is regarded as a tool of the U.S. by almost every other nation on Earth. Have you ever studied the group?
What poppycock. What part of the UN Charter is opposed to anything we stand for in the U.S.? We stand against war crimes. We stand opposed to poverty, and hunger. We fight diseases that kill people. The U.S. is not the barbarous state you claim at all.
Here’s the Preamble to the UN Charter; you can’t seriously claim the U.S. is, or should be, opposed to any of it:
It’s clear, simple language. What part of that could any American patriot oppose?
You said:
What provision of Agenda 21 does that?
Be specific.
Every provision of Agenda 21 is voluntary. Nothing in the documents is not something that we should NOT be doing, already.
There is no bureaucracy at all. There is a call for other nations to join us.
Seriously, have you read Agenda 21 documents? They call for measures to prevent future repeats of the Dust Bowl. They call for safe and sustainable agricultural methods, not farming that depletes the land — this is a direct outgrowth of the U.S.’s Soil Conservation Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps — it’s right out of the Boy Scout merit badge on Soil and Water Conservation.
Let me guess — you think Boy Scouts are communists, right?
I see claims like that as pure folderol, insane babblings from conspiracy freaks who can’t read, or refuse to read, and prefer to confuse others with bafflegab. That’s not you, of course — so I wonder where you got that idea?
There is no provision for global governance in the UN Charter — and in fact, there are provisions specifically prohibiting it See Article 2, Sections 4 and 7, for example:
Chapter 7 deals with how to stop international aggression, like Germany’s invasion of Poland and France and Russia, like Japan’s invasion of the Philippines, like China’s puppet invasion of South Korea, like Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
So again, unless you’ve got some really good evidence to suggest that the U.S. has abandoned its history, its Constitution, and the hopes for peace and prosperity of its people and has strong need to embark on a campaign of international terrorism, I cannot imagine where you’re getting the idea that there is anything in the U.N. Charter to support the things you claim to fear, nor in any Agenda 21 document.
Where in the U.N. Charter is there any possibility of global governance? Where in Agenda 21 is there anything we should not be doing?
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The United States isn’t implementing Agenda 21 because there is no Agenda 21. It’s a phantom boogyman conjured by the RNC because the Republican party is no longer rational, intelligent or even dealing with reality.
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A rational patriot wouldnt want to out source any solutions to an organisation that is antagonistic toward his country and whose many of its members do not share its values of liberty and individual freedoms…that will gouge his country for coin all the while berating his country for its lifestyle. Yes there have been dust bowls, fires droughts … weather we can’t control. We have regard for the environment though and compare well / out do most in the world in its protection. So why would a patriot put his trust in another layer of unaccountable bureaucracy that will seek to grow itself on predominantly our money. You see global governance as a ‘good’ , a patriot would regard it with suspicion….just look at what sort of countries make up its membership.
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More critically, one might ask, why would a rational patriot not take Agenda 21 to heart? It’s not like we haven’t had our shares of Dust Bowls, forest fires, city conflagrations, floods, and just general unthinking degradation of our environment that we can afford to pretend that feeding people in the future isn’t important, and that we don’t need to worry about the land and water required to accomplish those tasks, and sustain the high quality of that land.
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ER…so the USA isnt implementing Agenda 21 because the USA forgot about it. The RNC is on some paranoid frolic about Agenda 21 being forced upon its local communities …but it isnt because has been forgotten. So why did we sign it if we gonna ignore it , sounds like a good argument to bail out on it all together! .., which would be a bad thing because the cartoon depicts utopia if it was implemented. …mmmh utopian wet dreams generally end in tears , and Agenda 21 is about the utopian fantasy of us Industrialised nations banding together and ending the inequalities between us and all the poorer nations…..sounds like commie plot to me! No wonder the RNC is up in arms …a stealth agenda to transfer wealth to them poor folk in some despotic African hell hole sounds like something we should be up against ….
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Just when you thought the GOP couldn’t outdo itself in the bat**** crazy looney tunes department….
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That’s some world class crazy you got there!
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