Volume 2, Number 6 -- August 21, 1997

WHO WILL CONTROL THE LAND IN ALABAMA? (OR OTHER STATES)

PLEASANT GROVE (AL) CITY COUNCIL MEETS AND APPROVES RAIN-WATER RUN-OFF FEE

The Pleasant Grove City Council recently held a specially called meeting for the sole purpose of considering whether or not the city of Pleasant Grove would join with other cities in Jefferson County in assessing fees to individual land owners for the purpose of monitoring rainwater (or storm-water) run-off for the presence of pollutants. The final vote was that Pleasant Grove will join the Jefferson County monitoring plan. This was considered the most economical approach to meeting the unfunded mandate from the federal EPA.

A citizens' discussion followed the meeting and answered some of the questions surrounding this issue:

• The fee for homeowners will be $5. annually. For larger parcel owners it will be $15. annually. Schools, churches and citizens over age 65 who have filed for homestead exemptions will be exempt from the fee but not exempt from the monitoring process or its consequences.
• These fees are not applicable to commercial enterprises. They are already covered by ADEM. One individual at the meeting said his fees run him $1000. annually.
• Offenders (polluters) will have an opportunity to correct a problem. Failure to do so could result in fines of up to $25,000. per day and up to ten years in prison. (We are unsure of just how or to whom such a fine could be applied. Whether to an individual landowner, an individual business or the county or municipality responsible for the area involved.)
• Concerns were expressed over such things as dumping of oil-change residues into the ground, the problems caused by lawn and garden chemicals or by faulty septic systems

No one mentioned that the United Nations Agenda 21 (from the 1992 Rio Summit) calls for just such a program, nor that a report of U.S. progress in this area has been made to the UN.

While there may be a legitimate need for some monitoring of water pollution, we believe our Constitution makes this a function of the individual states.

We view the approach taken as an intrusion into individual liberties by the federal government (and ultimately by a foreign power), whereby a mechanism that has already proven to be a means of control through bureaucratic abuse is set in place. In other sections of the country citizens have found regulations stemming from the Clean Waters Act to be a federal, or even a state weapon that has been seriously abused. Private citizens, as a rule, are not equipped legally or financially to fight the resources the government has at its disposal. Lands have been confiscated and citizens imprisoned because some bureaucrat found delight in the exercise of power.*

Of course Pleasant Grove is not the only municipality in Jefferson County to vote this way. A recent issue of the Birmingham News had several headlines showing that Homewood, Leeds, Trussville and Bessemer also voted to be included

* We refer you to Dr. Michael Coffman's book Saviors of the Earth? The politics and religion of the environmental movement or to Lost Rights, the Destruction of American Liberty by James Bovard for documentation of some of these abuses.

AN INTERESTING LOOK BACK

Usually we have tried to use official UN documents or writings to support our contention that we need to get the US out of the UN. The May 1, 1997, issue of Tom Anderson's Straight Talk, however, contained a reprint of an article he wrote in December 1956 and we think portions of it worth repeating here:

• World brotherhood through United Nations is an unrealistic remote Utopia requiring the impossible unification of Atheism with religion; morality with unmorality, freedom with slavery, and abundance with poverty. Free nations can't unite with police state nations. Free armies can't integrate with unfree. Free people can't unite with slaves. Parliamentary palaver can't produce peace. World peace can't be bought by surrendering sovereignty to any kind of world government. We need a foreign policy based on American strength instead of United Nations weakness.
• Putting our faith and fortune, life and liberty into the hands of the United Nations today would be like a cow entering a cage of hungry lions to vote on what they'd have for dinner tonight.

How unfortunate for our nation that Mr. Anderson's words went unheeded by Americans forty years ago. Will they continue to go unheeded?

ON THE HOMEFRONT
A message from the Chairman

A thousand page Global Biodiversity Assessment (named by one prominent environmentalist as "the most anti-human document ever"), an 18 page UN treaty, the EPA, Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development, reducing the population by 2 billion, 1/2 land-mass grab of U.S. and Canada for UN Wilderness Biospheres where no human habitation or intrusion would be permitted, Kentucky and Tennessee faced with the possibility of having to evict citizens from the "land between the lakes" area . . . These are but a few of the evils of the day, coming at us like an avalanche from the United Nations.

But when Congress was close to ratifying the UN "land-grab treaty" and the UN was asked to produce a so-called "scientific study" (called for in Section 25 of the treaty) explaining how the treaty would be implemented, Congress was told that no such "assessment" existed, nor was one being prepared. Thanks be to God, a noted environmental scientist, author of Saviors of the Earth? the politics and religion of the environmental movement (which all should read), Dr. Michael Coffman secured a copy of the 1000-page document in Switzerland and presented it to the Congress. His action, along with others, helped stop action on the ratification process. Nevertheless, the Clinton Administration has been proceeding virtually as if the treaty had been ratified (example: the designation of ten river systems this year as "heritage sites" effectively takes the determination of site usage from the states and puts it into federal bureaucrat hands), and is determined to continue to seek ratification.

Because bureaucrats have been using such weapons as the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act to implement UN mandated, liberty-robbing environmental programs, many innocent Americans have already suffered in Tennessee, Kentucky, Yellowstone and lumber-jack states. The designation of these U.S. Biosphere Reserves comes under UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific & Cultural Organization).

This Committee, responsible for the newsletter you're reading, The Alabama Committee to Get US Out of the United Nations, has developed a 40-45 minute, in-depth presentation that includes a discussion of these issues with slides, maps, video and audio tape and printed handouts. We are using this as a way of communicating to state legislators (and others) the many dangers we see inherent in these so-called "environmental programs." Thus far we have conducted three of these group presentations and one meeting with an aid to U.S. Representative Bob Riley and Alabama House Representative Larry Sims. Alabama State Representatives Albert Morton, Arthur Payne, Johnny Curry, Jim Townsend, Jim Carnes, Mike Dean, Mark Gains, Victor Gaston, John Hawkins and Allen Sanderson along with State Senators Bill Armistead and Albert Lipscomb have attended one of the group sessions. A number of other State Senators and Representatives have expressed a desire to attend.

We thank these individuals for their willingness to take time from extremely busy schedules, and commend them for their dedication to the citizens of Alabama, their open mindedness and their pursuit of freedom. To all of you, and to those who will attend in the future, we are grateful and we salute you.

One of our goals in conducting these sessions is to build support for legislative action and resolutions which would prevent the UN Biosphere program (or other similar programs) from encroaching on property rights and individual freedoms enjoyed by the citizens of Alabama (and other states) under the Constitutions of this nation and its several states.

As a result of our efforts and those of some of our legislators, we are happy to announce the pending introduction by Representative Jim Carnes of a House Resolution that will voice Alabama's concerns about the UN's encroachment into such state sovereignty issues.

Again, we are most grateful to all our state legislators who have devoted their time and energies to this effort.

The wording of an early draft of this Resolution follows this column. Whether it will be the final wording is uncertain at this time.

Some of our earlier newsletters contain more detailed information on the Biosphere program. Please ask your legislator to sign or co-sponsor this resolution and ask your Senator or Representative if he would like to attend one of the presentations discussed above. Then call the Committee to let us know and we will take it from there. Thank you and God bless Alabama and America.

Text of a House Resolution passed by the Alabama House of Representatives

HR__ REQUESTING CONGRESS TO INSURE THAT THE UNITED STATES PARTICIPATION IN THE UNITED NATIONS BIODIVERSITY TREATY WOULD PROTECT LAND USAGE POWERS OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LANDOWNERS.

WHEREAS, The United Nations has promoted and created a Biosphere Program involving 328 biosphere reserves in 82 nations, 47 of which involve sites within the United States, including areas of the Talladega National Forest in Alabama; and

WHEREAS, it has been suggested by some that the participation by the United States in the U. N. Biodiversity Treaty could potentially deprive or limit federal, state, and local governmental entities and private landowners from enjoying and exercising their currently existing rights to fully use or regulate public and private property; and

WHEREAS, neither the Legislature of Alabama nor the U. S. Congress has had the opportunity to fully explore, consider, or debate the potential negative impact to United States public and private landowners that might occur pursuant to the United States ratification of the U. N. Biodiversity Treaty; and

WHEREAS, while we may agree in the spirit of projects of international environmental protection and stewardship such as the proposed U. N. Biodiversity Treaty, we believe also that the rights of government and its citizens regarding land usage should not be compromised; and

WHEREAS, there are serious unresolved issues concerning the taking of property for public purposes that have been addressed by a series of recent U. S. Supreme Court decisions; now therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE LEGISLATURE OF ALABAMA that we hereby request the U. S. Congress to consider the land usage issues that may result from the participation of the United States in the United Nations Biodiversity Treaty, and that Congress provide the necessary safeguards to insure that the rights of United States public and private landowner would not be abridged or altered by such a decision to participate.

RESOLVED FURTHER, that copies of this resolution be provided to President Clinton, Secretary of State Albright, and each member of the Alabama Delegation to Congress.

A QUOTE TO CONSIDER

from page 242 of Saviors of the Earth?

"...the shrill rhetoric and the wholesale use of fear by environmental and global leaders to convince Americans we must give up our freedoms in order to survive. The same tactics used by Hitler are now being used by environmental leaders. To put this into perspective, lets look at the 'central organizing principle' called for by Vice President Gore:"

• We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization. . . . [This calls for] embarking on an all-out effort to use every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action - to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment - and to preserve and nurture our ecological system, Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing programs, moderate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change - these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public's desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary. (Italics added)

"Compare this quote from Gore, calling for unprecedented sacrifice and loyalty, to another, little-read quote from a famous orator of history."

• What we needed most was the conviction that first of all the whole attention of the nation had to be concentrated upon this terrible danger, so that every single individual could become inwardly conscious of the importance of this struggle. True incisive and sometimes almost unbearable obligations and burdens can only be made generally effective if, in addition to compulsion, the realization of necessity is transmitted to the individual. But this requires a tremendous enlightenment, excluding all other problems of the day which might have a distracting effect.

• In all cases where the fulfillment of apparently impossible demands or tasks is involved, the whole attention of a people must be focused and concentrated on this one question, as though life and death actually depended on its solution. Only in this way will a people be made willing and able to perform great tasks and exertions. ---- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf