"Growing pains: St. Clair pushing towns for plans" was the headline of a prominent front page article in the Sunday, April 7, 2002, edition of the Birmingham News which describes the efforts of the Chairman of the St. Clair County Commission to bring:

"....a seismic governmental change: Create comprehensive growth plans and adopt zoning ordinances to enforce them."

The article continues to describe programs in progress that bring communities into the fold of "growth plans" enforcement ordinances. Pell City’s 98-page plan, "Progressive Pell City," states:

"Once all 14,880 acres have been developed, the city will see much of its woods and pastures become a traditional suburban community:

• homes on lots larger than 3 acres will comprise 20.5 percent of the town;
• residences on lots of 0.3 to 3 acres, 41.7; percent;
• garden homes, townhouses and apartments, 5.8 percent;
• manufactured housing, 2 percent;
• commercial and office building, 9.7 percent;
• industrial complexes, 7.1 percent;
• agriculture and open space, 8.5 percent;
• parks and greenways, 3.4 percent; and
• civic buildings 1.3 percent."

The percentages add up to 100% of the land in Pell City. The article does not mention personal ownership of property nor the inalienable rights that our founders believed came with land ownership. The master plan of the city/county takes precedent over private ownership of property. That may sound like something out of Hitler’s Germany, but "planning" has become acceptable and fashionable to the masses. Hitler is quoted as having said: "we do not create socialist programs and force them on the individual; we teach socialist dogma to the children and as adults they cry out for socialism, and we graciously provide it." Indeed, the government school has seemingly accomplished its goal.

The article could have been titled: "Local government tells would be land owners how their land will be used".

Similar growth management programs have won acclaim from the 1996 United Nations Habitat II conference held in Istanbul. The Conference awarded three Gold Medals, one of which was awarded to the Washington State School of Architecture. The winning program calls for local communities to be totally self sufficient. The quote from the plan which may be accessed at the following web archive website: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.arch.wsu.edu/information/sustain/home.html reads as follows:

"...a sustainable community is one which provides all of its own needs for air, water, land (or food and fiber), and energy resources within the confines of its own site."

Award winning programs frequently become the standard. If the master plan for Pell City is patterned after the would-be standard from Habitat II, less than 8.5 percent of the land will be allowed to produce food for the residents of Pell City.

Four years after the 1996 United Nations Conference, Habitat II, the State of New Jersey, under the leader ship of Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman (the current EPA Director), published a newsletter that touted the American Planning Association award to the State of New Jersey for:

"....exemplary models for smart growth planning practices." The newsletter defines a "Sustainable Community" under the State's "Smart Growth" plan: "The term sustainability means being able to live today without using up the resources, such as air and water, needed for future generations."

Back to the news article of April 8, it also referred to Springville's plan (another small community in St. Clair County) and stated:

"The plan encourages high density residential development based on the principles of "New Urbanism" - a movement that calls for narrower streets, garages that open discretely onto back alleys, sidewalks that promote walking, and front porches that encourage conversations with those who pass by."

The next day, April 8, 2002, the Birmingham News, Metro State page 1b printed another stealth article in plain view:

"Livable cities meeting to be held Factors that lead to more livable cities will be the topic of the annual Livable Cities Conference on Thursday at Birmingham Southern College. Keynote speaker will be Andres Duany, founding member of the Congress for the New Urbanism. He is one of the designers of more than 200 new towns, regional plans and community projects including Seaside, Fla., and the Town of Mt. Laurel in Shelby County."

The media has been careful not to reveal the whole truth by using labels that reflect a warm and fuzzy feeling but convey little if any substance, such as: Livable Cities, New Urbanism and the Congress for the New Urbanism. To this list can be added Smart Growth, Sustainable Development, Eco-Industrial Parks.

Should the planners become aware that the names these programs represent have raised the ire of the public, the programs are allowed to quietly disappear and later reappear with a new name and in some cases a new locality. Of course, the United Nations is never mentioned in the same article.

This assertion is not made without foundation. In 1995 this writer called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiative (ICLEI), a United Nations organization, and asked the representative in Berkley California, "Why are local communities in other parts of the world developing ‘Local Agenda 21’ programs, commonly called ‘Sustainable Development,’ and the local media proudly proclaims the connection between the United Nations and the local program?" He answered: "A survey was conducted in the United States; the results indicated that the American public would not accept programs that clearly indicated a connection to the United Nations."

The conversation was not recorded, and without corroborating evidence the information could not be used. A recent Internet search revealed a United Nations document published by the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) which contained information that confirmed the 1995 conversation with the ICLEI representative.

That document is titled, "The Future of Local Agenda 21 in the New Millennium." The speech was delivered in London, England June 29, 1998. It contains the verbatim speech as delivered by the author, Mr. J. Gary Lawrence. His accomplishments are also listed in the document:

"Gary Lawrence is one of the key thinkers on sustainable development, an advisor to the US President’s Council on Sustainable Development and to US AID. He was on the US Government delegation to the 1996 Habitat II Conference and has also been Director of the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Washington and Chief Planner in the City of Seattle."

Mr. J. Gary Lawrence stated:

"In the case of the U.S., our local authorities are engaged in planning processes consistent with LA21 [Local Agenda 21] but there is little interest in using the LA21 brand. Participating in a UN advocated planning process would very likely bring out many of the conspiracy-fixated groups and individuals in our society such as the National Rifle Association, citizen militias and some members of Congress. This segment of our society who fear ‘one-world government’ and a UN invasion of the United States through which our individual freedom would be stripped away would actively work to defeat any elected official who joined ‘the conspiracy’ by undertaking LA21. So, we call our processes something else, such as comprehensive planning, growth management or smart growth." (emphasis added)

The speech is available at: http://www.unedforum.org/publi/millpaper/mill%20paper2.pdf
[To obtain, click on this link with right mouse button then click "save target as." It will be necessary to download the file, you cannot open it from here.]

Deceit is not a strong enough word, and an elitist attitude is no excuse for such actions of the so-called professionals in the news media. But printing misleading or slanted information with knowledge of a much larger underlying agenda is not a criminal act in our Constitutional America (once the end result of their efforts is attained, the truth may be lost completely). The resulting effects on society will nonetheless be devastating to our nation.

The point that Mr. Gary Lawrence made when he stated: "So, we call our processes something else..." should alert everyone that this is a multifaceted program and it has adopted names that the public has come to trust. Removing the United Nations building from the soil of the United States and repudiating the document that legally binds us to this global system will not change the land use regulations in Pell City.

The building and document are but outward signs of a system that has been weaving its tendrils throughout our social structure for decades. Just removing them might be compared to giving aspirin to a terminally ill patient. The patient may feel some relief but the the lethal tumor continues to grow. The sought after cure must encompass much more. It requires enabling the citizenry to recognize programs that appear unrelated to the UN but which retain the essence of its socialism. This effort must provide a broad understanding which will allow one to identify programs aimed at advancing the globalist agenda. A single prong attack on the UN may have worked years ago but is insufficient today.

Even now, a pilot project for the nation, is ongoing in Leeds, Alabama, a community of less than 50,000. Leeds is in the process of merging the computer monitoring of real time purchases of individuals, businesses, and government (in all its aspects including schools) to guide all entities to a predetermined outcome. The outcome is not defined in the Leeds plan.

Supposed conservatives on the city council endorsed this plan. The endorsement was backed by a $25,000.00 grant to fund the first phase of the project. Funding is now being sought from the Ford Foundation. When a supposed conservative sponsor was quizzed about the program and his support for it, he denied the project’s intent and its connection to international organizations. This individual has the support of the conservative community and that support is unshakable. We can’t know whether or not he understands the probable end result of this plan, but this is just one more example of a globalist scheme that has been accepted by the culture of our day. Paint a rosy picture for greedy little politicians but, please, don’t let them see the thorns. Taking away our funding for the UN will help, but move the United Nations to another soil, destroy the legal bindings that tie our society to the UN and the people will continue to cry out for the same programs. This is not a defeatist cry but a plea for you to look at the broader picture that must be addressed so that we may recognize the agenda whenever and wherever it surfaces and speak to the issues that bring out the truth. We may very well loose this battle, but the war is already over and, thank God, the victory is His.

Urge your Congressman to co-sponsor Ron Paul’s HR 1146, The American Sovereignty Restoration Act.

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