The Shofar is the ancient trumpet which called the people of God to prayer, repentance, sacrifice and war.

June 2002: WORLD SUMMIT

Microsoft Word Format:

The United Nations is to hold a "World Summit on Sustainable Development" in Johannesburg from 26th August to 4th September.  According to the UN 'Earth Charter Initiative", the summit is:

"A gathering of governments, United Nations agencies, multilateral financial institutions, (there's a surprise! - Ed)  NGOs and major groups to assess global change since the historic United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Earth Summit) of 1992. Expected outcomes will aim to answer the following questions, among others:

  1. What has been accomplished since 1992?
  2. What have the participating countries done so far to implement Agenda 21? Have they adopted National Sustainable Development Strategies as they agreed they would by 2002?
  3. Have they ratified the conventions that aim to prevent loss of biodiversity or ensure women's rights as they agreed to do in 1992?
  4. What obstacles have they encountered?
  5. What lessons have they learned about what works and what does not?
  6. What new factors have emerged to change the picture?
  7. What mid-course corrections need to be made to reach the goals?
  8. Where should further efforts be concentrated? "The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development is serving as the central organizing body to the Summit. The agenda will be set through a collaborative process that seeks the participation of civil society and input from the national levels, that will flow into a series of sub-regional and regional gatherings and eminent person roundtables. Input from the Secretary-General of the United Nations and a meeting of the International Eminent Persons Roundtable will further shape the agenda."

GLOBALISTS INVOLVED
Key points to notice include:

  1. The presence of globalists (eminent persons and financiers) in fixing the agenda,
  2. The continued imperialist drive to promote abortion and contraception under the guise of 'women's rights.'
  3. The use of the word 'sustainable.'  This means that poor countries must not be allowed to develop national policies that encourage growth and threaten the pre-eminence of the 'multinational financial institutions.'  They are to keep in their place and remain at subsistence level.
  4. There must be coercion or global policing.  Nitin Desai, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said in April 2001:  "I sensed that there was a recognition that we will never achieve sustainable development unless we can generate a global ethic of responsibility or stewardship."  Global responsibility needs global enforcement.

KYOTO RATIFIED BY EU
Reuters reports:

"All 15 European Union nations have ratified the Kyoto pact intended to combat global warming and the EU used the occasion to goad Washington -- which has turned its back on the treaty -- to do its part.

"The so-called Kyoto protocol, which grew out of the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is aimed at cutting the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for rising global temperatures.

"The protocol, signed in Kyoto in 1997, requires industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent over the period 2008-2012. Both the European Union and the United States -- the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases -- are parties to the framework convention, but President Bush shunned the treaty, saying it would hurt the U.S. economy.

"At a ceremony at U.N. headquarters in New York, Margot Wallstrom, European commissioner for the environment, called the signing "an historic moment for global efforts to combat climate change" while underlining the need for all industrialized as well as developing nations to pitch in.

"All countries have to act, but the industrialized countries have to take the lead," she said.

The reduction of 5% is modest, but too much for profligate America.  More important, and possibly in the back of President Bush's mind, was the element of supra-national control inherent in the Kyoto accord.  The Australian government has also refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty,  Christian Voice believes that the Lord's resources must be used with care and responsibility, but the control factor makes us suspicious of Kyoto, and the enthusiasm of EU Commissioner Ms Wallstrom does not assuage our suspicions.  The UN is itself a wasteful, corrupt organisation which promotes anything which allows it to boss everyone around and impose a humanist anti-life zero-growth population control agenda.  God said, "Go forth and multiply" and He hasn't said, 'Hold on, there's too many of you" yet.

GENETIC RESOURCES
The European Union Council of Ministers has decided to sign the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.  The treaty "aims to protect the world's most important agricultural plant species in order to safeguard global food security."  However, farmers have been doing just that for generations, and the treaty notably rules out the abolition of Genetically-Modified crops.

Secretary of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Josi Esquinas-Alcazar said that the treaty seeks to ensure that the genetic resources and local technologies developed by generations of farmers are "complemented and enhanced" by new technologies of genetic engineering. He said, "Genetic resources and biotechnologies should be considered complementary, as the first provide the raw material for the second.  Even the most sophisticated biotechnologies do not create genes, but re-combine those existing in nature to produce new varieties and agricultural products. Modern biotechnologies provide powerful tools with the potential to increase and improve production in various situations, including to the benefit of small farmers and local economies."

The alleged benefit is an illusion, because elitist bio-firms like Monsanto and Novartis want to increase the dependence of farmers on themselves, with tricks like GM plants from which the seed is infertile so that new seed must be purchased each year.  Over and above these concerns, is the certainty that God's judgment will fall on the generation which interferes with His creation.

PRAY:  That pro-life groups will be able to attend the Johannesburg conference and brief the governments of developing nations to the threat of the Earth Charter.  That GM crops will be banned.

VISIT: www.earthcharter.org/wssd/  and www.earthsummit2002.org