[excerpt]
Suppose, loyal reader, you and I were to work together in secret and hatch a plan that would affect others â perhaps a lot of others â without their knowledge or consent. Would we or would we not be launching a conspiracy? I think we would have to say, Yes.
Now suppose we do the same thing, but instead of keeping it secret we put our agenda on the World Wide Web where anyone with a computer, a modem and an ISP can access it. Never mind that weâve written it in mindnumbing bureaucratese. Never mind that most of the public is more interested in sports, the Oscars or the latest Survivor series. Never mind that its reporting by the mainstream media is minimal and focused on side issues. The point is, our machinations would be available to any literate person who has the will and the know-how to seek them out.
I doubt we could still call it a conspiracy. What would be the point?
But that is the state of affairs with the UNâs latest confab, the International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Monterrey, Mexico, held from 18 â 22 March, 2002. This meeting continued the agenda set forth in Our Global Neighborhood issued by the Commission on Global Governance in 1995, restated in the Millennium Declaration, and now incorporated into the Monterrey Consensus agreement. Except for the Internet, of course, media reporting was skimpy, even though representatives of 171 nations signed the agreement. The meeting was attended by hundreds of other luminaries, from leaders of non-governmental organizations to CEOs of multinational corporations who attended an International Business Forum on "public / private partnerships."
The Monterrey Consensus is fairly tough slogging. The phrase mindnumbing bureaucratese pays the document a compliment. There are abundant phrases like global partnerships, sustainable development, good governance, appropriate policy and regulatory frameworks, involving all stakeholders and so on and so on, for 16 pages (73 paragraphs) of small print. One suspects that its writers wanted to discourage prying eyes. Most people indeed will lose interest before they get to the second page. Much the same may be said for the UN website itself. It is a disorganized, hard-to-navigate mess; finding specific information on it is challenging even for experienced Web-hounds.
But there is enough in this document to give away the game when translated into plain, words-mean-things English â for those who persevere. For example, in the very first paragraph of the Consensus is the overall goal of the meeting: "⦠to eradicate poverty, achieve sustained economic growth and promote sustainable development as we advance to a fully inclusive and equitable global economic system." In the next breath (paragraph 2): "We note with concern current estimates of dramatic shortfalls in resources required to achieve the internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration." Thus the need for "[m]obilizing and increasing the effective use of financial resources and achieving the national and international economic conditions" needed to achieve the goals; this "demands a new partnership between developed and developing nations. We commit ourselves to sound policies, good governance at all levels and the rule of law" (paragraph 4).
Okay, time out. Once translated from bureaucratese, is this or is this not a recipe for global socialism, under the auspices of a global superelite? (Superelite here means: an elite operating freely at an international of a national level, with the additional clout and resources this implies.) Is it or is it not a call for massive redistribution of the wealth from "developed" nations (i.e., the U.S.) to "developing ones" (i.e., much of the rest of the world). What, finally, is the cash value of the last sentence in the above quote? The UN steadfastly denies any commitment to setting up a world government. According to Our Global Neighborhood, "global governance ⦠does not imply world government or world federalism." But then what in blazes does it imply?
