Opinion
By Robert Malone, MD, MS
03-21-23
Below is a image of The Original Charter of the United Nations, signed 1945
From its founding, the UN has sought to be more than just an organization to to promote international peace and security after the Second World WII.
The United Nations is a complex organization that, in theory, is tasked with world governance. According to their website, this is the breakdown of how they view their global responsibilities now.
Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the United Nations can take action on the issues confronting humanity in the 21st century, including:
- Maintain international peace and security
- Protect human rights
- Deliver humanitarian aid
- Promote sustainable development
- Uphold international law
The United Nations was created in 1945, following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security. The UN accomplishes this by working to prevent conflict, helping parties in conflict make peace, deploying peacekeepers, and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and should reinforce one another, to be effective.
The UN Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security. The General Assembly and the Secretary-General play major, important, and complementary roles, along with other UN offices and bodies.
(Note how the UN has cunningly added “Promote sustainable development” to their vision of how the charter is to be implemented in the 21st century).
What are these 17 “sustainable development” goals of the UN?
If these “goals” and “targets” aren’t a recipe for the UN seeking to rule the world, what is?
So, who is running Agenda 2030 and making sure these goals and targets are met?
The Secretary-General of the UN, is essentially the director of the UN. It is an elected position with a five year term. But since its founding in 1945-6, there have only been nine Secretary-Generals. Generally, Secretary-Generals serve multiple terms, usually without challenge.
The Role of the Secretary-General:
The Charter describes the Secretary-General as “chief administrative officer” of the Organization, who shall act in that capacity and perform “such other functions as are entrusted” to them by the Security Council, General Assembly, Economic and Social Council and other United Nations organs. The Charter also empowers the Secretary-General to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in their opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security. These guidelines both define the powers of the office and grant it considerable scope for action….
… day-to-day work that includes attendance at sessions of United Nations bodies; consultations with world leaders, government officials, and others; and worldwide travel intended to keep the Secretary-General in touch with the peoples of the Organization’s Member States and informed about the vast array of issues of international concern that are on the Organization’s agenda…
The Secretary-General is also Chair of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), which brings together the Executive Heads of all UN funds, programmes and specialized agencies twice a year in order to further coordination and cooperation in the entire range of substantive and management issues facing the United Nations System.
Frankly, the Secretary-General may be the most important job in the world. So how come most people don’t even know who occupies the post!
Secretary-General António Guterres has served in this position since 2017. In 2021, there was a resolution by the Security Council and he was re-appointed unanimously. His vision statement can be found here.
Ambassadors in the assembly chamber burst into applause as Assembly President Volkan Bozkir announced Guterres’ re-election by “acclamation,” without a vote.
Who is António Guterres?
Born, raised, and educated under the dictatorship, Guterres’ views and ideas were formed from the poverty of the Portuguese countryside he visited during his early years and his later social work in the capital city. He attended the prestigious Instituto Superior Técnico — part of the University of Lisbon — where he studied physics and electrical engineering. Upon graduating in 1971, Guterres went into academia, becoming an assistant professor. However, this didn’t last long, and in 1974 he joined the Socialist party, eventually leaving lectures behind and going into politics full time.
Following the Carnation Revolution, Guterres held positions of leadership within the socialist party, and in 1976, in the first democratic vote following the revolution, he was elected as a socialist MP. It was during his time in parliament that Guterres made a name for himself as an orator, thanks to his fiery speeches and fierce debates.
In 1992, he became Secretary-General of the Socialist Party, a position he held until 2002. Guterres began to “modernize” the party, in a similar fashion to much of the “New Left” across Europe during this time <RWM: Consider reading about the foundations of Marist ideologies in the formation of the New Left>. Additionally, he acted as vice president, and then president, of the umbrella organization the Socialist International.
In 1995, Guterres was elected Prime Minister of Portugal
In 2002, he lost the majority vote.
Since then, he worked his way up through positions at the United Nations.
As Secretary-General, he delivered a report in 2021 entitled “Common Agenda,” where he laid out his vision for the next five years. His summary and a link to the full report can be found here.
Here are quotes from the Secretary-General’s report:
Member States agreed that our challenges are interconnected, across borders and all other divides. These challenges can only be addressed by an equally interconnected response, through reinvigorated multilateralism and the United Nations at the centre of our efforts.
That is why Our Common Agenda is, above all, an agenda of action designed to accelerate the implementation of existing agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals.
It should also include updated governance arrangements to deliver better public goods and usher in a new era of universal social protection, health coverage, education, skills, decent work and housing, as well as universal access to the Internet by 2030 as a basic human right.
Now is the time to end the “infodemic” plaguing our world by defending a common, empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge. The “war on science” must end.
I am calling for a global code of conduct that promotes integrity in public information <RWM: ergo censorship?>.
Now is the time for a stronger, more networked and inclusive multilateral system, anchored within the United Nations. Effective multilateralism depends on an effective United Nations, one able to adapt to global challenges while living up to the purposes and principles of its Charter. For example, I am proposing a new agenda for peace, multi-stakeholder dialogues on outer space and a Global Digital Compact, as well as a Biennial Summit between the members of the Group of 20 and of the Economic and Social Council, the Secretary-General and the heads of the international financial institutions.
These goals, not surprisingly, dove-tail nicely with the World Economic Forum’s vision for the future.
The United Nations has morphed into a global monster.
In the United States, 94% of all international agreements are NOT approved by Congress but instead are signed by the Presidential executive order.
The Authority for U.S. Participation in the Paris Climate Agreement
American Progress, July 2015
In the United States, there are two categories of agreements that are binding under international law: treaties, which require the formal consent of a two-thirds majority of the Senate, and executive agreements, which the president can be authorized to conclude on a variety of grounds. These grounds may include the consent of the Senate to a prior treaty to which the agreement is pursuant, the enactment by Congress of a statute to which the agreement is pursuant, or the president’s independent constitutional authorities.
Despite popular understanding, executive agreements are a well-established means of entering international agreements and account for the overwhelming majority—94 percent—of international agreements in the United States in the modern era. They are also on par with treaties in force and weight under international law, as both can create international legal obligations for the United States.
The Authority for U.S. Participation in the Paris Climate Agreement entered by the United States from 1985 through 2014—illustrates that executive agreements have been used in almost all areas of international law, in matters of both great and minor significance, and throughout both Republican and Democratic administrations and congresses.
The above rationale was used for the Paris Agreement, which was signed by President Obama and never approved by Congress. It is this “agreement” that affirmed Agenda 2030.
The Paris agreement (image from the UN below):
But when is an agreement, not an agreement? When the agreement is a treaty.
The Paris Agreement is a treaty
From the United Nations Climate Change Office.
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016.
When the executive office made the case through the progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress, that the Paris Agreement could be signed by the Executive office with out the 2/3 approval by Congress, they slyly forgot to mention that the UN considers the Paris Agreement a TREATY.
This is the TREATY that President Trump withdrew from and President Biden re-joined.
It is the Paris agreement treaty, with its closely linked Agenda 2030, that gave rise to the “Inflation Reduction Act” that was signed in 2022. This law, labelled as the “Climate Change Bill,” put in place many of the UN’s sustainability goals outlined in Agenda 2030.
So this treaty was both entered into and withdrawn without approval from Congress. Yet the United States Constitution is very clear.
The United States Constitution provides that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur” (Article II, section 2). Treaties are binding agreements between nations and become part of international law. Treaties to which the United States is a party also have the force of federal legislation, forming part of what the Constitution calls ”the supreme Law of the Land.”
The Senate does not ratify treaties. Following consideration by the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Senate either approves or rejects a resolution of ratification. If the resolution passes, then ratification takes place when the instruments of ratification are formally exchanged between the United States and the foreign power(s).
The executive office under both Democratic and Republican control is not following the Constitution.
We all know about the World Health Organization’s IHRs, which could potentially place the WHO in control of public health emergencies (the final draft has not been released yet). We all know that fear and reality that they could be signed into existence by the Executive office, without Congressional oversight or approval.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) “introduced the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act in May, 2022. This legislation would require any convention or agreement resulting from the work of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) intergovernmental negotiating body be deemed a treaty, requiring the advice and consent of a supermajority of the Senate”. This bill has not received Congressional support.
A bill introduced by Rep. Lauren Boebert: H.R.376 – Paris Agreement Constitutional Treaty Act would “prohibit taking any action to carry out the goals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—commonly known as the Paris Agreement—unless the Senate first ratifies the agreement. Further, the bill prohibits the use of any funds to advance the agreement”. Unfortunately, this bill never had Congressional support and never made it out of committee.
The reality is that the USG executive branch is out of control and in breach of the US Constitution on multiple fronts, not the least of which are the role of congress in approving treaties and constitutionally protected free speech rights.
There is a solution to executive overreach.
Congress must step in and re-affirm their right to approve or reject treaties, even those masking as international agreements. The easiest way to do this is by a stand-alone bill or a rider to a bill re-asserting the power of Congress alone to approve or disapprove of all international agreements that meet the criteria of a treaty. Such legislation could be upheld in the courts, if vetoed by President Biden. It is also important for the Supreme Court to reassert the proper separation of powers and to confirm the primacy of both the first and second amendments to the US Constitution.
Furthermore, the unconstitutional assertion that the executive branch can employ international agreements as a work around for a treaty otherwise requiring congressional approval needs to be challenged and clarified by Congress.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
