Another 2007 article from Brazilian site.
The Hidden Face of the UN
Interview by Michel Schooyans, Professor Emeritus of the University of Louvain Ano II Mattino della Domenica
By Luca Fiore
1. During the Congress on Globalisation, Economy and the Family, held in Rome from 27 to 30 November 2000 by the Pontifical Council for the Family, Mr. exposed the concept of globalisation according to the UN. This conception is also analysed at length in your most recent book, The Hidden Face of the UN, published by Sarment/Fayard, Paris, 2001. For you, this conception tends to consider that the environment has more value than the person. What it is? What is your concern?
Globalisation, Mondialisation: two terms that entered everyday language; two concepts that have become the subject of debates and discussions involving the future of world society. These terms mean, first of all, that human societies have become interdependent: for example, a devaluation of the Japanese yen has repercussions throughout the world economy. This also means that world societies are integrated: travel and the media teach men to know themselves better; scientific information is widely disseminated and discussed in virtual forums open 24 hours a day. In principle, we should obviously be happy with this evolution and it is clear that it demands new instruments for conducting international relations.
Traditionally, these international relations are organised based on two models. On the one hand, a model embodied today by the USA. Globalism is conceived there from the hegemonic project of the dominant nation, whose objective is to impose a neoliberal organisation of the world. This project initially has a strong economic connotation: its objective is the globalisation of the market; but it also obviously involves a desire to manage the world politically. It cannot be realised except with the connivance of rich nations. The other model is the heir of socialist internationalism and, if it insists on the necessary economic reforms, it puts a political objective in the foreground: limiting the sovereignty of states and subjecting them to the control of a world political power. The method of achieving this end is no longer revolutionary; in the spirit of Gramsci.
When it speaks of globalisation, the UN incorporates the meanings of that word as we have come to remember. But it takes advantage of the positive image associated with the term to give it a new meaning. Globalisation is interpreted in the light of a new vision of the world and of man's place in the world. This "holistic" view considers that the world constitutes a whole endowed with greater reality and value than the parts that compose it. In this whole, the emergence of man is but an avatar of the evolution of matter.
2. You also expressed serious reservations about the Earth Charter, a UN document in preparation, to be published shortly. You even claim that in him we find the influence of the New Age. What are the connections between the New Age and this text?
This is a draft document in which one of the drafters is none other than Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev himself. What does this document emphasise? Being only the product of a material evolution, man must bow to the imperatives of the environment, of Nature, of ecology. The influence of the philosopher Thomas S. Khun, one of the great inspirers of New Age, is evident here and confirmed in Marilyn Ferguson's books on the same current. Man must accept that he is no longer the centre of the world. According to this reading of nature and man, the "natural law" is no longer that which is inscribed in the intelligence and heart of man; it is the relentless and violent law that nature imposes on man. The tanned New Age ecologists even present man as a predator, and similar to all predator populations.
3. How does this Earth Charter relate to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 bows to a truth that is imposed on everyone. Recognises that all men have the right to life; who are born free and equal in dignity; who are free to associate, to assign themselves a political regime of their free choice, to organise themselves in trade unions, to create a family, to adhere to a religion, etc. All men have the right to participate in life; politics and economic life, since everyone has something unique to offer to other men. All the totalitarianisms of the 20th century were born out of contempt for these inalienable rights. To promote these rights throughout the world is to stand in the way of systems that reduce man to nothing more than a cog of the state, an instrument of the Party, a specimen of a certain race.
The Earth Charter abandons and even combats Judaeo-Christian and Roman anthropocentrism, reinforced by the Renaissance, and which was brought to its most incandescent point in the 1948 Declaration, and should even supplant the Decalogue itself, modesty aside!
4. You went so far as to speak of the UN project to progressively establish a "world super-government" that will supersede intermediate bodies, nations, and will impose a single mindset, through control of information, health, trade, of politics and law. Wouldn't that be a very George Orwell picture of the future?
The ecological argument developed in the Earth Charter is, in reality, an ideological device to camouflage something more serious: we are entering a new cultural revolution. Indeed, the UN is in the process of formulating a new conception of law. This conception is more Anglo-Saxon than Latin. The founding truths of the UN, referring to the centrality of man in the world, are little by little deactivated. According to this conception, no truth about man is imposed on all men: to each his own opinion. The rights of man are no longer recognised as truths; they are the object of procedures, of consensual decisions. We negotiated and at the end of a pragmatic procedure, we decided, for example, that respect for life is imposed in certain cases but not in others, that a certain genetic manipulation justifies the sacrifice of embryos, that euthanasia must be liberalised, that homosexual unions have the same right as the family, etc. Hence, the so-called "new human rights" are born, always renegotiable according to the interests of those who can make their will prevail.
To make these "new rights" palatable and, above all, the conception of law that underlies them, two axes of action must be privileged. Sovereign nations must first be weakened, as they are usually the first to protect the inalienable rights of their citizens. Then, in international assemblies, it is necessary to obtain the greatest possible consensus, resorting if necessary to corruption, blackmail or threats. Once reached, consensus can be invoked to bring about the adoption of international conventions that acquire the force of law in the states that have ratified them. This type of globalisation, supported by a purely positivist conception of law, justifies the most intense apprehensions.
5. The title of your latest book is The Hidden Face of the UN: what face is that, and who is hiding behind it?
In dossiers as complex as that of globalisation according to the UN, the lack of transparency clearly makes direct proof and mathematical demonstration difficult. The recent experience, in France, of malpractices and other irregularities confirms that no organisation is prepared to recognise that it is corroded by the action of confraternities, by the presence within it of "fraternities" and "networks". However, such realities exist without a shadow of a doubt. We know them not only by their actions, but also by what some of their members say about them publicly, for example on television. Of course, there are always people ready to fervently deny evidence, even when they don't even know where to find the dossiers.
In reality, the UN ideology of globalisation is shaped in free-examiner, agnostic, utilitarian and hedonistic references. If we patiently review recent UN meetings on issues as diverse as health, population, environment, habitat, world economy, information, education - to name but a few examples - we perceive a remarkable community of inspiration' and an equally remarkable convergence of goals. Of course, at the instigation of the sovereign nations that are its members, the UN should carry out an internal audit, failing which it will increasingly give the impression of being under the influence of a technocratic mafia. I have the advantage over others of arriving at this conclusion after several years of research. However, if you ask me if I saw the "invisible hand" with my own eyes, I must answer that I saw only his shadow. But in case, this is enough.