http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/19991213_xex_the_40year_g.shtml
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
PANIC IN THE YEAR ZERO
The 40-year gun grab
'60s disarmament plan
still going strong, say U.N. critics
By Stephan Archer
and Sarah Foster
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
For nearly 40 years, a few groups on the political right
have sounded the alarm over a seemingly absurd
scenario -- that gun control legislation was actually a
key part of a plan for total national disarmament and the
eventual replacement of United States troops by a
United Nations army as part of the law enforcement arm
of a one-world government.
The idea that such an improbable plan could exist, if
only on paper -- or even more improbable, that people
were working behind the scenes to implement it - has
always been dismissed by the mainstream media and
government officials as a paranoid, right-wing delusion.
So where exactly does the truth lie in this decades-old
controversy - the cause of great alarm for some, and for
others, an occasion to heap ridicule and contempt?
At the center of this issue is a 20-page State
Department pamphlet published in 1961, titled
"Freedom From War: The United States Program for
General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful
World" - Department of State Publication 7277 ( http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/arms/freedom_war.html ). The
program outlined was presented by President Kennedy
to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 25, 1961, and
offered "specific objectives toward which nations should
direct their efforts." These included:
* The disbanding of all national armed forces and the
prohibition of their re-establishment in any form
whatsoever other than those required to preserve
internal order and for contributions to a United Nations
Peace Force.
* The elimination from national arsenals of all
armaments, including all weapons of mass destruction
and the means for their delivery, other than those
required for a United Nations Peace Force and for
maintaining order.
The disarmament process would take place in three
stages:
* Stage I: Measures that would "significantly reduce" the
capabilities of nations to wage war.
An International Disarmament Organization would be
created within the United Nations; an inspection
infrastructure would be established with observation
posts set up at ports, highways, airbases and railway
centers to monitor troop movements and other military
activities; and -- most important -- States would
develop arrangements for establishment of a U.N.
Peace Force and U.N. peace observation groups would
be "staffed with a standing cadre of observers who
could be dispatched to investigate any situation which
might constitute a threat to or breach of the peace."
"A Commission of Experts would be established to
report on the feasibility and means for the verified
reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons
stockpiles."
"Arms and armed forces would be reduced: The armed
forces of the United States and the Soviet Union would
be limited to 2.1 million men."
* Stage II: Further reductions in the armed forces,
armaments, and military establishments of states would
be made, including strategic nuclear weapons delivery
vehicles and countering weapons; a permanent
international peace force would be established within the
United Nations;
"The dismantling or conversion to peaceful uses of
certain military bases and facilities wherever located"
would continue;
The International Disarmament Organization would be
strengthened and enlarged to enable it to verify the
steps taken in Stage II and to determine the
transition to Stage III.
* Stage III: "During the third stage, the states of the
world ... would take final steps toward the goal of a
world in which:
"States would retain only those forces, non-nuclear
armaments, and establishments required for the purpose
of maintaining order; they would also provide support
and provide agreed manpower for a U.N. PeaceForce.
"The manufacturing of armaments would be prohibited
except for those agreed types and quantities to be used
by the U.N. Peace Force and those required to maintain
internal order. All other armaments would be
destroyed or converted to peaceful purposes.
"The peace-keeping capabilities of the United Nations
would be sufficiently strong and the obligations of all
states under such arrangements sufficiently far-reaching
as to assure peace and the just settlement of differences
in a disarmed world."
Shortly after his address, President Kennedy signed
Public Law 87-297 (H.R. 9118) that created the United
States Arms Control Agency, a separate organization
operating outside the jurisdiction of any department and
charged with overseeing the disarmament
agenda.According to the statute creating the agency, the
terms "arms control" and "disarmament" mean "the
identification, verification, inspection, limitation, control,
reduction, or elimination, of armed forces and
armaments of all kinds under international
agreement to establish an effective system of
international control.... "
On April 18, 1962, the new Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency carried the ideas in Freedom
From War another step -- offering a draft of a treaty
entitled, "Blueprint for the Peace Race: Outline of Basic
Provisions of a Treaty on General and Complete
Disarmament in a Peaceful World," which reiterated the
provisions of "Freedom from War." When word of
Document 7277 got around, the State Department was
deluged with requests, and after the supply was quickly
depleted, the U.S. Government Printing Office didn't
print any more copies. In response to the demand, the
ultraconservative John Birch Society took on the task of
keeping the nation supplied with facsimile copies --
exact replicas of the original, right down to its bright
blue cover. The document is also on the State
Department's website (http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/arms/freedom_war.html ) in the archives section.
"This document is one of the most revolutionary and
subversive proposals ever put foreword by any
government official," wrote William Jasper, senior editor
of the Birch Society's magazine, The New American, in
the Nov. 22 edition. "Incredibly, the program originally
introduced in this document became -- and remains -
official U.S. policy."
Jasper adds, "And since no provision is made for an
exemption of arms owned by private citizens (and since
the U.N, itself is hardly sympathetic to private gun
ownership), it is reasonable to assume that private arms
are intended for destruction under the term."
Tom Mason, a Portland, Ore. Attorney who lobbies for
the National Rifle Association in the international arena,
corroborates at least part of Jasper's contention - that
gun control is connected to the disarmament movement.
"In the United Nations, the movement against guns
started in 1995 with two almost simultaneous efforts,"
said Mason. "To this day it remains a two-pronged
approach -- a dynamic between two centers of action:
one centered in Vienna, one in New York City."
Vienna is home to the Commission on Crime Prevention
and Criminal Justice -- which approaches gun control as
part of an effort against international crime.
"Half the action is in Vienna, where the focus is on crime
prevention," said Mason. "The other is in New York
and the Department of Disarmament Affairs at the
United Nations headquarters."
David Patterson, deputy historian at the State
Department, downplayed the possible significance of
Freedom From War and the Blueprint for the Peace
Race -- identifying them as "part of the propaganda
war."
"It's a recurring issue which conservative groups would
put forward as an example of how we were willing to
capitulate to the Soviet Union during the Cold War --
disarm unilaterally," Patterson said. "Of course, none of
this was true, but it's still going the rounds of right-wing
publications. We get these calls."
Asked about the draft treaty Blueprint for the Peace
Race, Patterson answered, "It was submitted to the
U.N. and Kennedy had talked about it in more general
terms in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in
1961. So it was a blueprint. It was an outline of what
the United States was prepared to do if we could come
to an agreement with the other parties, particularly the
Soviet Union, on the issue of general and complete
disarmament."
"Of course," he continued, "It was pie in the sky,
because there wereso many conditions put on the
proposal that the Soviet Union would never accept it.
And if they had accepted it they would have had to
open up their society and be prepared to have all kinds
of comprehensive inspections, which at the time they
were totally unprepared to do."
"It [the proposal] met a quick death -- nothing
happened," said Patterson, who added that as far as he
knew it was never implemented.
"I think that it's far-fetched to say that the current efforts
at gun control in the United Nations go back to 1961.
Unless you can show some kind of linkage over the past
almost 40 years between those two issues [gun control
and disarmament] it would be hard to demonstrate."
William Nary, who was with the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency from 1963 until his retirement in
1994 and historian for the agency for 20 years,
described the proposal as "visionary" and said it had
"not technically" been withdrawn. Total disarmament, he
said, meant "exactly what the plan says: Only the police
and armed forces would have arms."
"But I know we were never going after hunters or
sportsmen - despite what the plan says," he added.
"It was advocated in part because the Russians had
proposed it. They had proposed a plan calling for
general and complete disarmament - but radical
disarmament," Nary said. "It seems to me it [the
proposal] was idealistic and visionary, and I don't know
who would have expected that we would achieve it. But
it was a bit of a plan, and many of those measures have
been adopted. Specifically, test ban agreements,
reductions in manpower of the armed forces, controls
on the transfer of armaments -- treaties like SALT I and
II and START -- control of nuclear weapons systems
and large conventional forces."
Asked whether, under the plan, a private citizen would
be allowed to own a gun, Nary recalled: "That issue
came up, and I know that our leadership made it clear
to the Congress that we were not trying to disarm
private citizens in that sense -- not just the precise
wording of the plan. I know that our leadership testified
to the Congress that we weren't about to completely do
in the National Rifle Association. That wasn't part of the
design -- at least we interpreted it as not to include
disarming the citizens or hunters." Natalie Goldring is
director of the newly-established Program on General
Disarmament at the University of Maryland, a founder
of the International Action Network on Small Arms ( http://www.iansa.org/ ), and
director of the Security and Disarmament Program at
the National Center for Economics and Security
Alternatives ( http://www.ncesa.org ), a non-governmental organization. This last,
she says, is useful when she wishes "to take off my
academic hat" and work on issues through IANSA as a
representative of a non-governmental organization.
WorldNetDaily documented recently how such groups
are lobbying hard at the United Nations - and being
heard - in their efforts to bring about international gun
control.
Goldring is familiar with Kennedy's Blueprint for the
Peace Race and Freedom from War proposals, and
told WorldNetDaily how far the proposals had come
toward being implemented.
According to Goldring, the term "general disarmament,"
as used in U.N. circles and by non-governmental
groups, does indeed encompass smallarms - including
rifles, shotguns and handguns.
"The idea is that we're opening the discussion," she said,
explaining the current emphasis at the United Nations on
disarmament and its focus on light weapons and small
arms -- which she sees as a revival of interest, rather
than a completely new issue.
"There hasn't been any public discussion on this in 35
years -- the last hearings were in the 1960s," she
explained. "I think that during the Kennedy
administration you had a lot of actual research being
done on broader disarmament programs. Some of that
was purely political in nature and wasn't very practical
even then -- and it was a fairly idealistic time. But a lot
of the principles that were enunciated are still relevant
today."
"People talked about three stages of disarmament a lot
in the early '60s, but in the decades since then we've
done much of Stage One, bits of Stage Two, and
maybe a little bit of Stage Three," she said. For
example, "We've got a non-proliferation treaty. We
more or less have a comprehensive test ban. We've got
a treaty banning national missile defense. Since that time
we've had a significant buildup of strategic weapons, but
we've also had a dismantling and a destruction of a great
number of nuclear weapons. So a lot of things have
happened that are on the positive side of the measure."
Other parts of the program required by Stage II in the
plan have also been realized, Goldring said, notably the
dismantling of certain military bases, the reduction of
military forces and the buildup of the U.N.
peace-keeping forces -- though as she sees it, the
balance between U.S. military infrastructure and force
levels is "completely skewed."
Addressing the issue of base closures, "We need to do
more," she said. Specifically, "at least one and probably
several more rounds of base closures. They're still
implementing the last round of base closures, but if they
don't keep going, you'll have a very inefficient set-up,
because a disproportionate percent of the defense
budget will go towards facilities and infrastructure."
"That's happening now," she continued, "But we're
getting the annual Army whining about how they don't
have enough people. They're telling Congress the units
aren't ready to go to war -- and it turns out that many of
the people in those units are currently on peacekeeping
missions -- it's not as though they've left the military."
"So there has been a reduction in military forces -- but
not to my mind as much as needs to," Goldring said. [/quote]
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
[This message has been edited by DC (edited December 13, 1999).]
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
PANIC IN THE YEAR ZERO
The 40-year gun grab
'60s disarmament plan
still going strong, say U.N. critics
By Stephan Archer
and Sarah Foster
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
For nearly 40 years, a few groups on the political right
have sounded the alarm over a seemingly absurd
scenario -- that gun control legislation was actually a
key part of a plan for total national disarmament and the
eventual replacement of United States troops by a
United Nations army as part of the law enforcement arm
of a one-world government.
The idea that such an improbable plan could exist, if
only on paper -- or even more improbable, that people
were working behind the scenes to implement it - has
always been dismissed by the mainstream media and
government officials as a paranoid, right-wing delusion.
So where exactly does the truth lie in this decades-old
controversy - the cause of great alarm for some, and for
others, an occasion to heap ridicule and contempt?
At the center of this issue is a 20-page State
Department pamphlet published in 1961, titled
"Freedom From War: The United States Program for
General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful
World" - Department of State Publication 7277 ( http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/arms/freedom_war.html ). The
program outlined was presented by President Kennedy
to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 25, 1961, and
offered "specific objectives toward which nations should
direct their efforts." These included:
* The disbanding of all national armed forces and the
prohibition of their re-establishment in any form
whatsoever other than those required to preserve
internal order and for contributions to a United Nations
Peace Force.
* The elimination from national arsenals of all
armaments, including all weapons of mass destruction
and the means for their delivery, other than those
required for a United Nations Peace Force and for
maintaining order.
The disarmament process would take place in three
stages:
* Stage I: Measures that would "significantly reduce" the
capabilities of nations to wage war.
An International Disarmament Organization would be
created within the United Nations; an inspection
infrastructure would be established with observation
posts set up at ports, highways, airbases and railway
centers to monitor troop movements and other military
activities; and -- most important -- States would
develop arrangements for establishment of a U.N.
Peace Force and U.N. peace observation groups would
be "staffed with a standing cadre of observers who
could be dispatched to investigate any situation which
might constitute a threat to or breach of the peace."
"A Commission of Experts would be established to
report on the feasibility and means for the verified
reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons
stockpiles."
"Arms and armed forces would be reduced: The armed
forces of the United States and the Soviet Union would
be limited to 2.1 million men."
* Stage II: Further reductions in the armed forces,
armaments, and military establishments of states would
be made, including strategic nuclear weapons delivery
vehicles and countering weapons; a permanent
international peace force would be established within the
United Nations;
"The dismantling or conversion to peaceful uses of
certain military bases and facilities wherever located"
would continue;
The International Disarmament Organization would be
strengthened and enlarged to enable it to verify the
steps taken in Stage II and to determine the
transition to Stage III.
* Stage III: "During the third stage, the states of the
world ... would take final steps toward the goal of a
world in which:
"States would retain only those forces, non-nuclear
armaments, and establishments required for the purpose
of maintaining order; they would also provide support
and provide agreed manpower for a U.N. PeaceForce.
"The manufacturing of armaments would be prohibited
except for those agreed types and quantities to be used
by the U.N. Peace Force and those required to maintain
internal order. All other armaments would be
destroyed or converted to peaceful purposes.
"The peace-keeping capabilities of the United Nations
would be sufficiently strong and the obligations of all
states under such arrangements sufficiently far-reaching
as to assure peace and the just settlement of differences
in a disarmed world."
Shortly after his address, President Kennedy signed
Public Law 87-297 (H.R. 9118) that created the United
States Arms Control Agency, a separate organization
operating outside the jurisdiction of any department and
charged with overseeing the disarmament
agenda.According to the statute creating the agency, the
terms "arms control" and "disarmament" mean "the
identification, verification, inspection, limitation, control,
reduction, or elimination, of armed forces and
armaments of all kinds under international
agreement to establish an effective system of
international control.... "
On April 18, 1962, the new Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency carried the ideas in Freedom
From War another step -- offering a draft of a treaty
entitled, "Blueprint for the Peace Race: Outline of Basic
Provisions of a Treaty on General and Complete
Disarmament in a Peaceful World," which reiterated the
provisions of "Freedom from War." When word of
Document 7277 got around, the State Department was
deluged with requests, and after the supply was quickly
depleted, the U.S. Government Printing Office didn't
print any more copies. In response to the demand, the
ultraconservative John Birch Society took on the task of
keeping the nation supplied with facsimile copies --
exact replicas of the original, right down to its bright
blue cover. The document is also on the State
Department's website (http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/arms/freedom_war.html ) in the archives section.
"This document is one of the most revolutionary and
subversive proposals ever put foreword by any
government official," wrote William Jasper, senior editor
of the Birch Society's magazine, The New American, in
the Nov. 22 edition. "Incredibly, the program originally
introduced in this document became -- and remains -
official U.S. policy."
Jasper adds, "And since no provision is made for an
exemption of arms owned by private citizens (and since
the U.N, itself is hardly sympathetic to private gun
ownership), it is reasonable to assume that private arms
are intended for destruction under the term."
Tom Mason, a Portland, Ore. Attorney who lobbies for
the National Rifle Association in the international arena,
corroborates at least part of Jasper's contention - that
gun control is connected to the disarmament movement.
"In the United Nations, the movement against guns
started in 1995 with two almost simultaneous efforts,"
said Mason. "To this day it remains a two-pronged
approach -- a dynamic between two centers of action:
one centered in Vienna, one in New York City."
Vienna is home to the Commission on Crime Prevention
and Criminal Justice -- which approaches gun control as
part of an effort against international crime.
"Half the action is in Vienna, where the focus is on crime
prevention," said Mason. "The other is in New York
and the Department of Disarmament Affairs at the
United Nations headquarters."
David Patterson, deputy historian at the State
Department, downplayed the possible significance of
Freedom From War and the Blueprint for the Peace
Race -- identifying them as "part of the propaganda
war."
"It's a recurring issue which conservative groups would
put forward as an example of how we were willing to
capitulate to the Soviet Union during the Cold War --
disarm unilaterally," Patterson said. "Of course, none of
this was true, but it's still going the rounds of right-wing
publications. We get these calls."
Asked about the draft treaty Blueprint for the Peace
Race, Patterson answered, "It was submitted to the
U.N. and Kennedy had talked about it in more general
terms in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in
1961. So it was a blueprint. It was an outline of what
the United States was prepared to do if we could come
to an agreement with the other parties, particularly the
Soviet Union, on the issue of general and complete
disarmament."
"Of course," he continued, "It was pie in the sky,
because there wereso many conditions put on the
proposal that the Soviet Union would never accept it.
And if they had accepted it they would have had to
open up their society and be prepared to have all kinds
of comprehensive inspections, which at the time they
were totally unprepared to do."
"It [the proposal] met a quick death -- nothing
happened," said Patterson, who added that as far as he
knew it was never implemented.
"I think that it's far-fetched to say that the current efforts
at gun control in the United Nations go back to 1961.
Unless you can show some kind of linkage over the past
almost 40 years between those two issues [gun control
and disarmament] it would be hard to demonstrate."
William Nary, who was with the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency from 1963 until his retirement in
1994 and historian for the agency for 20 years,
described the proposal as "visionary" and said it had
"not technically" been withdrawn. Total disarmament, he
said, meant "exactly what the plan says: Only the police
and armed forces would have arms."
"But I know we were never going after hunters or
sportsmen - despite what the plan says," he added.
"It was advocated in part because the Russians had
proposed it. They had proposed a plan calling for
general and complete disarmament - but radical
disarmament," Nary said. "It seems to me it [the
proposal] was idealistic and visionary, and I don't know
who would have expected that we would achieve it. But
it was a bit of a plan, and many of those measures have
been adopted. Specifically, test ban agreements,
reductions in manpower of the armed forces, controls
on the transfer of armaments -- treaties like SALT I and
II and START -- control of nuclear weapons systems
and large conventional forces."
Asked whether, under the plan, a private citizen would
be allowed to own a gun, Nary recalled: "That issue
came up, and I know that our leadership made it clear
to the Congress that we were not trying to disarm
private citizens in that sense -- not just the precise
wording of the plan. I know that our leadership testified
to the Congress that we weren't about to completely do
in the National Rifle Association. That wasn't part of the
design -- at least we interpreted it as not to include
disarming the citizens or hunters." Natalie Goldring is
director of the newly-established Program on General
Disarmament at the University of Maryland, a founder
of the International Action Network on Small Arms ( http://www.iansa.org/ ), and
director of the Security and Disarmament Program at
the National Center for Economics and Security
Alternatives ( http://www.ncesa.org ), a non-governmental organization. This last,
she says, is useful when she wishes "to take off my
academic hat" and work on issues through IANSA as a
representative of a non-governmental organization.
WorldNetDaily documented recently how such groups
are lobbying hard at the United Nations - and being
heard - in their efforts to bring about international gun
control.
Goldring is familiar with Kennedy's Blueprint for the
Peace Race and Freedom from War proposals, and
told WorldNetDaily how far the proposals had come
toward being implemented.
According to Goldring, the term "general disarmament,"
as used in U.N. circles and by non-governmental
groups, does indeed encompass smallarms - including
rifles, shotguns and handguns.
"The idea is that we're opening the discussion," she said,
explaining the current emphasis at the United Nations on
disarmament and its focus on light weapons and small
arms -- which she sees as a revival of interest, rather
than a completely new issue.
"There hasn't been any public discussion on this in 35
years -- the last hearings were in the 1960s," she
explained. "I think that during the Kennedy
administration you had a lot of actual research being
done on broader disarmament programs. Some of that
was purely political in nature and wasn't very practical
even then -- and it was a fairly idealistic time. But a lot
of the principles that were enunciated are still relevant
today."
"People talked about three stages of disarmament a lot
in the early '60s, but in the decades since then we've
done much of Stage One, bits of Stage Two, and
maybe a little bit of Stage Three," she said. For
example, "We've got a non-proliferation treaty. We
more or less have a comprehensive test ban. We've got
a treaty banning national missile defense. Since that time
we've had a significant buildup of strategic weapons, but
we've also had a dismantling and a destruction of a great
number of nuclear weapons. So a lot of things have
happened that are on the positive side of the measure."
Other parts of the program required by Stage II in the
plan have also been realized, Goldring said, notably the
dismantling of certain military bases, the reduction of
military forces and the buildup of the U.N.
peace-keeping forces -- though as she sees it, the
balance between U.S. military infrastructure and force
levels is "completely skewed."
Addressing the issue of base closures, "We need to do
more," she said. Specifically, "at least one and probably
several more rounds of base closures. They're still
implementing the last round of base closures, but if they
don't keep going, you'll have a very inefficient set-up,
because a disproportionate percent of the defense
budget will go towards facilities and infrastructure."
"That's happening now," she continued, "But we're
getting the annual Army whining about how they don't
have enough people. They're telling Congress the units
aren't ready to go to war -- and it turns out that many of
the people in those units are currently on peacekeeping
missions -- it's not as though they've left the military."
"So there has been a reduction in military forces -- but
not to my mind as much as needs to," Goldring said. [/quote]
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
[This message has been edited by DC (edited December 13, 1999).]