George Rebane

Mr Steven Frisch is one of, if not the, leading leftwing intellectuals in the northern Sierra.  He earns his keep as CEO of the Sierra Business Council, a cynically named non-profit, progressive NGO that promotes all manner of leftwing policies and causes in this part of California.  SBC also consults to regional government jurisdictions and agencies in their implementation of ‘sustainable development’ as most easily discerned by the recommendations contained in the UN’s Agenda 21 objectives and the initiatives promoted by its derivative ICLEIs across the land.  RR has covered A21 issues for many years and devotes an entire category to it under which are gathered the relevant commentaries and postings.

Mr Frisch has seen fit to visit these pages with some regularity to debate issues with which he does not agree in my commentaries and in the attendant comment streams.  As a liberal and progressive, his approach to debate is primarily to either misrepresent what has been written, or to attack strawmen that he constructs with the standard liberal shibboleth, ‘We know what he really meant.’  The sequel of this post amply illustrates this mode of attack.

In past screeds Mr Frisch has called me ‘unpatriotic’, ‘un-American’, ‘traitor’, ‘racist’, …, and recommended my departure from everywhere that ranges from Nevada County all the way to shores of the USA.  In my turn, I consider the two of us to have been brought up and now live in different universes.  With some assuredness, lavishly documented here over the years, I can state that Mr Frisch knows next to nothing of the areas in which I claim some expertise.  I’m sure he reciprocates that sentiment.

My response to Mr Frisch here is motivated by an extensive comment that he saw fit to post this morning under ‘Scattershots – 12aug19’.  It is reproduced hereunder in its entirety, along with my responses interleaved in italics.

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There is no doubt that Agenda 21 exists, although it is known now as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and it’s (sic) basic ideas can be found here: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/

RR does not purport to have a separate or unique interpretation of A21, and has always cited the original UN sites and documents pertaining its objectives and goals for the world.

No one has ever contended, as George implies that Agenda 21 coming out of the 1992 Rio Summit did not exist; what they have contended is that these goals, which were always and remain now entirely voluntary, are not a UN conspiracy to control the world, reduce national sovereignty, or prescribe any particular action on the part of a national, state or local government. Just like everything else the UN does these goals are developed by the member states, of which the United States is one, and it is up to the individual nation to determine how each one and the extent to which each one will be incorporated into national policy.  (Please re-wordsmith this paragraph, for my meager intellect is no match for the intricacies you posit.  It sounds like something I would like to respond to were my abilities up to the challenge.  Thanks.)

Agenda 21 is not a law, it is not a treaty, and it is not mandatory in any way.

RR has never maintained that A21 is a conspiracy and has argued vehemetly that is is NOT.  It is only our leftwing readers that return with that charge time after time.  Nor have I claimed that A21 is any imperative other than a set of goals and objectives for nations to adopt into their public policies going forward toward one unified world which has been a celebrated UN goal since its 1945 founding.  US jurisdictions do voluntarily (with some political pressures of course) adopt and implement A21 coherent policies, we have pointed this out without any further claims that such actions are somehow submissions to external diktats.  We do it to ourselves.

The case that George makes is that this comprises some form of global governance to which we as a nation are compelled to adhere to, or that each individual as a citizen will be held to in the future, and that is simply patently false.  This claim is a blatant and unabashed lie, oft repeated by Frisch, for which there is no evidence he can cite.  And as such it has so been pointed out to him numerous times without impact – it is an example of ‘We know what he really …’.

The case he and others have consistently made here is that the mere act of developing these goals comprises a commitment to implementing them and that the implementation diminishes sovereignty.  Existentially true on the face of it.

That false narrative is founded on a number of false premises and nativist prejudices.  (For the record, I am an American nativist with appropriately substantiated prejudices.)

The first is long line of opposition in the United States to our involvement in the United Nations and our suspicion of any and all international cooperation, going all the way back to the League of Nations. The opposition argument is that international cooperation creates a form of world governance that eventually the US will be compelled to participate in. This is predicated on a long line of opposition to the UN first widely popularized in the US by the John Birch Society who contented the UN was a part of the international communist conspiracy to control the world.

Here is an example of his horribly faulty logic (ignore the JBS detour, it’s part of the drill).  The history of America’s (now greatly diminished) opposition to one-world globalism has nothing to do with the actual implementation of A21 compliant/coherent public policies (laws, regulations, codes, …), which have accelerated since the 1992 document was finalized by the UN.  Under Bush1 the US became a signatory to A21’s non-binding objectives and plans.  Continuing a public face of opposing globalism while implementing its provisions is a prudent and politic way to proceed.  Neither activities need interfere with the other – they are not connected at the hip.  No secret cabal needs to assemble and meet surreptitiously.

We see the threads of early JBS opposition in much of the narrative on these pages where voluntary UN goals are conflated with legal prescriptions and described as the forerunners of a ‘new world order’, even though the UN Charter clearly states that national governments retain all of their sovereign powers. Apparently even talking to ferners is a part of the conspiracy.  (Talking to ‘ferners’ is only a recently demonstrated conspiracy in the progressive mind.)

Based on this original false narrative is piled the logical fallacy of false equivalency.

There is no ‘conflation’ of anything in these pages save the illustration and checking off the A21 objectives list as another compliant public policy is promoted or put in place by progressives.  It is a well-practiced and prudent approach that needs no conspiracy and can/is carried out in full view of an under-informed public that has no ability to connect the dots (or even knows that the dots exist).  No one needs to make and wave an A21 banner when the next tranche of freedom limiting ‘sustainable development’ diktats are adopted by one of our jurisdictions.

We see that here commonly. Roundabouts? They got ‘em in Europe. Sidewalks? Walkability is discussed in the sustainability goals so it must be a conspiracy. Natural resource planning like NH 2020…it is mentioned in A21 so it must be the same. Equity in any form…well we should be able to live with people who we feel culturally attuned to and even discussing equity is forcing me to live with people whose culture I may not share. Oh..My..God…higher density housing as a means of bringing people into a clean safe affordable homes…that is ‘stack and pack’ Agenda 21.

The introduction of ‘roundabouts’ into this discussion is both specious and spurious that indicates the lack of substantive arguments against how A21 has been represented in these pages.  RR commentaries have never raised such detailed traffic control measures.  However, there is no denying that A21 calls for a human future in high density housing (‘stack and pack’), along with great restrictions on land use across our continent as illustrated on numerous maps drawn to A21 specifications.  And what is undeniable to all, who have sufficient years of experience, memory, and are studied, is the steady deterioration over the years of public accessibility to public lands and private properties under cited strictures that again parallel A21.  It is what it is, and the Steven Frisches of the land are the foot soldiers promoting such policies.

Of course all of these things are not prescribed by the UN, some of them are simply local communities and governments doing their normal planning and seeking efficiencies that they are empowered to do by our national and state constitutions.  No one has argued that these strictures are not due to ‘normal planning and seeking efficiencies’, but RR has pointed out when the proponents argue their case for such by citing new (A21 compliant) international norms and protocols adopted by other countries, while representing the US as lacking and behind the more enlightened nations of the world.

If Grass Valley is looking at roundabouts it is not doing it to comply with the UN A21 statement, it is seeking a cheaper, safer, more efficient way to move traffic through intersections…which roundabouts are.  Oh please, enough about A21 roundabouts in Nevada County.

If Nevada County seeks to measure and quantify its Greenhouse Gas Emissions because the state of California has set a target for reductions by a specific date, and measurement is part of the process to determine success, the mere fact that the tool the state has adapted and approved to help it make those measurements was once developed by a third party (ICLEI) is irrelevant; that tool was tested and adopted by our sovereign state government.

And that, of course, is the whole point of RR drawing parallels between A21/ICLEI prescriptions and their implementation by local and state governments, most visibly led by our own California that is now permanently in the bag for progressives and the globalist Left.  If it walks like a … etc.

If local communities are zoning land for affordable housing it is not because A21 points out the benefits of housing density to reduce price and reduce impacts, it is because the state of California has set goals for affordable housing, which the police powers in its constitution give it every right to do, and did going back to the ratification of that constitution in 1879, more than 100 years before the Rio Summit.  Again, a specious defense of a hill not attacked.  See above response.

The conspiracy theory George is pushing in not whether Agenda 21 or the UN sustainability goals exist; it is that its existence is a threat to American sovereignty.

Again, never a claim of a conspiracy, however, I maintain a strong belief with supportive arguments over the years that progress toward A21 ‘sustainability goals’ (most recently advanced under the introduction of the Green New Deal) is definitely and a fortiori “a threat to American sovereignty.”  This is an argument of socio-political ideology (see also my published credo, glossary, and Rebane Doctrine entries) which is defined in meticulous detail in this weblog, and for which counters have been consistently invited and ignored.

It is a part of George's broader objection to government and the powers of government to do exactly what we the people have empowered it to do. It is part of his failure to understand that when government acts in a way that he would not approve of that does not mean the action is automatically illegitimate, it means he is part of a society bound together by laws and customs and processes that becoming a citizen made him a party to.

I have no ‘broad objection to government’ nor its constitutional powers, nor do I claim that its actions which counter my ideological preferences are “automatically illegitimate”.  That is either another one of Frisch’s gross deficiencies in the art of debate, or simply a gratuitous lie for those who take him at his word instead of demanding a citation or checking the record.

Yes, I wish George held himself to the same standards he seeks to hold other immigrants too. After all he entered the US as a child as part of a UN refugee resettlement program.  And what, pray, are these standards that I exclusively reserve for myself as an immigrant?  My standards for immigration have long been published in these pages, along with the standards that the US government placed on us immigrants in 1949. I have an idea George, if you don't like it go the hell back to Estonia, or wherever the hell you came from. (I am of course just kidding, America is about welcoming the displaced, dispossessed and persecuted.)  That’s a relief; thank you.

Posted by: Steven Frisch | 14 August 2019 at 08:25 AM

[update] As further illustration of the futility of dealing with irretrievable morons, I invite you to examine the comments of a progressive sackhead who calls himself Jig Wiggly (and who correctly dares not connect his identity with the demonstration of his intellect).  Were not their thoughts and words indelibly recorded in these pages, no one would believe that such social values and lines of reasoning could survive in 21^st century America.  But survive and thrive they do.  And in Washington our representatives, who probably have little idea of the depth of such intellectual depravity alive and well in the hustings, continue to harbor thoughts that there might remain some common ground to reunite us as a nation.  At this stage of the game, as I have reported and cited, there is absolutely no evidence of that possibility remaining in the land.  We are all biding our time.