Bugs And The Future Of Meat

Raising insects for food is a growing business. Could they one day replace beef, chicken, and pork on plates everywhere?

Robert Downey Jr. wants you to eat insects. He said as much in early 2021 during a virtual appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” The Iron Man actor is such a big fan that the investment company he started pledged more than $220 million in funding for a French mealworm product company called Ynsect.

But Downey isn’t in it for the money. He says that eating bugs, or entomophagy, might just be the alternative to beef, pork, chicken, and seafood that we need to help protect the environment.

His enthusiasm is based on an idea that has the attention of several researchers, conservationists, and international agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. And yes, money talks, too. Market researchers expect the global edible bug market to grow nearly 30% over the next five years, reaching $3 billion by 2027.

So, what’s all the buzz about? The gist of it is this: Raising land animals that give us much of our protein contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. Plant-based foods, such as nuts, legumes, grains, and vegetables, also contain protein and have a much lower environmental footprint than meat, but they might not satisfy everyone’s tastes.

Insect farming could be a more sustainable solution to help meet the world’s growing nutritional needs.

“There are huge environmental benefits,” says Arnold van Huis, a tropical entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the first author on the FAO’s seminal 2013 report on edible insects. When compared to other animal protein sources, van Huis says, farmed insects “emit less greenhouse gases, they need less land, and they need less water.”

So, insects could be well-positioned to help feed the world, while having a smaller impact on the planet. And, the best part—according to proponents—they’re tasty! 

What's so Great About Protein?

Proteins are probably best known for their role in building muscle. But they play critical roles virtually everywhere in our bodies, from our skin to our brains. They spur important reactions in the body, provide structure, and ferry other molecules to their destinations.

Our bodies make proteins from organic compounds called amino acids. Amino acids contain two functional groups —an amino group (-NH2) and a carboxyl group (-COOH)—and a unique side group. Of the 20 amino acids we need to stay healthy, our bodies can produce 11. To get the other nine essential amino acids, as they’re called, we need help from our diets. Meats, including beef, fish, and poultry, supply us with all nine essential amino acids. We can also get them from nuts, legumes, grains, and vegetables, but you have to mix and match these sources to get all nine.

Single food choices, such as individual meats, that give us all nine essential amino acids are called complete proteins. Many insects also fall into this category.

Putting Bugs on the Menu

Most people who have grown up in the United States, Canada, or the European Union tend to shun insects.

“We’re fairly eco-phobic,” says Valerie Stull, an environmental health scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describing a common Western view. “We build our houses, and we put screens on our windows, and we keep everything closed. And whenever there’s like an insect in our house, we want to kill it or get rid of it.”

To many Americans, Canadians, and Europeans, bugs such as roaches and fleas are a sign of uncleanliness.

But most insects don’t signal dirt and disease. There are more than 1 million species of insects that have been discovered in the world—scientists think there could be as many as 10 million. About 1,900 have been documented as edible, according to FAO reports, and an estimated 2 billion people in 130 countries eat insects, from locusts in Thailand to maguey worms in Mexico.

One way to change our relationship with insects, Stull says, is to interact with beneficial insects that we view more positively. Bees for example, are well-liked, as they pollinate our food and give us honey.

The next step is to re-think our ideas about what constitutes food.

“We all grew up with a certain idea of what is food and what’s not, but that idea is not the same around the world,” Stull says.

Stull remembers the first time she ate insects, while on a family trip to Costa Rica as a young teenager.

“We were eating at a fancy restaurant, and they served us citrus ants,” Stull says. “I remember being very nervous and squeamish about trying these, but then when I actually did, I was really surprised, because they tasted like food.”

We’ve seen such attitude changes throughout history. Lobsters, for example, were once plentiful and inexpensive, but are now pricey delicacies in a lot of places. Ironically, from a taxonomic standpoint, lobsters are pretty much giant insects of the ocean. Crustaceans and insects are both in the arthropod phylum.

“Why do we think a lobster is good food, but a cricket is bad?” Stull says.

From Pests to Food

Insects can severely damage agricultural crops, causing devastating losses for farmers. Humans have been battling insect pests as far back as the ancient Sumerian civilization some 4,500 years ago. The Sumerians used elemental sulfur as a pesticide, but in the last century, synthetic pesticides have largely taken over.

There are serious side effects from using pesticides to manage insects that feed on crops—a top one being the collateral damage to other insects. Neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides that attack insects’ nervous systems, were developed to control insects like the corn rootworm, which causes an estimated $1 billion in crop losses every year in the United States. But scientists are increasingly finding that neonicotinoids also hurt beneficial insects such as pollinating bees.

A win-win solution for controlling insects that damage crops might simply be to harvest and eat them. In fact, that was what happened in Thailand with the Bombay locust during the 1960s and 1970s. The locusts attacked maize crops, and at first, the Thai government responded by spraying pesticides on them. But the pesticides didn’t work, so between 1978 and 1981, Thai farmers instead began harvesting the locusts. Today in Thailand, the Bombay locust is no longer a pest, but one of the most popular street food snacks, called patanga.

The United States has its own pest-turned-food story, though a short-lived one. Swarms of the Rocky Mountain locust used to devour everything in their wake in the Midwest in the 1870s. One swarm in Nebraska in 1874 covered approximately 198,000 square miles, an area twice the size of Colorado. The swarms subsided in the 1890s, and the locust is now extinct. But while they were still plentiful, the U.S. Department of Agriculture advocated for eating the critters to simultaneously control the pest and help starving families whose crops failed. One entomologist wrote that the locust, when “boiled and afterward stewed with a few vegetables and a little butter, pepper, salt, and vinegar, made an excellent fricassee.” 

Bugs —A Superfood?

Most experts don’t want to say it yet, but insects might qualify as “superfoods.” There’s no scientifically based definition for this term, but many people use it to refer to nutritious foods rich in compounds with potential health benefits beyond what “normal” foods offer.

Of course, bugs are a diverse group, and the species will differ in terms of nutritional value. But overall, compared to meat from beef, insects could be a healthier protein source, because they contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids, says van Huis. Fatty acids are carboxylic acids (R-COOH) with long chains of 12 to 20 carbon atoms.

While we need a variety of dietary fats to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, including vitamins A and D, to build cell membranes, and to help blood clot, too much of the saturated fats found in red meat could harm our heart. Conversely, polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as linoleic acid found in vegetable oils and nuts, are not only considered good fats, but also essential fats—our bodies need them but cannot make them.

Fatty acids are carboxylic acids (R-COOH) with long carbon chains of 12 to 20 carbon atoms. A saturated fatty acid is one that is “filled” to capacity with hydrogen atoms. That is, each available carbon bond holds a hydrogen atom, and the carbon atoms are bonded to each other in the chain with single bonds. Fatty acid chains containing one (mono-) or more (poly-) double bonds between carbon atoms (C=C) are called unsaturated.

Insects are also a good source of micronutrients, including iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium. Micronutrients are elements that occur in very small amounts in the body, but are essential to good health.

Additionally, insects in the diet could help address iron and zinc deficiencies, which are common in developing countries. In economically advanced countries, preschool children and pregnant women who need extra iron are also susceptible to iron deficiencies.

The iron content in insects is unique because insects provide both heme and non-heme iron, Stull says. “Typically, heme iron is found in animal protein, while non-heme iron is found in plant protein.” Heme iron is bound in hemoglobin, a red blood cell protein that supplies the muscles and other organs with oxygen. Heme iron is more easily absorbed by the human body than non-heme iron.

Another potential health benefit of insects is that they provide fiber in the form of chitin, which is found in bugs’ exoskeletons. Chitin is the second most abundant natural polymer, after cellulose, which is a type of fiber in fruits, vegetables, and cereals. Polymers are large molecules made up of repeating chains of smaller chemical units known as monomers.

One possible downside of eating insects that van Huis can think of is that people might have an allergic reaction to them, particularly if they are also allergic to dust mites or to crustaceans.

Nutritious or not, a critical part of getting more people to eat bugs could depend on whether they like the taste.

If you’ve never tried one, you might wonder what bugs taste like. They are often described as nutty, but this doesn’t do justice to their range of flavors.

Daniella Martin, also known online as “Girl Meets Bug” and the author of Edible, compared sauteed waxworms to mac and cheese in a Huffington Post article. She also wrote that filets of giant water beetles tasted like “melon soaked in banana-rose brine, with the consistency of red snapper.” Scorpions draw comparisons to popcorn, shrimp, and crab.

If the idea of eating whole insects is too hard to swallow, a gateway bug would be the one Downey touted to Colbert: a powdered version that you can toss into smoothies or muffin batter.

What bug flavors do you want to discover?

Soylent Green Or Eating Bugs In The New World Order

Soylent Green the Movie!

A nightmarish futuristic fantasy about the controlling power of big corporations.

In 2022, Earth is overpopulated and totally polluted; the natural resources have been exhausted, and the nourishment of the population is provided by Soylent Industries, a company that makes a food consisting of plankton from the oceans.

Most of the World's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation, including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green: small green wafers which are advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties but, like most other foods, in short supply which often leads to weekly food riots.

In the end it's discovered that a bizarre, disturbing secret of the ingredient used to manufacture Soylent Green. 

Soylent Green is PEOPLE!

Here's what we might expect soon in the New World Order diet.

Comparison to Pre-Collapse Times

In wealthy countries, in pre-Collapse times, it was customary for people to buy most of their food at large, corporate warehouse-stores called 'supermarkets'. Often, when people see pictures of these facilities, their reaction is that the photo must be a fake. The vast size, the piles of fresh-looking and exotic vegetables, the shelves and shelves of varied boxed and bottled and immaculately wrapped products, the neatly plastic-wrapped, perfect-looking meat, it seems impossible. It's all historically accurate, though. Those images are nothing like the modern reality of going to market, and it's hard for us today to imagine how this magical fantasy land of food that our ancestors took for granted was even physically possible.

The answer to that is simple - energy. That society in a century or two burned through millions of years accumulation of fossil fuels to use machines and chemicals to rapidly grow, harvest, process and transport food, and to maintain constant refrigeration until perishable items were sold, and even then, they were also prepared to actually waste mind-boggling quantities of food. This is especially egregious when you consider that even in that privileged age, there were still people who didn't have enough to eat.

The collapse of this highly globalized and interdependent system and its replacement with an ill-prepared system of local food production and delivery, combined with the creeping stresses and increased frequency of adverse weather, the cooling of northern Europe later in the century, and, of course, the nuclear winter after the Middle East War, explains the century of famine that followed.

The New World Order has not come close to restoring the pre-Collapse global food system, but with decades to reshape the ruined global systems of the early 21st century, a global trade and transportation network, and access to the entire world, they have been able to shape a new global food system which by and large is fairly enviable relative to a purely local food system.

New World Order Food Systems Or Choices

Bugs, Bugs, And More Bugs! 

Insect farming will be a more sustainable solution to help meet the world’s growing nutritional needs.

There are huge environmental benefits when compared to other animal protein sources. Farmed insects "emit less greenhouse gases, they need less land, and they need less water."

So, insects will be well-positioned to help feed the world, while having a smaller impact on the planet. And, the best part - they’re tasty!

Food, security, and diet in the New World Order will depend heavily on income and social class. We can speak in generalities before getting into those differences, but suffice it to say the types of foods that people have access to and the reliability of that access varies very markedly across income levels and geography.

Post-Collapse, food systems became very local, and especially with the various climate-related disruptions, this local supply became very vulnerable to local famines. The states that came out of the Global Collapse, and the New World Order that absorbed most of them, viewed reglobalizing the food supply as one of their single most urgent concerns, so that a crop failure in one locality would not automatically equate to a famine.

The Order partially succeeded. Pre-Collapse, a food item might travel around the world three times before ending up on a 'supermarket' shelf, and that is certainly no longer the case. The Order avoids relying on refrigeration and extremely rapid transport, but durable foodstuffs might travel over very long distances by train and by wind-electric ocean liner to get to market. In any given locality, the food available in the market will still be heavily dominated by local production. But in recent years, famine has become unheard of, at least in urban centers and areas of strong NWO control, and that is in no small part due to the reglobalization of some staple food supplies.

Foods that are available in the market will be foods that can keep a long time at room temperature, such as dried flours and beans, bottled and canned preserves, and cured and fermented products. Fresh foods like fresh vegetables will be available when in season, or else vegetables like potatoes, onions and carrots that can be stored for longer periods of time under cool but not reliably refrigerated conditions will sometimes be stockpiled.

It is very common for people to buy or grow fresh food and then do their own preserves, which if not done correctly can lead to problems like botulism. There is always a little element of fear with home preserves, but they're an important part of most families' diets.

People except for the very wealthy generally don't have electric refrigerators, because they are out of most people's economic means, and because frequent power outages make them less useful, anyway. Freezers can actually hold 0 ºC for a long time until everything thaws and are slightly more popular and useful. Iceboxes and ice delivery services have made a major comeback, and a sort of hybrid electric refrigerator/icebox is popular with the professional class. Anyone who can manage it has a cold cellar, but this doesn't work in many geographic locations. Communal electric coldrooms with locked cages that charge a monthly rent are popular in some communities.

People typically go to a neighborhood market for food that will often have some kind of backup power to enable it to keep food cold more reliably. Fresh, perishable food is purchased somewhat rarely, either in season or for special occasions, and it will usually be eaten right away. In Europe, it's normal to go to the market for small purchases relatively frequently as opposed to buying a lot of food all at once. In some centers, markets may be larger, like a small version of the old supermarket, and in other cases, they are a laborious matter of going from stall to stall buying what you need from different merchants.

Meat eating is much reduced from pre-Collapse levels, where in the wealthier countries, a meal just wasn't considered complete without meat. There are some ideological reasons for this, as many today are vegetarian. Also there are some who are concerned about animal cruelty, although, in general, the early 21st century represented a high water mark for concern for animals, and this sort of reasoning isn't as popular today. Largely, though, it's due to the cost of meat, and a concerted state-sponsored campaign to get people to eat less meat to reduce their environmental impact.

With the exception of those who object for moral or philosophical reasons, though, meat eating, as well as dairy and eggs, is a status symbol for the elite class, and they consume a lot of meat (although not to the levels of pre-Collapse diets), which in turn tends to make the lower classes desire it as well, particularly the professional classes, who will tend to eat dried or salted meat, and fresh meat on special occasions. In many areas, dairy and eggs may be more available to the lower classes than other forms of animal products, and products like dried bouillon for flavor.

Generally speaking, the Order doesn't license or allow very much fishing at all, and fish farming is incredibly tightly regulated. It took the Order years to dismantle the global fishing industry - they practically had to patrol the seas and sink fishing boats on sight to make a dent in it. However, the damage to global fisheries is done, and global marine ecosystems are still absolutely decimated. Only the very richest people typically get to eat fish and other seafoods, at least legally, because the prices are astronomical. Most people would be disgusted by the idea anyway, because they are no longer used to thinking of fish as food.

One food item that never went away in much of the world and has made a big debut in the former West is insects, for example, crickets, they are an important source of protein in many people's diets.

Agricultural Production

Family-scale farms, subsistence farming and gardening still have a large presence in much of the world, especially in the backwaters where NWO control is weak, but in much of the world, agriculture is substantially large-scale and corporatised. It is a heavily regulated industry, and because the New World Order bases much of its legitimacy on its ability to impose long-term sustainability, massive monocultures are generally not permitted.

The NWO simply doesn't have the energy reserves or economy to sustain mechanized agriculture at the pre-Collapse scale. Instead, it solves the problem of mass food production by throwing massive amounts of manual labor at it, as was still common in lower-wage pre-Collapse societies. In the Order, it is common for many of these people to be stuck in an extremely restrictive labor contracts that make them virtual slaves, and they do not have a good life. An enormous amount of the food security of the Order as a whole depends on this form of slave labor. Even those who are not held in virtual slavery are still heavily exploited.

Similarly, chemical fertilizers and pesticides are problematic for the Order to use on a large scale. Instead, the Order relies on crop rotation and mixing, on planting many varieties as in the theory the pests won't be able to go after them all equally, and on the extensive use of both old-fashioned selective breeding and highly sophisticated genetic engineering. There is hardly a plant-based food item that humans eat in the Order that hasn't been adulterated with human gene manipulation in some way.

Cuisine

The Global Collapse and the rise of the New World Order led to huge population movements and things being mixed up in general, and cuisine is no exception. Ethnically homogeneous societies are practically unheard of today, and while there has been some efforts to maintain recognizable styles of cuisine, there has been an awesome amount of culinary syncretism, and even food that is advertised as belonging to a particular tradition typically has some element of culinary fusion to it.

Spices are typically a food item that can be effectively stored and transported long distances, and the Order is generally quite successful at making a wide variety of spices available at fairly affordable prices worldwide, especially in cities. The exact availability may vary, though, which tends to encourage experimentation to find a way to work with whatever is available at any given time. Any spices grown and produced locally will be more available and more heavily used in any given locale.

For these reasons, as a generality, food in the Order is really good compared to what it could be. People may have had to get used to making do without fresh, perishable ingredients a lot of the time, but they have learnt to do some pretty amazing things with preserves and other durable foodstuffs, and the combination of the greater variety of food available and the historic cuisines of the world coming together and mingling has led to some pretty impressive results.

There is still a huge amount of regional variation in NWO cuisine, often depending on what preserved foods are most available in that area and what fresh food is grown locally, and also just depending on the history and mix of cultures in the area. If anything, food is much less homogenized in the Order than it was in pre-Collapse times, as the Order has no equivalent of the 'fast food' of earlier times, that has died out, and it actually lacks a global cuisine to replace the starchy, fatty, salty and meaty American cuisine of the previous era.

Street food is everywhere in the towns and cities, and it is delicious, but be careful, it's not always safe to eat, and you are taking your chances until your body acclimates to the local pathogens. With that caveat, it is still highly recommended. The locals typically don't have any problems eating it and once you get past an often difficult phase of getting used to it, you will probably like it, too.

If you are vegetarian, or just squeamish about common food items like bugs, you can say 'we se uzreslek', 'I am a vegetarian'. Vegetarianism is common in the Order and if people know you're vegetarian they can and will normally easily accommodate you. If you want vegan food, though, make sure to specify 'we se zra uzreslek', otherwise, people will tend to assume certain animal byproducts are fine.

 

 

Also: 

Soylent Green Synopsis - The Movie

In the year 2022, the population has grown to 40 million people in New York City alone. Most housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and the homeless fill the streets and line the fire escapes, stairways of buildings, abandoned cars, subway platforms, etc. Unemployment is at around 50%. Summers are oppressively hot and humid with temperatures over 90F degrees during the day and night due to Earth's recent climate change resulting from the Greenhouse Effect. Food, as we know it in this present time, is a rare and expensive commodity. Technology is at a standstill as most of planet Earth's natural resources are gone including most trees. Most of the World's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation, including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green: small green wafers which are advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties but, like most other foods, in short supply which often leads to weekly food riots.

Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is a New York City Police Department detective from the 14th Precinct who lives in a dilapidated, cramped one-room apartment with his aged friend and roommate, Solomon "Sol" Roth (Edward G. Robinson). Roth is a former college professor whose job is to sort through the now-disordered remnants of written records and books to help Thorn's investigations. Roth and his like are known as "books." He tells Thorn about the time before the ecological disaster and population crisis of the early 2000s, when real food was plentiful, although Thorn is generally not interested in the stories, finding most of them too hard to believe.

Thorn is assigned to investigate the murder of William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten), a 68-year-old wealthy lawyer living in a luxury high-rise apartment building called Chelsea Towers West. At the crime scene, Thorn first talks with the building superintendent Charles (Philip Stone) about discovering the body. Charles leads Thorn to the 22nd floor and to Simonson's apartment which is 22A. Thorn finds Simonson lying in a pool of blood after having been struck multiple times in the back of the head with a sharp object which is speculated to be a meat hook or an ax. Instead of looking for clues, the poorly paid detective helps himself to the wealthy man's food, liquor and books and even enjoys taking a shower (with real hot water and soap). He questions Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), an attractive 23-year-old "concubine" (euphemistically known as "furniture") who comes with the apartment, and Simonson's bodyguard, Tab Fielding (Chuck Connors), who claims that he was told to escort Shirl on a shopping trip when the attack took place. The sanitation crew led by Wagner arrives to take Simonson's dead body away, as Thorn leaves after collecting a written statement from Fielding.

Returning to his apartment, Thorn gives Roth the Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019, a two-volume work which he took from Simonson's apartment. Thorn returns to work at the 14th Precinct during that evening where they're hundreds of people lining up to collect death benefit money from recently diseased friends and family members. Thorn talks to his superior officer, Lieutenant Hatcher (Brock Peters), telling him that he suspects the Simonson homicide may have been an assassination, since nothing was stolen from the apartment and the murder seemed professional. Thorn also finds it odd that the luxury apartment's sophisticated alarm and monitoring electronics, including the building's security cameras, happened to be inoperative on the night of the murder, and Simonson's bodyguard just happened to be out of the apartment at the time. Thorn confides in Lt. Hatcher that he suspects that Fielding might have had something to do with Simonson's murder.

The next day, Thorn stakes out Fielding's apartment building and sees him leave. Thorn lets himself into Fielding's apartment where he questions Fielding's live-in "furniture", Martha (Paula Kelly), about his work for Simonson. Thorn returns to his own apartment to eat an evening meal of the purloined food taken from Simonson's apartment that Roth prepares for them. Afterwards, Roth tells Thorn about the research he did on the murder victim and that Simonson was a member of the board of directors of the Soylent Corporation. When he presents Roth with a spoon of strawberry jam surreptitiously palmed from Fielding's apartment, Roth tastes it and declares that Fielding's "furniture" is eating some "$150-a-jar" strawberry jam, which is an out-of-place luxury for the mistress of a bodyguard.

That evening, Thorn returns to the Chelsea Towers West to question Shirl, who tells him that Simonson became deeply troubled in the days before his death, even taking her to a local Catholic church. Shirl is throwing a party in Simonson's vacant apartment for the other "furniture" girls of the building. Just then, Charles arrives and begins yelling and hitting the women for slacking off until Thorn arrives back in the living room to stop Charles from hurting the girls anymore. After sending Charles and the rest of the furniture girls away, Thorn returns to Shirl and they make love.

A little later that same evening, Thorn goes to a local Catholic Church (teeming with hundreds of homeless people) and attempts to question the priest (Lincoln Kirkpatrick) about Simonson's confession, but the priest is almost catatonic with exhaustion and has a hard time remembering Simonson, even though Simonson, as a rich man, would have stood out among the impoverished people who normally frequent the church. When the priest remembers Simonson, he tells Thorn the memory of what Simonson told him during confession which is haunting him, and he is unable to describe what Simonson said to him because it was "too horrible". The next day, Fielding goes to the church and murders the priest in the confessional booth to ensure he never talks again.

The next morning, as Thorn begins uncovering more evidence as to why Simonson was murdered, New York State's Governor, Joseph Santini (Whit Bissell), who was once Simonson's partner in a high-profile law firm and who is running for re-election (as shown in the campaign posters on such walls as that of Hatcher's office), instructs Hatcher to close the investigation. However, Thorn continues his investigation into the murder. When Governor Santini learns that Thorn refuses to close the case of the Simonson murder, he orders his chief of security, Donovan (Roy Jensen), to have Thorn murdered.

When Thorn is on riot duty during the Tuesday distribution of Soylent Green rations, Simonson's murderer, Gilbert (Stephen Young), a local assassin-for-hire whom was the one that Donovan contracted to murder Simonson, attacks Thorn and fires several shots at him with a silenced pistol as a food riot begins. Thorn chases his attacker into the thick crowd as large dump trucks called "scoops" designed by the NYC Riot Police, arrive to pick up closely packed rioters and "scoop" them into the trucks. But before Thorn can capture Gilbert, who manages to wound Thorn by shooting him in his right calf, the assassin is crushed to death under the "scoop" of one of the riot control vehicles.

Thorn goes back to Fielding's apartment and beats him and his mistress Martha for the attempt on his life. Thorn then goes back to Shirl at Simonson's apartment where she removes the bullet and stitches his wound. Shirl tells Thorn that a new tenant will be arriving soon at the apartment and is hoping to move in, but she has romantic feelings for Thorn. Thorn tells Shirl that he will let her know if she wants to stay with him or the new tenant of Simonson's apartment. After resting for about an hour, Thorn leaves the apartment into the evening as sirens for the nightly curfew begin sounding. Sometime later a new potential tenant, a brash high-class businessman, arrives at the apartment and questions Shirl about herself and describes his daily details should he decide move in and want to keep her as "furniture".

Meanwhile, Roth examines Soylent's oceanographic reports at the Supreme Exchange, a library and gathering place for fellow "books." The "books" and Roth finally realize that the reports indicate a "horrible" truth which, despite reading it for themselves, they find nearly impossible to believe; Soylent Green isn't made from plankton, it's made from human bodies. Unable to live with what he has uncovered, Roth opts for assisted suicide at a government clinic (in the former Madison Square Garden, which had been converted to a clinic for mass euthanasia), a process referred to as "going home". As Roth is dying, he watches video clips of Earth long ago when animal (sheep, deer, and horses) and plant life was thriving and there was no pollution, while listening to light classical music.

Thorn returns to his apartment and finds a note from Roth that he is "going home". Thorn races to the clinic and forces one staff attendant (Dick Van Patten) to allow him to see and talk to Roth. During Roth's final moments, he tells Thorn the secret of Soylent Green, and begs him to follow his body to the processing center and report back to the Supreme Exchange so they can take the information to the Council of Nations to take action.

Thorn sneaks into the basement of the assisted suicide facility, where he sees corpses being loaded onto waste disposal trucks. He secretly hitches a ride on one, which is driven to a heavily guarded waste disposal plant just outside the city. The black-clad sanitation drivers are escorted at gunpoint out of the truck where a white-clad plant worker takes over driving. The sanitation worker is escorted to another truck leaving the fortress-like facility to drive back to the city. Once inside the plant, Thorn sees how the corpses are processed into Soylent Green wafers. They are loaded onto a conveyor belt and driven through a large machine about several hundred yards long, and the Soylent Green wafers come out on the other end. But Thorn is spotted by two plant workers and is chased. Thorn kills one and subdues another before he escapes from the plant just when the alarm is sounded.

Thorn returns to the teeming city and heads for the Supreme Exchange to report what he found, but is ambushed by Fielding and three other gunmen (all of whom presumably work for the government and are also aware and are trying to conceal the secret about Soylent Green). Thorn manage to get to a police payphone and call Shirl to tell her that he loves her and to stay with the new tenant whom wants to rent Simonson's vacant apartment. Thorn also manages to place a second call to Lt. Hatcher at the 14th Precinct to tell him where he is and that he is being attacked, but then gets cut off when the assassins close in.

During a chase through the deserted streets and alleys (cleared of people because of the government-imposed dusk to dawn curfew), Thorn manages to kill all the gunmen chasing him except for Fielding who shoots Thorn in the back. He retreats into a cathedral filled with homeless people and Fielding follows him. After a desperate fight through throngs of sleeping homeless, Thorn kills Fielding by stabbing him with a rusted kitchen knife.

When police backup arrives at the church, the seriously wounded and nearly hysterical Thorn confides to Lt. Hatcher the horrible secret behind Soylent Green, while Hatcher looks on with disbelief. As Thorn is being carried away by the police on a stretcher to a local hospital, he urges to Hatcher to spread the word and shouts out to the spectators: "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!! We've got to stop them... SOMEHOW!!!"

WHO OR WHAT IS THE ANTICHRIST?

 

A Lecture On The Coming Antichrist

Recently a spate of books have been speculating on various end-time scenarios involving the person of the future Antichrist and what is referred to as the Tribulation period. While these scenarios are somewhat similar, many variations still exist concerning the rise and demise of this final end-time ruler. Writing 2500 years ago, Daniel supplied a brief sketch of the character and career of this king who “shall do according to his will” (11:36). The prophet Daniel, exiled in Babylon almost all his life, was shown by the Lord the future of his people Israel. In the revelations recorded in Daniel chapters 2 and 7 through 9, Daniel learned that because of their sin, the people Israel would be kept under Gentile domination for “seventy sevens” of years. These Gentile nations were pictured as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, after which the Messiah would destroy these kingdoms and institute a righteous kingdom with Israel back in its place of blessing. After the fall of Babylon to King Cyrus of Persia (539 B.C.), Daniel received another revelation concerning Israel in the “latter days” (10:14). This one caused him much anguish (10:16) because it depicted severe persecution for Israel.

From Daniel’s point in history in 536 B.C., the revelation of Daniel chapter 11 was totally prophetic. But from our vantage point in the year 2000, the prophecy of Daniel 11:1-35 is historical fact. It has already been fulfilled, with 11:36-45 yet to be fulfilled. The main focus of Daniel 11 is the rivalry between the king of the south (the Ptolemies of Egypt) and the king of the north (the Seleucids of Syria) over the land of Israel during the time of Greek rule (323-198 B.C.). This culminated in the person of the Seleucid despot Antiochus IV, described in 11:21 as a “vile person.” Antiochus IV sought to Hellenize Judea by outlawing the practice of Judaism and proclaiming himself as “Zeus manifest.” To that end, he erected an image of Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem in 167 B.C. and demanded that everyone worship the image. This is “the abomination that maketh desolate,” referred to in Daniel 11:31. The Jews resisted this Hellenization, resulting in the Maccabean revolt that reclaimed the Temple three years later and produced the Feast of the Dedication, commonly known as Hanukkah.

Daniel 11:21-35, describing the persecution of the Jews under Antiochus IV, relates to 11:36-45 in that Antiochus is a type of the Antichrist who is to come. Just as Antiochus persecuted the Jews and magnified himself as God, so will the Antichrist. And just as Antiochus was eventually defeated, so the Antichrist will come to an inglorious end.

The Character of the Antichrist (Daniel 11:36-39)

1. He Will Arrogantly Blaspheme (v. 36). 

While it would seem most likely that 11:36-45 would continue to prophesy concerning Antiochus IV, the descriptions in these verses do not correspond to Antiochus’s religion or career. Since the king in these verses is distinguished from the kings of the north and south (11:40), he must, therefore, be a king from a different region. Since an analogous figure, the “little horn,” is found elsewhere in Daniel as the final leader of rebellion against God, the king here must be none other than Antichrist himself.

As pictured in Daniel 7:8, 11-20, Antichrist will exalt himself above God, which is blasphemy. But he will not restrict himself to only reviling the true God; he will exalt himself above all gods. This pictures a situation similar to Revelation 17, when the Beast (representing the Antichrist) turns on the harlot (representing pagan religion) and destroys her in order to set himself up as God, to be worshiped alone. The sense is that the Antichrist will ridicule all known religion and proclaim something new, with himself at its head.

2. He Will Exalt Himself as God (v. 37). 

The Antichrist will disregard the “gods of his fathers” (meaning traditional worship) and will initiate something previously unheard of. He will also disregard the “desire of women.” The interpretive question in this phrase is whether it means that the Antichrist will hate women or hate what women desire. If the verse means the latter, it suggests he will hate a child, either Tammuz in the pagan context or Messiah in the Jewish. Since the context of verse 37 concerns Antichrist’s exaltation of himself over all gods, whatever the “desire of women” is will somehow relate to this self-exaltation above all gods. Consequently, it fits better to interpret this “desire” as the Messiah, who would fall into the same category as “other gods.” This also correlates with Revelation 13:15, which pictures the Antichrist setting up an image of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem and demanding worship—a future “abomination of desolation” (Mt. 24:15).

3. He Will Worship Military Power (vv. 38-39). 

While Antichrist will exalt himself above all gods, he will, nevertheless, worship a god—“the god of fortresses.” This may mean that as an arrogant dictator, he will trust only in military might. Or, as verse 39 implies, he will trust in a “foreign god” (Satan himself [see Rev. 13]), whom he will proclaim to reveal incarnately (as Antiochus did of Zeus). Either way, the result will be military conquest. As pictured in Daniel 7:8, the Antichrist (“little horn”) will uproot three horns of the ten-horned kingdom/beast, which represents the worldwide Roman Empire. This suggests that the ten-kingdom final form of the Roman Empire will already be in place before Antichrist appears and makes his move to dominate. The world war that will erupt from this effort will produce the effects pictured by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rev. 6:1-8).

Thus the character of the Antichrist can be summarized as one who will try to establish himself as God, seeking to rule the world strictly for his own glory and desire for power. In doing so, he will deride all known religion and proclaim a new order for the world, with himself at its head. All who do not submit will be crushed. As revealed in Revelation 13, the Antichrist ultimately will receive his power from Satan, who will seek to rule the world through him much as God the Father rules the world through his Son, Jesus Christ.

The Career of the Antichrist (Daniel 11:40-45)

1. Invasion of the Middle East (vv. 40-43). 

Verse 40 places these events “at the time of the end.” This most easily describes the last half of the seven-year Tribulation period. Antichrist will invade the Middle East and conquer Israel, breaking the covenant he confirmed with the nation (Dan. 9:27). He will capture half the city of Jerusalem (Zech. 14:2), including the Temple (Rev. 11:1-2), and will try to exterminate the rest of the people of Israel. But God will protect them (Rev. 12:6, 1316). It is significant that Antichrist is distinguished from the king of the north and the king of the south. Although he is typical of Antiochus IV, a king of the north (Syria), he will not be Syrian. Since the tenhorned beast of Daniel 7 and Revelation 12-13 represents the Roman Empire, Antichrist most likely will be a Westerner who will invade Israel in order to proclaim himself God in the Temple. In reaction to this invasion, Egypt and Syria will counterattack. Egypt and North Africa will fall before him, and his troops will occupy much of the Middle East.

2. The End of the Antichrist (vv. 44-45). 

Not only will Antichrist’s invasion of Israel spark resistance from the Middle Eastern nations, but other nations to the north and east apparently will come to attack him. This gathering of the armies of the world is reflected in Revelation 16:12-16. There the sixth bowl judgment will open the way for the kings of the east to move toward Israel. Then the “three unclean spirits, like frogs” (demons) will perform supernatural signs to gather all the nations of the world to Israel, where they will camp in the valley of Armageddon. Apparently these armies initially will gather in Israel to oppose the Antichrist. But through demonic influence, they will unite instead to fight against Israel and the true and living God.

As pictured in Daniel 11:45, Antichrist will pitch his tent on the “holy mountain,” the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There he will come to his end. The Lord Jesus Himself will descend, destroy the armies at Armageddon, and stand on the Mount of Olives to rescue the Jewish people in Jerusalem who, by this time, have recognized Him as the Messiah (Zech. 12:1-14; 14:1-5; Rev. 19:11-21). Thus the stone made “without hands,” pictured in Daniel 2:44-45, will destroy this Gentile rule over Israel and crush this last-ditch Satanic rebellion against God. Then God will set up a Kingdom of righteousness on earth that will endure for 1000 years (Rev. 20).

Antichrist…will conquer Israel, erect an image of himself in the Temple, and demand the worship of the world.

Thus the Antichrist will use Western military might to invade Israel and the Middle East. There he will conquer Israel, erect an image of himself in the Temple, and demand the worship of the world. In doing so, he will blaspheme not only the true God, but also all other gods, in order to establish a dictatorship that worships him alone. Although nations will resist him, demonic influences will gather these nations together in Israel to fight against the true God. There the Antichrist and the armies of the world will be destroyed.

Agenda 2030: Preparing The Way For The Antichrist & The New World Order

 Agenda 2030: Preparing the Way for the Antichrist & the New World Order

Chances are you missed it. Missed what you ask? You probably missed the historic vote at the United Nations that took place on September 25th, 2015. To quote from the UN’s own website on that date:

The 193-Member United Nations General Assembly today formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, along with a set of bold new Global Goals, which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed as a universal, integrated and transformative vision for a better world

In other words, the United Nations which represents the nations and people of the world, came together and agreed upon what they have termed “Agenda 2030” – a set of goals for the entire planet that will be universally binding on everyone, everywhere. At least that is what they are hoping for. In short, the UN intends to impose new laws, rules, regulations, programs, and initiatives upon every human being in the world in an effort to accomplish a series of 17 goals that they feel are in the best interests of the planet which they lump under the term “Sustainability”.

What’s so bad about sustainability? It sounds like a really positive thing right? We need to take good care of our environment. We need to help people, especially the poor & marginalized. We need to put an end to war, conflict, and suffering. We need to find cures and eradicate all diseases. Who wouldn’t be opposed to these things? These are goals that everybody should support right?

Wrong. This is exactly the point. The concept of “sustainability” or “environmentalism” is the one subject/initiative that all peoples from all cultures, of all faiths, and all political ideaologies should be able to support. In other words, rallying all of the people of Earth together to accomplish sustainability leads toward a specific outcome…global unity.

At this point, for those of you who are reading this and are concerned about the human race and everything being unified politically, economically, and spiritually stay alert to these coming events. Global government. Gobal economy. Global religion.

Concerning the coming Antichrist, some have pointed out that when the time comes for the Antichrist to be revealed, he isn’t going to appear on the world stage and then try to build the New World Order. The NWO will already be prepared and ready to go for his arrival so that when he takes his place as leader of the world, he will immediately have control of a unified planet.

When it is necessary all of the structures to be put into place first will be to usher in the Antichrist. Think of it like a game of chess…all of the pieces have to get put into place first before the final move is made for checkmate. And that is exactly what we are witnessing with Agenda 2030.

Ever since the United Nations enacted Agenda 21 (basically a first draft of Agenda 2030) in 1992 at a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, it has been grabbing more and more power at a faster pace, and this latest round of global goals is pushing things into high gear.

The 17 Goals outlined in Agenda 2030 include:

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*

Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

On the surface these goals sound great. But the problem is what they are really intended to do and that is to give more control over every human beings life to the UN. For example, how do you end poverty? Simple. Redistribute everyone’s wealth. Protect ecosystems? Simple. Gradually force people back into the cities to live in smaller, more effiecient ecofriendly apartments. Reduce energy consumption? Simple. Put smart meters on everyone’s home and control the amount of energy available to them. Give better education to all? Simple. Roll out Common Core across the globe. End hunger? Simple. Give food with GMOs to all nations. You get the picture.

These goals will lead to laws that will allow a global government, the NWO, to gain control into almost every aspect of our lives. It’s the perfect way to lay the ground work for a one world government.

Ultimately, whether people want to recognize it or not, our world is rapidly approaching the time prophesied in the Bible where it will be joined together as one. The New World Order has been in the works for a very long time and we are quickly approaching the final stage where all of the pieces have come into place. Trade agreements have been signed (i.e. TPP &  TTIP), New central banks have been established with the goal of replacing the dollar as the reserve currency of the world (i.e. BRICS bank), people of various faiths are becoming more unified (i.e. Chrislam & efforts of Pope Francis), just to name a few.

As the UN begins to start acting on the goals outlined in Agenda 2030, be prepared to see a rapid erosion of freedoms and the replacement of the U.S. Constitution with a Global Constitution. Then it will only take some sort of catalyst such as war, economic collapse, famine, disease, terrorism, or some other method to create a state of chaos that will lead the people of the world to cry out for the official establishment of the NWO along with a global leader to be in charge…the one known in the Bible as the Antichrist.

Soon this world will be divided into 10 major geographical regions and nerve centers.   The Illuminists know that all of the governments around the world are destined to collapse soon.   They know this because these are planned economic collapses.   With the total collapse of the global economy a world wide take over will be enforced thereby creating a Totalitarian Police State. 

Scytáles AB Together With Netcompany-Intrasoft Wins Landmark EU Digital Wallet Contract

Dec. 6, 2022 – Scytáles AB together with Netcompany-Intrasoft, member of NETCOMPANY Group A/S, has been awarded the much-anticipated European Digital Identity Wallet contract, encompassing development, consultancy, and support services.

In 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and following announcements as early as 2020 by Commission President, the European Commission announced its plans for a European Digital Identity framework available to all EU citizens, residents, and businesses.

The ultimate objective is a secure European e-identity, available to all EU citizens, across the EU and across activities. This would include digital identification means, electronic signatures, validation of documents and would entail transparency of data use.

The European Digital Identity Wallet will provide the benchmark for secure and transparent digital identification across the EU, ensuring at the same time the safety of the data that each citizen provides. The benefits are multi-fold from ease of use to cost reductions for businesses to cross-border transactions made possible.

The wallet will be developed by Scytáles AB and Luxembourg-based consortium leader Netcompany-Intrasoft and will be offered to Member States and other stakeholders for implementing the requirements of the Regulation on a framework for a European Digital Identity.

Mr. Konstantin Papaxanthis, CEO of Scytáles AB: “Since the global pandemic the digitalization of processes for both companies and public services has made safe digital identification imperative. The EU Digital Wallet will simplify daily life for EU citizens and businesses and create growth opportunities for public and private services across the EU. We are honored to have been awarded the EU Digital Wallet contract with our reputable partner and proud that Scytáles’ world leading technology gets recognized.”

About Scytáles:

Scytáles is the leading developer of ISO-Mobile Driving Licenses, Mobile IDs and Derived Mobile IDs as a complement to Security Printed Documents and Validation mechanisms over the counter and over the web. With our fully ISO-compliant technologies, we are the global leaders of the new generation of personal credentials using a cell phone while authorizing what data will be shared. We enable going mobile and validating in real-time in online and offline modes. Scytáles AB represents Sweden as an expert in several Standardization Bodies. Headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden and offices in the US, Greece and Portugal.

Is One-World Currency Only A Click Away?

For many people today, online shopping is the way to go. You don’t have to fight traffic on the roads or wait in long lines. There are no crowded aisles, and the store never closes. You can turn on your computer, sit down, relax, and shop at your leisure.

You can buy just about anything you want online these days, including books, clothing, electronics—even groceries. That’s right, you can do your grocery shopping online, and the supermarket will deliver your items directly to your doorstep within 24 hours.

Technology is changing the way we do almost everything. It’s even daring to change the currency we use to do it with.

The Bible implies that in the end-times, the world will use a universal currency. The apostle John wrote that during the future seven-year Tribulation, the Antichrist “causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name:…666” (Rev. 13:16–18).

John must have asked himself, How will the Antichrist exert international control and manipulate who buys and sells in a massive economy? But what seemed incomprehensible in John’s time has become a reality today. Technological developments have made our world much smaller and more connected with the simple click of a computer key.

The “mark” in Revelation 13:16–17 can be interpreted as a stamp, branding, implanted microchip, or man-made engraving of some sort. Receiving the mark of the Beast will be mandatory for everyone during the Tribulation. According to Revelation, the mark has two main functions:

Identification. 

It identifies the people who show loyalty to the mission and work of the Antichrist. Those with the mark accept his aim to unify the nations under his administration and force everyone to worship him in all of his hubris. Verse 16 places no social or cultural boundaries on who can receive the mark. It is for “small and great, rich and poor, free and slave” everywhere; no one is to be exempt from the Antichrist’s plan.

The mark also conveys a message of complete and utter divorce from God. Revelation says those who receive the mark are in rebellion against the Lord and destined to face His wrath (14:9–10; 19:20).

In contrast, those who refuse the mark are in danger of being martyred; but they stand in allegiance with God, and their reward is great: eternal life (20:4).

Control. 

The mark of the Beast also functions as a way for the Antichrist to control the populace. Unless one receives the mark, he or she is unable to buy or sell anything in the global market, meaning many probably will accept the mark simply to survive. Managing what people buy and sell on such an immense scale would require a one-world currency to monitor all transactions.

Social and financial control of this magnitude in first-century Rome would have been inconceivable. Yet with today’s social and financial developments in technology, the idea of worldwide financial control is uncomfortably plausible.

Not long after the U.S. recession spread globally in 2008, the UN Conference on Trade and Development proposed a worldwide currency managed by a “Global Reserve Bank” to help move away from dollar domination in order to prevent a single currency from negatively affecting global economics. The 218-page report states an internationally controlled currency would help stabilize every member country.1 The idea of a global currency is not only on the minds of UN bureaucrats, but it is also on the minds of those who have come to distrust the banking system altogether.

Enter Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer, digital currency created by the alias developer Satoshi Nakamoto. The highly controversial currency transcends all countries, currencies, and markets. It lacks regulation and is in no need of a bank acting as the middleman.2

When you want to purchase a product with Bitcoin, you make a time-stamped, digitally cryptic transaction with the person or company with whom you are doing business. You and your computer become the bank. And since there is no physical bank, Bitcoins are saved in a digital wallet that is either on your computer or in cloud storage—meaning it resides in a gigantic data center somewhere in the great unknown.    

Anyone can earn, save, and invest Bitcoins; all you need is a computer, tablet, or smartphone to connect you to the Internet. Because Bitcoin is a cashless currency, you acquire Bitcoins through an exchange of products, services, or other currencies. That means if you sell a product or provide labor, you have the option to be paid in Bitcoins. You may also purchase Bitcoins, backed by your country’s currency, through a Bitcoin processing company like BitPay.

This currency proudly offers anonymous transactions. However, the ability to control such a digital currency for overseeing purchases would be simple to establish.

You’re probably thinking this currency is a bizarre, avant-garde, underground invention that doesn’t have two feet to stand on. Not so. You may be surprised to learn that Bitcoin is much more developed than many people realize.

For starters, major corporations love the less than 1 percent service fee levied for transactions, compared to the 2 percent or 3 percent service fees credit-card companies charge. Also, many companies see the world moving in the direction of a geo-cashless society and want to be ahead of the curve on currency transition.

Companies like online megastore Overstock.com recently started accepting payments in the form of Bitcoins. The Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association will gladly take your digital currency, and Tesla Motors—the newest American car company—will happily sell its $100,000 electric cars in exchange for your Bitcoins.

BitPay, a Bitcoin processing company based in Atlanta, Georgia, boasts more than 15,000 merchants across 200 countries. And to think that as recently as September 2012, BitPay had a mere 1,000 merchants. BitPay also claims to have processed an astonishing $100 million in peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions.

Forbes Magazine, one of the world’s leading publishers of business news, touts, “Bitcoin began 2013 at $13 a coin, only to ring in 2014 around $800 with worldwide fascination driving the 60-times gain.”3 Bitcoin’s extraordinary rate of growth probably means it isn’t vanishing anytime soon.

John Dyer, author of From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology, says, “When technology has distracted us to the point that we no longer examine it, it gains the greatest opportunity to enslave us.”4 We live in a culture that dives head first into technology without ever evaluating the long-term consequences.  

And though Bitcoin may or may not be reliable or the future of one-world legal tender, it reveals there is an infrastructure, desire, and market for a global, digital, cashless currency. The question is, “Who will control it?”

UN Agenda 2030: A Recipe for Global Socialism

Agenda 2030, touted as a solution to everything from poverty to global warming, is really a plan to empower a global governing body.

The United Nations and its mostly autocratic member regimes have big plans for your life, your children, your country, and your world. And those plans are not limited to the coercive “climate” agreement recently concluded in Paris.

While the establishment media in the United States was hyping ISIS, football, and of course “global warming,” virtually every national government/dictatorship on the planet met at the 70th annual General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York to adopt a draconian 15-year master plan for the planet. Top globalists such as former NATO chief Javier Solana, a socialist, are celebrating the plan, which the summit unanimously “approved,” as the next “Great Leap Forward” — yes, the old campaign slogan of the Chinese Communist Party.

The master plan is comprised of 17 “Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) with 169 specific “targets” to be foisted on all of humanity — literally all of it, as the plan itself states explicitly. “As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind,” reads the UN manifesto, entitled Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. But if you love liberty, self-government, free markets, or the U.S. Constitution, you will almost certainly be wishing that the UN would leave you behind.

Officially dubbed “Agenda 2030,” the UN plot, as its full title suggests, is aimed at “transforming” the world. The program is a follow-up to the last 15-year UN plan, the defunct “Millennium Development Goals,” or MDGs. It also dovetails nicely with the deeply controversial UN Agenda 21, even including much of the same rhetoric and agenda. But the combined Agenda 2030 goals for achieving what is euphemistically called “sustainable development” represent previous UN plans on steroids — deeper, more radical, more draconian, and more expensive.

“This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity,” reads the preamble. “All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan.” Ironically, the preamble even claims the UN goals will “free the human race from the tyranny of poverty” and “heal” the planet — or, as the planet is also referred to in the document, “Mother Earth.” Not-so-subtly purporting to usurp the role of God, the UN even claimed that the “future of humanity and of our planet lies in our hands.”

Speaking on September 25 at the opening ceremony of the confab that adopted Agenda 2030, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hinted at just how far-reaching the plot really is. “The new agenda is a promise by leaders to all people everywhere,” he explained, presumably conflating “leaders” with mass-murdering gangsters such as Kim Jong-un, Raul Castro, Robert Mugabe, and other despots who hold great sway with most of the regimes comprising the United Nations. “It is a universal, integrated and transformative vision for a better world.” “We need action from everyone, everywhere,” Ban said, pointing to the “guide” offered by the 17 SDGs. “They are a to-do list for people and planet, and a blueprint for success.” “We must use the goals to transform the world,” Ban continued. “Institutions will have to become fit for a grand new purpose.”

The Agenda 2030 agreement makes the audacity of the scheme clear, too. “This is an Agenda of unprecedented scope and significance,” boasts the document.  “Never before have world leaders pledged common action and endeavor across such a broad and universal policy agenda,” the agreement continues. “What we are announcing today — an Agenda for global action for the next fifteen years — is a charter for people and planet in the twenty-first century.”

The Agenda

Perhaps the single most striking feature of Agenda 2030 is the practically undisguised roadmap to global socialism and corporatism/fascism, as countless analysts have pointed out. To begin with, consider the agenda’s Goal 10, which calls on the UN, national governments, and every person on Earth to “reduce inequality within and among countries.” To do that, the agreement continues, will “only be possible if wealth is shared and income inequality is addressed.”

As the UN document also makes clear, national socialism to “combat inequality” domestically is not enough — international socialism is needed to battle inequality even “among” countries. “By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources,” the document demands. In simpler terms, Western taxpayers should prepare to be fleeced so that their wealth can be redistributed internationally as their own economies are cut down to size by Big Government. Of course, as has been the case for generations, most of the wealth extracted from the productive sector will be redistributed to the UN and Third World regimes — not the victims of those regimes, impoverished largely through domestic socialist/totalitarian policies imposed by the same corrupt regimes to be propped up with more Western aid under Agenda 2030.

Wealth redistribution alone, however, will not be enough. 

Governments must also seize control of the means of production — either directly or through fascist-style mandates. “We commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services,” the document states. It also says that “governments, international organizations, the business sector and other non-state actors and individuals must contribute to changing unsustainable consumption and production patterns … to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production.”

In plain English, the Agenda 2030 document is claiming that today’s “consumption and production” patterns are unsustainable, so we’ll need to get by with less. How much less? It would be hard to find a more clear and concise assessment than that offered by the late Maurice Strong, the recently deceased Canadian billionaire  and longtime UN environmental guru who led the 1992 Earth Summit, in a pre-Earth Summit document: “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle-class … involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and ‘convenience’ foods, ownership of motor vehicles, numerous electrical appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning ... expensive suburban housing … are not sustainable.”

In truth, such “lifestyles and consumption patterns” are sustainable, so long as the freedom that makes prosperity possible is not destroyed in the name of achieving “sustainability.” The UN and the environmental lobby claim that we must get by with less because there are now too many people on the planet consuming too many resources. But this rationale for accepting UN-imposed scarcity is patently false.

Of course, the promoters of Agenda 2030 would claim that rather than impoverish us, the global regime they envision would take good care of us — through universal health coverage, for instance. One of the targets for Goal 3, ensuring “healthy lives” and “well-being,” is: “Achieve universal health coverage,” including “vaccines for all.” Universal access to “mental health,” along with “sexual and reproductive health-care services” — code words for abortion and contraception — are also included. All governments are expected to integrate such services into their “national strategies and programmes,” the agreement demands.

It is worth noting that mass-murdering Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin made clear that controlled healthcare is the “keystone” of socialism. The United Nations obviously agrees. And though he may not call it “socialism,” Obama undoubtedly also views government control of healthcare as key. Indeed, enactment of ObamaCare could be viewed as a “great leap forward” by the United States toward implementation of a key component of Agenda 2030, before Agenda 2030 was even “approved.”

But as important as targeting healthcare is to the globalist schemers, any plan for building international socialism would be lacking without also targeting the next generation with global-socialist propaganda. And so an entire goal of Agenda 2030 is devoted to ensuring that all children, everywhere, are transformed into what the UN calls “agents of change,” ready to push forward the plan for the new global order. “Children and young women and men are critical agents of change and will find in the new Goals a platform to channel their infinite capacities for activism into the creation of a better world,” the agreement explains.

The sort of activists that the UN hopes to make your children into is also explicitly defined in the agreement. “By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development,” the global plan for 2030 states. Considering what the UN means by “sustainable development” — population control, central planning, global governance, and more — the agenda for your children takes on an even more sinister tone.

“Sustainable” children for global citizenship in the new order will be accomplished via what the UN misleadingly refers to as “education.” In the UN document the word “education” alone is mentioned more than 20 times. And throughout the agreement, the UN openly advocates the use of schools to indoctrinate all of humanity into a new set of values, attitudes, and beliefs in preparation for the new “green” and “sustainable” world order. The UN’s education agenda also puts sex “education” front and center. “By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services [abortion and contraception], including for family planning, information and education,” the document explains.

How much will Agenda 2030 cost? Various figures have been thrown around by UN bureaucrats regarding the monetary costs of the plan, generally ranging between $3 trillion and $5 trillion per year.

Yes, trillions. In the “From Billions to Trillions” report released by the World Bank in July 2015, the globalist outfit, a key player in Agenda 2030, conceded: “To meet the investment needs of the Sustainable Development Goals, the global community needs to move the discussion from ‘Billions’ in ODA [Official Development Assistance] to ‘Trillions’ in investments of all kinds: public and private, national and global, in both capital and capacity.”

But the money needed to implement Agenda 2030 and other UN schemes is only part of the cost. Other parts include the loss of our national independence and freedom that the rise of global governance and global socialism would surely entail. Revealingly, empowering dictators to help in global governance is openly touted by Agenda 2030. The document states, “We recommit to broadening and strengthening the voice and participation of developing countries [the regimes ruling those countries] — including African countries, least developed countries, land-locked developing countries, small-island developing States and middle-income countries — in international economic decision-making, norm-setting and global economic governance.”

Powerful Promoters

When Agenda 2030 was adopted at the 70th annual UN General Assembly confab in New York City on September 25, the UN plot to re-engineer civilization was ushered in with a “thunderous standing ovation,” the UN Department of Public Information reported. Every one of the 193 UN member governments on the planet — from murderous communist and Islamist dictatorships to those ruling what remains of the “Free World” — vowed to help impose the UN’s controversial goals on their subjects.

It all sounded so wonderful to some of the world’s most brutal dictators that they could hardly contain their glee. “This agenda promises a brave new world, a new world which we have to consciously construct, a new world that calls for the creation of a new global citizen,” gushed Marxist dictator Robert Mugabe, the genocidal mass-murderer enslaving Zimbabwe who also serves as chairman of the African Union. “I want to believe that we are up to this task that we have voluntarily and collectively committed ourselves to. Our success, and in particular the promise of a new world that awaits us, depends upon this commitment.” He also promised to vigorously impose the UN Agenda 2030 on the starving and impoverished victims his regime lords over with Agenda 2030-style policies. The communist Castro regime vowed to work with socialist Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and other tyrants to impose the UN goals on their victims, too — all with financing from Western taxpayers.   

The brutal tyrants ruling Communist China, meanwhile, have also been enthusiastic cheerleaders for the UN goals — goals that the regime boasted it played a “crucial role” in developing. The Chinese autocracy, infamous for forced abortions, censorship, religious and political persecution, the “one-child policy,” terrible pollution, kangaroo courts, and of course, murdering more human beings than any other entity in all of human history, used its vast, global propaganda machine to celebrate Agenda 2030.

“China has made important contributions to the global efforts in reaching a fair, inclusive and sustainable post-2015 development agenda,” the regime’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Wang Min, was quoted as saying in a report by the Communist Chinese news and espionage service Xinhua. “China is also very active in putting forward Chinese proposals…. The agreement includes important proposals by China and many other developing countries in numerous aspects.”  

 Among other “commitments,” China promised to spend $2 billion in foreign countries to meet the UN goals in “education” and “health,” with its funding increasing to $12 billion by 2030. While only contributing a small piece of the pie, the fact that Beijing is so excited about the agenda is quite revealing. Echoing Chairman Mao’s rhetoric, EU and NATO globalist Javier Solana said, “With a sustained commitment from all countries, developed and developing alike, the world can ensure that it celebrates another great leap forward in 2030.” (Emphasis added.) The last “Great Leap Forward,” presided over by Chairman Mao Tse-tung between 1958 and 1963, resulted in the murder of an estimated 45 million Chinese who were worked, starved, or beaten to death.

The Obama administration, which apparently does not plan to present the UN scheme to the U.S. Senate for ratification as required by the U.S. Constitution, also offered a forceful defense of the UN agenda. Speaking to the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2015, after purporting to commit the United States to the global plot, Obama claimed the UN blueprint “is one of the smartest investments we can make in our own future.”

Even the world’s leading religious figure, Pope Francis, addressed UN member governments with a plea to support the UN goals. “The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ... is an important sign of hope,” he declared, before demanding a UN “climate” regime as well.

Beyond governments and religious figures, much of the private sector also enthusiastically backed the new goals. Among the mega-corporations backing the scheme are the world’s top three search engines: Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo. It was not immediately clear whether those corporations’ support for the UN agenda would affect the supposed impartiality of search results, but critics of the UN plan expressed alarm nonetheless.

For now, at least, the world and the White House are all pretending that the SDGs are binding on Americans, too. However, the U.S. Senate was not consulted, as the Constitution requires for all treaties. And even if the Senate were to ratify it, the federal government cannot grant itself new anti-constitutional powers merely by approving a treaty. Therefore, the agreement has no force in the United States. But as UN Agenda 21 showed clearly, that does not mean that the Obama administration, and possibly future presidents, would not attempt to push it forward anyway. The American people, therefore, must demand through their elected representatives that the UN power grab be stopped.