Om FN

[QIQrrr]

Fox News, April 29, 2010: Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest." Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women." Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release on the filling of "vacancies in subsidiary bodies," was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was "elected by acclamation," meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states — including the United States - U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women's Rights

[QIQrrr]

Fox News, May 11, 2010: This week, the U.N.’s top human rights body, renamed the Human Rights Council, is poised to add Libya to its membership. Libya will be elected by the U.N. General Assembly through a secret ballot in a process that champions geographic and religious loyalties over anything remotely resembling the actual protection of human rights. The Obama administration is making no moves to call for the defeat of Libya or any of the other soon-to-be human rights specialists now running for a seat. And yet, the 2009 State Department Human Rights Report says that in Libya there is routine torture and abuse of detainees, legally-sanctioned amputations and flogging, sentencing of political opposition members without trial, indefinite detention of women and girls “suspected of violating moral codes,” homosexuality is criminalized, and their president claims that “the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah are forgeries.” Libya will not be lonesome. Other candidates include Malaysia, Mauritania, Uganda, Angola and Qatar. The 2009 reports from the state department on all these Council shoe-ins tell us the following: in Uganda there are politically-motivated killings by the government, and law enforcement officials view wife-beating as a husband’s prerogative. In Angola there is government torture, widespread rape of inmates, and Internet chat rooms are monitored. In Malaysia, religious authorities arrest “deviants” in order to return them to the "true path of Islam.” In Qatar the law calls for 10 year sentences for individuals proselytizing anything but Islam, conversion away from Islam is a capital offense, and the legal system treats with leniency men who murder women where there has been “immodesty” on the part of the victim - Human Rights Just a Joke At the U.N.

[QIQrrr]

The Washington Examiner, May 13, 2010: Seven countries accused of human rights violations, including Libya, Angola and Malaysia, won seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council in an uncontested election Thursday. The U.N. General Assembly approved all 14 candidates for the 14 seats on the 47-member council by wide margins despite campaigns by human rights groups to deny countries with poor rights records the minimum number of votes needed. All 14 countries easily topped the 97 votes required from the 192-member world body. Libya, which currently holds the presidency of the General Assembly, received the lowest number of votes — 155 — while Angola got 170 and Malaysia 179. In addition to these three countries, human rights groups criticized the poor rights records of Thailand, Uganda, Mauritania and Qatar which also won seats. The seven other countries that won seats were Maldives, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain, Switzerland, Moldova and Poland. Iran withdrew from the race on April 23 after facing strong global opposition for severe human rights abuses including the government's crackdown on opposition supporters. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said it was "notable ... that Iran's bid fell short." Human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations also successfully opposed the election of Iran and Venezuela in 2006, Belarus in 2007, Sri Lanka in 2008, and Azerbaijan in 2009. The 14 countries elected Thursday will serve three-year terms starting June 19 on the Geneva-based council, which was created in March 2006 to replace the U.N.'s widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission - Libya, Angola and other countries accused of rights violations elected to Human Rights Council

[QIQrrr]

PJM, May 17, 2010: Newly disclosed documents on waste, fraud and abuse at the United Nations. The UN, for all its endless promises about transparency and its ample enjoyment of other people’s money, does not release these reports to the public. It is only thanks to the U.S. that they are now seeing daylight at all. For anyone who cares about even minimal integrity in UN management and handling of taxpayer money, there’s a trove of bombshell material here. The reports total hundreds of pages, but the typical report runs about 10-20 pages. They date from October, 2008 through August, 2009 - Hot Tips on UN Waste, Fraud and Abuse: U.S. Mission Posts Scores of UN Internal Reports

[QIQrrr]

The Guardian, May 21, 2010: The economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer. The UN's biodiversity report – dubbed the Stern for Nature – is expected to say that the value of saving "natural goods and services", such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher – between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them. The UN report's authors go further with their warning on biodiversity, by saying if the goods and services provided by the natural world are not valued and factored into the global economic system, the environment will become more fragile and less resilient to shocks, risking human lives, livelihoods and the global economy. "We need a sea-change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature: not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within," said the report's author, the economist Pavan Sukhdev. The changes will involve a wholesale revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives, Sukhdev, told The Guardian. He referred to the damage currently being inflicted on the natural world as "a landscape of market failures". The report will advocate massive changes to the way the global economy is run so that it factors in the value of the natural world. In future, it says, communities should be paid for conserving nature rather than using it; companies given stricter limits on what they can take from the environment and fined or taxed more - UN says case for saving species 'more powerful than climate change'

[ChristianHovden]

FN posisjonerer seg før AGW implosjonen?

[QIQrrr]

Rent vitenskapelig er det mange år siden denne teorien imploderte. Dessverre finnes det fortsatt en politisk arena for de uvitenskapelig anlagte. Noen politikere tror fortsatt på teoretiske fantasier uten virkelighetsforankring. Teorier som er grundig avslørt som fabrikert juks. FN må gjerne gjemme sine røde faner bak kampen for å bevare artsmangfoldet, men også her får de problemer med vitenskapen. Dette vil sannsynligvis svekke troverdigheten ytterligere. Det som er nevnt i nyhetsklippene ovenfor drar heller ikke i positiv retning. Organisasjonen har imidlertid flere økonomiske sugerør av internasjonal lengde tilgjengelig - blant annet Verdensbanken og IMF. I tillegg er WHO på offensiven med et kreativt forslag om å inndrive skatt på internettbruk. Det går også rykter om at FN har lyst på egen seddelpresse. Kun frekkheten ser ut til å overskygge ambisjonene. De klarer nok å holde det gående en stund til.

[QIQrrr]

Nok en avdanket arbeiderpartipolitiker ser ut til å være på tur hjem til hovedkvarteret:

The Sydney Morning Herald, July 22, 2010: Former prime minister Kevin Rudd is reportedly being considered by the United Nations for a top-level job as an adviser on climate change. Mr Rudd spent several days in New York last week meeting with UN officials. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is now considering creating a role for him as a top-level adviser on climate change, according to a "diplomatic source with knowledge of the plan," the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday - Rudd in line for job at UN: report

Noen utvalgte Rudd-sitater fra en tale han holdt i forkant av København konferansen:

● Climate skeptics are quite literally holding the world to ransom.
● The legion of climate change skeptics are active across the world, and they happily play with our children’s future.
● The clock is ticking for the planet, but the climate change skeptics simply do not care.
● Climate change skeptics offer no alternative official body of evidence from any credible government in the world.
● These do-nothing climate change skeptics are prepared to destroy our children’s future.
● Climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer.
● Climate change skeptics in all their guises and disguises are not conservatives. They are radicals.
● The logic of these skeptics belongs in a casino, not a science lab, and not in the ranks of any responsible government.
● The Government I lead will act.

En handlingslammet Rudd fikk som kjent sparken av sine egne, og i rollen som klimarådgiver for FN vil han forhåpentligvis kunne bidra til at organisasjonens kredibilitet svekkes ytterligere.

[QIQrrr]

Arutz Sheva, August 1, 2010: Senior Hamas commander Issa al-Batran was killed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike that followed a Grad rocket attack on the city of Ashkelon. While several news outlets reported details of Batran's past, including previous attempts on his life, they failed to note a major component of Batran's personal life: his day job as a United Nations-employed schoolteacher. Batran taught at a UN school in Al-Bureij. According to the Bethlehem-based Maan news agency Batran worked in the school at least until January 2009, and possibly beyond that time. His job as a schoolteacher was mentioned by Maan and other Arab news outlets in 2009, when several members of the Batran family were killed in an airstrike during the counterterror operation Cast Lead. At that time, his senior position in Hamas was not mentioned. Hamas has vowed to avenge Batran's death. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) has faced controversy in the past for its ties to Hamas. In 2004 UNRWA's then-Director Peter Hansen caused a stir when he told a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, “I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll. And I don’t see that as a crime.” In March 2009, Hamas swept the UNRWA union elections, winning 17 out of 27 seats. A short time later, UNRWA's Gaza director, John Ging, called on UN employees in Gaza to play down their affiliation with local terrorist groups or face dismissal - Slain Senior Hamas Terrorist was Employed by UN

[QIQrrr]

Vanguard, August 2, 2010: After losing over 2,000 Nigerian soldiers to peace-keeping operations worldwide in recent times, President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday directed the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Paul Dike and other service chiefs to henceforth ensure that no Nigerian troop is lost to militia groups or ethnic gangs in theatre of operation without any genuine cause. Speaking at the International Seminar on Peace Support Operations organised by the Ministry of Defence, the President also called on the United Nations Organisation to review its rules of engagement and save Nigeria the burden of losing so many of its highly trained military personnel due to the present inadequate rules of engagement. Also speaking, former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo toed the line of President Jonathan saying, “henceforth, we should not send out our troops to be sitting ducks of senseless militias, and made sacrificial lambs in peace support operations. I believe that the rules of engagement need to be re-examined because when rules of engagement are not clear, soldiers get confused and are easy prey to ethnic militias.” Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Paul Dike in an overview, noted that there are currently over 5,700 Nigerian troops partaking in peacekeeping operations worldwide making her the fourth largest troop contributing country in the world. He said Nigeria has so far lost 2,000 men and expended over $10 billion in peacekeeping, saying out of 55 UN operations, Nigeria has participated in 40 operations in such countries as Congo, Lebanon, Somalia, Croatia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Ivory Coast and Democratic Republic of Congo - Peace operations: Jonathan decries killing of Nigerian soldiers

[QIQrrr]

Financial Post, August 4, 2010: The most spectacular recent example of UN corruption emerged with the oil-for-food fiasco, in which billions of dollars were siphoned to the regime of Saddam Hussein under the guise of humanitarian aid. Since oil-for-food, the UN has faced other cases of non-accountability, including “cash for Kim” payments by the UN Development Program to the government of North Korea. There have also been far more serious allegations: that UN “peacekeepers” have physically and sexually abused those they were meant to be protecting, including children. However, inquiries are often blocked by the countries of the nationals involved - Cleaning up at the UN

The Daily Telegraph, August 4, 2010: Ecuador is seeking $3.6bn (£2.2bn) from rich countries - in return for doing nothing for a decade. The unusual deal is part of a new United Nations initiative to persuade energy-rich countries not to drill for oil and gas in environmentally sensitive areas. Ecuador has therefore agreed not to touch three oil fields in the Yasuni region of the Amazon for the next ten years, if rich countries buy enough 'Amazon bonds'. Ecuador's Yasuni reserves are estimated to hold 846m barrels of crude - How to raise $3.6bn for doing nothing

Yahoo! News, August 5. 2010: Carbon taxes, add-ons to international air fares and a levy on cross-border money movements are among ways being considered by a panel of the world's leading economists to raise a staggering $100 billion a year to fight climate change. Economist Nicholas Stern told international climate negotiators that government regulation and public money also will be needed to create incentives for private investment in industries that emit fewer greenhouse gases. In short, a new industrial revolution is needed to move the world away from fossil fuels to low carbon growth, he said. "It will be extremely exciting, dynamic and productive," said Stern, one of 18 experts in public finance on an advisory panel appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - UN panel: New taxes needed

[QIQrrr]

Arutz Sheva, August 5, 2010: The Palestinian Authority continues to incite young schoolchildren to armed struggle against Israel in its textbooks – textbooks that are used by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to teach incitement in Israel's capital city, says investigative reporter David Bedein, who spoke in an interview with Arutz Sheva's Hebrew-language news service. The books in question include passages praising terrorists killed while attacking Israel as “martyrs”. They also teach children that Arabs descended from those who fled Israel during the War of Independence have a right to “return” to Israel. Bedein's finding that the textbooks in Arab schools in Jerusalem are as problematic as those used in PA schools elsewhere is backed by a frank interview with PA Minister of Education Lamis al-Alami, who spoke with a member of Bedein's investigative team and told her that the textbooks provided by the PA for UNRWA schools are precisely the same in Jerusalem as in Ramallah, Shechem and Gaza. "These books discuss war against Israel, martyrs, the right of return. It's the first education system since the Third Reich which prepares its pupils to demonize Jews and to wage war against the Jews,” Bedein said - Report: UN Teaches Jihad in Jerusalem

[QIQrrr]

EXCLUSIVE: After a Year of Setbacks, U.N. Looks to Take Charge of World's Agenda

Fox News, September 8, 2010

After a year of humiliating setbacks, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and about 60 of his top lieutenants — the top brass of the entire U.N. system — spent their Labor Day weekend at a remote Austrian Alpine retreat, discussing ways to put their sprawling organization in charge of the world’s agenda. Details concerning the two-day, closed-door sessions in the comfortable village of Alpbach were closely guarded. Nonetheless, position papers for the meeting obtained by Fox News indicate that the topics included:

● How to restore “climate change” as a top global priority after the fiasco of last year’s Copenhagen summit.

● How to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen the discussion further to encompass the idea of “global public goods.”

● How to keep growing U.N. peacekeeping efforts into missions involved in the police, courts, legal systems and other aspects of strife-torn countries.

● How to capitalize on the global tide of migrants from poor nations to rich ones, to encompass a new “international migration governance framework.”

● How to make “clever” use of new technologies to deepen direct ties with what the U.N. calls “civil society,” meaning novel ways to bypass its member nation states and deal directly with constituencies that support U.N. agendas.

As one underlying theme of the sessions, the top U.N. bosses seemed to be grappling often with how to cope with the pesky issue of national sovereignty, which — according to the position papers, anyway — continued to thwart many of their most ambitious schemes, especially when it comes to many different kinds of “global governance.”

Not coincidentally, the conclave of bureaucrats also saw in “global governance” a greater role for themselves.

As a position paper intended for their first group session put it, in the customary glutinous prose of the organization’s internal documents: “the U.N. should be able to take the lead in setting the global agenda, engage effectively with other multinational and regional organizations as well as civil society and non-state stakeholders, and transform itself into a tool to help implement the globally agreed objectives.”

And for that to happen, the paper continues, “it will be necessary to deeply reflect on the substance of sovereignty, and accept that changes in our perceptions are a good indication of the direction we are going.”

Hammering away at perceptions that nation-states cannot adequately meet global challenges, but the U.N. can, is a major theme of the position papers, which were assembled by a variety of U.N. think tanks, task forces and institutions, including the United Nations Development Program, and the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

CLICK HERE FOR THE POSITION PAPERS

Se kilde for mer.

[QIQrrr]

The Washington Times, September 14, 2010: Last week, scientists cut in half their estimate of the ice-loss rate. The news won't dissuade global warmists at the United Nations to waver from their ultimate target: your wallet. In Copenhagen, developed countries pledged $30 billion to pay for so-called "greenhouse-gas" reduction in 2010-2012. After that, the U.N. wants an additional $100 billion by 2020, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has a wish list calling for much more. In his upcoming report to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals summit scheduled for Sept. 20-22 in New York, Mr. Ban claims that purported global-warming mitigation in developing countries "would require financial assistance of perhaps an additional 1 percent of gross domestic product of rich countries in 2015, a small sum compared with the likely costs of inaction." U.S. GDP in 2009 was $14.3 trillion; 1 percent of that amount would put the American payout at $143 billion. That's hardly "a small sum" - Global wealth redistribution scheme targets billions from America

UN totalitarians want your money and your life

[QIQrrr]

Fox News, September 17, 2010: As the United Nations hosts scores of world leaders at its annual General Assembly this month — and a special summit called by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for Sept. 20 — behind-the-scene tensions are high between the world organization and New York City, which has repeatedly warned that the U.N. complex on Manhattan’s East side is dangerously exposed to potential terrorist attacks. In some places at the periphery of the U.N. complex, little more than a wheel-barrow full of high explosives could have a disastrous effect. In others, a truck-bomber could drive within a few yards of the complex before setting off a blast that could be as devastating as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But one important part of the U.N. complex, the Conference Building that houses the U.N. Security Council, is vulnerable to attack from an unusual direction: underneath. The Conference Building hangs directly over the FDR, on a concrete platform that is directly exposed to a potential terrorist detonation. Another major vulnerability is an exit ramp from the FDR that curls alongside the south end of the U.N. campus onto 42nd Street, a short distance from the U.N. library building - EXCLUSIVE: U.N. Ignores Risks of Terror Attack, New York City Says