United Nations Green Climate Fund May Require Carbon Tax As Loan Contingency For Developing Countries

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The Green Climate Fund, designed to channel as much as $100 billion a year in pledges to emerging nations, may try to wean recipients off fossil fuel and encourage them to put a price on carbon, according to an overseer.

The fund may guarantee bank loans in developing nations for projects ranging from wind farms to building insulation and less-polluting agricultural equipment, Naoko Ishii, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility in Washington, said yesterday in an interview in Doha. She heads one of two secretariats governing the fund.

Climate projects may be able to get private-sector finance augmented by guarantees from the fund, alongside discounted loans from government or development banks, Ishii said. The 24- member board of the Green Climate Fund, which is still waiting to recieve money from developed nations, may make loans or guarantees conditional on the recipient having the right environmental policies in place, she said.

“I know that conditionality is a very sensitive word, but from the donor point of view, if the money is to be impactful, there must be some policy environment put in place,” Ishii said.

United Nations envoys from about 200 nations meeting in the Qatari capital this week are seeking to extend the Kyoto Protocol and lay the groundwork for a global climate agreement for 2020. Financing from richer nations to the developing world for the next seven years will help cut emissions before the new deal comes into force, Ishii said.

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Egyptian Opposition Leader Ahmed Said: US Ignored Warnings on Brotherhood (+video)

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Washington has failed to heed warnings from inside Egypt about the true intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian opposition leader Ahmed Said tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

“Unfortunately the United States was not listening,” Said told Newsmax. Said, a former member of the Egyptian parliament, heads the Free Egyptians Party, a staunchly pro-Western, pro-democratic political party.

“I was a member of parliament for the past five months before the parliament was dissolved, and I have met with several congressional delegations and met with Sens. John McCain and John Kerry — and I don’t think they’re really listening, to be very honest

Said, whose group is among the many opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the first elected head of state in the country’s history, tells Newsmax.TV that Egyptians hoped that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would be elected to the White House last month because of his tough foreign policy positions.

“The United States has a reputation of only respecting those in power who think they are strong — and people were hopeful, to a certain extent, that if Romney took over, he would be more aggressive with respect to dealing with human rights in Egypt and things like that,” he said.

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Lord Monckton Ejected From U.N. Climate Meeting For Telling Truth

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Stifling Dissent: A lone voice cried out against the global warming sham at the United Nations climate change conference and it was unceremoniously silenced. What are the alarmists afraid of?

Christopher Monckton, the third viscount of Benchley, adviser to Margaret Thatcher and global warming realist, shook up the U.N.’s talks in Doha, Qatar, when he told the delegates that “in the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all.”

“If we were to take action,” he continued, “the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptive measures later. So our recommendation, therefore, is that we should initiate very quickly a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track.”

His statement was met with boos and heckles — and, of course, an ejection and seizure of his credentials.

The U.N. will justify the ejection on grounds that Monckton deceptively posed as a delegate from Burma when he spoke. But how else could a skeptic speak at such a gathering?

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Russia Arms Syria With Powerful Ballistic Missiles

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Hours after NATO agreed on Tuesday to send Patriot missiles to Turkey because of the crisis in Syria, Russia delivered its first shipment of Iskander missiles to Syria.

The superior Iskander can travel at hypersonic speed of over 1.3 miles per second (Mach 6-7) and has a range of over 280 miles with pinpoint accuracy of destroying targets with its 1,500-pound warhead, a nightmare for any missile defense system.

According to Mashregh, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard media outlet, Russia had warned Turkey not to escalate the situation, but with Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles, it delivered its first shipment of Iskanders to Syria.

Reporting today, Mashregh said the handover occurred when Russian naval logistic vessels docked at Tartus in Syria.

The Iskandar is a surface-to-surface missile that no missile defense system can trace or destroy, Mashregh said. Russia had earlier threatened that should America put its missile defense system in Poland, it would retaliate by placing its Iskander missiles at Kaliningrad, its Baltic Sea port.

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New York Times Cairo Bureau Chief: Muslim Brotherhood Is ‘Moderate, Regular Old Political Force’

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The New York Times Cairo bureau chief David K. Kirkpatrick insists that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force,” despite Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent power grab and the Islamist organization’s radical views.

Kirkpatrick called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday from Egypt as the Brotherhood’s supporters battled opponents who feared a return to dictatorship on the streets of Cairo. When asked by Hewitt whether the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, a former top ideological enforcer in the movement, were consolidating power in Egypt to pursue an undemocratic Islamist agenda, Kirkpatrick said he thought such criticism was “misplaced.”

“The Brotherhood, they’re politicians,” he said.

“They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate — conservative but religious, but moderate — regular old political force. I find that a lot of the liberal fears of the Brotherhood are somewhat outside. That said, you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of what the good life looks like. But in the short term, I think they just want to win elections.”

Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s slogan is the not-so-moderate “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

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Looming Catastrophe: Syria Mixes Chemical Weapons to Bomb Civilians? (+video)

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Syrian forces have mixed chemical weapons and loaded them into bombs in preparation for possible use on President Bashar Assad’s own people, Fox News confirms.

A senior U.S. official told Fox News that bombs were loaded with components of sarin gas, a deadly nerve gas. Syrian forces have 60 days to use these bombs until the chemical mixture expires and has to be destroyed.

NBC News, which first reported this latest escalation in the Syrian civil war, cited sources saying bombs filled with a sarin component have not yet been loaded onto planes, but the Syrian military is prepared to use these chemical weapons against civilians pending orders from Assad.

The sarin could be delivered in several ways but is believed to have been placed in fracturable canisters that can be dropped from planes, according to a senior US military source.

“We think they have it in aerosol form,” the source told Fox News.

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U.S. and British Counter-Terrorism Intelligence May Have Been Compromised By Swiss Spy Agency

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ZURICH (Reuters) – Secret information on counter-terrorism shared by foreign governments may have been compromised by a massive data theft by a senior IT technician for the NDB, Switzerland’s intelligence service, European national security sources said.

Intelligence agencies in the United States and Britain are among those who were warned by Swiss authorities that their data could have been put in jeopardy, said one of the sources, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.

Swiss authorities arrested the technician suspected in the data theft last summer amid signs he was acting suspiciously. He later was released from prison while a criminal investigation by the office of Switzerland’s Federal Attorney General continues, according to two sources familiar with the case.

The suspect’s name was not made public. Swiss authorities believe he intended to sell the stolen data to foreign officials or commercial buyers.

A European security source said investigators now believe the suspect became disgruntled because he felt he was being ignored and his advice on operating the data systems was not being taken seriously.

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Syria Preparing to Use Chemical Weapons; “Red Line” for US

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President Obama warned Syria on Monday not to use chemical weapons against its own people, vowing to hold accountable anyone who did, even as American intelligence officials picked up signs that such arms might be deployed in the fighting there.

The White House said it had an “increased concern” that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was preparing to use such weapons, effectively confirming earlier reports of activity at chemical weapons sites. The administration said it would take action if they were used, suggesting even the possibility of military force.

“Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington. “The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”

Neither the president nor his aides would specify how the United States would hold Syrians accountable, but the White House confirmed that contingency plans had been drawn for direct action. The president’s statement amplified similar warnings issued by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier in the day in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, which represents the interests of the United States in Damascus now that the American Embassy there has been closed.

“This is a red line for the United States,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I am not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”

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After a Brief Hiatus, Gaza Tunnels Open for Business

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For eight days, the sounds of illegal commerce here at the ragged southern edge of the Gaza Strip were silenced by the pounding thrum of battle.

Israeli military jets bombed the sandy stretch of land just a center fielder’s throw from Egypt each day, hoping to collapse the underground avenues for food, cars, medicines and weapons that support Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

Ahmad al-Arja, a 22-year-old engineering student, was among the army of diggers forced to take the conflict off. But minutes after Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire on the evening of Nov. 21, his boss was on the phone.

“He said, ‘Come on, count on God, and tomorrow morning, start digging,’ ” Arja recalled, as he began with his cousins the tedious, treacherous work of tunnel repair.

The business of Rafah is the tunnel network that circumvents the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and business once again is booming.

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Syria’s Civil War a Cover for Killing Christians?

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A pair of car bombs that killed 38 people and reportedly injured 83 more in the mostly Christian and Druze town of Jaramana, Syria, has led some to allege the rebels are using the civil war to cover a more sinister campaign of slaughtering Christians.

In a statement issued by Open Doors, USA, the human rights group reports that the Syrian government is placing the blame for the attack on “terrorists.” Yet the statement also says the residents of the Damascus suburb haven’t joined the fighting on either side.

Although the rebels have denied involvement in the attacks on Christian neighborhoods, Open Doors believes the attacks are aimed at Christians, rather than supporters of Assad’s government.

For some, however, this attack was personal. A Syrian-American who has asked not to be named to protect relatives still living in Syria says the twin car bombings claimed the lives of family members.

“The explosions in Jaramana killed my uncle’s father in-law and another uncle’s wife’s cousin,” the Syrian-American said. He says the intended targets of the attacks are obvious.

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