Posts

DeMint and Inhofe: U.N. treaties mean LOST U.S. sovereignty, Liberals intent on imposing backdoor globalism

For years, liberals and misguided State Department officials have pushed for the U.S. Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). This treaty would convey ownership of the oceans to a United Nations agency and give international bureaucrats veto authority over U.S. naval operations and could force the United States to comply with international carbon emissions caps.

Last week, we defeated LOST by securing commitments to ensure it cannot gain the 67 votes needed for ratification.

However, no sooner had the 34th Republican senator signed a letter opposing LOST than the surrender of American sovereignty was put back on the table by foreign diplomats and their internationalist allies in the federal government.

With LOST dead, the new treaties being promoted to take its place include the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Disabled, which calls for government agents to supersede the authority of parents of disabled children and even covers abortion. Also, the Obama administration has begun negotiations on a new U.N. treaty to create international gun control rules that could slowly erode our Second Amendment.

The globalist ideologues behind these treaties are either ignorant of or hostile to the universal human experience that problems are best solved by the people and institutions closest to them. So assured are these masters of their mandate to direct the lives and wealth of other people that they see their routine failures to do so efficiently at the local, state and national level merely as reason to ascend to new heights of international command and control.

Read more from this story HERE.

 

Time for the U.S. to Abandon the United Nations

For years, pundits, politicians and columnists – including me – have fiercely criticized the United Nations. This institution has become a political cesspool controlled by totalitarian states and rogue nations that despise democracy, liberty and freedom. It’s only getting worse with time.

Look what’s happened during the past two weeks:  Syria is likely to get a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N. Watch reported Iran will get a “top post” on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty conference, which it described as being “like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud in the stock market.” Meanwhile, U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan claimed to have had a “very candid and constructive” meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

These are all ridiculous stories, but honestly, should we be surprised? I’m not. The U.N. has a long, sordid history of electing tyrannies and dictatorships to its various agencies, boards and councils. For an organization that vigorously claims to support world peace, it also vigorously – and controversially – supports countries that don’t have the slightest grasp of this concept.

For example, Libya chaired the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2003 – and was a U.N. Security Council member in 2008 and 2009. Syria has twice headed the U.N. Security Council, in June 2002 and August 2003. Iran and Iraq were scheduled to co-chair a U.N. nuclear disarmament conference before Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in 2003. Additionally, North Korea – a major nuclear threat – headed the U.N. Conference on Disarmament just last year.

Not to be overlooked is the U.N.’s repeated condemnation of Israel’s policies for more than five decades while ignoring the terrible slaughter of Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims in two bloody civil wars, publicly supporting an antiterrorism conference held in Tehran, and refusing to expel members that openly support and finance terrorist groups. The list goes on and on.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: FreedomHouse

Russia’s Putin: US, the West is on the Decline

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday the West’s influence was waning as its economy declines but warned Russian diplomats to be on their guard against a backlash from Moscow’s former Cold War enemies.

In a biennial speech to Russian ambassadors, Putin also took a shot at the West by condemning any unilateral actions to solve international disputes and underlined the importance of resolving such conflicts through the United Nations.

His remarks suggested that Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, would keep on defending ally Syria at the United Nations over its military crackdown on an popular uprising that has evolved into an armed insurgency.

“Domestic socio-economic problems that have become worse in industrialized countries as a result of the (economic) crisis are weakening the dominant role of the so-called historical West,” Putin told a meeting of Russian ambassadors from across the world.

He told the envoys, gathered in Moscow, that they should try to influence events where Russian interests were at stake.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum

More UN idiocy: Iran to Oversee Arms Treaty Conference

Iran has been chosen as a member of the “bureau” overseeing a month-long United Nations conference in New York aimed at finalizing a controversial global “arms trade treaty.”

The move, which came as the conference got underway last week but received virtually no attention, is the latest example of Iran taking up leadership positions at the United Nations despite its defiance of Security Council resolutions relating to its nuclear program.

Furthermore, according to an expert panel monitoring U.N. sanctions on Iran, Tehran continues to flout a Security Council ban on exporting its weaponry, with Syria the main recipient.

“This is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a non-governmental monitoring group based in Geneva, which drew attention to Iran’s elevation to the conference bureau.

UN Watch is urging U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the move: “He should remind the conference that the Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its prohibited nuclear program, and that Iran continues to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments to the murderous Assad regime . . .”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: scazon

UN calls for international tax on billionaires to transfer wealth to poor

The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries.

An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or financial transactions proposed in a UN report that accuses wealthy nations of breaking promises to step up aid for the less fortunate.

The annual World Economic and Social Survey says it is critical to find new ways to help the world’s poor as pledged cash fails to flow.

The report estimates that the number of people around the globe worth at least $1 billion rose to 1,226 in 2012.

There are an estimated 425 billionaires in the United States, 315 in the Asia-Pacific region, 310 in Europe, 90 in other North and South American countries and 86 in Africa and the Middle East.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Jorbasa