Tag Archives: United Nations

Middle East, United Nations, War On Terror

al-Qaida Wants Syria Next

al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims to support Syrian rebels. Good work on that Arab Spring thing President Obama. Syria on one side, Egypt on the other, and Israel the ‘monkey in the middle.’ Only in reverse.

Now, after weeks of slaughtering their own people, the United Nations (aka Useless Nations) and the Arab League call for a peacekeeping force. One small problem with that. There first has to be peace to keep. And right now Syrian President Bashar Assad has his tanks in the cities shooting his citizens.

As an aside, have you noticed the citizens throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the military who are shooting bullets. Know why that is? The people are not allowed to have guns. Only the military and police may have guns. Syrians, same as in Egypt, are not allowed to own guns. I bet they wish they had the right to keep and bear arms. They sure could use it.

Today Sen. Leiberman and others are calling for the administration to support the Syrian ‘rebels’ covertly and overtly with weapons so they can not only defend themselves, but can have some chance of overthrowing the Assad regime.

That’s an interesting proposal. But how about thinking that one through. Do you want al-Qaida or the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Syria?

That’s what happened in Egypt. You can’t deal with Syria effectively enough without including Iran, the puppet master of terror in the Middle East. And not without coming out publicly to explain the end game of who or what will be in charge after Assad.

But that takes leadership.

Link: In complicating move, al-Qaeda backs Syrian revolt

China, Egypt, Iran, Middle East, Politics, Religion, Russia, United Nations, War On Terror

Another Diplomatic Disaster For The Unites States

Leave the upcoming military confrontation with Iran aside for a moment. And put Russia and China on the back burner as countries hostile to humanity for condoning Syria’s murdering of their own citizens. Which at the same time highlights the uselessness of the United Nations and its Security Council.

Set that aside for now so you can concentrate on how Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt is sending 19 American NGO (non governmental organization) workers to trial for ‘crimes’ like promoting democracy and human rights and for receiving funds to support them and their mission.

The Muslim Brotherhood used the NGO’s to help overthrow former President Hosni Mubarak. The ‘democracy’ that got rid of Mubarak is no longer needed. Now, they are holding 43 of them prisoner and moving to the oppressive Sharia law.

One of the Americans held captive is Sam LaHood, the son of Secretary of  Transportation Ray LaHood. Sam LaHood is the head of the Egypt office of the Washington-based International Republican Institute.

I don’t attribute any of that as, like Joe Biden had warned, that President Obama will be tested on the international stage. This is a result of a combination of his inexperience, naivety, and his pre-occupation with transforming the United States into some form of government-controlled society where the federal government makes all decisions for you.

Three years ago, then Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said . . .

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.

And they have not stopped.

Makes one wonder if Biden made that statement because he knew what would follow when the top of the ticket is clueless on any subject besides ‘social justice.’

Link: Egypt sends American workers to trial

Media, Politics, United Nations

Obama, No More Empty Words

President Obama was in Chile today and answered questions for the first time since U.N. authorized military action in Libya began.

Some of what he said was ‘we can’t simply stand by with empty words.’

In the real world, what goes around comes around. The President is very convincing when he is speaking and has had the media hypnotized for years.

Anyone with a memory of the 2008 campaign will remember Sen. Obama criticizing Sen. Clinton for her ‘words, just words. Follow the link, you decide who owns empty words.

Economy, Egypt, Energy, Media, Middle East, Organized Labor, Politics, United Nations

Fed Policy, Govt. Policy, Egypt Burns

Here’s a little ditty that the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole. That’s because the Obama administration, environmentists, and the Federal Reserve are not insignificant players in the rioting and unrest we are seeing in the Middle East, and in the rise in prices of foodstuffs around the world. WHAT you say?

For years now, the United Nations has been complaining that they can’t continue to feed all they need to for a lack of money caused by the rising food cost. This is a direct consequence of bio-fuel nonsense where the United States is using food (corn) to put in our gas tank. This causes all kinds of food to be more expensive. Not just for foodstuffs made from corn, but meat and poultry products because it is also food for the livestock.

Compounding that is the enormous spending of the Federal Reserve. The effect of that has contributed to the increase in food prices not only here but everywhere else in the world.

Chriss W. Street at Big Government writes . . .

QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

When you consider how lucky we are to live in the United States, where 10% of our income goes for food for three meals a day,  a rise in food prices is not as much of an issue as it is in other parts of the world like Egypt, where food consumes 50% of their income for two meals a day. Couple that with outrageously high unemployment while the ruling class lives the high life, and you have a powder keg in the making.

UPDATE 06:50:

As if there isn’t enough evidence of how government policies were accomplices in Egypt’s revolution, new evidence points to the role of labor unions and the American Left in orchestrating it:

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

China, Economy, Energy, Politics, United Nations

Climate Change Conference ‘Going Backwards’

That’s the good news. Frustrated by the competition to play God, the big U.N. climate talks in Cancun are ‘going backwards.’

They are arguing over adjusting the imaginary global thermostat down 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees. While the world’s two biggest polluters, China and India, feel it is unfair that they be forced to participate, don’t want anything to do with it. They haven’t signed on to the Kyoto Protocol either.

Then there’s the rift as to who would manage the $100 billion per year fund that they say they need in order to meet their goal. The World Bank or the United Nations? No matter who it would be, you know it would be nothing more than a slush fund for dictators and despots around the world, helping them to play God while the United States mostly foots the bill for their folly.

Meanwhile, environment ministers began flying in Saturday, hoping to put new life in the U.N. talks. Don’t you wonder about ‘the cost’ that their carbon footprint places on our green earth?

Link:  Plodding climate talks stepping up to higher level

Economy, Energy, United Nations

Skeptic Or Denier?

The role of skeptic – the one who asks the questions, the one who demands answers – is generally a lauded role in modern society. At least .. as long as there’s a Republican on the hot seat. But in climate circles, they have another word, a pejorative term, for skeptics: deniers. The church of global warming has no tolerance for heresy, and even less for probing questions or investigations. And so it is that the journalist Phelim McAleer was denied press credentials for the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in sunny Cancun, Mexico this week.

Meanwhile Christina Figueres, the UN climate chief, launched the annual climate change meeting in Cancun in Mexico, asking negotiators to strike a “compromise” and weave together elements of a solid response to global warming by drawing inspiration from the Mayan goddess of “reason and creativity.”

And, more talk of the need to transfer money and technology under the belief that the United Nations can adjust an imaginary global thermostat by moving vast amounts of money from one side of the earth to the other, if only the other side of the earth will go along. Guess who from? Leaving the rest of us in the dark.

Link:  The Climate Conference Echo Chamber |  UN climate change conference opens in Mexico

Energy, Politics, Uncategorized, United Nations

Demand For Biofuels Hurting Poorer Nations

This is not a new subject, just an example of what happens when governments fail to learn from their mistakes. It’s what happens when foodstuffs are used in biofuel production.

Families from Pakistan to Argentina to Congo are being battered by surging food prices that are dragging more people into poverty, fueling political tensions and forcing some to give up eating meat, fruit and even tomatoes.

With food costing up to 70 percent of family income in the poorest countries, rising prices are squeezing household budgets and threatening to worsen malnutrition, while inflation stays moderate in the United States and Europe. Compounding the problem in many countries: prices hardly fell from their peaks in 2008, when global food prices jumped in part due to a smaller U.S. wheat harvest and demand for crops to use in biofuels.

But it goes even further than that. In terms of the carbon footprint created in producing biofuels compared to that of fossil fuels, fossil fuels out-green biofuels. So how smart is it to do unnecessary harm to the environment while increasing food prices and hurting the poorer nations around the world?

More of history repeating itself happens when governments refuse to learn how markets operate and what happens to them when the government steps in with taxes and price controls.

Argentina’s government has responded with higher taxes, export limits, controls on supermarket prices of meat, wheat and corn, subsidies to food producers and pay hikes of 30 percent for union workers. The moves have temporarily eased the pain but beef producers have thinned their herds in response to government intervention and the price of meat has doubled in the last year.

“Before, we would eat meat three times a week. Now it’s once, with luck,” said Marta Esposito, a 45-year-old mother of two in Buenos Aires. “Tomatoes, don’t even talk about it. We eat whatever is the cheapest.”

The environmental movement really has to come clean on what their goal is. Is it to help the environment, or is it to handicap the United States?

Link: Surging costs hit food security in poorer nations |  Fossil Fuels Out-Green Biofuels |  United Nations Warns Of Food Fight

Media, Politics, United Nations

Hold Turkey Responsible, Not Israel

The ‘rush to judgment’ that the United Nations has made, portraying Israel as the bad guy by enforcing the blockade is stunning. Equally as stunning is the lack of support for Israel from Washington over this incident. Or the sinking of a S. Korean Navy vessel, or Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions, or . . .

For those in the media whose memory seems to be as short as the combined length of the beards of binLaden’s wives, Hamas is at war with Israel. Hamas has been found to re-arm itself in shipments of humanitarian aid. The reason for the blockade is to insure that only humanitarian aid goes to Gaza. Israel is all for them getting the humanitarian aid they need and seeing to it that they get it. Especially since they know, as does the administration and the UN, that Hamas controls and runs Gaza and use aid as a weapon against their own people.

This ‘Freedom Flotilla’ was not about delivering aid. It was about starting a PR campaign to make Israel the bad guy. Terrorists were on board. The ship was under the Turkish flag. The ship refused to stop to be inspected, thereby provoking what took place afterward. That was the plan and Turkey knew it. People delivering humanitarian aid don’t arm themselves with clubs, knives, and guns to use against the Israeli soldiers there to insure that only aide is delivered. And the don’t have camera crews from Al Jazeera on board.

The Free Gaza Movement announced its intention to breach Israel’s barricade of Gaza – requiring it to violate Israel’s territorial waters.

The rubber is hitting the road Mr. President. A leadership moment is needed. Recall our Ambassador to Turkey in protest. And get off the anti-Israel bandwagon in the useless United Nations. Use your bully pulpit to call a spade a spade.

Link: Turkey Responsible for Flotilla Deaths

China, Iran, Politics, Russia, United Nations

Barack Hits A Hard Place, The United Nations

There comes a time when rhetoric just runs out of steam. Seems that is the case now over getting tough on Iran for its secret nuclear ambitions.

Permanent Security Council member China has joined Russia in opposing Washington’s plans to impose tough, wide-ranging sanctions on the Islamic Republic over its refusal to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment activity and open up fully to U.N. nuclear inspections.

If there ever was a legitimate reason to walk away from the United Nations club and form a ‘new world order,’ this is it.

Seems that limiting alternatives, like the Russia and China are doing, is their game. When the alternatives are limited, if tougher sanctions are off the table, the choice then becomes to let Iran develop a nuclear arsenal or go the military route, including a blockade. Whatever other sanctions could be imposed would be ameliorated by Russia and China.

It is diplomatic propaganda for Russia to characterize sanctions by the United States and the European Union and ‘other western nations’ as being unilateral if it does not include the United Nations. Clearly, they hang their hat on their puppet called the United Nations.

It’s crunch time for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Their choices couldn’t be more clear. Does the United States stand with the EU and like-minded allies or will we find a face-saving way to leave the EU and the Middle East at risk and back down? I guess we will soon see exactly what Barack and Hillary mean when they speak of improving our image around the world.

Watch for yet another apology tour, while China and Russia are ROTFL.

Link: Russia warns U.S. against unilateral Iran sanctions – Yahoo! News.

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics, United Nations

Investing In Global Warming, Cap And Trade

Hardly a week goes by lately where news comes out that adds to the doubt about ‘man made’ global warming. From incomplete and manipulated data, to selective science of hand-picking tree samples, to lost or destroyed supporting data, and lately to statements of Phil Jones.

Phil Jones was forced to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after a series of leaked emails and other documents suggested that the data supporting global warming theories had been “cooked” and that opposing theories were being suppressed.

But this was not the end of the revelations.

“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

“And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”

What do you mean ‘statistically significant‘ you ask? According to Phil Jones . . .

This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.

And associating climate change to man-made global warming, there’s this question to Jones . . .

“How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?”

Jones: “I’m 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”

OK fine. And we now know all about their data and record keeping problems.

So what’s the point? The whole point of this ‘man-made’ global warming hysteria is to execute a transfer of wealth through whatever way possible, under the pretense that we can adjust the global thermostat as well as sea-level. It’s is a political movement that has turned into a near religion with environmentalists.

Then there’s this gem about rising sea levels . . .

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

Whether it by by the United Nations, the Kyoto Protocol, and more locally, the administration’s Cap & Trade legislation, all of these schemes are designed to move money from our side of the earth to the other, with the side benefit of depressing our economy and raising prices even further. I mean it just makes sense. If you’re a slip and fall lawyer, you go after the money. In the global scale, the ‘richest’ nation in the world is right here. And for anyone who was in Copenhagen, you saw who the evil one was. It was the United States, and it was capitalism.

In light of what is now known, we are starting to see signs in the US of hopping off this man-made global warming bandwagon. But not everyone.

Know who is heavily invested in this scheme? Al Gore. He probably has the most to lose when the cap and trade and carbon credit trading schemes fall through. Starting with a company he and another investor started called Generation Investment Management LLP. I’m all for capitalism, and according to Al Gore and the media, he’s just putting his money where his mouth is. The reason capitalism works is because there is risk taking. When the market demands it, entrepreneurs will provide. Responding to the market, or not, determines who wins and who looses. Gore’s company is an associate member of the Chicago Climate Exchange. A carbon credit trading exchange. (Available right now at $.10/share. Their stock fell 33% after the Copenhagen global warming festival in December.) How much Gore has invested varies from guesstimates from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. Suffice it to say, if things go the way he hopes they will, he’ll make George Soros’ wealth look like small change.

So yesterday, either in denial or a last ditch attempt to saves his investments, or both, Al Gore opines in the New York Times ‘We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change.’ The first sentence of his opinion piece says it all . . .

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Right. The sky is falling. On him. Then, from high on the mountain, not far from the burning bush, Gore ends with this. From Rick Moran at American Thinker.

Finally, this bit of weirdness that shows Gore for what he is; a megalomaniac:

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis – inconvenient as ever – must still be faced.

Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer – as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an “instrument of redemption?”

Who else has put their money where their mouth is? Well, in a more muted and covert kind of way, the BBC has. They have $12.5 billion of their pension funds invested in companies whose future depends on the success of the whole man-made global warming movement and subsequent laws and regulations.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you see an article about a man-made global warming ‘crisis.’