The international movement to provide the United Nations (UN) with unprecedented power and influence over world affairs has found a seemingly innocuous, but deceptive train to ride. The North American perception of this world body founded in 1945 has become that of a vast, but vapid and corrupt organization. The UN “Climate Change” train will change that impression, but not for the better. With support from the Obama administration, the path ahead will place the UN on a track toward receiving an irreversible influence over our lives. The continuing corruption will render untold dividends for the corrupt and morally repugnant.
There are currently 192 countries making up the United Nations members list. The vast majority of the member nations are dictatorships by any other name. You can dress their leaders in fancy robes and toss an occasional crown on a head, but from Saudi Arabia to Libya and Gambia, their leaders oppress their populations. They loot as much as they can from their economies, while enjoying a comforting credibility rubbing shoulders with other narcissistic misanthropes under the opulent umbrella of the UN General Assembly.
The UN has never been an effective vehicle for achieving real peace and security, although it was intended to achieve exactly that when it replaced the impotent League of Nations. The overwhelming power of the United States has been the major underlying force that has prevented major international wars since WWII. The UN has been an inept bystander to international affairs. America’s power and influence has generated kick-back that has been fomented within the UN where jealousy found broad fertile ground amongst a majority of member nations, including Europeans such as Norway, and Denmark. No need here to extend the list of envious pretenders that easily includes the likes of Russia.
The reaction against the U.S. found new energy when the world found itself in an economic recession, and fingers could be pointed at America for having been too self serving. In slide the opportunists. Beating the newfound drums of climate change fear and catastrophe, they will mutate the upcoming Copenhagen meeting on climate change into a perfect vehicle through which begrudging usurpers will once again attempt elevating the UN to status of world power, “over” the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »
He’s crossed swords, over the years, with all the usual right-wing suspects, from car-makers to gun owners to Wall Street executives, health companies, and George W Bush. Now Michael Moore has picked a fight with a hero of the international left. Read the rest of this entry »
Gunmen from Hizbul Islam head for Somalia’s southern port of Kismayu October 1, 2009. Rival Islamist rebels battled in southern Somalia’s Kismayu port on Thursday, killing at least 20 people and the fighting threatened to spread to other parts of the failed Horn of Africa state.
REUTERS/Feisal Omar
United Nations officials say Somalia has not been in such perilous shape since the central government collapsed in 1991 and is in desperate need of help.
But right now that help is being delayed, they say, at least partly because the American government is worried that its aid is going to feed terrorists.
American officials are concerned that United Nations contractors may be funneling American donations to the Shabab, a Somali terrorist group with growing ties to Al Qaeda.
Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama hold up a cardboard cutout of Obama at a campaign event at the Palm Beach Community College in Lake Worth, Florida October 21, 2008.
REUTERS/Jim Young
“It’s not about me“, says the cardboard president? How does the Mmm mmm mm president say this with a straight face anymore?
President Obama’s underwhelming speech at the UN General Assembly and his charm offensive III media blitz perpetuates his growing image of a president who is trying to sell us style over substance; personality to drive policy; a junior senator elected to the highest office in the land to lead the free world who is woefully under-prepared to do any such thing. So he finds himself selling…
….himself.
Riding on the mantra of “hope” and “change” and “I’m not Bush.”
Obama’s rhetorical method in international contexts — given supreme expression at the United Nations this week — is a moral dialectic. The thesis: pre-Obama America is a nation of many flaws and failures. The antithesis: The world responds with understandable but misguided prejudice. The synthesis: Me. Me, at all costs; me, in spite of all terrors; me, however long and hard the road may be. How great a world we all should see, if only all were more like…me. Read the rest of this entry »
Who was President Obama trying to appeal to in his speech? You’ll never find “a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” than some of those nations who make up the UN General Assembly.
Niles Gardiner writing for the Telegraph (contrast this to the opening paragraph of this editorial in the Guardian), nails it, describing Obama’s UN speech today as a display of soft power in the face of brutal enemies, thereby failing to advance American interests onto the world stage.
It’s always a bad sign when a US president gets several rounds of heavy applause at the UN General Assembly, as Barack Obama did this morning in New York. Needless to say, the loudest cheers from the gathering of world leaders came when he condemned the actions of a close US ally, Israel, in continuing to build settlements in the West Bank. You can always rely on attacks on the Israelis to generate the biggest roars of approval at any meeting of the United Nations, and Obama dutifully obliged. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. President Barack Obama gestures during his address to the 64th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York, September 23, 2009. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (UNITED STATES POLITICS)
I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. A part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies and a belief on, on certain critical issues, America had acted unilaterally without regard for the interests of others.
And this is has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism which, too often, has served as an excuse for collective inaction.
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After all, it is easy to walk up to this podium and point fingers and stoke divisions. Nothing is easier than blaming others for our troubles and absolving ourselves of responsibility for our choices and our actions. Anybody can do that.
Like blaming the previous Administration for the state of affairs today and giving validity to misperceptions? Good grief!
I’m sure many of you remember this ad Obama put out in response to the 3am Clinton ad:
Well, as Mike wrote about earlier we can see how well that “good” judgment has worked out so far:
North Korea announced Monday that it successfully carried out a second underground nuclear test, less than two months after launching a rocket widely believed to be a test of its long-range missile technology.
The curtain is about to rise again on the long-running nuclear tragicomedy, “North Korea Outwits the United States.” Despite Kim Jong Il’s explicit threats of another nuclear test, U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth said last week that the Obama administration is “relatively relaxed” and that “there is not a sense of crisis.” They’re certainly smiling in Pyongyang.
Poor Obama. He was told that other nations were just soooo excited he was elected and they couldn’t wait to work with him after so many years of the “arrogant” and “dismissive” George Bush (video here).
So when North Korea defied the world and launched it’s missile on Sunday, Obama decided to get tough. In a big test of his leadership abilities he gave a speech in Prague where he declared:
“North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for a long range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for action — not just this afternoon at the UN Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response. And North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons. All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. That’s why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.” –President Obama, Prague April 5,, 2009
The response from the U.N. was immediate. The following is a short audio clip from UN headquarters with the statements of diplomats clamoring to follow Obama’s lead:
The Obama admin spending may just be the final straw on the already fragile status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Today there’s news that a UN panel is recommending ditching the US dollar in favor of a shared basket of currencies instead.
Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.
Persaud, chairman of consultants Intelligence Capital and a former currency chief at JPMorgan, said the recommendation would be one of a number delivered to the United Nations on March 25 by the U.N. Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform.
“It is a good moment to move to a shared reserve currency,” he said.
Iran offered to stop attacking British troops in Iraq to try to get the West to drop objections to Tehran’s uranium enrichment project, a UK official says.
The disclosure by UN ambassador Sir John Sawers in a BBC documentary throws new light on backroom discussions between Iran and the West.
~~~
“The Iranians wanted to be able to strike a deal whereby they stopped killing our forces in Iraq in return for them being allowed to carry on with their nuclear programme: ‘We stop killing you in Iraq, stop undermining the political process there, you allow us to carry on with our nuclear programme without let or hindrance.’”
(wow, and that’s from the BBC-hardly a neocon mouthpiece. Odd they didn’t report this when GWB was President).
And in other news re Iran today. Not only does the leftist BBC confirm that Iran is a nuclear blackmailer and has been for years, not only does Iran pretty much admit to being part of the insurgency in Iraq, but…now the UN says they’ve got enough matl for a bomb.
In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought. They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.
If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.
Well, if President Obama doesn’t release his Iran plan (he’s had a plan for Iran for 2yrs now, right), then someone else might take action before he does.
Well, it’s been a busy time for me but I could not let this thankathon go by without providing my own post to thank a great President. One I am so thankful was in office after Sept. 11th 2001.
One of the best qualities in the man that I will sorely miss is that he never backed down on something he felt was right due to public opinion. He knew we had to finish the Iraqi mess once and for all after 9/11. There was no way we could allow Saddam to thumb his nose at the world, supporting terror, and obtaining WMD, in a post-9/11 world. He knew 13 years of conjoling, begging and pleading was enough. But even then he gave Saddam a chance to stop it. He didn’t just give him a chance to stop the war from happening he went to the UN for help in getting him to comply with a strong resolution. A resolution that any sane leader would have recognized was his last chance:
…in 2002 President Bush bucked the advice of his more hawkish advisers and agreed to take Tony Blair’s advice and seek another U.N. Resolution — was it the 16th or 17th? — against Saddam Hussein. Resolution 1441 passed 15-0. True, the Administration failed to obtain a second resolution, not least because the French reneged on private assurances that it would agree to a second resolution if America obtained the first.
He has done everything in his power to insure that we would not be attacked again. Again, making unpopular decisions, but he never backed down in the face of public opinion because he knew it was the right thing to do. We do not find many politicians like that. It’s a rare quality and the one I will miss sorely. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew Glass was a quiet man. He had a couple of friends, but they all lived blocks away, and his best friend lived on the other side of town. His neighbors though, didn’t like him at all.
Andy lived in a house that used to belong to his great grandparents, but the Basher family had been staying there for a long time before he moved back into it. Now the Bashers were angry. They hadn’t wanted to leave the house, and in the end, Andy had to call the police and force them out.
Because of the animosity, Andy had all kinds of arguments with the Bashers. The Bashers, who owned the houses on either side of Andy’s, would stand in their yards yelling, “We want our house back,” as they threw rocks at him over the fence.
“It’s not your house,” Andy would say to them, ducking to avoid the rocks, “It’s mine. You were just staying here while my family was gone.”
Andy often had to sleep under his bed because of the constant barrage of rocks that broke the windows in his house, and clattered to the floor all over his room. One time, the Bashers got so violent that the police even kicked them out of their houses next door, and some of Andy’s family members moved into them to keep the Bashers from moving back. Read the rest of this entry »
Ok, get your scorecards ready, and try to determine WHERE the Democratic Party, America’s Congressional leaders, America’s incoming President, and his administration stand on this issue.
Pres-elect Obama (long labeled as indecisive by his detractors) has not commented on Israel’s counterattacks against Hamas in Gaza. Before being elected he was both an advocate of peace and a supporter of Israel’s right to defend itself. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel’s counterattack have been going on since 2002, and talks have never prevented them.
Senator Clinton (D) (Obama’s pick for Secretary of State) backs Israel’s counterattacks and dismissed diplomatic talks with Hamas.
“negotiating with Hamas is unacceptable for the United States.”
Like a six lane highway funneling down to two, the traffic jam of hot spots awaiting PEBO (Prez-elect Barack Obama) after inauguration is approaching critical mass. As “that one” deftly dodges any appearance of supporting either Israel or Hamas in the ongoing Gaza conflict consuming the daily news, the future Commander in Chief may find himself being pressured to use more extensive military force against the still proactive Somalian pirates off the East African coast.
Evidently air and sea power wasn’t enough. And in response to a UN Somalian representative’s description of his country’s problems, the SC expanded their blessings this month for what may turn out to be a chaotic war on the pirates … now allowing the individual nations’ pursuit to go ashore, within Somalia, where the pirates operate.
In other words… the Security Council has just okayed any and every willing and able country to wage war on the sea thugs… at sea, in the air, and with boots on the ground. And as far as I can see, there is no coalition organization to such operations.
