Brasilia - Brazil announced on Tuesday it planned to protect an
additional 10 000km² of land and pledged not to let economic woes stop
it from implementing other measures to protect the environment.
According
to the Environment Ministry, the country's total surface area under
preservation - including reservations for indigenous people - would
increase to 770 000km² under decrees signed by President Dilma Rousseff
just days before the start of Rio+20, a United Nations summit on
sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro.
http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Brazil-expands-conservation-areas-20120606
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Aid agencies limit their impact by refusing to fund the media
By not supporting journalists,
aid agencies are severely limiting their access to the truth about what is
happening in developing countries and, therefore, their ability to make a
difference
It’s time Canada considers leaving the UN, Tory MP says
OTTAWA — A Conservative
backbencher is demanding Canada reconsider its membership in the United Nations
after the world body criticized the government for its treatment of alleged war
criminals and changes to the refugee system.
Ontario MP Larry Miller
said he is also upset the UN deployed a special food rapporteur to Canada last
month instead of to a developing country.
“The United Nations is an
organization that was designed to work collectively to solve the major problems
facing the world,” Mr. Miller said in a statement. “If this is the type of
action that the UN will be taking then I think that it is high time that we review
our participation in the United Nations.”
Sunday, 3 June 2012
Claudia Rosett: The IMF, Rio, and the UN’s Tax-Exempt Elite
By Claudia Rosett
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, recently gave an interview to a British newspaper, The Guardian [1], in which she criticized tax dodgers in Greece. Then Lagarde became a target of criticism herself [2], when The Guardian reported on Tuesday that as head of the IMF she paid no taxes on her yearly salary of $467,940, or her accompanying annual allowance of $83,760.
The next day, CNBC rushed to Lagarde’s defense [3], with an article pointing out that Lagarde’s tax-exempt status is standard for employees of the United Nations family of organizations, which includes the IMF. Quoting the Vienna Convention on the immunities of “diplomatic agents,” CNBC noted that, like her predecessor, Lagarde was merely enjoying privileges that were hers by right:
“Protest against her, and you protest against thousands of UN employees throughout the years.”
Well, come to think of it, what a great idea!
Diplomatic immunities have their place. But they derive from an earlier age of the world, when diplomats concerned themselves chiefly with representing their own countries, and there was no vast family of globe-girdling multilateral organizations trying to cook up rules for all, while draped in diplomatic privileges. Today, in the age of the UN alphabet soup, and a global hive of “international civil servants” plotting 5 and 10 and 15 and 50 year plans for the planet, diplomatic immunities have come to provide cover for a growing elite bureaucracy — the 21st century version of the old Soviet nomenklatura, communism’s administrative patrons, who dished out to the peons the stifling rules from which they themselves were substantially exempt.
The problem is not just the lavish salaries and benefits these multilateral “diplomats” enjoy, though these do tend to be plush. The deeper problem is that diplomatic immunity means that international civil servants are shielded from the effects of the endless rules and guidelines they love to crank out. Staff of the IMF dispense tax prescriptions hither and yon, but they themselves are exempt from the pinch. Lagarde has a point, that a great many Greeks have been ducking their responsibilities. But the IMF has a long record of favoring “austerity” policies, including tax hikes, which too often further damage the economies they are meant to fix, and inflict the most pain on the people who can least afford it. The collapse of the Indonesian economy, in 1997-1998, comes to mind.
Likewise, UN legions of international planners have made stock practice of enjoying privileges they keep trying to deny to the common folk. It is by now a classic of the genre that UN climate-crats jet around the globe for conferences in Bali, Durban, and — coming up, again, next month — Rio [4], at which they prescribe a lot less travel, to be enforced by de facto taxes, for everyone else.
Systems in which rule-makers are exempt from the rules have a built-in problem for those who live under them. In a democracy, there is the vital feedback of elections, in which the mightiest can be held to account. But the UN, and its affiliates, are not democracies; they are collectives, populated by governments and staffed by diplomatically immune bureaucrats who are increasingly in the business of inventing rules, taxes, and costly self-serving programs for people who have no clear way to vote them out. That is the real cost of the UN elite, exempt from taxes but chronically seeking ways these days to tax the rest of us — Lagarde and the IMF being the least of it, as Fox’s George Russell recently chronicled in his article on the potential multi-trillion-dollar tab [5]for the UN’s imminent Rio summit.
NyTimes: Eleanor Roosevelt Would Be Appalled ‘U.N. Me,’ a Documentary About the United Nations
The gimmick they use is at this point a bit threadbare, but Ami Horowitz and Matthew Groff certainly succeed in generating outrage with “U.N. Me,” a sassy documentary that suggests the United Nations is doing more harm than good.
The filmmakers take a wide-ranging look at recent United Nation failures: peacekeepers accused of crimes, the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq, inaction in Darfur. Not much here is new, but condensing it all into one zippy documentary makes for an ugly portrait.
The film employs techniques favored by Michael Moore and some of Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” crew, using satire to confront satire-challenged officials. Mr. Horowitz, the on-camera gadfly, finds ways to work wit into decidedly unpleasant subject matter.
He gets an audience with Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, who tries to blame drought and climate change for the crisis in Darfur. “So maybe the Prius is the answer to all our problems there,” Mr. Horowitz says.
The clueless look on the ambassador’s face is amusing enough, but at the same time you feel the limits of the form. As Mr. Stewart would be the first to admit, mocking easy targets isn’t serious journalism...
A threat for seeking U.N. accountability
By Jennifer Rubin
The Palestinian News and Information Agency reports: “Head of the PLO refugees’ affairs department Zakaria al-Agha strongly criticized in a statement on Thursday a bill submitted by the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on Palestinian refugees . . . Agha described the bill as ‘a conspiracy to liquidate the issue of refugees and [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] UNRWA’s role,’ warning of serious repercussions in the region if the bill is approved as it aims to drop the Palestinian right of return and end the function of UNRWA as caretaker of the Palestinian refugees.”
US Tax Dollars Funding Palestinian Corruption?
... Rep. Louie Gohmert wants answers from the State Department and the Palestinian Authority.
"In one of our meetings in the West Bank, I said, 'Look, do you understand that when you're not spending the billions of dollars that you've received from countries, particularly the United States, to provide homes for your own people, who are homeless -- how do you expect us to keep funding you?'" Gohmert said.
Gohmert says the money fuels the conflict.
"You know, it really looks like when you squander money and don't help the homeless have homes, that you are trying to keep this hatred, keep this anger going so that the feud keeps going," Gohmert noted.
"Why should we fund that? Well the answer is, 'we shouldn't,' he concluded.
So far, the Obama administration seems silent on the issue.
U.N. takeover of the Internet must be stopped, U.S. warns
A U.N. summit later this year in Dubai could lead to a new international regime of censorship, taxes, and surveillance, warn Democrats, Republicans, the Internet Society, and father of the Internet Vint Cerf.
UN official in Haiti: Budget cuts causing cholera deaths
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A United Nations official says that people in Haiti are dying from cholera because funding to stem the disease is drying up.
John Ging of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says there is an urgent need for new ways to tackle the disease and for aid donors.
The U.N. says that 13,000 people have been treated for cholera so far this year and 132 have died. The numbers are expected to increase because of budget cuts.
Health officials say the waterborne illness has killed more than 7,100 people since it was likely introduced to Haiti by a U.N. unit from Nepal. More than 536,000 others have fallen ill.
Ging made the statement Thursday following a three-day visit to Haiti.
Let’s get out of UN: And do not apologize to this global collection of thugs
Canada apparently owes the United Nations an apology. That’s the view put forward by a group of supposedly eminent Canadians such as Ed Broadbent and Flora Macdonald, as well as organizations such as Amnesty International. These fine folks are upset at the reaction of the Harper cabinet to Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food.
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Global development podcast: what can Rio+20 achieve?
As delegates prepare for
June's Rio+20 UN Earth summit on sustainable development in Brazil, we ask what
tangible measures the conference can hope to produce. The podcast looks back at
the 1992 Rio summit, and explores the issues of the green economy, what role
companies and corporations should play in sustainable development, and what is
on the agenda for the People's summit
UN Plans to Expand Its Environmental Agency
The United Nations will be
pushing for an expansion of its already powerful global environmental agency at
this year's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro June 20-22. The UN Environmental
Program (UNEP) will be renamed the UN Environmental Organization (UNEO) and
promoted to the level of a “specialized agency,” giving it more authority and
allowing it to receive more funding.
The ultimate purpose of
the organization's restructuring is to support the Sustainable Development
division of the UN, the same division that has imposed the radical and highly
controversial Agenda 21 policies on nations across the globe.
Shamshad Akhtar a Pakistani replaces Jomo Kwame Sundaram at UN-DESA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr Shamshad Akhtar (Urdu: ڈاکٹر شمشاد اختر) was appointed by the President Pervez Musharraf as the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan for three years in December 2005. She is the 14th governor of the State Bank and the first female to assume this position. Previously, she also held positions with the Asian Development Bank.
Born in the city of Hyderabad, Sindh, Dr Akhtar completed her Ph.D in Economics from Scotland's Paisley College of Technology. She has an M.S. in Economics from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad and an M.A. in Development Economics from the University of Sussex, England. In 1987 she attended Harvard University under the Fulbright programme. Furthermore, she served in the World Bank prior to joining the State Bank of Pakistan.
Dr. Shamshad Akhtar took over as Governor, State Bank of Pakistan on January 2, 2006 for a three-year term. Dr. Akhtar, who is the first woman and the 14th Governor of the State Bank since its inception in July, 1948 brings rich experience, both national and international, to her new assignment.
Prior to her appointment as SBP Governor, Dr. Akhtar has been serving the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as its Director General, Southeast Asia Department since January, 2004. Earlier, she was Deputy Director General of the Department. She also held the position of Director, Governance, Finance and Trade Division for East and Central Asia Department of ADB.
Dr. Akhtar began her career in ADB in 1990 and rose to the position of Manager in 1998 after serving as Senior and Principal Financial Sector Specialist. She has been ADB’s Coordinator for APEC Finance Ministers Group from 1998–2001 and has served on a number of ADB committees including the Reorganization Committee, Appeals Committee and Oversight Committee etc. She has interfaced and represented the Asian Development Bank at the Bank for International Settlements and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). She has developed a broad regional expertise in financial and economic matters of Central Asian Republics & Southeast Asia including the People’s Republic of China.
Before joining the ADB, Dr. Akhtar worked for 10 years as an Economist in the World Bank’s Resident Mission in Pakistan. In Pakistan, she also worked briefly with the Planning Offices of both the Federal and Sindh Governments. She dealt with wide ranging subjects which covered analysis of macroeconomic situation, finance and money and structural reforms of key sectors including industry and agriculture. Her work included papers on taxation system of Pakistan, state of inter-governmental fiscal relations, poverty incidence & its dimensions and foreign direct investment etc. Dr. Akhtar also contributed to the development of diversification of financial markets including the analysis of monetary policy and state of banking industry (at the World Bank) and restructuring of the Securities & Exchange Commission, Insurance Commission and worked closely with the private sector including the stock exchanges of Pakistan. She has been advising the central banks on reforms of financial markets. Dr. Akhtar has also been dealing with the banking sector’s legal, regulatory and institutional reforms while advising on diversification of the industry to exploit long term funding through development of bond market.
[edit]
Wu Hongbo 吴洪波 - is Sha Zukang's replacement at UN-DESA
Wu Hongbo 吴洪波
Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Born: 1952
Birthplace: Shandong Province
AT-A-GLANCE
BIOGRAPHY
CAREER DATA
TRAVEL & APPEARANCES
FULL LISTING
Biography Highlight
Wu Hongbo, male, Han nationality, is a native of Shandong Province. He was born in 1952 and graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Wu studied at Victoria University in New Zealand from 1978 to 1980.
View complete biography »
Recent Career Data
2007— Assistant Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2005—2007 Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Office
2003—2005 Ambassador, Chinese Embassy Philippines, Manila
2002—2003 Deputy Commissioner, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Macao SAR
2000—2002 Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Affairs Department
1999—2000 Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, West European Affairs Department
1998—1999 Chief Representative, Chinese Delegation, Sino-British Joint Liaison Group
1997—1998 Counselor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commissioner's Office Hong Kong SAR
1995—1997 Representative, Chinese Delegation, Sino-British Joint Liaison Group
1991—1995 Section Chief, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Affairs Department
View complete career data »
Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Born: 1952
Birthplace: Shandong Province
AT-A-GLANCE
BIOGRAPHY
CAREER DATA
TRAVEL & APPEARANCES
FULL LISTING
Biography Highlight
Wu Hongbo, male, Han nationality, is a native of Shandong Province. He was born in 1952 and graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Wu studied at Victoria University in New Zealand from 1978 to 1980.
View complete biography »
Recent Career Data
2007— Assistant Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2005—2007 Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Office
2003—2005 Ambassador, Chinese Embassy Philippines, Manila
2002—2003 Deputy Commissioner, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Macao SAR
2000—2002 Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Affairs Department
1999—2000 Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, West European Affairs Department
1998—1999 Chief Representative, Chinese Delegation, Sino-British Joint Liaison Group
1997—1998 Counselor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commissioner's Office Hong Kong SAR
1995—1997 Representative, Chinese Delegation, Sino-British Joint Liaison Group
1991—1995 Section Chief, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Affairs Department
View complete career data »
Ban Ki-moon & Me? (truth on United Nations)
CLICK HERE FOR STORY ON THE JEWISH WEEK
Documentary makes Borat/Michael Moore-style attack on the United Nations.
Documentary makes Borat/Michael Moore-style attack on the United Nations.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Call their style Michael Moore meets Sacha Baron Cohen.Two pro-Israel activists are hoping that their documentary on the United Nations — to be released nationwide on June 1 — brings focus to what they say is the world body’s global ineffectiveness.
One of the more powerful scenes from “U.N. Me” comes from a lull in deliberations at the controversial 2009 Durban Review Conference in Geneva, a parley headlined by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and boycotted by Israel, the United States and others because of its obsessive focus on the Jewish state.
In the clip, an American in a dark suit and tie mounts the podium and seizes the microphone.
“You people should be embarrassed and ashamed,” filmmaker Ami Horowitz announces to the handful of delegates scattered about the hall. “You have squandered the opportunity the world has given you. This is a perverse example of what it was meant to be.”
The conference already had been somewhat of a diplomatic zoo, with myriad protesters — a disproportionate number of them Jewish — disrupting the proceedings and causing a ruckus in the hallways. With security heightened, Horowitz was whisked from the room within seconds.
But standing in the near-empty press gallery was Horowitz’s partner, Matthew Groff, who captured the incident on tape (as did JTA). The footage now forms the climax of the scathing documentary written, directed and produced by Groff and Horowitz.
Horowitz’s Geneva stunt is a move plucked from the playbook of the documentarian Moore, whose screen persona of the everyman trying to get straight answers from the powerful pervades his critically acclaimed work in films such as “Bowling for Columbine” and “Roger & Me.”
But will the left-leaning Moore’s trademark style wow viewers of a documentary taking aim at an organization that has long been a punching bag for the right?
Horowitz, a former investment banker and avowed conservative, says the film is neither liberal nor conservative. Indeed, in what may wind up being a savvy directorial decision, the film never mentions what many consider one of the most egregious examples of the UN’s moral blind spot: a relentless focus on Israel.
Instead, Horowitz keeps the lens trained on UN failures in areas generally cherished by liberals: peacekeeping and human rights.
He travels to the African nation of Cote d’Ivoire, where he reports on a little-known incident in which a contingent of French UN peacekeepers fired on protesters. He interviews Nobel laureate Jody Williams, whose report on Darfur for the UN Human Rights Council was nearly blocked by the very body that commissioned it. And he reviews the details of better-known examples of UN wrongdoing, such as sexual abuse allegations by peacekeepers and the atrocious Oil for Food Programme that served mainly to enrich Saddam Hussein.
“Almost anybody who is a liberal thinks it’s a liberal movie, and everybody who is conservative thinks it’s a conservative movie,” Horowitz said. “People don’t know [UN reform] is a conservative cause.”
If Horowitz’s style owes much to Moore — a man he describes as his “friend” — he also acknowledges a debt to another character of the big screen: Borat, the fictional and clueless Khazaki journalist created and depicted by Cohen.
Horowitz routinely presents himself as a credulous buffoon, eagerly accepting the assurances of an Iranian official that his country is not making nuclear weapons and agreeing with UN disarmament chief Sergio Duarte’s assessment that despite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated hostile declarations against Israel, the Iranian president’s true intentions cannot be divined.
The routine succeeds, Borat-syle, in making several interviewees look silly. In a segment on the UN’s failure to stop the killings in Darfur, Horowitz asks Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations why Sudan stones gays after the first offense but lesbians only after the fourth.
“No, no, no,” the ambassador corrects him. “Woman, if she is married, she will be stoned immediately.”
Earlier in the interview, Horowitz informs the ambassador that before learning of the situation in Darfur, he had thought the Janjaweed was a strain of Sudanese marijuana.
Horowitz says he was moved to make a film about the UN after watching “Bowling for Columbine,” Moore’s documentary about guns and violence in America.
“I saw his movie and [I thought], if I want to get my point across, this is the best way to do it,” Horowitz said.
Financed in part by the conservative telecommunications executive Howard Jonas, “U.N. Me” premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2009. Jonas also helped Horowitz penetrate the halls of power.
Horowitz screened the film for Dick Cheney at the former vice president’s home in Virginia, and for media executives Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in New York. According to Horowitz, Murdoch liked the film and wanted to distribute it, but Ailes warned him that supporting the film would be tantamount to declaring war on the UN.
Murdoch, Horowitz recalled, replied that Ailes’ Fox News is already at war with the world body.
“The whole idea of the movie is based on the idea of activism,” Horowitz said. “I’m not trying to tell an impartial story. The only thing I’m responsible for is the truth. I have no responsibility beyond that. I don’t have to show both sides of anything. I have a point of view, and I’m trying to prove it.”
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
IMF chief Christine Lagarde pays NO TAX on her £300,000 salary (despite attacking Greece for dodging payment)
•Questioned about Greek crisis head of IMF said country can help itself collectively 'by paying all their tax'
•Suggests that IMF's money would be better spent on African children than on people in Athens
•Lagarde takes home £298,675-a-year untaxed
•Receives further tax-free allowance package of £52,000
…Annual pay for UN workers start at between £29,000 to £51,000 with
senior salaries range between £61,000 and £80,000 although this figure
varies depending on where an employee is based.
A UN worker based in Geneva could expect to see their base salary
increased by 106 per cent while even in Juba, the relatively poor
capital of South Sudan, a UN worker could anticipate a 53.2 per cent top
up of their salary.
Sacha Baron Cohen 'banned from filming at UN for fear of upsetting dictators'
Sacha Baron
Cohen was banned from shooting scenes for his new film The Dictator at the
United Nations because it might upset real-life despots, the comic has claimed.
Jomo Kwame looses his bid for ILO - Briton wins (Who will justify all UN-DESA's DSA paid to Jomo for months of PR campaign in Geneva?)
Click here to view this on ILO webpage
GENEVA (ILO news) – The International Labour Organization (ILO) has elected Guy Ryder as its tenth Director-General. Ryder, who is currently the ILO’s Executive Director for International Labour Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, was elected by secret ballot by the ILO’s Governing Body. He will begin his five-year term in October 2012.
“I am really excited about this chance: this is a tremendous opportunity, in the middle of this global crisis, to make a difference to the lives of millions of people, including those who've never heard of the ILO, to change their lives for the better”, said the Director-General elect. “I thank the Governing Body for their confidence. The significance of what happened here today will be judged by what we do, and that is to put the people and the world of work at the heart of everything we do.”
Guy Ryder elected as ILO Director-General
Guy Ryder was elected as the tenth Director-General of the ILO and will begin his five-year term in October 2012.
GENEVA (ILO news) – The International Labour Organization (ILO) has elected Guy Ryder as its tenth Director-General. Ryder, who is currently the ILO’s Executive Director for International Labour Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, was elected by secret ballot by the ILO’s Governing Body. He will begin his five-year term in October 2012.
“I am really excited about this chance: this is a tremendous opportunity, in the middle of this global crisis, to make a difference to the lives of millions of people, including those who've never heard of the ILO, to change their lives for the better”, said the Director-General elect. “I thank the Governing Body for their confidence. The significance of what happened here today will be judged by what we do, and that is to put the people and the world of work at the heart of everything we do.”
Friday, 25 May 2012
Bob Orr says: "U.N. will enter into direct agreements with private investors and major industries"
... “There will be a number
of agreements to come out of this meeting because there’s now a coordinated
effort by companies and investors to focus on sustainability issues,” Robert
Orr, assistant secretary general for policy planning, said today in an
interview at the New York event. “That’s the biggest difference between Rio ’92
and Rio ’12.”...
British Labour says: - "David Cameron unfit to chair UN Development pannel"
David Cameron is
unfit to chair the UN development panel – and here's why
The British PM's record
suggests he could hardly be more ill-equipped to devise the post-2015
development agenda
In Washington, U.N. paid lobbysts are fighting against "Accountability at the United Nations"
UNRWA: Nothing
to see, just move along; Lobbying against UN accountability
... A senior Senate aide
tells Right Turn that Jordanian officials just sent an e-mail to congressional
staffers urging opposition to any amendment that could lead to undermining the
UNRWA. (The fear that an actual accounting would deprive the UNRWA of U.S.
taxpayer dollars is reason enough to support it.) The request reads: “Jordan
urges the Senate to avoid any language which would directly or indirectly lead
to undermining UNRWA. The embassy will be happy to further explain the
Jordanian position, observations and reservations to your office and other
Senate members, including the potential negative implications on Jordan, its
economy and the peace efforts by any language that undermines or purports to
undermine UNRWA.”...
Ros-Lehtinen(R) and Engel(D) against Obama's support for Navi Pillay's extension
U.S. Reps. Snub
Navi Pillay
The U.N. General Assembly
today formally extended Navi Pillay's term as U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights for another two years.
But not before House
Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY)
fired off an angry letter calling on the Obama administration to "publicly
and strongly oppose" Pillay's extension, saying she has been too soft on
China, Syria, and other rights violators and has "repeatedly demonstrated
bias against the State of Israel."
Thursday, 24 May 2012
The Law of the Sea treaty will sink America's economy
By Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen. John Cornyn
Americans despise taxes. After all, one of the key issues that paved the way for the American Revolution was the unfair taxation that King George III levied against the Colonies.
Now some in the US Senate want to say yes to an international tax. It would be the first time in history that an international organization would possess taxing authority, and it would amount to billions of American dollars being transferred out of the US Treasury.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is the vehicle through which such taxes would be imposed on U.S.-based commercial enterprises.
Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch is the ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee. Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee.
Go See U.N. Me — Now Ami Horowitz, top-notch conservative filmmaker and funnyman
... But what is U.N. Me? According to Horowitz, it’s “a love letter” to the United Nations, albeit a love letter with “constructive criticism.” But if U.N. Me is a love letter, then it’s the letter you write to a significant other threatening a break-up. You want the relationship to work, but there have to be some major changes. The movie recounts several of the major failings of the United Nations over its history: the sexual abuses and massacres committed by U.N. peacekeepers, the failure to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the U.N.’s inability to curb terrorism, the Oil-for-Food program, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, and the United Nation’s failure to support human rights across the world. Not exactly the most uplifting material. But U.N. Me is more than a recitation of the United Nation’s misdeeds; instead, it delves deeper into how the culture and the structure of the U.N. led to such debacles...
Should United Nations Get Taxing Powers or Direct Funding?
Over the years, I’ve strenuously objected to schemes that would enable international bureaucracies to levy taxes. That’s why I’ve criticized “direct funding” proposals, most of which seem to emanate from the United Nations.
* A scheme to let the United Nations tax services such as air travel.
* A proposal, pushed by George Soros and other statists, for U.N. taxes on things such as energy use.
* And, of course, the favorite of the big-government crowd, a global tax on financial transactions.
U.N. Chief Disappointed Over Deadlocked Rio+20 Negotiations - (will he fire or promote Nikhil Seth for failure ) ?
(it seems that Nikhil is playing it all in this time)
UNITED NATIONS, May 23, 2012 (IPS) - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has invested heavily in the success of the upcoming U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), is publicly expressing his frustration at the lack of substantial progress on a final plan of action for a greener economy and a sustainable future worldwide.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram wants "a global new deal" - as long as it comes with a USG job/salary for himself (~$500 Thousand) in Geneva
A Global New Deal
Jomo Kwame Sundaram is UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and G-24 Research Coordinator.
... Although inclusive multilateralism has been battered by various challenges, including its seeming messiness and slow progress, it remains the best option for various reasons. The United Nations system must be bolder, but powerful interests must also allow it to play a bigger role...
Robert Mugabe, UN Tourism Ambassador?
From Zimbabwe comes a report that the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is appointing Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe as a UN international tourism ambassador, in recognition of all he’s done to promote and develop — yes — tourism. According to the Zimbabwe Herald, this is an honor Mugabe will share with Zambia’s President, Michael Sata, because “The two leaders have shown that tourism is central to the development of Africa by naming it as one of the four pillars of economic development.”
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