International Busy Body Laws Waning?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Are we beginning to see the first cracks in the idea of “universal jurisdiction,” the international busy body “law” that said that any nation can arrest the leaders of any other nation and try them for “war crimes”? Let us hope we are, at least.

Now, I’ve always contended that the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals was a mistake. Not because those Nazi scum were innocent, far from it. But, rather, because it set a bad precedent that contended that the “international community” was qualified to capture, prosecute, and punish “war criminals.” This entire concept is made to order if one wants to destroy national sovereignty but not for one much interested in the rule of law. In fact, it is a direct assault on any rule of law because it invites the capricious rule of the mob (by reflecting current world opinion) on just who is and who is not a “war criminal.” Not to mention that the assumption that a world body can make these determinations must as a matter of course preclude any power over its own people by the individual nations involved. The determination of the “world community” will and must supersede national legal rulings — unless those rulings happen to agree with that world opinion which only makes the national decision at best perfunctory and certainly pointless.

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International Busy Body Laws Waning?”


Obama Official Says U.S. ‘Not Perfect’ in Human Rights at U.N. Panel Meeting

-By Warner Todd Huston

In keeping with the America denigrating tone set by president Obama, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, told participants of the United Nations Human Rights Council that the U.S. has “not been perfect ourselves” on human rights issues.

Rice was discussing the pending membership of the United States on the U.N. Human Rights Council which has such human rights loving states as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Jordon, Nicaragua, Egypt, and Pakistan as members. With members of such high standards, it is no wonder that Ambassador Rice felt the need to apologize for the U.S.A.

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Obama Official Says U.S. ‘Not Perfect’ in Human Rights at U.N. Panel Meeting”

Boxer Urges Quick Handover of U.S. Power to UN

-By Warner Todd Huston

Senator Barbara Boxer (D, CA) wants to speed the process of handing power over U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations as soon as possible by urging the State Department to come out in support of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The UNCRC imposes on all treaty signatories power over laws concerning children and, by extension, families. The largest portion of laws concerning children and families in the U.S. are state statutes so this treaty would, in actual fact, eliminate all family laws in the various states and hand the power over this area of law to the U.N. as per the Supremacy Clause to the U.S. Constitution (Article V1) that states that treaties preempt state laws.

Boxer is eager to destroy the entire lot of family laws throughout the country supposedly to protect “the most vulnerable people of society.”

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Why I Want Barack Obama To Fail As President

-By Warner Todd Huston

An extremely liberal co-worker of mine — he’s in the past said that the “rich” should be killed, for instance — asked me a serious question by which he felt he could gauge whether or not I was a “real” American in his eyes during the rise of the age of Obama. He wondered whether I wish success for Barack Obama as our president. After a few seconds of reflection I had to honestly give a qualified “no” in answer to his query. Naturally this fellow went off about how it was unAmerican to wish the president to fail and how it would damage the country. But, after he briefly calmed down, and brief calm is usually all we can expect from him, I gave him a fuller explanation.

I reminded him that it was a qualified no I gave him. Of course every American wants his president to be successful on every count that will benefit the country. No true American wants to see a monumental, destructive, Carteresque failure in the White House. My liberal co-worker is correct on that count. No one wants the next Buchanan, who, Nero-like, fiddled while Washington D.C. and the country burned. We want them all to be Reagans, Washingtons and Lincolns.

But, that is just it, isn’t it? We want them to do what is best for the country. That is what we mean by “success.” And, when you get right down to it, opinions vary of what “best” means. I do want Obama to be successful on what would be best for this country, absolutely. Unfortunately, there is little that he campaigned on that would be good for this country.

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Undermining Our Sovereignty from Without & Within

-By Nancy Salvato

The first amendment to the United States Constitution expressly prohibits the United States Congress from making laws that infringe on the freedom of the press. While it should be expected that those elected to the legislature have at least a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights, this is not necessarily the case.

“Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected.” Neither score bodes well for the state of our nation.

If we are to continue to be a sovereign country, we must understand the rule of law and why each and every word of the founding documents are so important to the defense of our nation and to the continuation of our freedoms.
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World’s Gutter Governments To Sit In Judgment Over U.S. Human Rights Record

-By Frederick Meekins

No one is perfect. As such, at times correction and admonition may need to be promulgated to set the ethically concerned back on the right path.

When issued by those adhering to the high standards to which they profess, such criticism can be looked upon as a helpful corrective to assist equals in living up to their potential. However, when such accusations are leveled or sustained by those with no intentions of living up to the standard themselves, the maligned should turn the tables against such dubious defamers and expose just who it is that undermines dignity, order, and liberty.

According to a May 20, 2008 Washington Times article titled “U.N. Puts Its Scope On U.S. Racism”, this world body has sent an envoy to the United States to gather information regarding racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and “related intolerance”. According to others in the human rights industry, such as Freedom House, this category of protections does not limit itself to narrowly defined matters such as abridgements of free speech or mass killings and seizures of property but also includes healthcare, education, and equal justice for immigrants and minorities.

For starters, before we start badmouthing what is available in this great land for these particular classes of people (especially immigrants), perhaps we should take a look at the places from which the new arrivals came. For a toilet bowl might be a dramatic improvement if you just crawled up from the sewer. If they have it so poor here, why did they come here in the first place, and if it is not to their liking here, they are always free to go back.
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Georgia/Russian War: Blame Obama

-By Warner Todd Huston

General Wesley Clark had one thing right during his tenure as a general in the U.S. military. He understood the portentous nature of the Russian’s move to take control of the airport in Pristina, Kosovo at the end of the 1999 NATO engagement in Yugoslavia. He ordered NATO forces to gear up to prevent the Russians from taking the airport but was opposed by British Gen. Michael Jackson, at the time head of the Kosovo peacekeeping forces, who reportedly told Clark that he wouldn’t help him start a third World War.

I don’t know if Clark fully realized what the investment of the Pristina airport might have meant for future Russian actions, but he seemed to know then that it wasn’t a good thing. In retrospect, we can see that, even though they backed down in 1999, it taught the Russians the lesson that they could act with impunity without fear of any real consequences. Later, though, the Russians found that they could not count out any action with Bush in the White House.

Now, let’s face the truth about Russia. She has never, ever been part of the club. No Russian leader has ever seemed convincingly interested in joining the western world and act as a responsible member of an international community. Oh, there was that brief, shining hour when Boris Yeltsin came close, and then only just. But none before and certainly none after have been interested in joining the enlightened world. And, once again, we are seeing Russian belligerence hold true. In this case, instead of purely militaristic aims, we are seeing a Russia planning on an energy hegemony over Europe and willing to act the bad boy to achieve those aims.

Certainly the weakling states of the European Union haven’t the guts nor the military to force Russia to behave herself. Just as certain, the members of the EU have no will to stop Russian plans to control all energy in the region. Only the U.S.A. has displayed the will to oppose moves such as Russia’s in the world today and even that will is anemic.

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World Citizenship?

-By Thomas E. Brewton

It means different things, depending upon your religious faith.

Responding to Senator Obama, Citizen of the World, a reader emailed this observation:

June 17, 1982 – Ronald Reagan speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, “I speak today both as a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.”

Would you care to come to the same conclusions about President Reagan?

My response is that the difference between Senator Obama’s usage and President Reagan’s is a matter of intent.
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Questioning Pagan Gospel

-By Thomas E. Brewton

A few things for the high priests of environmental paganism to ponder when they next forgather to worship their own egos.

Barton Bennett sent me a link for Dr. Walter Williams’s column reminding us how far from the truth is the junk science that flourishes like maggots in today’s cesspool of educational ignorance.

So far as I know, the self-anointed main stream news media in the United States have ignored one of the principal reasons for the British Labour Party’s crushing defeat in recent local elections: the public’s recognition, at last, of the devastating economic costs of meeting the carbon emissions standards to be imposed by the socialist commissars in the EU’s Brussels headquarters.

To sense the reaction when citizens finally are brought face-to-face with reality, read the following:
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Media Trots out Gorbachev to Attack John McCain

-By Warner Todd Huston

If they had a reality show for international politicians called “Biggest Loser” the most popular nominee for the title would be Mikhail Gorbachev, the man that lost his whole country, not merely an election. Yet, every once in a while and for some untenable reason, this communist loser is trotted out by the US media as some sort of expert on international politics. Unsurprisingly, his opinion is always sought to act as an attack on a Republican politician or policy. This time it is the All Headline News service trotting out old spotty in order to wag a finger at GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Back on March 18th, McCain reiterated his idea of creating a new international organization styled as a “League of Democracies.” McCain imagines this organization as a chance to renew the commitment of the world’s democratic nations to the concept of helping others grow as well as lending more support to those already so formed.

Americans and Europeans share a common goal – to build an enduring peace based on freedom. Our democracies today are strong and vibrant. Together we can tackle the diverse challenges we face, whether radical religious fanatics who use terror as their weapon of choice, the disturbing turn towards autocracy in Russia or the looming threats of climate change and the degradation of our planet.

But the key word is “together”. We need to renew and revitalise our democratic solidarity. We need to strengthen our transatlantic alliance as the core of a new global compact – a League of Democracies – that can harness the great power of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.

Well, whether you think it feasible or not for all the democratic nations to get together to form a new United Nationsesque organization, the idea has some merit. After all, the entire reason the UN does not work — and never did or even could work — is because those nations that stand four-square against freedom and liberty have as much say in policy as those who wish to further the advancement of human freedom. The UN is a joke that we should never have bothered with.

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Google De-Lists Prominent UN Critic Blogger

-By Warner Todd Huston

In another blow against freedom of speech on the Internet, Fox News is reporting that Google has taken the measure of de-listing the work of an anti-UN blogger named Matthew Lee. For several years, Lee has run the Inner City Press, a small news/opinion site that is focused on criticizing the United Nations. But since Google has teamed up with the UN on recent initiatives, Google has found that Lee’s criticism is too much for them to handle.

Mr. Lee has been taking after big targets for a long time, so he is no newcomer to the scene. In 1987 he went after Citigroup with his corruption exposes, but since 2005 the United Nations has been his favorite target. He has especially focused on the “inner workings of what could be called the practical-applications arm of the international organization, the United Nations Development Programme.”

As Fox News reports:

Many of Lee’s stories were featured prominently whenever Web users looked for news about the U.N. using the powerful Google News search engine, a vital way for media outlets both large and small to get their articles read… But beginning Feb. 13, Google News users could no longer find new stories from the Inner City Press.

After the Government Accountability Project discovered the plight of Inner City Press and raised their own stink about the de-listing, Google claimed that the de-listing was a mistake but that it would take “a couple weeks” to fix the “glitch.”

“We acknowledged our misunderstanding … but it takes time for the restoration to occur,” [Google spokesman Gabriel] Stricker said. “The glitch will be resolved as soon as possible. We’re working on it.”

The GAP, however is none too happy about Google’s “glitch.” GAP’s international-program director Bea Edwards told Fox that Inner City Press was “the most effective and important media organization for UN whistleblowers.”

“We’re alarmed. The question is, is what user sent the complaint? And it’s probably not too hard to guess. We would guess the complaints came from the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme).”

This isn’t something new for Internet organizations like Google, however. Google and other Internet organizations like Newsvine and Digg have been embroiled in efforts to eliminate the conservative voice from the Internet for quite some time.

For instance, Newsvine recently canceled the account of the conservative news/opinion site called The New Media Alliance. And, as Noel Sheppard reported back in May of 2006, the conservative opinion site called The New Media Journal was removed from search engines by Google because Google deemed the commentary site a “hate site.”

So, far from being the wild west of opinion, the Internet is seemingly more and more in the grip of leftist organizations that are out to eliminate conservative expression on the net. Add to this the liberals in Congress who want to reinstate the inaptly named “Fairness Doctrine,” and we get ominous signs of the left’s oppressive ideas of “freedom of speech.”

It’s just one more example that Jonah Goldberg is right. Liberals are closer to fascists than any conservative.

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UN ‘Peacekeepers’ Vandalizing Ancient Art — Where is MSM Reporting?

-By Warner Todd Huston

We are told over and over again that the United Nations is the answer to all the world’s ills. It is often claimed that without the UN things would be so much worse in troubled spots around the world. But, when we look at the pernicious effect the UN has where ever it goes, it’s awfully hard to reconcile the claims with the hard truth. For one thing, we’ve seen the UN responsible for turning indigenous teens into prostitutes for UN workers in Cambodia, Africa, and Bosnia. Well, now we can add vandalism of sacred, ancient wall-art to the ever growing list of evils perpetrated by UN operatives.

But, where is the Media to report this outrage against human history and sacred religious relics and sites? About the same place they were when underplaying the reports of UN “peacekeepers” and employees forcing young women into prostitution the world over… absent from the scene.

From raping poor women to raping art treasures, the UN is in the forefront of the efforts to demean and destroy all across the third world. Today the Times online give us the story of UN “peacekeepers” defacing 6,000 year-old art in the Western Saharan rocks of Africa.

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Celebrating America’s Decline, ‘Waving Goodbye’ To The U.S.A.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Through the pessimistically, penumbrous pen of Parag Khanna, the New York Times has declared that the U.S.A. is finished. Yes, we have lost our “global hegemony” and we will find that by 2016, “America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.” Boy, it looks bad the for the good ‘ol U.S. of A., as far as the Times is concerned. My guess is that the news of our demise is being greatly exaggerated.

So, who is this Parag Khanna to whom the Times has given all this space? Well, he’s a “senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation” and guess who this organization is linked with? You guessed it: George Soros. Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros is one of those listed on the “Leadership council.” In fact, the larger portion of the Board members and other associates are journalists and left leaning activists. With a few token and so-called right leaning folks — like Francis Fukuyama and Christine Todd Whitman, neither of whom are conservatives — the Board of directors also sports such well-known names as the leftie Google king Eric Schmidt and Bernard L. Schwartz, the man responsible for transferring restricted technology to China during Clinton’s lamentable years in office.

No wonder Khanna thinks the U.S.A. is finished, look who he hangs out with!

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Pining for an America That Does What Foreigners Want Her to Do

-By Warner Todd Huston

Moisés Naím who is also editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine wants to pretend that he and his ilk love America in a Washington Post op ed. But, after reading his newest editorial, titled “A Hunger For America” where he denounces the U.S.A.’s “incompetence, recklessness and ignorance,” one can only come to the conclusion that he only loves it when America does what foreigners want her to do. In other words, he doesn’t love America at all, he only loves the interests and desires of others and using the power and money of America to their ends instead of our own. More ridiculously, he seems to pine for an America of the past, saying “the word wants America back,” proving that his real problem is just more of the kind of boring Bush Derangement Syndrome so endemic in the MSM.

Even Naím’s initial premise is flawed.

For the next several years, world politics will be reshaped by a strong yearning for American leadership. This trend will be as unexpected as it is inevitable: unexpected given the powerful anti-American sentiments around the globe, and inevitable given the vacuums that only the United States can fill.

Despite the game face of anti-Americanism out among the world of nations, there has not really been any slackening of want for America’s favor on the part of foreigners — though Naím does make that clear a little later in the piece. Further, since before the U.S.S.R. fell, the U.S. has been filling those “vacuums” the whole time. His initial paragraph makes it seem that the U.S. has been sitting idly on the sidelines since 2000. Yet, then he goes on to decry what we have done with the second paragraph of his piece making it clear that it hasn’t been the U.S.A.’s lack of involvement in the world that people will hunger for, but a change of the sort of involvement that he doesn’t like. His is a desire for U.S. involvement that he hopes will change in 2008.

This renewed international appetite for U.S. leadership will not merely result from the election of a new president, though having a new occupant in the White House will certainly help. Almost a decade of U.S. disengagement and distraction have allowed international and regional problems to swell. Often, the only nation that has the will and means to act effectively is the United States.

Notice how he pins this “return” to U.S. involvement in the world to a new president’s entrance into the White House. It isn’t that we’ve stood by doing nothing, it’s just that he doesn’t like what we have been doing. He obviously pines for the Clinton years of a foreign policy that was far more mollification for what others want than the strongly America focused policy under Bush.

Then Naím goes on to clearly make his case that he wants an America that does everyone else’s bidding, eschewing her own, as well as a U.S. that foots the bills for every little podunk nation on the globe.

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A Standing Army for the United Nations

-By Frank Salvato

There are many disturbing issues to contemplate in the world. From the dangers of aggressive Islamofascism to the pomposity and arrogance of the American elected class (and those vying to be included) the world stands witness to myriad threats and power grabs. But two power grabs opens the door for the United Nations to both amass sovereign rights and to fund and assemble a military force under its own banner.

That the United Nations is a corrupt and ineffective institution is an understatement. The list of illegal activities and instances of institutionalized bigotry are so numerable that they weave a tapestry of embarrassment that would incite any governmental body with integrity to disband. Truth be told, they can‚t even agree on a definition for “terrorism.” As they say, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

An example of the UN‚s corrupt leadership can be seen in the Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the larger blemishes on the face of the organization. Alas, it is a blemish that the secular-progressive press failed to expose in detail. You see, a few corrupt world leaders ˆ we‚ll cite Jacque Chirac as a prime example ˆ were utilizing their seats on the UN Security Council to hold the United States and aligned coalition countries at bay while they violated the resolutions put in place by that very organization. Their actions defrauded the Oil-for-Food program of millions if not billions of dollars and enriched Saddam Hussein in the process.
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Saving The World

-By Nancy Morgan

Over 15,000 bureaucrats, politicians, officials, and assorted do-gooders from 187 nations descended on the tropical island of Bali last week for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.Their goal? To make a last ditch effort to save the world from the ravages of global warming. The aim is to require industrial nations to limit their emission of C02 to 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. This is necessary, they proclaim, in order to head off rising oceans, drought, famine, dying species, and, well, just plain catastrophe.

These noble shepherds of the earth are willing to have others make any sacrifice necessary to achieve their laudable goal. They are even willing to make some sacrifices themselves. Starting with the 100,000 tons of CO2 emissions caused by all the private jets used to ferry them to the conference. Not to worry…

Indonesia plans to plant 79 million trees to ‘offset’ the entire conference’s emissions. The European Union has assured us that they will be buying carbon credits on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. And the UK? Well, their 40-person team will have their emissions neutralised through a central government fund. Whew..

It looks like this conference is being held just in the nick of time. Reports on the damage man is doing to the environment have been making headlines all week. AP environmental writer Michael Casey describes the havoc global warming is wreaking on nature: “More than 3,000 flying foxes dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps, and giant squid… ” You get the drift.

Global warming is truly a crisis. By consensus. Peoples across the world are actively promoting their own solutions, hoping against hope that rational people will see the error of their ways and join this selfless crusade:
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A Single Reason for US Intervention in Iraq

-By Frank Salvato

“It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.” – Thomas Jefferson

As progress continues to be made in every aspect of the Iraqi conflict — militarily, socially and politically — the debate among the ideologically entrenched here in the United States rages on. This is in large part due to the positioning of candidates from all political parties in preparation for the 2008 elections. There is an intense desire to look both peace-loving and hawkish on the issue of the Iraqi front in the overall war against Islamofascist aggression. This is not an easy task when they are simultaneously declaring their support for the soldiers in the field and questioning the value of the mission and how well it is being executed. Meet the two-faces of the political panderer. Not very attractive, are they?

While factions of our society debate the pros and cons of US military intervention in Iraq the facts presented for the initiation of efforts there have always stood clearly defined. They were laid out in no uncertain terms, and in order of priority, by President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002:
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