Free Republic

"Investigative journalists doing their jobs should dig deep, into Pelosi's role in the controversial, $280-million, federal-funded Hunters Point Shipyard affair - in relation to her alleged role as an investor in a real estate investment called PRESIDIO PARTNERS. Look past the fact that the 936-acre site, of which about 443 acres are not polluted - Hunter Point is the largest tract of undeveloped land in San Francisco. Roll Call stated that in early 2004, Murtha “reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the City of San Francisco” and that “Laurence...

Senior Biden Administration Officials Participating in High-Level Vatican Conference on FridayVATICAN CITY — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry, and the heads of the IMF, World Bank, and African Union will be taking part in a high-level Vatican conference on Friday on the theme “Dreaming of a Better Restart.” Hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, the one-day meeting, which includes the participation of finance ministers from the US, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Argentina, aims to build on recent inter-governmental efforts to combat inequality, climate change, and hunger following...

As President Obama gears up for his presidential visit to Cuba this weekend – the first in 80 years – scientists are pondering the future of Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. One idea proposed is the creation of a transnational conservation area, or peace park.

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

What is going on at Rio+20, Lord Christopher Monckton concluded, is an “attempted coup on a global scale by the governing class against the people.

The Rio+20 Earth summit must take decisive action on population and consumption regardless of political taboos or it will struggle to tackle the alarming decline of the global environment, the world's leading scientific academies have warned. Rich countries need to reduce or radically transform unsustainable lifestyles, while greater efforts should be made to provide contraception to those who want it in the developing world, the coalition of 105 institutions, including the Royal Society in Britain, urged in a joint report released on 14 June. It's a wake-up call for negotiators meeting in Rio for the UN conference on sustainable development....

The U.N. Meddling with Religion: Part 7 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, June 3-14, 1992 Informally called the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil.Another example of the United Nations trying to blend all religions together into a New Agey "Global Consciousness aka: the coming Planetary Transformation aka: World Awakening aka: Shift to the New Aquarian Age" and get rid of the "exclusive" Christian Gospel.Conference Secretary-General: Maurice StrongFrom this UN page:The two-week Earth Summit was the climax of a process, begun in December 1989, of planning, education and negotiations among all Member States of the...

Sanibel, Fla., was one of the first U.S. cities to endorse the Earth Charter nearly a year ago as a part of Earth Day celebrations. It was also the first U.S. city to withdraw its endorsement. This controversial document, promoted by Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong for a decade, is seen by many to be an effort to create a new "16 Commandments" to serve as the foundation for a new global religion. Sanibel citizens were not happy about the endorsement. Forty-two citizens and five former mayors signed an open letter, published in a local newspaper, demanding that the endorsement...

There is a whiff of Fascism emanating from the Obama White House. Reports say that the head of GM is quitting under duress from the Obama administration:

Just as desperate kids in nearby shantytowns lined up for water at standpipes as Earth Summit delegates converged upon Johannesburg in 2002, H20 is still a scarce commodity in the region. According to the London Sun, 80,000 bottles of mineral water quenched the thirst of 60,000 delegates to the Johannesburg Earth Summit on Sustainability. While the delegates from 182 countries have long since gone home, the children of Alexandra, a shantytown just down the road from the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Sandton, still go thirsty. Chronicled in the Corporate Watch video, White Gold, Alexandra is "a settlement of largely self-built...

Lobsters, caviar and brandy for MPs at summit on starvation > Opulent ... plush dining room where bigwigs will eat for ten days By NEIL SYSON THE sickening champagne and caviar lifestyle being enjoyed by Earth Summit delegates was exposed yesterday. They are gorging on mountains of lobster, oysters and fillet steak at the Johannesburg conference — aimed at ending FAMINE. As the summit began yesterday, desperate kids in nearby shanty towns queued for water at standpipes. Bigwig politicians among the 60,000 delegates, including Deputy PM John Prescott, also get vintage bubbly and brandy. Taxpayers are footing the £500,000 bill...

The problem with ‘post-modern’ society is there are too many people with nothing meaningful to do, building ‘careers’ around controlling the lives of others and generally making social nuisances of themselves. They justify their meddling by discovering social ‘problems’ and getting the media to magnify them out of all proportion. The latest example in Queensland, Australia, concerns the ‘discovery’ that schoolchildren are in danger from their own lunchboxes. While millions of members of former generations ate lunch out of lunchboxes and lived to tell about it, it seems today’s mummy-chauffeured generation is at risk. A recent lunchbox survey (sic)...

CLEAN WATER, CLEAN air and the alleviation of poverty were among the goals discussed at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit, held from August 26 to September 4. They sound like worthwhile endeavors. Who would argue that a decrease in air and water pollution and an increase in the per-capita wealth of the poor aren’t laudable goals? Unfortunately, the majority of the attendees at Johannesburg Climate Legacy 2002 were ill suited for implementing their own agenda. They are simply nut cases, whose ideas are so far-fetched most of them should be ignored. Carbon dioxide emissions and global warming were on everybody’s agenda....

Thankfully, the fiasco in Johannesburg is over. President Bush was right to stay home. He was also right to send determined delegates with firm instructions to thwart the ambitions of the radically green global-governance crowd. To some extent, the U.S. delegation was successful. The green crowd insisted on language in the final document that would commit the world to produce 15 percent of its energy from "alternative" sources – specifically wind, solar and small dams – by a time certain. They didn't get it. The final document language calls for nations to act "with a sense of urgency" to increase...

Is it just me or is there something ironic about a summit on sustainable development that features the leading environmental groups of the world emitting 290,000 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Even more interesting is the fact the regional government of Johannesburg set a plan whereby the delegates could donate money to clean the environmental mess they created and only one seventh of the amount needed was donated. I have my doubts about a conference that gives Robert Mugabe a warm reception, ignoring that his regime recently killed 186 political opponents, continues to confiscate lands of white farmers...

This Labour Day, I thought about the working class, the masses. No, honestly, I did. Okay, I was on the beach, but the folks around me lying on the sand had jobs they'll be getting back to this morning. They worked. They would be classed as workers. But they're not a homogeneous "working class," they're not conscripts in Karl Marx's "masses." The transformation of Labour Day, from a celebration of workers' solidarity to a cook-out, is the perfect précis of the history of Anglo-American capitalism. If you want to see what "the masses" are meant to look like, buy a...

Repeatedly interrupted by jeers and protests from environmentalists, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the Bush administration’s environmental record and its efforts to help the poor in the developing world at the Earth Summit’s closing day Wednesday. “THE U.S. is taking action to meet environmental challenges, including global climate change,” Powell said to loud booing from the rear of a hall filled with government leaders and delegates ranging from youth activists to environmentalists. The Bush administration has been strongly criticized by leaders and activists for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, which many countries view as crucial for reversing a global...

Why did the United Nations (UN) and even UK Prime Minister Tony Blair try to cajole President George Bush into attending the Earth Summit meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa? The answer is the very essence of every United Nations meeting I have attended since 1995: follow the money trail. During the 1992 Earth Summit, Secretary-General Maurice Strong cleverly devised the issue of the environment as a means of soaking the rich countries to pay the poor, while ignoring the graft and corruption of Third World governments that are the main cause of their peoples¹ sufferings. This current meeting is a...

Having begun on August 26 and continuing on through September 4, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa is what may be the largest confab the United Nations has ever sponsored. WSSD commemorates the ten-year anniversary of the adoption of Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil back in 1992. Over 100 world leaders, thousands of delegates, CEOs, representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other dignitaries and elites – over 20,000 people in all – have descended on the Sandton Convention Center in South Africa’s largest city. Moreover, as WSSD has approached...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has brought his personal duel with Britain to the Earth Summit. Mugabe, 78, drew applause from many of the delegates at the summit when he fired a salvo at Prime Minister Tony Blair, the sternest critic of Zimbabwe's seizures of white-owned farms. "We have not asked for any inch of Europe or any square inch of that territory so, Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe," Mugabe said in his speech to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. "We wish no harm to anyone, we are Zimbabweans, we...