Free Republic

It is beyond refute that the United States is a world leader, and exceptional, in several categories, although not in those that portray the richest nation in the world in a favorable light. Oh, it is true that America’s military is without peer, American corporations pay some of the lowest tax rates in the world, and the wealthy elite holding most of the nation’s wealth pay minimal taxes compared to most other countries. However, the United States also leads the world in the number of citizens incarcerated, number of guns in the population, number of gun-related homicides, lowest median income...

The U.N. racism watchdog urged the United States on Friday to halt the excessive use of force by police after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman touched off riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Minorities, particularly African Americans, are victims of disparities, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said after examining the U.S. record. "Racial and ethnic discrimination remains a serious and persistent problem in all areas of life from de facto school segregation, access to health care and housing," Noureddine Amir, CERD committee vice chairman, told a news briefing. Teenager Michael...

Meanwhile, has anyone noticed how the sound of the chirping crickets has suddenly changed to the snorting of pigs at the trough? With Barack Obama now firmly in place as their ex officio leader, the United Nations pooh-bahs have come up with a surefire way to stick it to the taxpayers of the world, while feathering their nests for all time. It’s called making global warming/climate change a health issue at their very next summit in November 2015. Christiana Figueres, the top UN climate official, said upcoming negotiations on an international global warming accord should be viewed as a health...

Submitting the U.S. to the international community’s will — without the consent of Congress In yet another demonstration of contempt for the Constitution, President Obama and his administration are pursuing what the New York Times characterizes as a “sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions”—absent any input from Congress. The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority approval by the Senate to ratify any legally binding treaty. The Obama administration plans to sidestep that requirement by calling the agreement a “politically binding” deal that would substitute for an actual treaty. It would consist of...

A new sun rose over the United Nations today and it's got the Barack Obama logo on it. In one of the most significant transitions of our lifetime, a mantle was passed today, yet most of humanity remains blissfully unaware of it. It couldn’t be worse because just as the late and lamented author Henry Lamb predicted back in 1997, aging, health-hampered Global Warming/Climate Change Godfather Maurice Strong has been replaced by Barack Obama. “The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratifications...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress. In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of...

Governments should have tougher rules for electronic cigarettes—banning their use indoors and putting them off limits for minors—until more evidence can be gathered about their risks, the U.N. health agency said Tuesday. In a bid to set public policy, the World Health Organization said the popular nicotine-vapor products, particularly the fruit, candy and alcohol-drink flavors, could serve as gateway addictions for children and adolescents. It recommended governments forbid or keep to a minimum any advertising, promotion or sponsorship in a market that has mushroomed to $3 billion last year and now includes 466 different brands. …

Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, and the principle behind racism in America is to distinguish the white race as superior to all other races. Sadly, Despite Thomas Jefferson’s “immortal statement” that “all men are created equal,” America was founded on racism and it is beyond refute it is still a country steeped in white supremacy. It is true the nation has made progress from its beginnings when African Americans were considered 3/5ths of a human being, Native Americans were slaughtered, Christianized, and herded on to reservations, and...

The European Union (EU) on Friday offered to take charge of Gaza's border crossings and work to prevent illegal arms flows, according to The Associated Press (AP). The EU is prepared "to play a strong role" in managing the crossings while assuring that Israel's security is guaranteed, said the 28-nation bloc's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. The EU offered to reactivate and extend its monitoring of the Rafiah crossing with Egypt and other border posts, provided there will be a UN Security Council mandate for the mission and a sustainable cease-fire in place, according to AP. In addition, the EU...

U.S. civil rights advocates aired their concerns about the recent Michael Brown shooting to the United Nations in Geneva, according to a press call from the organizations on Wednesday. “This issue was front and center,” Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, explained during the call. According to Shelton, Trayvon Martin’s mother Sabrina Fulton and Jordan Davis’s father Ron Davis told their stories about losing their teenage children in shootings in each of the pre-briefings of the process. “I think that everyone was outraged and horrified to hear that, yet again, it had happened in St. Louis, Missouri,”...

Pope Francis formally asked U.N. agencies and the entire international community “to take action to end the humanitarian tragedy now underway” in northeastern Iraq. In a letter signed Aug. 9, but released by the Vatican only after it had been delivered, Pope Francis told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon immediate action was needed “to stop and to prevent further systematic violence against ethnic and religious minorities.” The papal letter was sent after militants of the Islamic State terrorist organization had captured Mosul in late July and Qaraqosh in early August, killing hundreds of people and forcing tens of thousands of Christians,...

People reading the title of this article should be excused for doing a double-take. To most of us the United Nations has been — especially in the last few decades — a debating society dedicated to the promulgation of anti-Semitism. It seems all the organization does is pass resolutions condemning Israel, that is when they’re not launching investigations of the same country via their Human Rights Council, a latter-day branch of the Wehrmacht, led by posturing Third World bigots, that usually meets at beachfront resorts. Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been a tiny bit perturbed of late by...

With the UN everything is possible and this Fox News report by George Russell certainly raises some questions. While controversy continues to swirl around the huge Hamas tunnel network in Gaza, an internal United Nations audit report reveals that a U.N. Development Program office that funds and monitors spending on construction in the territory allowed at least five non-staff contract employees to handle “core” procurement processes that only staffers are supposed to handle, including those for ordering up “significant” civil construction activities.At the same time, the office’s internal financial tracking system — a UNDP-wide system known as Atlas — was...

I wanted a transcription of this speech to use as a quote in the novel I'm writing. I've seen it a few times over the years, and felt it appropriate for my message. I searched the web, found the supposed text, and decided to compare the results with the video for accuracy. I was quickly surprised to find that much of the supplied text was different. The video was also intermingled with multiple edits - ie entire paragraphs missing. If you watch closely, you can see the edits. I decided to transcribe the speech myself. The results are below. I'm...

UN Seeks to Prosecute Israelis for "War Crimes" in Global Court The New American 04 August 2014 After the United Nations was caught last month giving rockets found at UN “schools” in Gaza to the terrorist group Hamas, the UN’s top “human rights” bureaucrat accused Israel of perpetrating possible “war crimes” — for, among other actions, refusing to share with Hamas its Iron Dome defense technology that protects Israeli territory and civilians from Arab missile attacks. The widely criticized UN official’s accusation, made in a press conference about the ongoing conflict, prompted a mixture of ridicule and outrage around...

Conakry — Medical teams struggling to curb Ebola in West Africa have been discouraging bush meat consumption, believed to have caused the outbreak, but some rural communities dependent on the meat for protein are determined to continue their traditional hunting practices. While meat from wild animals such as fruit bats, rodents and forest antelopes have largely disappeared from market stalls in main towns like Guéckédou (in southern Guinea and the epicentre of the disease) or the capital Conakry following campaigns to avoid contamination, it is still being eaten in remote villages despite the risks. "Life is not easy here in...

Israel knows that the leaders of the terrorist group Hamas are headquartered the Shifa hospital in Gaza: It was Israel that build the hospital – including the bunker in the basement that Hamas uses as its headquarters. The Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker, however, not because they are trying to score propaganda points, or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters—but because they built it. Back in 1983, when Israel still ruled Gaza, they built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath Shifa hospital—which is one among several...

The United Nations Security Council met once again Thursday on the crisis in Gaza. This time it heard “humanitarian” briefings from Under Secretary-General for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Valerie Amos, and the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Pierre Krahenbuhl.

The United Nations' human rights chief expressed concern on Thursday at what she said were plans by the U.S. government to deport tens of thousands of unaccompanied children who entered the United States in recent months. Navi Pillay-Wanker, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Washington to protect the child migrants and investigate dozens of reports of abuse against them by U.S. officials. "I am particularly concerned because the United States appears to be taking steps to deport most of these children back," Pillay-Wanker told a final news briefing in Geneva before completing six years in office on Aug. 31....

As legend has it, Groucho Marx sent the Friars Club a telegram that read, “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” At least the Friars Club had standards. What to make of the United Nations? It has a single criterion for membership: existence. Admittedly, this is an unattainable standard for such fictional realms as Westeros, Erewhon, Kreplakistan, and numerous locales from the TV series MacGyver (Gnubia, Kabulstan, et al.). But if you’re a nation-state that actually exists, you’re a shoo-in, like Kate Upton trying to get...