Free Republic

One of the most important periods for the Second Amendment in recent history is upon us, as the opening meeting of the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference began this morning in New York. During the 26-day conference, world leaders are convening to finalize the terms of the ATT, which seeks to regulate the international arms trade and seriously threatens Second Amendment freedoms.   In a press kit that was released in June, the UN was obviously cognizant of the backlash surrounding Second Amendment rights, going so far as to include a "Myths & Facts" section, which states:   Also included...

Want the United States to gain legal access to the vast amount of oil and natural gas in the underwater Extended Continental Shelf? Get LOST. Specifically, the U.S. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which often goes by the acronym LOST. The Obama administration wants the Senate to act on the treaty, which has been around since 1982. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) recently held a hearing to make the case for LOST. According to its advocates, we need LOST for a variety of reasons. One of them concerns the oil and gas resources located in the outer limits of...

British Lord Christopher Monckton parachuting into Durban, South Africa, to challenge UN climate crisis claims, brought numerous journalists and onlookers to the beaches where he landed. A 20-foot banner across our press conference table gave the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow further opportunities to present realistic perspectives on the science and economics of climate change. CFACT played by the rules, obtained the necessary permits beforehand, and ensured that its message was heard throughout the seventeenth annual climate conference (COP-17). Greenpeace, on the other hand, got no permits before staging an Occupy Durban protest in the hallway outside the plenary session...

Blood on the bed. That's what 12-year-old Tamar Fogel saw last week when she opened the door to her parents' bedroom in Itamar, Israel. The blood covered the blankets and the bodies of her father, Rabbi Udi Fogel, and her 3-month-old sister, Hadas. In the other room, her mother, Ruth, lay murdered. So did her brothers, Yoav, 11, and Elad, 4. Five members of the Fogel family were slaughtered in their home last week because they dared to live on historic Jewish land. They were not murderers and were not occupiers. They were people who simply wished to leave in...

United Nations: The U.S. State Department is holding up Arizona as America's human rights problem, fishing for applause from the likes of Cuba and Libya. But Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer isn't taking it lying down. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to go lower than even Andrew Young in his Carter-era heyday by holding up Arizona as a human rights violator in its groveling "Universal Periodic Review" for the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission. The 29-page mea culpa of America's wrongs is nothing but a political advertisement for recent executive acts from the Obama administration, repackaged as human rights improvements. Apologizing...

The global nanny state wants to take another bite out of your freedom. Its new target – your dinner plate. The Guardian reported on June 2 that the UN was supporting a switch to a radical anti-meat agenda. “A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today,” wrote the paper. Here’s how the group Vegan Action describes this extreme vegetarianism. “While vegetarians choose not to use flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool,...

A 2006 study, Livestock’s Long Shadow, claimed meat production was responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions – more than transport. Its conclusions were heralded by campaigners urging consumers to eat less meat to save the planet. Among those calling for a reduction in global meat consumption is Sir Paul McCartney.

Iran: A Russian general has issued a public warning about the dangers posed by the Islamist regime in Tehran. Is further confirmation needed to convince the West that the dithering United Nations isn't the answer?Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, speaking at a Russian press agency news conference Thursday, corroborated intelligence that Iran is developing a next-generation, long-range missile and has dangerous nuclear weapons ambitions. Dvorkin, who heads Moscow's Center for Strategic Nuclear Forces, said, "Iran has long abandoned outdated missile technologies and is capable of producing sophisticated missile systems." Dvorkin doesn't believe Iran is capable — yet — of building an...

United Nations: It takes some gall to grumble about getting billions in U.S. taxpayer handouts. Does U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expect spend-happy Uncle Sam to give the corrupt U.N. its own stimulus?It wasn't the way to win friends and influence people in the U.S. Congress — even this spendthrift band of power-drunk lawmakers. In a private meeting with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the secretary-general called America a "deadbeat" nation because U.S. taxpayers have been slow in chucking out another billion dollars in dues. The U.S. ponies up some 22% of the nearly $5 billion U.N. budget. We...

Climate Change: When the United Nations insists that man-made global warming is now proved beyond doubt, it's practicing one of the few things it has proved itself good at: censorship of dissenting viewpoints.The wasteful, corrupt, dictatorship-dominated U.N. may not be successful in fulfilling very many of its supposed objectives — world peace, the end of poverty, mutual understanding, etc. — but when it comes to suppressing contrarian points of view that interfere with official U.N. stances, the organization ranks with the best. Take the attempts two years ago to tell the truth about the anti-Semitism of the Hamas terrorist organization,...

People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world's leading authority on global warming has told The Observer Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further. His comments are the most controversial advice yet provided by the panel on how individuals can help tackle global warning. Pachauri, who was re-elected the panel's...

Father of victim says U.N. body's order 'don't mean diddly' Texas is refusing to bow to yesterday's World Court order to stay the Aug. 5 lethal injection of convicted rapist-killer and illegal alien Jose Medellin. (snip) Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office rejected Mexico's complaint. "The world court has no standing in Texas, and Texas is not bound by a ruling or edict from a foreign court," Perry spokesman Robert Black said. "It is easy to get caught up in discussions of international law and justice and treaties. It's very important to remember that these individuals are on death row for...

United Nations: It's said that the U.N. is only as good as its members. But putting a Nicaraguan dinosaur communist at the presidency of the General Assembly takes it all a step lower. Already, the America-bashing is back.Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, Nicaragua's foreign minister until his Marxist Sandinista party was booted in 1990, has now got a new gig leading the U.N. General Assembly. Oh, lucky us. A Maryknoll priest of the old liberation theology school, the 75-year-old rifle-and-cassock radical is famous for taking the U.S. to the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 1986 over President Reagan's arming...

Bangkok - The United Nations will send nearly a quarter of a million condoms into cyclone-hit Myanmar to help needy survivors with no access to contraceptives, a UN official says. So far, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said it had sent 72 800 condoms to survivors struggling to maintain their family planning after the storm hit in early May. A total of 218 400 condoms would be delivered, UNFPA aid advisor Chaiyos Kunanusont said. "We don't want regular use of contraception disrupted. An emergency usually damages the health system, so people don't have access to condoms and contraceptives," said Chaiyos.

Politics: With the world awash in disaster, the United Nations is spending money to send a "special rapporteur" to look into racism in one of its member nations. The country? Why, the United States, of course.The rapporteur in question, Senegal's Doudou Diene, will investigate "contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" in a number of American cities. In fact, the U.S. is the least racist nation on Earth. Diene's visit is a calculated insult to both the American people and President Bush, and an attempt to influence the upcoming U.S. election. Sure we have our problems. But...

World Bodies: The newest adviser to the U.N. Human Rights Council hates democracies and loves dictators. The only right he wants is to bash the United States and Israel. Truly, the inmates are running this asylum.We commented last week on how the Human Rights Council of the U.N. has ignored China's occupation and brutalization of the Tibetan nation while finding time to condemn Israel a dozen times in the HRC's two years of existence. This is no surprise when people like Jean Ziegler, a former Swiss Socialist lawmaker, is picked as one of the council's 18 advisers. His election last...

Iran: The United Nations Security Council and the U.N.'s atomic "watchdog" have confirmed their critics' worst fears: Even when they can bring themselves to act on Iran's nuclear threat, their actions are toothless.Iran's new punishment from the Security Council for continuing to enrich uranium freezes the assets of 12 individuals and 13 companies, and monitors two financial institutions. But it may actually be worse than doing nothing. It tells the Islamofascist mullahs that the civilized world is so fixed to diplomatic fantasies that it actually thinks Tehran will be swayed by more of the same pointless measures Iran has gleefully...

Children are among those who are most devastated by climate change, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced today. “They pay with their health, their development and – too often – also with their lives,” Hilde Johnson, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, told reporters in New York. Every year, three million children under the age of five die from environment-linked diseases, such as diarrhoeal disease, respiratory infections and malaria, and the agency predicts that these numbers will rise with climate change, she said. Curbing climate change and UNICEF’s top priority – to protect and support the health, development and education of...

International Affairs: Now the United Nations is sounding alarms about problems in the world's food supply. Typical. These people always need a crisis to justify the expansion of their powers.Jacques Diouf, head of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, worries there is "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food." The International Herald Tribune reports that FAO's "food price index rose by more than 40% this year, compared with 9% the year before" — a rate, according to Diouf, "that was already unacceptable." The prices of wheat and oilseeds have reached record highs. On the...

NEW YORK — Did the United Nations Development Program use an American charitable organization to secretly funnel nearly $2 million, and perhaps much more, to North Korea — over and above the millions in hard currency it is already known to have given the Kim Jong-il regime in violation of its own rules?UNDP documents seen by FOX News raise those questions, and others about the relationship between UNDP and the humanitarian group Mercy Corps, also known as Mercy Corps International. The documents show millions of dollars allocated to Mercy Corps International for North Korea seem to have escaped normal UNDP...