Before Bill Clinton left office, he authorized 2001 an 84% increase in the government's investment in nanotechnology research and development, National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/html/20000121_4.html and made it a top priority.
These funds now make available monies for grant projects for:
Focus Areas at a Glance (28)
More: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563271/posts
Bush Says 'Yes' to UNESCO
Austin RuseToday we report on the news that the U.S. government intends to rejoin UNESCO, which it pulled out of during the Reagan era. Social conservatives will be deeply concerned over this since UNESCO, while not as bad as the U.N. itself, still supports the U.N. in promoting abortion and anti-family values around the world. Social conservatives will insist on one of their own for the U.S. UNESCO job.
Friday, Sept. 20, 2002
One of the little-noticed and little-reported items in President George W. Bush's speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week was the U.S. pledge to rejoin UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In his speech, President Bush declared that "As a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to UNESCO. This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning."
For more than a year, the Bush administration has sought ways to illustrate its commitment to multilateralism. Rejoining UNESCO is the most tangible manifestation of this effort so far.
UNESCO was established in 1945 to disseminate educational, cultural and scientific materials deemed essential for establishing toleration and peace. During the Reagan administration, the U.S. pulled out of UNESCO, charging the agency with rampant waste and fraud, and a hard-left pro-Soviet slant. Sharing many of these concerns, Great Britain also withdrew from UNESCO at about the same time.
Prior to its decision to rejoin UNESCO, the White House reached out to social conservatives, and was warned that many groups were increasingly concerned with UNESCO's ongoing support of the U.N.'s radical social agenda. A symbolic vote on the proposal was defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives, further signaling widespread U.S. distrust of the organization.
In a Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) memo requested by the White House and the State Department a year ago, it was pointed out that social conservatives would object to UNESCO's collaboration with the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and its main NGO partner, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). In line with these groups, UNESCO now advocates for reproductive health services for children. In U.N. parlance, reproductive health services includes abortion. For instance, one UNESCO document praises Thailand's provision of abortion-causing "emergency contraceptives" to children as an "innovative strategy."
UNESCO is also a proponent of the International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, a document written by UNAIDS and the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights. The document calls on governments to ensure a "right to safe and legal abortion," to legalize "same-sex marriages," to legalize prostitution, and to provide graphic sexual and homosexual education to children. The document also seeks the establishment of "criminal penalties" for people engaged in speech construed to be a "vilification" of homosexuality.
In the name of AIDS-reduction, UNESCO has fully embraced reproductive and sex education. In concert with UNAIDS and UNFPA, UNESCO has created curricula that many social conservatives would believe undermine parental authority, show disdain for traditional cultures and religious worldviews, and introduce dishonesty into education.
A great deal of UNESCO's other educational materials fall squarely in the camp of political correctness, endorsing liberal stances on such issues as gender and environmentalism.
Although disgruntled, conservative groups might refrain from criticizing Bush if he selects a strong social conservative to represent the United States at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Austin Ruse is President of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
Copyright - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 427 New York, New York 10017 Phone: (212) 754-5948 Fax: (212) 754-9291
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
George W. Bush
United Nations
..somehow the UN and mental health do not seem to fit well together...
Riiiiight. I suggest folks read 'The Gulag Archipelago' for further details on where this is headed.
"Mental health refers to how a person thinks, feels, and acts when faced with life's situations. It is how people look at themselves, their lives, and the other people in their lives ...and explore choices." "
Anybody who thinks that the U.N. has any business being involved in such an endeavor should have his head examined.
Hey Donna is carpet munching considered 'healthy' behavior
from a mental,moral or hygenic point of view?...
Yes, I really do want this woman looking out for my mental health. Ummm Hmmm. Sure I do.
Nam Vet
That is just plain scary.
1. You are mentally ill (especially because you believe America is the greatest country on Earth and you hate gays and commies).
2. You need to be given psychotropic drugs to 'cure' this mental illness.
3. Mental Health is defined as any unwanted thought or emotion (unwanted by whom is not defined at this time but the Annointed may determine that for you at any time in the future).
4. Your refusal to agree to this program is another sign of your mental illness and further proof that you need medication until you become compliant and agreeable.
/
Read 'Vision Of The Annointed' by Thomas Sowell and this will all become clear.
ping...in case you have not seen this...
Don't forget about this....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1567623/posts
UN plans to release untapped wealth of $7 trillion (and solve the world's problems at a stroke)
Oops, the text didn't post...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1567623/posts
UN plans to release untapped wealth of $7 trillion (and solve the world's problems at a stroke)
The most potent threats to life on earth - global warming, health pandemics, poverty and armed conflict - could be ended by moves that would unlock $7 trillion - $7,000,000,000,000 (£3.9trn) - of previously untapped wealth, the United Nations claims today.
The price? An admission that the nation-state is an old-fashioned concept that has no role to play in a modern globalised world where financial markets have to be harnessed rather than simply condemned.
In a groundbreaking move, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has drawn up a visionary proposal that has been endorsed by a range of figures including Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Laureate.
It says an unprecedented outbreak of co-operation between countries, applied through six specific financial tools, would slice through the Gordian knot of problems that have bedevilled the world for most of the last century.
If its recommendations are accepted - and the authors acknowledge this could take years or even decades - it could finally force countries to face up to the fact that their public finance and growth figures conceal the vast damage their economies do to the environment.
At the heart of the proposal, unveiled at a gathering of world business leaders at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, is a push to get countries to account for the cost of failed policies, and use the money saved "up front" to avert crises before they hit. Top of the list is a challenge to the United States to join an international pollution permit trading system which, the UN claims, could deliver $3.64trn of global wealth.
Inge Kaul, a special adviser at the UNDP, said: "The way we run our economies today is vastly expensive and inefficient because we don't manage risk well and we don't prevent crises." She downplayed concerns over up-front costs and interest payments for the new-fangled financial devices. "The gains in terms of development would outweigh those costs. Money is wasted because we dribble aid, and the costs of not solving the problems are much, much higher than what we would have to pay for getting the financial markets to lend the money."
The UNDP is determined to ensure globalisation, which has generated vast wealth for multinational companies, benefits the poorest in society.
It urges politicians to embrace some groundbreaking schemes put in place in the past 12 months to tackle global warning, poverty and disease, based on working with the global markets to share out the risk.
These include a pilot international finance facility (IFF) to "front load" $4bn of cash for vaccines by borrowing money against pledges of future government aid.
The scheme, which is backed by the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was born out of a proposal by Gordon Brown for a larger scheme to double the total aid budget to $100bn a year.
In an endorsement of the report, Mr Brown said: "This shows how we can equip people and countries for a new global economy that combined greater prosperity and fairness both within and across nations."
The UNDP says rich countries should build on this and go further. It proposes six schemes to harness the power of the markets:
* Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through pollution permit trading; net gain $3.64trn.
* Cutting poor countries' borrowing costs by securing the debts against the income from stable parts of their economies; net gain $2.90trn.
* Reducing government debt costs by linking payments to the country's economic output; net gain $600bn.
* An enlarged version of the vaccine scheme; net gain (including benefits of lower mortality) $47bn.
* Using the vast flow of money from migrants back to their home country to guarantee; net gain $31bn.
* Aid agencies underwriting loans to market investors to lower interest rates; net gain $22bn.
Professor Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank and a staunch critic of the way globalisation harms the poor, said: "Globalisation has meant the closer integration of countries, and that in turn has meant a greater need for collective action.
"One of the most important areas of failure is the environment. Without government intervention, firms and households have no incentive to limit their pollution." He said a global public finance system would force countries to acknowledge the external damage their policies had, "the most important being global climate change".
Solving the environmental crisis tops the UN's $7trn wish-list. It calls for an international market to trade pollution permits that would encourage rich countries to cut pollution and hit their targets under the Kyoto protocol.
But - and the UN admits it is a big "but" - the US would have to sign up to Kyoto and carbon trading to achieve the $3.64trn that it believes the system would deliver over time.
"We are dealing with a global problem as pollution can only be dealt with internationally," Ms Kaul said. Richard Sandor, the head of the Chicago Climate Exchange, added: "Many encouraging signs are emerging. When the business case is clear, private entrepreneurs step forward."
But, the proposal is unlikely to get support from some green groups who believe that action to curb consumption, rather than market incentives, are the way to reduce carbon emissions.
Andrew Simms, director of the New Economics Foundation, said it left unanswered questions over how these markets would be managed and how the benefits and costs would be distributed. "We have nothing against markets so it would be missing the point to get into a pro- or anti-market stance. The point is how you distribute the benefits."
Here's more UN infiltration into US sovereignty...
UN Threatens to Trump US Land Policy
The ITTA, a U.N. measure the United States signed July 1, 1999, and accepted Nov. 14, 1996, created an organization that controls the world’s production (and consumption) of timber. The agreement, overseen and administered by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, labels nations as either timber producers or consumers and allots voting quotas based on levels of production versus consumption – with more voting weight granted to the former. The United States, a consumer, therefore does not possess the same ability to control - via ballot - the application of this agreement, as many of the producing nations do (e.g. Indonesia or Malaysia).
http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/796.html
Sorry Cal, I have so much UN crap archived that I keep stumbling upon more, but it is completely relevant...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1335656/posts?page=1,50
Big Media Won't Touch Agenda 21
I keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Bill O’Reilly or Shaun Hannity or Oprah Winfrey or somebody…..anybody, who has daily access to the multitudes, to say the words, “Agenda 21.” I’m still waiting, and for the life of me, I don’t understand the refusal to talk about the greatest threat to America that has ever existed. However, it dawns on me that wrapping a brain around Agenda 21 requires time, effort, interest, and a lot diligence. No one told me about Agenda 21. I found it by accident on the Internet. Then I went to the U.N.’s website and read Agenda 21. From there I went to Buenos Aires, The President’s Commission of Sustainable Development, my local sustainable development commissions and planners, to local visioning commissions, ecology conglomerates, and then back to the U.N.. After about six months of reading about a whole lot of global, national, and philanthropic organizations, I started documenting and keeping running lists because, I discovered, Agenda 21 was huge, highly developed, and a done deal. “How is it,” I asked myself, “that in 50 years, I never heard of any of this before? Where were my trusted newscasters? And why hasn’t my President, or the previous Presidents, ever talked about Agenda 21, the meetings in Buenos Aires, and Agenda 21’s connections to the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and a thousand other global organizations?”
So, I kept researching the Net. And lo and behold, I finally realized that Agenda 21 would never be publicized to Americans. It really can’t be.
As my running lists were now becoming encyclopedic, I also realized that there was no way to explain Agenda 21 easily. It’s too big, profoundly sophisticated, intentionally masked and hidden by corporate agendas and ecological ideologies that are, themselves, exploited by corporate agendas. But more than that, I realized that for Americans to understand Agenda 21, they would have to come to terms with a truth that, I fear, they won’t believe. What would that truth be? Let me try to say it in one sentence: Agenda 21 is the end of America.
As I read that sentence I think, “Well, Nancy, now everyone is going to think you are an extremist and no one will believe anything you say from now on. Everyone knows there can be no end to America….”
ping
Yikes Calp.
Just yikes.
Bump for now.
It'll take me a while to get through this thread. :-)
I hate the UN. I have yet to hear about ONE positive thing they have done. Their agenda is despicable.
