Paul Broun Stands Alone Against The United Nations

January 5th, 2013 | Posted by jclifford in Legislation - (3 Comments)

against the UNU.S. Representative Paul Broun was re-elected to Congress this year, in spite of some bizarre statements that he made while on the campaign trail, such as that evolution and the Big Bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of hell.”

So, now Representative Broun is aiming his lance at dragons on the floor of the House of Representatives. Wasting no time this week, on the first day of the 113th Congress, Broun introduced H.R. 75, a bill to end U.S. membership in the United Nations.

No other member of Congress is willing to cosponsor the bill.

Was this really the kind of leadership that the people of Georgia 10th congressional district were hoping for? I think I’ll cross that section of the rural South off my list of places to visit.

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Juntos Somos 99%: Ocupa Rio Protest June 20-22

June 15th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Activism | Liberal Links | Outside the USA | Uncategorized - (2 Comments)

Marking the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations “Earth Summit” on global development, the international Occupy movement is calling for protesters to gather in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22 to stage social movement pressure on the invitation-only participants in Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

Countering last year’s (fair) criticism of a movement without a cause, the Occupy movement has released a petition that enumerates desired changes in the direction of policy and policymaking:

We,members of the Occupy movement and civil society,highlight the critical window of opportunity at the Earth Summit to vastly scale up political,financial & public response to the environmental,social & economic crisis of our time,& to raise ambition to the level that science demands. We are exceeding 3 of 9 planetary boundaries (climate change;biodiversity loss;changes to the nitrogen cycle) and our economy has outgrown the ecosystems we depend on. We denounce debt-created money and demand urgent regulation for a steady-state economy. We vow to respect and protect the beauty and diversity of life on Earth,realising our interconnectedness with nature. Governments,corporations and financial institutions must wake up and dramatically prioritise people & the planet over abusive exploitation for short-term profit & “growth.”

In defence of our rights, freedoms & future,we call for:

1. A direct participatory democratic UN: inclusive rights-based global decision-making;open-source communications. Prioritise youth,women,marginalised voices & civil society formally in negotiations.

2. Ending corporate capture of the UN: end compromising partnerships & transfer of officials. Exclude business lobbyists from talks. Expose & prohibit the bullying & bribing of poor nations by rich nations.

3. Realisation of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by increased cooperation,commitment,funding & resources,strengthening the Millennium Goals (MDGs) & cancelling unjust poor country debt.

4. Peace & demilitarization,democratising the UN Security Council,a binding global arms treaty,SDG on peace & conflict,nuclear disarmament by 2030 & transfer funds to local sustainable development.

5. A Financial Transaction Tax,abolition of tax havens & a Global Carbon Fee on extraction of fuels,to transparently & equitably fund life-saving adaptation solutions,prioritising resilience & climate justice.

6. Ending fossil fuel subsidies now & extraction by 2020. Invest in non-nuclear Renewable Energy for All: global wind/solar/small-hydro/geo-energy;efficient stoves;zero carbon global electricity by 2030.

7. Outlawing Ecocide as the 5th International Crime Against Peace: prosecute destruction of ecosystems e.g. tar sands,oil spills,mountaintop removal, fracking. Protect the commons & Rights of Mother Earth.

8. Zero deforestation of Amazon rainforest by 2015 & globally by 2020. Rejection of pricing & trading nature,including forests,water & the atmosphere;and rejection of offsetting damage/destruction.

9. Food & water sovereignty & security. Ban land grabs. Protect Indigenous peoples’ land rights. Switch support for biofuels & industrial,chemical & GM agriculture to small organic farming & permaculture.

10. Indicators beyond GDP: measure wellbeing, participation, environmental health, socio-economic equity, gender equality, employment, provision for needs/services, protection of rights, & peace.

This is what democracy looks like.

The multilingual website for protests at the Rio+20 summit is ocupario.org.

What’s your take on the UN summit and the pressure on participants coming from the streets?

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Jonathan Turley Deceives About Obama’s Support For UN Religious Tolerance Resolution

December 13th, 2011 | Posted by jclifford in Barack Obama | Legislation | Religion - (8 Comments)

Regular readers of Irregular Times know that I am no great fan of Barack Obama. They also know that I have written to criticize Barack Obama’s embrace of intolerant religious leaders, and his broken promise to reform the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. Barack Obama is not a supporter of the separation of church and state.

However, I’m not one of those people who automatically hates everything that Barack Obama does. The fact that Obama has repeatedly betrayed the trust of his liberal supporters and embraced corporate domination and nasty right wing politics does not logically lead to the conclusion that everything President Obama does is right wing or pro-corporate. It’s important to look at the details of Obama’s actions, and not allow ourselves to get swept up in an absolutist narrative about Obama – whether that narrative declares that Obama is the wonderful embodiment of everything that we have ever hoped for, or a wicked swindler who is just as nasty as Newt Gingrich.

I admit that when I was forwarded to an article by lawyer Jonathan Turley declaring that the Obama Administration is promoting a United Nations resolution (U.N. Human Rights resolution 16/18) that encourages the criminalization of blasphemy and police crackdowns against people who criticize religion, I was inclined to believe the story. Obama hasn’t earned my trust. I didn’t want to just repeat the story, however. So, I read Turley’s article, and I read the resolution that it condemns.

What I discovered is that Jonathan Turley’s accusations against the Obama White House are dishonest and inaccurate.

united nations resoluton 16/18My suspicions were first raised by the tone of Turley’s article. Its rhetoric is oddly evasive and vague. Turley seems to suggest that he has some kind of inside knowledge about how the leaders of many nations intend to use the resolution, contending that the meaning of the resolution is somehow distinct from what the resolution actually says.

Turley isn’t confident enough in his own arguments to share what the resolution actually says, though. To support the contention that resolution 16/18 calls for the criminalization of the criticism of religion, Turley quotes the opening title of the resolution as “criminalizing ‘intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief.’”

Criminalizing intolerance of religion? Criminalizing the stereotyping of religion? Criminalizing the stigmatization of religion and belief? Why, that sounds terrible!

Pay attention to detail, however, and you’ll see that Turley’s quotation doesn’t begin with a capital letter, and has a “…” in the middle. Those are clues that Turley’s quotation of resolution 16/18 is not complete.

Here’s what the quoted section, the introductory title of the resolution, actually is: “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief”.

I’ll admit that this is a very poorly written title. It practically invites misunderstanding with its awkward construction. If we take the time to parse it, though, it becomes clear that what Turley says it says, and what it actually says, are two different things.

The title isn’t directed to protection of religion. It’s directed to the protection of persons. The phrase “based on religion or belief” is a modifier of the word “persons”.

Thus, the short phrase “persons based on” carries an essential part of the title: Its very object. When Jonathan Turley chose to omit this phrase, replacing it with “…”, he was making an edit that radically changed the meaning of the text.

A resolution that condemns intolerance of religion would be defending religion from criticism. That’s not what resolution 16/18 does. Instead, it condemns intolerance of persons based on religion or belief. The resolution condemns intolerance of persons, not intolerance of religious ideas. Those are two very different things.

The resolution doesn’t condemn discrimination against religion. It condemns discrimination against persons based on religion.

The resolution doesn’t condemn the negative stereotyping and stigmatization of religion. It condemns the negative stereotyping and stigmatization of persons based on religion.

The title of the resolution also condemns “incitement to violence and violence” based on religion. Jonathan Turley seems to have perceived that this condemnation might make the resolution sound noble, however, and he chose to edit that part out.

Turley claims that resolution 16/18 “‘condemns’ statements that advocate ‘hostility’ toward religion.” That’s not what the actual text of the resolution states, however. The following are the passages from the resolution that include the word “hostility”:

- The resolution “Expresses its concern that incidents of religious intolerance, discrimination
and related violence, as well as of negative stereotyping of individuals on the basis of religion or belief, continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of religious hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, as set forth in the present resolution, consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents;”

- The resolution “Condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence, whether it involves the use of print, audio-visual or
electronic media or any other mean”

- The resolution calls upon nations to begin “Speaking out against intolerance, including advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence;”

What Jonathan Turley characterizes as a condemnation of hostility toward religion is actually a condemnation of “religious hatred”. The two are so different that they’re almost opposites of each other. “Religious hatred” is hatred that is religious in nature or foundation.

The resolution does not, as Jonathan Turley says, “justify crackdowns on religious critics in the name of human rights law.” Anyone who would use resolution 16/18 for such a project has clearly not read the sections where the resolution recognizes that “the open, constructive and respectful debate of ideas, as well as interfaith and intercultural dialogue at the local, national and international levels, can play a positive role in combating religious hatred, incitement and violence.” The resolution also encourages “the representation and meaningful participation of individuals, irrespective of their religion, in all sectors of society”.

There are real instances of religious discrimination. In Saudi Arabia, they just cut off a woman’s head because she was accused of practicing sorcery. In the United States, Republican presidential candidates are promising to replace our nation’s institutions of religious freedom with a system of theocracy that promotes Christianity above all alternatives. Under Barack Obama, George W. Bush’s system of government patronage of religion that allows public money to be used to discriminate against religious minorities has been expanded without reform.

There’s no need for Jonathan Turley to go making up stories about threats to religious freedom.

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Torture Regime Is What We Got For 10 Years of War

October 11th, 2011 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in War and Peace - (0 Comments)

Last week was the 10 year anniversary of the start of the ongoing U.S. war in Afghanistan. It’s the longest war in American history, and many people are wondering what the purpose of the war is. Year after year, American soldiers have fought, killed, and died in Afghanistan, and year after year, the Taliban have grown stronger.

There’s an Afghan national government installed by the United States, and though it doesn’t really control the entire nation, the Obama Administration tells us that it’s in the vital interest of the United States to see this new Afghan government survive and thrive. Why this government in particular? What makes it superior to what another Afghan government might be?

Well, for one thing, the government of Afghanistan led by Hamid Karzai is exceptionally good at torture.

afghanistan tortureYesterday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report concluding that the current national government of Afghanistan is engaged in the systematic torture of its citizens. The report is based on inquiries into 47 different prisons in Afghanistan, so this isn’t just a case of a few “bad apples” in an otherwise noble system.

The investigators didn’t ask prisoners whether they were tortured. All reports of torture were volunteered by prisoners, without specific prompting questions. The methodology of inquiry ensured that prisoners had not had the opportunity to speak with each other, to share fabricated stories.

The experiences that prisoners told of were exceptionally brutal, not mildly coercive. One prisoner, who had been interrogated by the Afghan government in May of this year, said, “I did not confess. After two days he tied my hands on my back and start beating me with an electric wire. He also used his hands to beat me. He used his hands to beat me on my back and used electric wire to beat me on my hands and legs. I did not confess even though he was beating me very hard. During the night on the same day, another official came and interrogated me. He said, ‘Confess or be ready to die. I will kill you.’ I asked him to bring evidence against me instead of threatening to kill me. He again brought the electric wire and beat me hard on my hands. The interrogation and beating lasted for three to four hours in the night. The NDS officials abused me two more times. The asked me if I knew any Taliban commander in Kandahar. I said I did not know. During the last interrogation, they forced me to sign a paper. I did not know what they had written. They did not allow me to read it.”

Other prisoners reported that their genitals were twisted and wrenched, that they had received electric shocks, that their toenails were pulled out, that they were threatened with rape. A man imprisoned in April of this year reported, “When I insisted that those phone numbers were not mine and that I did not know about them, they called for another two Afghans and both of those interrogators started beating me with hard plastic water pipes on my legs and the soles of my feet… They took off my clothes, and one of them held my penis in his hand and twisted it severely until I passed out. After I woke up, I had to confess because I could not stand the pain, and I did not want that to happen to me again and suffer the same severe and unbearable pain.”

There weren’t just assertions of torture. Injuries consistent with torture were observed by investigators as well. “UNAMA interviewers observed injuries, marks and scars that appeared to be consistent with torture and ill-treatment,” the report states. Several of the people interviewed were under the age of 18 at the time that they were imprisoned and tortured.

So, let’s suppose that something changes in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and that the American military is able to successfully keep the current government of Afghanistan in power. Even if this happens, the “success” of the decade-long war will be to have installed and preserved a regime that engages in widespread torture of its citizens.

Why are we spending our nation’s fortunes to achieve such sadistic ends?

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The Myth Won’t Die: H.B. 1388, Barack Obama and Sending Hamas $20 billion

May 30th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | Legislation | Mysteries | Outside the USA | Politics - (11 Comments)

The HB 1388 Myth in the 111th Congress

Along with a belief in Christian End Times, the righteously violent rhetoric of the Hutaree was stoked by the belief that the current President of the United States had sent $20 billion to Hamas and welcomed Hamas members as immigrants to the United States. One of the last posts Tina Mae Stone made to her Facebook account before she was arrested fourteen months ago read:

HB 1388 Passed…. It’s bad news for us all… when people in this country is getting kicked out of there homes everyday and our government passes a bill to spend more then 20 billion dollars to bring Hamas here and supplies them with food and homes that just wrong.

In the 111th Congress that was in session, there was no House Bill to send Hamas $20 billion or bring Hamas members to the United States. H.R. 1388, the closest thing to “HB 1388,” was a bill promoting public service within the United States. It had nothing to do with Hamas. The following are all the bills before the House in the 111th Congress having anything to do with Hamas:

  • H.R. 1105, which stipulates that federal funds shall NOT be sent to Hamas or any group controlled by Hamas.
  • H.R. 2346, which stipulates that federal funds shall NOT be sent to Hamas or any group controlled by Hamas.
  • H.R. 3288, which stipulates that federal funds shall NOT be sent to Hamas or any group controlled by Hamas.
  • H.Res. 34, a resolution to “condemn Hamas for deliberately embedding its fighters, leaders, and weapons in private homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and otherwise using Palestinian civilians as human shields, while simultaneously targeting Israeli civilians; and to lay blame both for the breaking of the ‘calm’ and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas”
  • H.Res. 37, a resolution “condemning Hamas for the recent attacks against Israel.”
  • H.Res. 66, a resolution calling on Hamas and Israel to reach a cease-fire.
  • H.R. 1359, calling for the release of a soldier held by Hamas.

You’ll notice there’s nothing in there about sending $20 Billion to Hamas or escorting members of Hamas to the United States to give them “food and homes.”

The HB 1388 Myth in the 112th Congress

Despite the easily-confirmed fact that H.B. 1388 as characterized by Tina Mae Stone did not exist, the claim not only survived but thrived during the remainder of the 111th Congress. When a new Congress was sworn into office in January of 2011, generating an entirely new set of bills, did that stop the HB 1388 claim? Of course not, although the latest version of the myth downgrades the supposed Hamas aid down to $20 million, a staggering deflation.

My Spirit Path, May 15 2011:

Our So CAlled President Just Keeps Doing What He Wants!!!!
HB 1388 PASSED
You just spent $20,000,000 to move members/supporters of Hamas, a terrorist organization, to the United States; housing, food, transportation, the whole enchilada.

HB 1388 PASSED
Whether you are an Obama fan, or not, EVERYONE IN THE U.S. Needs to know….
H.R. 1388 was passed, behind our backs.

It wasn’t mentioned on the news…. Just went by on the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN screen.

Obama funded $20M in tax payer dollars to immigrate Hamas Refugees to the USA . This is the news that did not, and will not, make the headlines..

By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in “migration assistance” to the Palestinian refugees and “conflict victims” in Gaza . The “presidential determination” (ain’t that nice?) which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States , was signed and appears in the Federal Register….

See also TCU Nation on May 15 2011, What About God? on May 13 2011 and The Wild Zimarik on May 10 2011, each featuring exactly the same text.

It’s still untrue. In the 112th Congress of 2011-2012, H.R. 1388 is a bill having nothing to do with Hamas; it pertains to the supply chain of rare earth metals. There are only two bills before the House of Representatives in the 112th Congress that have anything to do with Hamas. They are:

  • H.Res. 244, which “maintains that a Palestinian government which includes Hamas must be prohibited from receiving United States aid until the government publicly commits to the Quartet principles.”
  • H.Res. 268, which “supports the position taken by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on April 22, 2009, that the United States will not deal with or in any way fund a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless and until Hamas has renounced violence.”

Did you notice the new bit added at the bottom of this year’s version of the HB 1388 myth? In an internal contradiction, it asserts that Hamas got that aid for “migration assistance” both through H.B. 1388/H.R. 1388 and by a presidential executive order. In an attempt to make the claim credible, it references an actual executive order which you can read for yourself here. The executive order neither mentions Hamas nor the immigration of anyone to the United States. It is a dedication of funds to the United Nations and the Red Cross in order to meet the humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees in the wake of Israel-Hamas military conflict, as a spending memo from the U.S. Consulate General specifies:

Of the $20.3 million in new ERMA funds, $13.5 million will go to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), $6 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and $800,000 to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). These organizations are distributing emergency food assistance, providing medical assistance and temporary shelter, creating temporary employment, and restoring access to electricity and potable water to the people of Gaza.

It is interesting to watch people who are so firmly dedicated to hating Barack Obama that they will pass around an internally inconsistent, multiply incorrect myth — interesting like watching a car crash.

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House Republicans Fail Again After Breaking Rules

February 9th, 2011 | Posted by jclifford in Legislation | Politics | Republicans - (2 Comments)

Last year, the Republican Party promised that, if it was given control of the U.S. House of Representatives, it would never try to pass a law without giving the American people at least 3 days to read what the proposed law actually says.

Today, the Republican Party broke that promise. It tried to pass H.R. 519, the United Nations Tax Equalization Refund Act. This legislation, if passed and signed into law, would have attempted to force the UN to give the United States 179 million dollars.

H.R. 519 was introduced by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen just yesterday, and rushed onto the floor of the House of Representatives by the Republican Party leadership. The bill was not given any review by any committee, and there was no opportunity to offer amendments on the legislation.

This afternoon, H.R. 519 failed to pass under the suspension of rules. Two Republicans, Michael Grimm and Peter King, both from New York, where the United Nations is headquartered, voted against the legislation.

This congressional Republican failure comes less than 24 hours after the dramatic failure by the House GOP to pass an extension of the most abusive aspects of the Patriot Act – also attempted under a suspension of the rules that Republicans promised to abide by.

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Obama Continuing Bush Spying Against United Nations

November 29th, 2010 | Posted by jclifford in Barack Obama | George W. Bush - (1 Comments)

Almost seven years ago, America learned of the possible involvement of George W. Bush’s White House in spying against the United Nations. Now, the Bush Administration’s program to spy against UN leaders has been confirmed by documents released by Wikileaks. Those documents include orders for spying against the UN signed by Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Those documents also include orders for spying against the UN signed by Barack Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yes, it seems that Obama, who promised change and respect for the rule of law if he should become President, didn’t change this Bush spy operation. Obama just kept Bush’s policy going.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have sent out memos asking at least 30 embassies to work to gather information on UN leaders, including Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, through ordinary spy techniques but also through the seizure of biometric data including iris scans and DNA material.

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Barack Obama Isn’t Leading On Climate Change

November 26th, 2009 | Posted by The Green Man in Barack Obama | Environment - (1 Comments)

Last night I wrote about President Obama’s decision to attend the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen. It’s good news, given that Obama had been wavering about attending at all.

That said, the substance of Obama’s visit to Copenhagen indicates an uwillingness on his part to seriously engage with the climate issue. The conference will be eleven days long, but President Obama will only attend for part of one day.

Then there’s the matter of Obama’s proposal for greenhouse gas emissions: 17% of 2005 levels by the year 2020. I’m appreciative that Obama is proposing anything at all, but this goal won’t match the need for strong action. Furthermore, superior proposals have already been made. The European Union, for example, is pledging a reduction of emissions to 30% of 1990 levels by the year 2020.

In both his delayed decision to attend the Copenhagen Conference and in his meek emissions proposal, Barack Obama isn’t showing the environmental leadership we need. Instead, he looks like he’s busy playing catch up with the rest of the world.

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