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MK Yariv Levin was allowed to vist Beit Hamachpela (House of the Patriarchs) in Hebron on Monday only after battling with Defense Ministry officials to exercise his perogative as a lawmaker. ..... MK Levin visited the tent city near the house from which 15 Jewish families were evicted using a legal technicality shortly before the holiday of Passover began. "The Patriarchs residents were evicted from their home two weeks ago, a period which no doubt was long enough to test the legality of the acquisition structure," Levin said. MK Miri Regev (Likud) is expected to visit the tent city tomorrow....

The world needs a new economic model based around “gross global happiness” rather than simply making money, according to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban, speaking at a meeting organized by the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan called “Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm”, said social and environmental factors should be considered, a statement posted on a United Nations website said. “Gross National Product has long been the yardstick by which economies and politicians have been measured. Yet it fails to take into account the social and environmental costs of so-called progress,” Ban told at the meeting at U.N....

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, on Tuesday presented a letter of complaint to the UN Security Council and to the organization's Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, over the Council’s silence in the face of the continued rocket attacks on southern Israel. “250 missiles since Friday, a rocket every 20 minutes, and zero response from the Security Council,” Prosor wrote in the letter, reminding Ban that “during your visit to Israel you met with children from the south and saw the situation for yourself. Yesterday you told the members of the Council that the firing of rockets at Israel's...

Lebanon-based Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has rejected a call by visiting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his terrorist organization to disarm, saying "The resistance is here to stay." Ban told a news conference Friday after meeting with Lebanese leaders, "I am deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hizbullah and... the lack of progress in disarmament," referring to the requirement for the terrorist group to disarm set forth in the ceasefire agreement with Israel that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Instead, Hizbullah has increased its weapons arsenal to a level beyond that which it had prior to the...

Every day in the Middle East, terrible things happen. The lies and distortions of truth help ensure things don’t get better. Every day in the Middle East, terrible things happen. The worst are the acts of violence and oppression. The second worst are the lies and distortions of truth that help ensure things don’t get better. Every day in the West, the lies are echoed and amplified, and new ones invented. This not only helps ensure things don’t get better in the Middle East, it guarantees they will get worse in the West. There is an ancient Navaho proverb that...

SYDNEY (AP) -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is calling for urgent action on climate change. Ban lashed out at climate change skeptics during a speech Thursday at the University of Sydney and said science has proven climate change is real.

The Arab League on Saturday announced it would host next week a conference on war-wracked Libya, which will be attended by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and the European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The April 14 gathering will focus on political solutions to the crisis and "reinforce coordination between the Arab League, UN, African Union and Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC)," league number two Ahmed Ben Helli said. Amr Mussa, who heads the 22-member pan-Arab body based in the Egyptian capital, OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and Jean Ping, head of the African Union Commission, will also attend the...

In message delivered by his assistant at Uruguay conference Ban Ki-moon says occupation is morally and politically unsustainable and must therefore end. 'A way must be found for Jerusalem to emerge as a capital of two States,' he adds. WASHINGTON – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed Israel's policy and called for the division of Jerusalem on Tuesday. In a message delivered by his assistant at a UN regional meeting in Uruguay, Ban said: "The target date for completing the Palestinian Authority’s two-year State-building program is fast-approaching." The occupation that started in 1967 is morally and politically unsustainable, and must...

In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories," admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as "a violation of international law."[1] The United Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. Nowhere has this obsession been more starkly demonstrated than at the World Conference...

Raising $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 is challenging, but possible through mechanisms including carbon markets, domestic carbon taxes and a variety of international transportation taxes, a United Nations advisory group said in a report Friday. Earlier this year, the UN's Ban established the panel, which includes U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and Deutsche Bank vice-chairman Caio Koch-Weser. The financing will be used to support mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries--in particular, for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

Top 10 Reasons I Hate the UN10. UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationMay 28, 2009:I’d think that seriously advocating book burning at any time would disqualify you, since presumably there are equally qualified candidates for the UN’s cultural heritage agency who’ve never advocated destroying cultural heritage. But Israeli society is toxic anyway – especially compared to the glory that is the contemporary Egyptian public sphere – so no loss:Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, a candidate for the top job at the United Nations culture agency UNESCO, apologised on Wednesday for calling for Israeli books to be burnt… Hosni...

Bummer! The outer space bureaucracy is not happening. Over the weekend the Brits invented the story about the United Nations appointing an ambassador in charge of extraterrestrial contacts. The most amazing part of the story was the speed with which the false rumor spread through many serious news outlets. Apparently the opinion of the media about the UN is so low that the appointment of an ET Ambassador seemed realistic. Newscasters all over the globe believed that Ban Ki-moon is totally capable of going intergalactic. After all it is likely that the UN will meet an alien before the...

Exclusive: China's John Bolton Posted By Colum Lynch Wednesday, September 8, 2010 - 6:46 PM Share Sha Zukang, the U.N. undersecretary general for Economic and Social Affairs and the organization's most senior Chinese official, offered U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a toast last week at a retreat in the Alpine resort town Alpbach that degenerated into an intoxicated rant against the United Nations, the United States, and his boss, Turtle Bay has learned. "I know you never liked me Mr. Secretary-General -- well, I never liked you, either," Sha told Ban at a dinner attended by the U.N.'s top brass, according...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The former head of the United Nations' internal oversight office has accused U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of poor leadership, saying that the world body was "falling apart" and becoming irrelevant. The latest criticism of Ban's performance at the helm of the United Nations, first reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday, comes as his aides weigh the former South Korean foreign minister's prospects for a possible second term. The former head of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), Inga-Britt Ahlenius of Sweden, said that under Ban's watch "there is no transparency, there is (a)...

"Air Force strikes in Gaza" SNIPPET: "IDF retaliates for deadly Qassam attack: Air Force hits several Gaza targets, including metal foundry, smuggling tunnel; Vice PM Shalom says Israel to offer strong response to rocket attack that killed Thai worker Thursday" SNIPPET: "IDF aircraft struck at least four targets in the Gaza Strip on Friday, a day after a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave killed a Thai worker in Israel, Hamas security officials and witnesses said." SNIPPET: "Israel also sent a letter of complaint to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is due to visit Israel at the weekend,...

Welcome to Bantanamo Posted By Colum Lynch Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 5:29 PM Share For the next four years, the United Nations' nerve center, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's office, will be situated in a squat, three-story, corrugated steel building on the U.N.'s north lawn that looks like a cross between a suburban big-box store and a high-security lockup facility. Bantánamo, a nickname embraced by U.N. staffers, has taken much of the grandeur out of diplomacy at the United Nations. It's a serious comedown for U.N. civil servants and delegates who have been grinding away in the cause of peace...

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country suffered after invasions during World War II and he will "stand to the end" to get full compensation, the Jerusalem Post reported. Ahmadinejad said he'd write to U.N. secretary General Ban Ki-moon to ask for compensation for damages caused to Iran during the war, and for use of its territory and resources by allied powers, the Post reported. "You inflicted lots of damages to the Iranian nation, put your weight on the shoulders [of the Iranian people] and became victors in World War II. You didn't even share the war profits with Iran,"...

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that emails leaked from a British university have done nothing to undermine the United Nations' view that climate change is accelerating due to humans. "Nothing that has come out in the public as a result of the recent email hackings has cast doubt on the basic scientific message on climate change and that message is quite clear -- that climate change is happening much, much faster than we realized and we human beings are the primary cause," he said.

In an effort to push the global warming agenda forward, Mr. Ki-Moon and Queen Elizabeth were in attendance in Trinidad and Tobago at a Climate Change / Global Warming event. Apparently sensing the changing tide (pun intended) there was a sense of urgency much like closing a deal on a longterm sale that you feel slipping from you fingers.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged the Senate to move forward on climate change before international climate talks in Copenhagen this December. “I would sincerely hope the Senate will take domestic action as soon as possible,” he said, after meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators on Tuesday afternoon. Ki-Moon said that he recognized the Senate was unlikely to pass a climate bill before the December negotiations, but he encouraged the Senate to at least draft broad principals laying out greenhouse gas reductions targets and other pollution reducing actions the United States could take. “They may have agreed to...

There must be some sort of global competition at the moment to see who can come up with the most ridiculous dire warning about the effects of climate change. Up until today Kofi Annan, Al Gore, Ban Ki-Moon and Gordon Brown were all leading contenders. Former Secretary General Annan claims that 300,000 people a year are being killed by climate change. Ban and Brown think we have just months to secure the future of our planet, and Gore believes in torturing us with disaster movies dressed up as documentaries. They’re all blown away however by the latest apocalyptic vision from...

GENEVA (AFP) – The world is speeding towards a climate catastrophe, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday, urging rapid progress in talks to cut emissions and tackle global warming. "Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss," the UN Secretary General said in a speech to the World Climate Conference. Ban, who this week visited the Arctic to witness first hand the changes wrought by global warming, warned that many of the "more distant scenarios" predicted by scientists were "happening now." "Scientists have been accused for years of scaremongering. But the real scaremongers...

UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Wednesday a vault carved into the Arctic permafrost, filled with samples of the world's most important seeds in case food crops are wiped out by a catastrophe. "The world faces many daunting challenges today, one of the greatest of which is how to feed a growing population in the context of climate change," a bundled-up Ban told reporters after he toured the site in the Svalbard archipelago some 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from the North Pole. "The seeds stored here in Svalbard will help us do just that. Sustainable food production may not begin in...

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway's ambassador to the United Nations has accused Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of weak, ineffective and at times counterproductive leadership during recent crises, the daily Aftenposten reported on Wednesday. Aftenposten published what it said was a letter from Ambassador Mona Juul to Norway's Foreign Ministry, where she said Ban was late in handling challenges and that his abrasive style irked even seasoned diplomats. "At a time when the need for the United Nations and for multilateral solutions to global crises is greater than ever, Ban and the United Nations are conspicuous in their absence," Aftenposten quoted the letter...

A SENIOR Norwegian diplomat has slammed Ban Ki-Moon as lacking leadership, ineffectual and prone to angry outbursts, a daily reported today, just two weeks ahead of the UN chief's visit to Oslo. Mona Juul, the Norwegian ambassdor to the UN, sent a damning confidential letter to her ministry half-way through Mr Ban's mandate, in which she said he had "hardly shown any leadership,'' Aftenposten reported. The newspaper, which obtained a copy of the letter, said Ms Juul also described Mr Ban as being "passive,'' especially in hotspots such as Sri Lanka, where a decades-long rebel insurgency was brought to an...

UN Chief’s Warning – The End Of The World Is Nigh! By Nile Gardiner August 12th, 2009 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has such a low profile on the world stage that he’s referred to as “the invisible man”. Perhaps in an effort to boost his press coverage he’s given a speech in Incheon, South Korea (hat tip: Drudge), that can only be described as a bizarre PR stunt, with the sort of cataclysmic environmental statements doled out in scientifically dodgy disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow or the forthcoming 2012. In his address to the Global Environment Forum...

UNdefended Human Rights by: Emily Kanyi, May 15, 2009 In the Fall of 1984, former Austrian United Nations Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim, lamented that the U.N. had not yet managed to cut through the political habits and attitudes of earlier less hurried centuries to come to grips decisively with emerging factors, despite much effort and undoubted sincerity. Twenty five years later, the U.N. continues to grapple with these issues and more so within one of its most paramount bodies—the U.N. Human Rights Council. On Tuesday, May 12, 2009, the U.S. won its first seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council,...

IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have shot himself in the foot. Ahmadinejad gave a vitriolic anti-American and anti-Israeli speech at the "Durban II" anti-racism conference in Geneva April 20 as part of an effort to launch his re-election campaign with a big bang and to bolster the claim that he is the global standard-bearer of anti-Western movements. The speech was designed to shock and provoke, and it did that -- but it also highlighted the Islamic Republic's increasing diplomatic isolation. Ban Ki Moon, who briefly pulled off his earpiece so as not to hear the translation of Ahmadinejad's incendiary claims,...

Only in the alternate reality that prevails at the United Nations can its greatest contributor be considered a “deadbeat.” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon tarred the United States with that pejorative during a meeting with Congressional leaders on March 11. At a press conference held on March 12 and attended by FrontPage Magazine, Ban Ki-moon tried to explain away his comments by saying it had all been a “misunderstanding.” He indicated that he was just trying to emphasize the fact that the United States is about $1 billion behind on its payments, “soon to be $1.6 billion.”

Ban Ki-Moon calls the United States a “Dead Beat Donor” Lou Dobbs tells United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to “STICK IT.” www.thedailychange.com/united-nations-ban-ki-moon-putz/

WASHINGTON – A day after his White House meeting with President Barack Obama, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the United States a "deadbeat" donor to the world body while making the made the rounds on Capitol Hill. Ban's criticism Wednesday of the U.N.'s single biggest backer irked some members of the House Foreign Relations Committee. They were generally supportive of his leadership but voiced concern about U.N. efforts in areas from Sudan to Somalia. "He used the word 'deadbeat' when it came to characterizing the United States. I take great umbrage (over) that," Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the panel's senior Republican, said...

Yesterday UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon fell into the customary lack of moral clarity which has made the UN famous. He traveled to the Middle East to visit the Gaza War Zone. He started at Gaza to "express solidarity with Palestinian suffering." His declaration showed a lack of backbone to lead. You see, in Gaza it was all Israel's fault, but when he spoke in Israel Hamas shared the blame, almost of a duplication of the Palestinian strategy of saying one thing in Arabic, another in English. The list of things he neglected to mention in Gaza was incredible....

At a closed-door meeting late last month in Turin, Italy, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon blasted his top officials, accusing them of crippling the world body through a combination of self-interest, petty squabbling and egoism. "We all know the U.N. is a huge bureaucracy," Ban told the assembled senior officials. "Coming here, 20 months ago, that prospect did not bother me. … "Then I arrived in New York. There is bureaucracy, I discovered — and then there is the U.N." ..."We waste incredible amounts of time on largely meaningless matters."

World body's spokeswoman says Ki-moon phoned Abbas to stress his support for Palestinians on day marking 'catastrophe' of Israel's inception; Israel demands retraction WASHINGTON - Israel is demanding that the UN strike the word 'Nakba' from its lexicon, this after the world body's spokeswoman uttered it, apparently by mistake, in a press briefing she held Thursday night. 'Nakba', or 'catastrophe', refers to the refugee flight of Palestinian Arabs that followed Israel's inception in 1948. The spokeswoman told reporters that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to stress his support for the Palestinian people on Nakba Day". An...

The Hague - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has issued a strong condemnation of the anti-Qur'an film released by Dutch MP Geert Wilders. The UN chief said there could be no justification for instilling hatred or incitement to violence. The European Union and a handful of Muslim countries have also strongly condemned the film. The authorities in Pakistan summoned the Dutch ambassador to account for the film and want the Netherlands to take legal action against Geert Wilders, who heads the right-wing Freedom Party. Negative reactions have also come from Iran, Jordan and Indonesia. The Indonesian authorities referred to the...

The BBC has apologized for significant errors in two recent news reports on Israel. In a news item on March 7, following the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack, the BBC showed a bulldozer demolishing a house, while correspondent Nick Miles told viewers: "Hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his family home. Later, mourners set up Hamas and Islamic Jihad banners nearby." The house, however, was not demolished; the BBC was embarrassed when news reports from other broadcasters showed the east Jerusalem home intact and the family commemorating their son's actions. Last week, the BBC apologized live on its news program,...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday promised in Dakar to "fight against those who want to justify violence against the religion." "We will fight against those who want to justify violence against the religion and promote understanding among the Alliance of Civilisations. We will strengthen cooperation between the OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) and the United Nations in this area (religion)," Ban said. He delivered his speech at the opening of the two-day 11th Islamic Ummah summit in Dakar, Thursday. The recently established Alliance of Civilisations (early January 2008) is a UN institution intended to promote dialogue between the...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday decried anti-immigrant perceptions in the United States and argued that Mexican immigrants complement American workers. On his first trip to the U.S. as Mexico's president, Calderon said he is working to combat anti-Americanism in Mexico and to improve job prospects there to reduce migration. He said he hopes that Americans resist anti-Mexican sentiments. "The worst thing that happened in this country is this anti-Mexican or anti-immigrant perception of people. We need to contain this," Calderon said after a speech at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "I need to change...

KIGALI (AFP) - The Rwandan genocide will haunt the world's conscience for generations, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday as he visited a memorial for victims of the 1994 massacre during a landmark trip to Kigali. The United Nations secretary general's visit comes as Rwanda seeks to mend ties with the international community, despite simmering resentment over the world's failure to prevent the genocide. "The 1994 genocide will haunt the United Nations and the international community for generations," Ban said, after laying a wreath over a mass grave, where some 250,000 people were buried. "The 1994 genocide shocked our consciences....

Former U.S./U.N. ambassador John Bolton returned to U.N. headquarters in NYC on Friday to launch his new book "Surrender Is Not An Option" (Threshold Editions- Simon & Schuster - 486 pgs.) The controversial U.S. diplomat quit his U.N. post in November 2006 when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stalled a vote on his nomination. For the preceding 18 mos. Bolton served as UN ambassador under a temporary Congressional recess appointment that was to expire on January 1, 2007. With a Democratic Congress taking office and a rejected nomination likely, Bolton asked President Bush to withdraw his name rather than face...

WASHINGTON — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called first lady Laura Bush on Tuesday to thank her for her support for the people of Myanmar and to keep international attention on the crisis there, the White House said.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon, opening a landmark summit on climate change, warned world leaders Monday they face condemnation by future generations if they fail to tackle greenhouse-gas pollution. "Climate change, and what we do about it, will define us, our era, and ultimately the global legacy we leave for future generations," the secretary general said. He demanded a breakthrough at a key conference taking place in Bali, Indonesia, in December. "The time for doubt has passed," said Ban, as he noted the grim 4th assessment on climate change by the United Nations' top scientific panel this...

UNITED NATIONS - The science is clear and the time short, but the political will is lacking to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday. Ban Ki-moon said he hoped next Monday's "climate summit" here will help galvanize leaders to take action "before it is too late." Asked at a news conference about President Bush's planned separate meeting to discuss global-warming measures among a handful of countries later next week, the U.N. chief said Bush assured him it would be coordinated with the established U.N. process of negotiating climate treaty commitments among all nations. The Bush administration rejects treaty...

<p>ABC reported on their website blog about 20 min ago that United Nations weapons inspectors discovered six to eight vials of a dangerous nerve gas, phosgene, as they were cleaning out offices at a U.N. building in New York this morning, federal authorities tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The federal authorities said the office, in a U.N. building near headquarters, was being evacuated and the White House had been notified at 10 a.m. New York police and fire officials said federal authorities had not notified them of any problem at the U.N. building, as of 11 a.m. A U.N. spokesperson said a statement would be issued shortly.</p>

UNITED NATIONS Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, now eight months in office, is proving that his courteous manner should not be mistaken for lack of resolve. The Korean diplomat's administration has spoken out for the victims of Darfur, confronted Sri Lanka over the killings of aid workers, and acted to establish the international tribunal on the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon. Quietly but firmly, Ban is helping to confirm the UN's indispensable role in the world. Yet Ban has made little progress in restraining the UN's own dark side. Getting underway in Europe alone, in the space...

Ban Ki-Moon Asked To Intercede On Behalf Of Two Journalists Under Sentence Of Death August 14, 2007 Reporters Without Borders RSF Reporters Without Borders wrote yesterday to United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urging him to intercede in the case of Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed Botimar, two journalists who were sentenced to death on 16 July, and to ask the Islamic Republic of Iran to adhere to the international treaties it has signed concerning civil and political rights. “Their most basic rights were violated as they were barred from court when the sentence was handed down,” the letter said. “Even more...

I do not like coming off like a crank or a crazed winger. I think of myself as pragmatic and moderate, and I believe that my positions bear that out. Yes, I sometimes use intense language when discussing the behavior and motives of the left, the Dems, and the MSM (all one thing, in a way). I believe that intensity is warranted. Still, my politics themselves are center-right, and I seek to be pragmatic, responsible, and not to buy into crazy conspiracy theories. That said, I want you to read this article by Debra Saunders. It's short enough, so please...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged the United States to take the lead in combating global warming during a visit to California to learn about the state's aggressive campaign to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. "The whole planet earth is at a crucial juncture," Ban told an audience at an event organized by the World Affairs Council of Northern California. "Time is of essence. The cost of inaction will be far greater than the cost of action." Ban, who served as South Korea's foreign minister before he became U.N. chief in January, arrived in San Francisco on Thursday...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are scheduled to spend part of today at a San Jose networking company in which the governor has an indirect financial stake. The company, Echelon Corp., manufacturers energy-saving control systems and will host the governor and the U.N. chief for a morning tour and press conference where both leaders are expected to praise California companies and their efforts to address global warming issues. But Schwarzenegger, who has a personal fortune estimated at more than $100 million, also has a holding of at least $1 million in an investment fund that...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....