Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – Monday’s vote by the United Nations’ cultural agency to admit “Palestine” looks set to break a logjam that will see a raft of other U.N. agencies follow suit – and risk losing U.S. funding in the process. The U.S. government quickly announced it was cutting funding to the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after its General Conference voted in favor of the Palestinian application for full membership – the first U.N. agency to do so. The funding cut is mandated by legislation from the 1990s that denies U.S. funding to any U.N. agency “which accords...

Whether you love or hate the United Nations, one thing all Americans ought to be able to agree on is that sloshing billions of American tax dollars into the UN, with little accountability and regardless of UN performance, is a chump’s game. I’d even suggest it is no favor at all to the UN itself — corroding its incentives for decent behavior, and swaddling its staff and offices in plush sinecures that are increasingly catching the attention of financially strapped American taxpayers, who pick up the biggest share of the UN tab. Yet the chief effort currently on the table...

In early September, the world’s most ineffective collection of “low life” thugs had what they like to call “high level” meetings on disease, disabilities, and the rights of migrant workers. And, on September 13, 2011, the 66th session — drum roll, please — of the United Nation’s General Assembly formally convened. On September 22, they will get down to the real business at hand, the only thing the UN has ever really done effectively, namely, the legalization of Jew hatred. That’s the day the UN will celebrate the tenth anniversary of their Durban (“anti-Semitic, pro-racist”) conference in which they named...

Months after top New York City officials expressed intense behind-the-scenes frustration at the security vulnerabilities at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, the U.N. is now planning to spend $100 million -- donated by the U.S. -- on the upgrade. That has created a new controversy: critics want to know why the U.S. is footing the entire bill, and why that money is not being credited against U.S. dues for the following year. “If the U.S. overpays the U.N., those funds should be returned in full to the U.S. Treasury,” declared Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who heads the House Foreign Affairs...

Free markets can still feed the world ... Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has rightly identified food price volatility as a priority for his country as it chairs the Group of 20 leading economies this year ... With food accounting for a large and volatile share of tight family budgets in the poorest countries, rising prices are re-emerging as a threat to global growth and social stability. When prices of staples soar, the poor bear the brunt. Without global action, people in poor countries will be deprived of adequate and nutritious food, with tragic consequences for individuals and for the future...

Move over Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. The State Department has made it official: The United States violates human rights. In an unprecedented move, the Obama administration submitted a report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights detailing the progress and problems in dealing with human rights issues in this country. The document is a strange combination of left-wing history and White House talking points. It describes how the United States discriminates against the disabled, homosexuals, women, Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics and those who don't speak English. There is the expected pandering to Muslims, noting that the government...

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 (IPS) - After a two-week fact-finding tour of U.S. prison and detention facilities, a UN human rights investigator has blasted the administration of President George W. Bush for a rash of shortcomings in the country's flawed justice system and continued violations of the rule of law. Philip Alston, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, addresses a press conference concerning his findings during a country-wide visit to the United States © UN / Devra BerkowitzPhilip Alston, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, addresses a press conference concerning his findings during...

President Bush is expected to address the situation in the Middle East, Iraq, and Iran's nuclear ambitions...

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Washington, DC, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association of America, has used the Conservative Political Actions Conference as a forum to harshly criticize U.N. efforts to reduce the amount of small arms in the hand of civilians. At the same day the U.N. Security Council debated its actions to implement sanctions and arms embargoes, LaPierre accused the United Nations of denying U.S. citizens the right to bear arms. His speech, filled with open distain toward the international organization, concluded, "Others here may suggest the U.S. to get out of...

For Immediate Release December 18, 2004 SUBJECT: NH residents torch UN flag Liberty lovers from across the Live Free or Die State converged on Keene, New Hampshire today to demonstrate their defiance of the United Nations. Twenty citizens from Keene and as far away as Rochester and Etna joined in opposing the UN by burning multiple UN flags. A promised counter-protest failed to materialize. Various reasons for disgust with the UN drew this group together. Some were there in opposition to UN attempts to ban private gun ownership as was proposed at the 2001 UN Small Arms and Light Weapons...

Tue May 4,12:18 PM ET Ambassador Sichan Siv, the United States Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and a female aide, left, walk out of the group's meeting to protest a vote giving Sudan a third term on the UN's Human Rights Commission, the world body's human rights watchdog, Tuesday, May 4, 2004, at the UN in New York. Siv called the vote an absurdity. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

A new system of governance... The Third Sector By Henry Lamb A new mechanism of governance is emerging. Georgetown University calls it "The Third Sector." The United Nations calls it "Civil Society." The President's Council on Sustainable Development calls it "...a new, collaborative decision process." Whatever it's called, it is a process to formulate public policy by non-elected individuals, unencumbered by the legislative process. The process was developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the United Nations. As the IUCN developed its land management policy proposals, a network of "civil society" organizations, called BIONET, was created...